Malone Tuning Stage 2

Today, I wrap up the saga of the bigger injector nozzles and the Malone Tune in the VW bus. And, finally take Hapy for a drive. But first, for my mj-friendly readers, Hapy 420; celebrate safely :) Before I get flamed, yes, I know 420 did not stem from a date. It came from a time-of-day, but that does not change the fact that people celebrate pot on the 20th of April. It does, however, explain why some folks celebrate 4:20 in the afternoon with their personal favorite intoxicant.

Also, please note that the fine people at blogger have notified their users that "After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported." So, if you are relying upon an email to let you know that there is a new post on one of your favorite blogs, this will no longer function starting in August.

On to chipping Hapy's TDI computer...

Malone Tuning

In the TDI world, and increasingly outside of it, Malone Tuning is kind of the hallmark for getting your ECU "chipped". For those who wish to get more out of their engine, there is a tune for practically any set up and performance target. Malone has a few tunes below the "stage 2" that I selected, which either maximize power with a completely stock set up or adjust settings for best economy. I decided that I wanted larger injectors so I could get a little more oomph, so the stage 2 is the better choice. I do not have any plans to upsize my turbo, but if I did, this tune would support it.

On the turbo, I am running a stock VNT-15. The easiest upgrade would be to find and install a VNT-17. These appear on some cars stock. The advantage of the 17 is that it can create more boost (in pounds per square inch or PSI), because everything is bigger. The downside is the turbo lag (delay in the arrival of the power) is increased, moving the powerband up the RPM's. Since the sound and vibration of the bus increases with the RPM as well, I generally try to stay below 3500RPM. The VNT-15 turbo starts to kick in around 1800, but isn't really all-there until closer to 2200. So, right now, my total band for power is around 1300RPM (2200-3500). Adding a bigger turbo will reduce that or push my top-end higher to compensate which would make for a more noisy / shaking experience. It is for this reason that I am not really considering a turbo swap. The $1000US for a turbo is, of course, a factor too. Besides, we haven't seen how bigger nozzles and a tune will affect things yet!

Ship Ship Ship Ship

projected HP and torque
increases from stage 2

The actual purchasing of a Malone tune is through "Tunezilla". For someone with a super-early TDI like mine, it is not a simple download of software, though. A pair of chips need to be swapped out. This can be done by their shop, who does this every day, or they will send you the chips to do it yourself. I decided to have them do it, and sent my ECU off to them. Less than a week later, it was back in my hands, having traveled through customs twice (Malone is in BC, Canada) and their shop. Unfortunately, FedEx international shipping was a little rough with the package and after some highly responsive tech support from Malone to diagnose, I had to send it back. Malone determined that a handful of the solder joints broke free during shipping, causing the ECU to not power up.

The symptoms were consistent: apply switched 12V power and nothing happened. No messages on the "K" line thru the OBD-II plug to my little reader, no check engine light, no glow-plug light, but there was power at and past relay 109. So, there was some power moving through the ECU (relay 109 is triggered by the ECU), just not all of it.

I sent it back and they turned it around in 2 days, finding and fixing the loose soldier joints. They super-packed it with extra puff, so we would not have a solder fail repeat. Again, about a week after I sent it to them, it was back in my hands. An aside: when I sent it the first time, FedEx said they were not delivering to that address, so I went through UPS. UPS cost twice as much. The second time I sent it, FedEx was delivering there again. So weird.

Holy Head Snap

Hapy says "lets play"

Anyway, this time when I plugged it in, I had an entirely different experience. I turned the key to "RUN" and heard the familiar "snap snap" of the relays and the dash-pod waking up. I turned the key to start and Hapy fired up immediately (bum-bum broom). He rough idled for a few seconds and then settled down at 900RPM. I cleared the codes (per Malone instructions) and then played with the go pedal. Oh, this is gonna be fun. The new injectors don't leak at all, and the pump retains prime after being left idle for days. Bigger nozzles, stage 2 tune, wrapped exhaust, oil temp and pressure gauging, fresh wiring from front to back, including a new, custom fuse/relay box, the fat-plug harness surgery... All I needed was a test drive and Hapy could be ready to rumble.

Not so fast. It would be irresponsible to put that much new power on the road without verifying the brakes. So, before I got my "go" on, I adjusted the rear drum brakes, checked the lining on the front and confirmed I had full fluid. I switched out the system to DOT4 a couple of years ago, so the fact that he has been sitting most of the time since did not concern me as much as DOT3 would have. DOT3 absorbs moisture (bad for your fluid life) over time while DOT4 does not.

dyno curve compare
stock -v- stage 2

So.. with brakes adjusted, and all the stuff I said a paragraph ago now complete, I'm ready to test drive. We have been blessed with pleasant (20*C / upper 60*'s F) high temperatures so far this April, with many sunny skies. This makes for some perfect conditions for a test drive. While I only did the usual lap for my test, it was amazing. Somewhere along the way when I worked on the original bus dash I failed to re-connect the speedometer cable, but otherwise, everything worked very well and the brakes responded strong. As I turned onto the main road, I quickly moved through 1st and 2nd gear. When I put it in third, I really put my foot into it. I didn't floor it, but I put it pressed it pretty far down. The turbo spun up and I lost traction in my drive tires: I was burning rubber in 3rd gear, rolling at around 25mph. That'll do. Hahaha. I don't think I'll need to do anything more performance-wise, though I may replace the exhaust pipe if that will reduce exhaust gas temperature (EGT) or if the wrap destroys it. When I got back home, I felt the rear tires; they were warm, but not hot. Same goes for the rear drums. Then, I checked the wrapped exhaust which was also warm, but easily touchable.

With a consistent accelerator pedal (no more 1200 limp mode) and better visibility into the engine health, Hapy is pretty much ready for some road-tripping this Summer. Now that CoViD-19 vaccines are becoming more widespread and plentiful, Hapy's system-ready status could not arrive soon enough.

That's it for now. As I go, another reminder that Hapy turns 50 on 3-September-2021 and we will be celebrating it at LL Stub State Park. If you have nothing else to do Labor Day weekend, there are some great hiking, horse and bike trails there as well as our little birthday.

Thanks, as always, for following along--

P0121 - the 1200 rpm limp mode - Final

Today I complete the saga of trying to resolve the P0121 error that persisted after I re-wired the front-to-back cable, the fuse box (main donor) harness and the fuse box / relay box. It is terribly ironic that this post arrives on Groundhogs Day. I have had drive-by-wire (P0121) issues so much since I did this conversion, it was like my own personal Groundhogs Day every time I dropped into that 1200 rpm zone. Queue the Sonny and Cher song. With only one error code, you would think this would have been easy. Nope. At least, after all the wiring changes, I only had the one code.

Pedal Pedal

new on bottom

When I left off my last post, I had concluded that the wiring was not the issue, and ordered a replacement pedal. These aren't cheap, but I found one for around $100US (which was a really good price). It took a while to get here from the east coast, but once in-hand, I thought it would be interesting to compare the new and the old. Physically, they are very similar, but the old one has a removable panel. I pulled out the multi-meter and started testing the resistance between all of the pins on both pedals. This was illuminating.

Then, I popped each pedal into a bench vice so I could depress the pedal by tightening the vice. This allowed me to measure how the resistance changed across the pins as the pedal was depressed. Generally, both pedals demonstrated the same direction of resistance change relative to the direction of the pedal movement, but there were some definite differences. For example, the resting resistance between the pins (which had a corresponding resistance on the other pedal) was lower on the old pedal than the new one. I was able to correct for most of the difference by shifting the little cover on the old pedal forward (front-is-front / away from the footpad). Prior to moving the cover, it was near the mid-point of the front-to-back adjustability.

The biggest difference I found was that on the new pedal, there was infinite resistance between pins 2 and 4 when the pedal was 0% depressed. The old pedal, however, had a measurable resistance (1760 on the second-to-highest sensitivity). Once the new pedal moved even a little off of 0% depressed, resistance was measurable. I thought this was the big tell that the old pedal was the cause, but before I get into the in-situ test, here are some tables and notes around my testing of the 2 pedals. I suspect there will be readers who are only here for that.

Testing Static Resistance between Pins 

inside the removable
cover

In the table below, the multi-meter was set at the second-to-most sensitive resistance measuring. The number on the top is from the new pedal, and the number below it is from the old one before I tweaked the little cover position. 

The word "flash" means that even though I tested these pin resistances 5 or 6 times, on the new pedal, the resistance between these pins would flash a quick 4-digit number and then go to infinity. I tried to measure it with different settings on the multi-meter, but for my purposes, it was clearly very different from the "old" pedal. Since it happened every time, I concluded it was not caused by my probe accidentally touching pin 3 while approaching pin 4. I did experience intermittent issues with my cheap $5US Harbor Freight multi-meter where the whole plastic probe would fall off the lead. The multiple tests ruled that out as a cause for the "flash" as well.

The "fix" for the probe-fall-off: Strip back a little bit extra off the end of the probe wire and push it back into the probe. Check continuity between the probes. Down to 0 or nearly 0? Perfect. Hold the wire and probe steady and tape the wire to the probe, and then run more tape up the wire a couple of inches. That wire won't pop out easily again.

Where were we? Oh, yeah.. while there are 6 pins, there was not a measurable resistance between most of them. That is why some pins are not on the tables at all and some pin intersections have a blank square. In both cases, there was no measurable resistance. Pin 1, for example, had no measurable resistance to any other pin. Neat, eh?

	3	4	6
2	1320 900	flash 1760
3		1010 996
5			1070 945

 

Testing Transient Resistance between Pins

Next, let's look at the throttle testing in the vice. So, consider these values as "when the pedal is depressed, the resistance between the pins..."

hunting gremlin

	3	4	6
2	unchanged unchanged	*drops (1590, 1480) drops (1570)
3		rises (1422, 1700) rises (1300)
5			infinite infinite

The * is to show that the resistance between the pins suddenly changes from infinite to something (high) 4-digit measurable once the pedal is starting to get depressed. The resistance between pins 5 and 6 goes to infinite as soon as the pedal starts being depressed. This is all really cool stuff, but are we closer to having an accelerator pedal again? Well, I plugged the 6-pin flat-connector into new pedal and started the engine. Idle... and then 1200 rpm mode. So, nope. So, next I checked the voltage of the 6 pins on the flat connector, and put my findings in another table below. Perhaps this would have been a good thing to test while waiting for the pedal to arrive. Or better yet checking before ordering one. Hindsight is great.

Voltage at the Flat Connector

The "should be" column is from comment #7 on this posting on the TDIClub. Fred's TDIClub is such a fantastic resource. Highly recommend for the knowledge, and they are generally nice folks too, unlike some other boards where so many replies to questions are "use the search function". Helping not helping.

	should be	no key	key to run
1	0-90%: 9+V	no V not ground	..8V
2	5v	no V not ground	5V
3	ground	ground	ground
4	.35V -> 4.5V	no V not ground	2.7V
5	0%: 0V >0%: 2.758V	no V not ground	8V
6	ground	ground	ground

So, I looked at this table and some of the values look spot-on, like the 5V reference voltage on pin 2 and the grounds on 3 and 6. The other 3 look like I wired them incorrectly. Like, maybe wire 5 should be going to pin 1, wire 1 to pin 4 and wire 4 to pin 5. At least then the voltages would be in the right ballpark. So, before I assume that my ECU is fried (the only other reason I can come up with for this), I decided to change some of the wiring to reflect this re-arrange first. Considering the difficulty I had determining the logic at the blue T10 I mentioned in the last post, this felt very much like a real possible cause.

Change 3 Wires

more hunting gremlin

Since the wiring on the fuse-box / relay-box harness was very hard to get to, and the 6-pin flat-connector is very easy to get to, I decided to change the wiring at the 6-pin flat-connector. This will force an update to my wiring diagram, but this was the fastest route to testing the theory while minimizing the potential "bump risk" (you bump something and now you have a whole new set of problems). Anyway, this re-wire was very easy: label the 3 wires, cut the heat-shrink, unwire, re-wire, re-heat-shrink.

Of course, any final test couldn't be without it's own challenges, as the electrical acted batty for about a day while I chased gremlins again. Something was creating a vibe, making the system act like the battery was dead. For example, the hazard switch would cause the relay to buzz, lights wouldn't come on, etc but a voltage test on the battery was fine. After several hours of tearing the dash board apart, believing I had bumped something when doing the flat-connector, I removed the battery from the bus and verified it had over 13.5V (full charge). So, I put the battery on the bumper and hooked up the battery cables, omitting the float charger, and tried the hazard. Success. Then I turned the key to run and everything acted normal. Love you, Hapy. Root cause: current owner error not tightening the positive battery cable on the battery post after changing the wiring. Sigh, sometimes are better than some times.

I pulled the positive cable off the battery and re-assembled the dash. While I was there, I cleaned all of the fuses and their connections with rubbing alcohol, and then zip-tied the fuse box up out of the way (it has never been screwed to the bus since I bought it). With the front-end cleaned up, I put the positive cable back on the battery (still sitting on the bumper) and checked again that things were normal. With the key turned to run, I checked the voltages on the flat-connector, and now the pins aligned with the table above.

Test Fire

battery on "bumper"

Feeling confident, I turned off the key, plugged in the new accelerator pedal and test fired the bus. Engine started, sat at idle, threw no codes... and working the pedal with my hands revved the engine. Hazah! To complete the loop, I removed the battery cables from the battery, and put the battery back in the bus. While I was there, I resolved some wire routing, and implemented a battery strap-down with the webbing I used to hold the speaker box in the MGB trunk (See Speaker Box Install Finish). This also is holding the battery-top fuse-box on top of the battery. I returned the battery cables to the battery posts (this time tightening them down) and did another test fire. Start, run and rev. With all the wiring and cables now sorted, I was able to re-install the original engine hatch prop, which means no more holding it open with either my head or a stick (like in the picture on the right, here, you can see a stick all the way to the left). More winning. And, of course, I bolted the pedal to the support post and tested the foot feel before heading inside for a celebratory smoothie.

The next day, I set out re-test the old pedal to see if that small resistance difference between pins 2 and 4 was meaningful. It isn't. The old pedal works correctly now, just like the new one: no codes, engine rev's. Since the new pedal is bolted in, I decided to leave it, and put the old pedal into my parts bin. In the end, the sporadic P0121 error that Hapy and I have suffered for the last few years was ultimately caused by something in the wiring that I replaced with the front-to-back cable at the start of the Chasing Electrical Gremlins saga (See part 1). Still, I will be putting the old pedal in a large Ziplock baggie under the rock-n-roll bed in case this new pedal fails on the road. So, this completes my efforts with the P0121. I hope the resistance and voltage (courtesy of TDIClub) information above is helpful to others as you diagnose your own P0121 error. 

Thanks, as always, for following along-

P0121 - the 1200 rpm limp mode - Part 1

Today, I will start to go through my efforts to identify the cause for my P0121 - Intermittent Signal from TPS issue. Yes, I know! Another multi-part series?!? Well, that's how it goes when we need to wait for shippers. Anyway, the process I followed is similar to what I did for the other wiring issues I just resolved in that there is a logical approach, but otherwise, this is about solving a 6-wire circuit and really shouldn't be a big deal. But it was and here we are.

Drive-by-Wire

drive-by-wire pedal

For those who haven't suffered from this code before, or may not even know this is the code you are getting, I'll start with a quick summary of what this is about. In modern drive-by-wire cars, your throttle pedal may not actually control the speed of your engine or vehicle directly. If you have watched some of the car shows on MotorTrend, when an older car (pre-fuel injection) gets a modern engine (with fuel-injection), they need to add a throttle position sensor (TPS) to tell the computer how far open or shut the throttle is. In these conversions, the TPS is usually connected to the throttle cable in the engine bay. This converted the pull/push of the cable (which reflects the push / let-up of your foot) into a signal the computer understands so it can figure out how much fuel to throw in, or how to adjust the timing of the spark. Cool, eh?

 

New cars, whether they are burning volts, waste cooking oil or dead dinosaurs, do not have a go pedal hooked up to a cable any more. They skip the middle man and have a TPS wired up to the pedal, so your pedal works like a big fader (light dimmer) or rheostat. The TPS converts your foot push / let-up into different voltage that gets sent to the computer where it does all the things I mentioned above.

P0121 - What Is It

All this is great. I mean, having something that precisely collecting your speed wishes and implementing them without a mechanical component seems pretty fantastic. And, it is, until that day when you are driving along and suddenly the pedal no longer seems to translate into speed. You notice that no matter how you position your foot, the engine speed doesn't vary. In fact, you note that the engine's speed has become static. I can't speak for other makes and model years, but if you are in a VW TDI circa 1998-2004 the engine will be pinned at 1200 rpm. Adding color to the scene will be the illumination of the check engine light. Your first impulse may be "oh snap, the engine is broken". Not so fast. In this case, you are probably getting code P0121: Intermittent Signal Inconsistency from the Throttle Position Sensor.

That sounds awfully scary, but in cars that were not hacked up like Hapy, this is probably caused by your TPS failing. It happens. In VW's, this is one of those rare parts that do not fail super-often, but when they do they are actually kind of easy to replace. You remove the panel under the dash, unplug the flat-connector, remove 4 bolts and it's out. Replacing the one in Hapy is just as easy, but determining that the TPS is the root cause is not. In Hapy, we have 6 circuits running through 7 meters of wire and multiple connectors. In your car, the 6 circuits probably run for less than a foot and run from that flat-connector to a T10 or something similar. No extra connectors, no super-long wires.

Hapy Diagnosing Plan

Before I pulled out my multi-meter, I gave myself a few minutes to think about the situation. I had intermittent P0121 codes getting thrown since I before swapped out the original 1998 NewBeetle one-year-only TPS for the more general-use one for model years up through 2004. The original TPS had the 6-wire bundle pressed against the underside of the bus, and eventually the plastic wire casings wore through. The wires grounded against the body, causing the original P0121 errors. The general-use pedal threw codes intermittently and was one of the drivers for the replacement of those wires with the front-to-back cable. That cable runs from just after the flat-connector all the way to the blue T10 (through another T12 connector). So, either some part of the wiring was done wrong or it was never the wiring all along, and it had always been the TPS or the flat-connector or both.

 

A side note about the wire sizes. The wires coming out of the VW 6-pin flat-connector vary in thickness from 22 or 24 up to maybe 18 (probably more like 20). Since the resistance of the wire is inversely related to it's thickness (thinner = more resistant), by replacing the old thin single wires with a thicker well-jacketed cable, I effectively reduced the resistance of the front-to-back run. According to this calculator, the wires in the new cable should be around 0.03 ohms. The old wires, being 22AWT gauge were around 0.3 ohms. Noting the decimal point, the old wires were 10x more resistant to current. So, we can exclude any concerns about the new cable wire size being a cause; quite the contrary, it should be delivering electronic messages better.

A failing TPS or a bad flat-connector sound like great theories. Let's prove it. I chose to start at the flat-connector and work back to the ECU. I have a second flat-connector in the heap of spare or removed TDI stuff in my garage that is also 6-pin, so I can swap-out the in-Hapy one if necessary. This also provided me the resistance values for a 6-pin flat-connector that is otherwise "normal". With the multi-meter at its most sensitive setting, I tested the resistance of each pin -to- end-of-wire. After the plug was warm in my hand, the resistance value was "3". Prior to that, when it was cold from the garage, the resistance was closer to "8". Since they were all within the same order of magnitude, I wasn't too concerned. That's our baseline: less than 10 on the most sensitive setting. With that, we bundle up and head back out to the bus.

Hapy Wiring at TPS

6-pin to
front-to-back cable

First, I unplugged the flat-connector, peeled back the plastic wire protector to where the wire splices were and then, with a razorblade, cut a small slit in each cable wire just past heat-shrink so I could touch metal with a probe. You can see the repairs to the wires in the picture on the right. The blue wire is probably the best visual example. Then, from 1 to 6, I checked the resistance to make sure they were all less than 10 on the most sensitive setting. To keep variables down, I held the flat-connector in my hands for about a minute first. It is still cold (4*C) here, even if I'm not complaining about it in every post. Apparently, its not a cold winter, I'm just a sissy working outside in it. So be it. Anyway, they were all very low, like at or below a "2" on the most sensitive setting. This told me that the flat-connector was good and the wire connections between the flat-connector and the cable were good. Very good, actually.

 

While the 6-pin flat-connector was out, I addressed the TPS plug socket with DeoxIt D5 according to the instructions on the can. I figured that if our problem was a simple case of the contacts getting worse over time, we would see a some improvement from this. I covered the little slits with electrical tape, and took a picture so I could reference the color-to-color later. I re-wrapped the wires in the plastic covering and moved to the back of the bus. I left the 6-pin flat-connector disconnected so the contacts could air dry.

Hapy Wiring at Engine Bay

T12-to-donor (T10 blue)

In the engine bay, I confirmed that the blue T10 and grey T12 plugs were snug. I would have had other issues if they had not been, but diligence wins electrical issues. Then, I pulled back the plastic cable wraps and took a picture of the T12 wires from pins 1-6 and then a picture of the color-to-color connections from the T12 to the wires which run to the blue T10. I compared these pictures with the wiring diagram I had constructed and believed all of the wires were routing to the correct partners. So far, so good. The next test was to confirm continuity between the blue T10 pin and the originating pin on the 6-pin flat-connector. This would demonstrate that the wiring from end to end is clean.

 

I was not really sure what to expect, resistance-wise. Before I could do anything, I needed to close the circuit, so I grabbed a long solid-core wire I have used to test with in the past. My testing process: I would gently insert a bare wire into the pin-hole in the flat-connector, and run the rest of the wire spool back to the engine bay. There, I measured the resistance between that wire end and a pin in the blue T10. I had difficulty figuring out which pin was "1" versus "4" in the blue T10 and the pattern from wire to pin seemed illogical. Unfortunately, had I really internalized that, I would have potentially found the root issue. When I found a connection, the resistance was down in the single digits in all cases. So, we can rule out the new wiring... ish: I discovered later that when I wired up the blue T10, I crossed up 3 of the wires. I didn't realize this until later (hence the 2-part post as I lost a bunch of time going down a wrong road). So, I continued forward believing that the wiring was right. Since I learned a bunch about the pedal along the way, I felt it was worth retaining all of this content.

 

Hapy TPS

Since I thought there were no wiring issues, I figured that the TPS went bad. I first thought that maybe I broke it by stepping on it all the way to max, and it needs a movement stopper or something. I looked at the way I installed it; the floor and the carpet would have acted like a prevent against over-pressing the pedal. After doing some research, it seems like these pedals are prone to failure if they get wet. Since Hapy is parked outside, and last year his fancy BusDepot cover effectively held water in rather than out, if the pedal had been steadily degrading because of the damp conditions over the winter (and sometimes in the Summer around here), then this seems a fairly reasonable explanation for the persistent, recurring P0121 code. I figured that last winter's super-damp caused the pedal to finally fail so I ordered a replacement.

 

That's it for today while we wait for the replacement pedal to arrive. More next time about resistances, voltages, etc as I examine the pedal and the pedal wiring and, ultimately, fix the P0121 error.

Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins (part 3)

Continuing on our journey through the darkness of the wiring rat's nest.

 

Shouldn't Have Cut That

not quite "before",
dashpod already pulled

I'll just jump right into the interesting part. Well, mostly. I started in the engine compartment and removed the wiring related to the coolant heater first: the relay box, the wires down to the glow plugs, etc. That much was great. Then, I moved on to looking at some of the wiring above, and as the bold-faced line implies, I cut something I would best not have.

 

Reflect back to the last time I clowned around on this wiring, I dug deep into the fuse-box. I started by pulling the fuses for circuits Hap doesn't need. Circuit by circuit, I cut that unnecessary wiring by referencing fuse sockets where the fuses had been pulled. That plan worked great. Lots of extra wiring got removed, and the engine still ran. I still had the sporadic not-limp-mode, and the occasional Hapy-don't-wanna-start issues, but they both seemed improved. Well, this time around, I got into the fusebox and saw a few wires that did not appear to have a partner on the other side of the fuse. So, I figured I just missed them the first time, and cut them. Well, that was wrong. Their "missing partner" was actually a common-line always-hot (circuit 30 in VW-speak) that was kind of hidden from view. Well, I didn't see them anyway. The wires I cut are for powering "engine control" circuits, of course. So, kinda important. Ugh.

Fuse Box Smaller

don't actually need
any of these relays

Once I realized that the wires I cut were critical, I needed a new plan. A while back, I bought a small relay box thing off eBay that has 6 relay slots and 6 fuse sockets. Once it arrived, I looked at how many fuses were in the donor fuse box and how many sockets were in that smaller box and the math did not add up. That was all before I did the clear out I mentioned above. After that, I was down to 7 fuses, and one of them was for the OBDII plug that I don't actually use. So, I think the fuse socket numbers may work. As for the relays, I only need 2 of the donor relays: the infamous 109 (main power) and old 180 (glow plugs). All the other ones can go, which leaves me 4 slots for other things, like the "RUN" and "START" trigger relays I have connecting the ignition from the front to the electrical from the donor. Neat. I didn't mean to change the fuse box and the relay plastic holder thing, but when I cut those two engine control wires the die was cast.

Label, Label, Cut

smarter way to remove
extra wiring

So, into the darkness we go. I started with the more obvious wires, like the thin little wires on the 180 (glow plug) relay. Then, I moved on to the T10 plugs. There are 5 (Blue, White, Black, Orange and Brown) 10-pin plugs in the mix of all that rat-nest. I unplugged them, and started dissecting by labeling either side of the cut, describing what is on the other side, and cutting. This picture on the right here explains the wire coming from the ignition switch position 86s as an example of how I dealt wit the wire-snarl.

While that sounds like quick work, I have moved slowly, researching each wire first, to make sure I don't have another "engine control" mishap. And, I want to do more than just label where it went; I want to know what it does first. This is a lot like a jigsaw puzzle where the more you do, the faster it goes until you eventually have all of the wires you intend to cut labelled and cut apart. I am almost done, which means the next post on wiring should include some building back up.

Diagramming

One last thing I have been doing, is crafting my own wiring diagram. I started by scanned the wiring diagram for the early ALH engine (80-pin ECU) from the Bentley. There are 13 pages. I am examining each circuit across the diagram and editing the image of the page to reflect what my circuitry will look like. I am retaining the original circuit numbering, etc. but adding the number of the fuse that I am using in the new fuse box to the documentation. Perhaps more importantly, I am erasing the wire references to things that I no longer have, like the coolant warming glow-plug stuff. My thinking is that this way someone who knows the original wiring (looking at you, Justin) can understand the diagram just as well as I do. This diagram will replace the diagrams in the 3-ring binder, since the 2 sets in there are both for later ALH models, so they are informative, but not exactly 100% representative. Between the cold and the dark, the diagramming effort helps me feel like I am moving forward while also creating clarity around the work.

My CoViD-19 Plea

I take a 2 mile walk pretty much every day to shake off the cabin fever and to get some exercise. Every day, I see 20-30 people also out taking walks, riding bikes or taking a run as well. That's great except I can count on one hand the number of people I encounter with a mask on at all (even worn wrong). The other day, I counted 3 people out of 28. Seriously. Our tiny state is consistently seeing over 1200 new cases a day, which is alarming when you consider our "summer peak" was 430 cases a day. Please keep your masks on, its not a political statement, it's not a chin-strap and it doesn't work unless it covers your nose and mouth. It's to protect others from you, not the other way around. We don't know if you have the virus or not, and quite frankly, if you're wandering around without a mask, and hanging around with others who don't have masks, then even if you had a test today... you don't know either. Just because you're outside doesn't mean you can run/walk/bike right past other people a-huffin and a-puffin (and sometimes a-coffin) without a mask. We are all tired of this, but that doesn't change anything about the importance of respecting it, and each other --

Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins (part 2)

Today continues where I left off with Hapy. Last, I had pulled a cable from the rear to the front, through small openings in the frame. I wired up the accelerator pedal plug into the new cable, as well as the ignition switch. Today, we take the next few steps.

Looking Up at 40F (4C)

Yes, it is still cold. It is December, after all. Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, the holiday music can come out in full force. Meanwhile, I'm dreaming of a not-rat's-nest wiring set up. Though, I suppose, a white Christmas would be pretty great too. We start with getting the wiring up front completely tidied up. I wrapped the exposed wires from the cable with 1/2" plastic wire wrap so it remains one cable almost all the way to the ignition switch. I split off the 6 wires for the accelerator pedal from the main bundle in front of the hand brake (front is front), and wrapped that in another plastic wrap. I ran that bundle behind the accelerator pedal support down to the pedal assembly. I then fed the excess cable down through the floor, leaving a little slack in the cable, but only just a little. The work in the cab is basically done for now.

Underneath

At this point, I slid under the front end and started sending cable back towards the rear. I was only able to get about midway before the original wire clump started to become a problem. See, I reused many of the same pass-throughs that I had used 10 years ago, and pushing the cable back against these wires was really not happening. So, recognizing that the old wires are no longer needed, I removed them. Unfortunately, they were taped to the 4-wire bundle for the brake switch, so I needed to remove that bundle as well. I wasn't using that circuit anyway: it only serves to notify the ECU that the brake has been pressed so turn off cruise control. I am obviously not using cruise control, so all of those wires go. I cleared wires all the way back to the spare-tire well, and confirmed the wire colors on the accelerator pedal circuit: they match. So, while the plug changed after the 1998 New Beetle TDI implementation, the wire colors didn't. Neat.

Lower Rat Nest Tear Down

Original outlet flange

Way back when I first did the swap, I had a Vanagon rear seat heater sitting on the accessory battery tray. That heater blocked from view how bad the wiring snarl was un the engine bay. Once the heater was removed this past Summer, it could have been obvious... if I'd looked. I did at this point in this rewire, and chose to start the cleanup right there. Hidden behind the heater were the relays and other associated wiring for the coolant glow plugs. For those not in-the-know, the manual transmission TDI's delivered with an aluminum coolant outlet flange. That flange had 3 glow plugs to warm the coolant. This flange was on this engine, but the coolant outlet sticks out the wrong side. In the bus, it sticks into the fuel tank. So, I swapped it out for the plastic coolant outlet flange that routes to the sides. Anyway, all that extra wiring and relay box were just sitting there. Were. They have been removed now. I moved a couple of ground wires that were in the middle of everything and then took all of the other wiring and pushed it up through the hole into the spare tire well. The cables that remain in the engine compartment are mostly against the compartment ceiling now. I didn't do much more, because I want the wiring up above to dictate how much more I do.

Research Again

It has been 10 years since I really looked at this wiring. Fortunately, TheSamba contributor AndyBees sent me a tome of wiring knowledge back then, and since I did not meaningfully stray from his work it will very much help me now. I barely scratched the surface of this documentation when I first did this install, though I did keep it in a 3-ring binder, with the other bus books in Hapy. 10 years ago, my goal was to just get it working and then I planned to circle-back and improve / clean it up. Well, after years of wrestling with the coolant (first leaks, then overheating) and then needing a break from the bus (hence, Oliver, the 1978 MGB), I'm only now getting to this. Based on a few hours of study, I expect I will be able to significantly reduce the remaining wiring. For example, I still have relays and wiring related to the radiator fan controls, even though I have those fans on a dashboard switch. And, of course, I will not be doing cruise control. There will be other discoveries as I go.

This is as far as I've gotten. My next steps are to start eliminating wiring related to functionality I am not going to retain (cruise control, etc). Since Hapy is outside/carported, this may take a while as I wait for nicer (read: warmer) days. We usually get a 50F/10C-degree day here and there. Since Hapy is blocking the garage bay where Oliver is parked, I may get my wrenching fix with some little projects on him when the weather is too cold to play with Hapy. Time, or more like weather, will tell. Thanks, as always for following along. Please stay isolated, and wear your mask / wash your hands when you can't.

Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins (part 1)

In the Summer of 2019, we barely made it home at the end of the Dog Days 333 (See parts 1 and 2). Hapy decided to just not start on command anymore. He was dropping into that modified limp mode and it was happening not just when he was cold, but pretty much at random. I promised him that I would fix it as we sat idling in a Dundee convenience store parking lot while C was in getting us drinks. Today's post starts that "fix it" journey. Before I begin, for my US readers, Hapy ThxGiving. For CoViD's sake, please stay home.

One Last Time

Hapy's usual home

After I finished the priming of all the Zed body panels (See Zed Prime), I moved them into the garage. This freed a covered one-car parking space. I had initially planned to put Nemo back in there and get after his wheel bearings. I decided instead that with the CoViD-19 numbers climbing to all-time highs, maybe it was okay if I didn't have a car that could take me too terribly far. Nemo can get me to the corner store and back; that's plenty until I can get the wheel bearings done.. once I confirm that they are the source of the noise, and it isn't just loud tires. So, I switched it up, and I am instead jumping into the Hapy electrical. I could have gone after this stuff at any point during the nice warm summer. That just wouldn't have been consistent with all the other work that's been done on this beast, so of course instead I chose some of the coldest days this year to do it.

First, I had to get Hapy into the spot. He is usually parked on a tarmac strip at the curve of our driveway so we can see him out our bedroom window. Yeah, we're weird. For any other car, moving it would be a simple effort of start, drive forward, reverse into the spot. Once I got the other cars out of the way, it was his turn, and just like so many times before, he just didn't want to start. I turned the key to start and nothing happened. Sigh. So, I tried to push him. Nope. There's a little dip in the tarmac that he would roll back into. I had to pull him onto the concrete with a trucker's chain around his front sway bar at one end (his front tow hook was pancaked by the prior owner) and around Nemo's front end on the other end. Fun. While I was trying to figure out how I was going to push him back into the covered spot, I lamented out loud to Hapy "why can't you just start one more time?". His response: he started. Of course; good boy. So, I backed him into the covered spot, and turned off the key.

Running Cable

In the TDI retrospective about secondary electrical, I mentioned replacing the single wires I originally installed 10 years ago with a cable. Well, I bought 30 feet (~10m) of 12-wire 16ga cable for this job when I bought cable for the additional gauge (see Oil Pressure and Temperature Part 4). It is not quite as thick as my ring finger as a sealed cable, and it has a nice thick jacket on it. I figured that the computer and rat's nest wiring is on the driver (left) side, as are the accelerator pedal and ignition switch. So, running the cable along the driver side made more sense than running it along the other side. Turned out, I thought the same thing 10 years ago, as the old wire bundle ran that way. I started from the rear, threading the cable through the bottom of the spare tire well and down into the engine compartment. From there, I ran it through manufactured holes in the frame over the rear suspension, along the inside of the mid-section frame rail to the cross member near the new heater location. I pressed the cable through a square hole in the cross-member, under the brake booster and then through another square hole into the area covered by the front belly pan. I had bored a large (~1/2 inch diameter) hole at the very front over the Summer when I routed the heater fan control cable through. I had planned to reuse that hole for this cable, and it fit with very little trouble. I pushed and pulled about 5 feet of cable up through that hole so I could stand alongside the driver seat to do the wiring bits.

Wire Front First

The 12-wire bundle is more than I was really ready for. The accelerator pedal needs 6 of them. The start and run signals account for 2 more and the OBDII signal is the last. The other wires will be used in the future for things like a speed sensor and a glow plug light. Like the extra wire in the cable I strung for the oil temp and pressure for a low coolant warning, I'll get to those later. For posterity (and my own personal reference later), these are the circuits for the 12-wire cable. I will update this as I make changes or discover mistakes:

circuit	wire color	purpose
1	Red	Accelerator Pedal 1
2	Yellow	Accelerator Pedal 2
3	Orange	Accelerator Pedal 3
4	Brown	Accelerator Pedal 4
5	Blue	Accelerator Pedal 5
6	Black	Accelerator Pedal 6
7	Red/Black	Ignition - START
8	Blue/Black	Speed Sensor
9	Orange/Black	OBD-II
10	Yellow/Black	Ignition - RUN
11	Brown/Black	Glow Plug signal
12	Black/Red	OPEN

I started with the ignition, splicing into the existing "RUN" circuit with the new signal wire. I figure the existing stuff (like lights) need power too, so the existing wire will simply feed old circuit #15. For the "START" signal, I just ran the new wire. The old starter signal was pretty batty, but it proved the TDI install was viable. Recall, it ran from the ignition down the old wire to right near the starter where it was spliced into a new wire that ran around the engine compartment to the spare tire hole through a relay to the computer, which then signaled TDI-donor relay to fire the starter... thru a new wire to the starter solenoid. There's like 20' (7m) of excessive and old wiring that I can eliminate. Then, I moved to the accelerator pedal.

Now, recall that I had to swap out the original round-plug accelerator pedal plug with a newer-model flat one after the old fly-by-wire pedal started to short out. I took a picture to help me identify which wire is which at the other end, but because the plug was changed, I expect the wire colors were as well, so when I cut the old wires off, I left about 1/2 inch of flat-plug wire on there so I can compare with the picture (here on the right) when I get to the rear-end wiring.

EDIT: I have updated the picture on the right here and the wiring reference above to reflect the actual circuit numbers in the wiring diagrams to avoid any confusion. Originally, the numbers ran the wrong direction relative to the official wiring schematics.

Even without the change, it was important to consider placement of the cable and the things that were going to be wired into it when I made my cuts to the wires. The ignition, speed sensor, etc are all at the dash where the accelerator is at the right foot. I made sure there was about 3 feet (1m) of cable between the ignition and the accelerator pedal cuts so there is room for cable routing. Also, it was important to pre-route the cable as much as I could so we didn't end up with the cable running in front of the steering column or goofy some other way.

Next

I admit, that doesn't sound like much. I moved the bus, ran some cable and did the wiring at the front end. Still, in sub 40*F (4C) it was a feat getting that much done without going numb. The weather around here is decidedly cold. I accept that I will not be able to get things done on Hapy very quickly, but with him out of the rain, at least it is not completely miserable. Just cold. If I can stand the cold, I will finish up the wire cable in the front by wrapping it with some plastic wrap, and pressing the excess cable back into the belly pan. Then, I'll push/pull the excess back to the rear so I have room to wire up the controls back there, probably leaving me close to 3m of leftover cable. There is a great deal of electrical housekeeping that I have not done back there. I think this is the right time to clean all that up, removing the unnecessary, trimming and mounting, etc so it is nice and clean. And, or course, our sporadic modified limp mode will no longer appear. It's all about staying warm enough to take small steps forward and eventually the wiring will be done. Then, I'll switch to diagnosing Nemo's rear bearings again.

Thanks, as always, for following along. Posts may appear more slowly as my work slows down. I'm still working on it (and staying CoViD safe, of course).

Pedal on the Right

Today's posting is a continuation of the last (Another Tow). In that post, I described the initial cause and my reported first reaction. I actually forgot a part, so I'll start there.

$5 Multi-meter

TPS wiring diagram

When I first got into cars, I had already dabbled in computers and wiring stuff. I'd fixed wiring in houses, strung cables for networks, etc. Still, even with that history, I didn't recognize the extreme value in a multi-meter. The fact that you can get one for $5 at Harbor Freight will lead many folks to the same conclusion: if its a cheap tool, it probably isn't worth much. Wrong. I first started using my multi-meter to set the static timing on the original pancake engine. Muir, the interweb and the Bentley talk about a timing light. Sure, you could fabricate a timing light with a dashlight bulb and some wire, Or, you could buy a timing light at your local car parts place. They cost more than $5, by the way. The cheapest, and in my opinion smartest solution is to use your multi-meter set on the 10's of volts setting. Rotate that dizzy until the voltage jumps (this is when the light would have turned on in the Muir model), and you're golden.

The multi-meter has been sitting on the top of my toolbox from day one. In retrospect, it is probably the most used tool I have. My 13mm ratcheting wrench is probably second. Anyway, on to its use with the wiring troubles...

Continuity Testing

old TPS plug

My first thought about the issues with the 1200 RPM symptom was that they were caused by one of the wires coming from the accelerator pedal melting against something and shorting out. To verify this, I grabbed a long stretch of wire and ran it along the ground from the pedal wiring to the back of the bus where the ECU sits. One wire at a time, I verified the continuity by splicing my on-the-ground wire into the test subject wire. Then, at the ECU, I would verify a closed circuit existed. All of the wires in the bundle were good. It was at this point, I decided to clean up the wires as I described in my last post (Another Tow).

Potentiometer Potential
If the wiring was good, and the bad grounds weren't part of the problem, then the issue must be at the potentiometer (that big variable resistor the wires go to that sends the how-fast-to-go signal in the drive-by-wire set up). This is often referred to as the "Throttle Position Sensor" or TPS. I unplugged the TPS from the wire bundle and disconnected it from the under-floor of the bus. At first, I thought the TPS got wet from the trip to Bend and it would work after it dried out. I read some threads about that happening for folks. On closer inspection, I could see that as the wires left the TPS, the insulation had stripped away. I could see copper. Since the TPS was pressed against the metal underside of the bus, the signals were shorting out right there.

bad TPS wiring

Had I discovered this in the middle of nowhere, broken down on the side of the road, I would have solved this in classic hack-style: put a small bit of rubber between the TPS and the underside of the bus to get back on the road. Since we were in the driveway and I'd already gone back on my promise, this was a fix it right moment.

New Pedal
The 1998 New Beetle donor from which I got the engine and related components had an accelerator pedal / TPS that was unique. By 1999, the components had changed, and the wire plug had as well. Gone was the old 2x3 (2 rows of 3 pins) round-ish plug. In its place is a 1x6 flat plug. Neat. The old TPS could still be found on the interweb, but NOS and even used on eBay were going for upwards of $400. Snort-giggle. Yeah, like I'm paying that. The new pedal assembly is available online for just over $100 or almost $200 for a genuine VW part. Considering the failed promise, I got the genuine VW part. The new pedal has the TPS integrated into it. You can't just remove the TPS and use it like I had before. This meant that the first real change to the cabin was necessary: the old pedal would go away and a new model pedal would have to be retrofitted. *pausing for the purists' gasps of shock*

Wire Plug Wire Plug

wiring extension

First, I needed to get the existing bundle of wires mapped to the new flat plug. Oh, and I needed a plug. I got a plug from the pick-n-pull, cutting as much donor wire from the bundle as I could. I cut the wires off the old TPS too, and wired up a cable extension from the old TPS location up through an existing hole in the floor, and up into the back of the dashboard before heading back down to a location near the heat directional control (picture about mid-shin on your right leg behind the kick panel).

Suspend a Pedal
With the wiring in place, I plugged in the new TPS / pedal assembly and

pedal support

started the engine. The 1200 RPM Symptom was gone, and the engine revved with pedal presses in my hands. Sweet! After killing the engine, I messed around with placement options. I don't want to have to hold my leg in the air to get to the pedal, but I also don't want the floor to interrupt the pedal movement before maximum throttle. I found a Hapy medium, and grabbed some 1" angle aluminum. I chose aluminum because its light, strong and looks good. With the right angle, it won't flex under the pressure of my foot on the pedal. I cut a notch out of the top so it would fit tightly against the emergency brake support and cut a notch out of the bottom so I could bolt the bottom to the floor. After test fitting the support, I marked the spots for the holes to hold the pedal assembly. A quick run with the drill and a few bolts later, I had a pedal installed. The final steps were cleaning up the carpet so the new support had a notch to fit into, and completely removing the old pedal.

Test Driving

install complete

Of course, as soon as I had it together, I wanted to take a spin. My kids were at their other parents' houses and my wife was working, so it was just me, Hapy fired right up like he always does. I put him in reverse and feathered the throttle. He leaped backwards. Whoa. I backed out of the driveway without my foot on the pedal and turned so the nose was pointing down-street. I put him in first and stepped on the pedal. The front tires almost left the ground as we jumped into motion. I was thrown back into my seat. Holy crap. Still feeling for how hard to press the pedal I zoomed down the sides treet to the main street intersection. Just to see how quick I could go, when the light turned, I jumped on it and turned onto the main road. The RPM's flew up and I shifted and then again and again in the span of about 5 seconds I had gone from dead stop to 40+mph. This was possible the fastest car I had ever driven, and its a 1972 VW camper.

I think, as I look back on this build, I'll remember this moment. I did so many little things to make it better, faster. In the end, the second generation pedal and assembly allowed me to tap into the horsepower and torque I originally envisioned when I started this project. I can't wait for our next festival. Now that I've fulfilled my promise to Hapy, I don't think he can wait either.

That's it for today. As always, thanks for following along.

Another Tow

In my last post, I lamented a little bit at the end about dropping into a version of limp mode (1200 rpm symptom) and sporadic misses. Today's post covers the start of what I did to resolve it. I split it into two posts because I tend to get wordy.

Muir's Divination

If you haven't read How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by John Muir, you absolutely should, even if you don't own an old Volksie. His tone and humor can still be felt on some VW boards and the YahooGroup member mail. Somewhere in his book, he writes about the promises we make to our cars of future repairs, if he-she-it just gets us home. Old VW's seem to have a soul, and they respond to those promises (sometimes) with safe passage home. The return trip from 4Peaks was one of those moments. About the time I was re-starting the engine to reset the engine from the 1200 RPM symptom every 50 feet, I promised Hapy that I'd get him fixed before I drove him again. He just needed to get us home. Like a good soldier, Hapy settled down and took us home with little trouble. Since my usual sled (Flash, the TDI Jetta) was still being driven by my 18 year old son while he completed the repair on his car (subaru clutch job), I reneg'd on my promise to Hapy and drove him to work the next day. It was under 3 miles, but it was still breaking the promise. Hapy let me know how he felt when I went to leave work at the end of the day.

Repo-Style Tow

Hapy would start and drop immediately into the 1200 RPM symptom from the first start after work. By the way, I'm not calling it limp mode anymore since "limp mode" is actually a different condition. I was able to get positioned in a parking lot that allowed for a tow truck to get at the bus while also in the shade (90*+ day), and waited for AAA to send the usual flatbed. What arrived instead was what I'd call a repo-truck. It was small and had a relatively non-descript towing rig attached to the rear. As it pulled in, the tow rig looked like a large iron cross jutting up from his rear bumper. When lowered, the cross would abut against whatever tires it could and then latch around from the other side. All told, this truck was able to snatch a car in under a minute. The driver slapped on the safety straps, and magnetic marker lights and we were on our way inside 5 minutes after he arrived.

On the route home, the driver shared that this was his first boost of the day and that he was heading over to the Hillsboro Hops field for opening day next. Apparently, lots of folks park illegally at that park, so he spends a few hours at every game snatching illegal parkers and hauling them a few miles away to impound. Not exactly my definition of a dream job. He was able to drop Hapy in the "fixit spot" at the end of our long driveway, though (see picture).

Un-Rat's Nesting

in process

Before

My friend Justin will probably be the first to agree that the wiring I didn't do when I did the TDI install was long overdue for a cleanup. I did what Agile tells us to do: the very minimum to achieve the desired end state. When conditions indicate that things need to be redone, do it then. Well, with the 1200 RPM symptom and the other codes getting thrown, I think it was time. Or past time. So, circuit by circuit, I removed unnecessary wiring. I started with plugs in the rat's nest that weren't plugged into anything and tracing those wires to their termination at the fuse box, ECU or a junction. Then, I pulled the unneeded plugs and wires from within the engine bay the same way. This required significant unwrapping of cables and subsequent re-wrapping for cleanliness. Last, I dug into the fuse box. This last step could have been my first. By verifying circuits at the fuse against the fuse diagram in the Bentley, I eliminated more wire than I retained. In the process, I discovered a possible root cause: I had one main ground, and it had started to shake loose. By removing so much wire, I was able to reduce how many brown wires connected into that ground as well. The end result looks much better, but the relay frames and the fuse box still need to be attached to the body. And, the 1200 RPM symptom didn't go away. Drat.

I decided that the cause of the 1200 RPM symptom wasn't in the wiring nearest the computer. So, it must be the wiring or the potentiometer at the pedal. In the next post, I'll dig into what I found and how I fixed it.

As always, thanks for following along..

discards

4Peaks 2016

Today's post is dedicated to the road trip to Central Oregon for the last 4Peaks Music Festival to be held at the Rockin' A Ranch.

The Going

I had taken the travel day off, with this hope that we could get out of town earlier than we had last year. We did, and we arrived earlier, but not without having a few adventures along the way. The night prior, I drove from work to the mega-market to get food supplies for the trip. Out of nowhere, a large crow dive-bombed Hapy, taking out his front driver's side turn signal. Knowing that we were going to see some rain, we set a course out of town past Discount Import Parts for a replacement lens. They didn't have the bolts to mount them, but Orchard's across the street had something suitable (10-24 X 2" Phillips Round HD Machine Screw).

We headed out of town before 4, but the weekend rush hour had already started. In classic Oregon form, there was a 45 minute backup heading South because of an accident on the north-bound side of the freeway. Traffic lightened up around Wilsonville, and Hapy drove like a champ the rest of I-5. We left the speedy folks behind and turned east on OR-22. Traffic fell away soon after we passed the jail, and we entered the forest and foothills

of the Cascades. Detroit Lake looked much fuller this year versus last year and we hit steady rain after leaving Idanha. By the time we passed Hoo Doo Ski resort, though, the rain had stopped and the cold air was noticeable. I still haven't put in the door seals, so the windwhip is loud (and cold sometimes). The heater was blowing warm air, though, so Boo was able to wrap a blanket around her floor vent to keep herself warm. We arrived before nightfall, but the place was much more populated than the year before. I guess word got out about how great waking up there on the first full day is.

The Scene
The parking folks helped us find a relatively flat spot, and with the use of a 6x10 block of lumber we nicked at the NW String Summit last summer, we were able to get Hapy's rear end pretty level. While meeting neighbors, we set up our now-usual festival spread: camp couch, rug.. but we had some new things this year. We brought the 10x10 popup canopy that we got on the way home from Montana last summer, and set up a fancy BBQ that my dad gave us. We filled our large Coleman 5 gallon water dispenser too. All of these things, when added to the camp table, multiple coolers, etc made for a pretty crowded space. We had spots of rain all weekend, so moving things around took on more meaning. Some things, like the water dispenser, could sit in the rain. Others, like the BBQ, fit under the bus when not in use. The old BusDepot canopy, however, was no longer water-resistant, so it will be landfill-bound soon. In the picture below, you can see how we resolved to use it solely as a bridge between the bus and the pop-up. Even in that way, it didn't work too well. Still, by the last day, we had our systems running smoothly, and there was room to sit and watch the rain.

rain-adjusted, Hapy @sunset

The main festival area was very similar to last year, but there were more vendors. Down in the gully, they had added a coffee stand and a tea-yurt for sitting with your beverage and a few friends. Boo and I liked that addition very much. Of the vendors up above, I didn't recognize many from before, but then we really didn't do the vendor scene last year. Boo found a pair of sandals that are crazy-comfy and hand made. Karen, the booth owner, had been at 4Peaks for years. We spent a bunch of time with a couple different folks, a printed drawing booth owner and a teacher-turned-potter. Both were very open to talking about things and weren't in any rush to end conversations or push sales. So mellow and kind.

After walking the scene for a bit on Friday morning, we could hear the main stage fire up with JED. From our camping spot, we could hear the main stage very well and chose to stay with Hapy more than at the main stage. As Boo puts it, "I think we're the only people we know who go to music festivals to get rest".

The Bands

raging into the rain

Mid-afternoon Friday, we heard a band starting to get their mix before kicking off their set, and Boo and I stood straight up. Their sound was amazing. We were pulled to the main stage like the didgeridoo pulled us down the bowl at our first Hootenanny. We were pulled all the way to the front of the stage, and then the skies opened up. It poured rain, and the band kept wailing. The harder it rained, the harder they played and the harder the crowd danced. It was some kind of energy feedback loop happening, and we all just rode it. For their second to last song, they pulled the horn player from JED up on stage with them... and then they jumped into the pit between the stage and the crowd. And then raged into the rain, blowing the crowd away. The Stone Foxes. Best Band of 4Peaks 2016. We decided we're going to McMinnville for their August music festival simply because Stone Foxes will be there.

Stone Foxes at 4Peaks 2016

Semi-spent from the Stone Foxes, we got a smoothie and walked vendors while the stage switched over for the Jeff Austin Band. We didn't stay for more than a couple of songs, hitting Hapy for food and rest in anticipation of the highly hyped Poor Man's Whiskey show in the Side Stage tent at 10. They were good, but it didn't seem like they had put much thought into their set list. Their songs seemed all over the place in terms of tempo and emotion, leaving the crowd genuinely confused. The songs they hit, they hit well. Most of the rest of the set was kinda all over the place. We left before they finished.

On Saturday, we heard (and liked) Della Mae from the bus while we did morning dishes and later watched Robben Ford and Poor Man's Whiskey on the main stage. After Poor Man's Whiskey, we listened to Chris Robinson while eating candy under a blanket and looking up at the stars (the clouds had rolled off).

Sunday morning, we visited the Side Stage tent, not wanting the festival to be over. We were treated to the Students of String Theory: kids playing some classic, and some modern songs on acoustic guitar and fiddle while singing. They were fantastic.

The Return

home bound

Sunday was the only sunny day, so lots of folks took their time leaving. We did too. as we packed up, we saw many of our fellow festers leaving by a different direction than we had come in. Thinking that they knew something, we fired up the google maps app and turned the same way out of the Rockin' A Ranch. The Google map was wrong and we found ourselves on a gravel road marked "Private". Awesome. From now on, I'm using Waze. Not too proud, I asked a couple who were leading their horses back onto their trailer, and received viable directions. A few twists and tuns later, and we were having a Dundee-like experience crawling through Sisters. Just like the year before, the drive out of the festival ground had shaken a fan wire loose, so we pulled off at the same viewing spot as the year before and fixed the wire. After that, the drive through the Cascades was fantastic. The day was beautiful and traffic light, allowing us to really enjoy the drive, until we arrived at I-5. There had been multiple accidents and rubber-necking opportunities like the drive out of town, so we found ourselves nudging along for about 45 minutes. During that stretch, Hapy would drop into the 1200RPM "limp mode" often. Additionally, the engine would act like there was a sporadic miss. We got home through promises of repair (like John Muir used to muse about in his Complete Idiot book).

That's it for today. Lots of repair adventures to follow. Like always, when I'm not posting, its because I'm out in the world, creating future content :) Thanks for following along-