Hapy Drives Again

It has been a long 18+ months without having a member of our family kicking around with us. But, Hapy is one injection-pump re-seal away from daily-driver status. Today, I'll go through the last little things. Again, my regrets for not taking many pictures. I have been away from fixing and blogging so I have fallen out of the habit of snapping a picture while I'm doing the doing. Also, I got hit by whatever flu thing that's been going around and was flat-backin bed-ridden for the last 3 weeks.

Clutch Adjustment

post-test drive

I touched on this at the end of my last post. I had to add an extra small spacer at the end of the Bowden tube as well as on the very end adjuster. To be fair, I really didn't need the one on the adjuster, but I would would not have much adjustment thread left if I hadn't. I ordered a replacement clutch cable and when it arrives, I will keep it under the rock-n-roll bed until I get to replacing it. I expect I will replace that cable relatively soon, but I want some fun drives before I take him off the road again, even to do something that I could do (and have done) on the roadside.

 

The standard adjustment advice is to shift the tension on the cable as felt by your foot on the pedal such that there is no engagement until the pedal has moved a good inch down towards the floor. This prevents premature wear on the clutch and/or throwout bearing. You don't want the throwout bearing riding on the clutch spindles all the time. That's noisy and introduces premature wear. What I did not recall from prior clownings on the cable was that the arm protruding from the transaxle would have so much play in it before the throw-out bearing touched the pressure plate at all. I recall it practically resting on the pressure plate, but my memory is not reliable. Anyway, I felt that the arm needed to press against the spring a little bit to get the adjustment correct. As I think on it now, that spring being engaged is what holds the clutch pedal all the way up so it's right. It just felt foreign. Honestly, it has been so long since I worked on Hapy, lots of this work has felt unusual.

 

Tail Light Show

Bowden Tube pic from theSamba

The tail lights were acting really strange prior to my first intended test drive after getting the clutch sorted. I start assessing the lights rather simply: run the hazards first. Since no other systems are involved, the blinkers ought to all light up together and turn off together. The left (driver) side was lighting up opposite from the others. When I added in simple running lights (still no key in ignition), the tail lights were a light show of blinking. I had initially thought that I did something funny with the reverse switch, but that is a simple dumb switch that allows 12V through when the transaxle is in reverse. So, I ruled that out. I concluded that the ground for the light fixture was poor, weak or virtually non-existent, causing the 12V to seek a ground though alternative paths of other not-illuminated lights, causing them to light up.

 

Getting into the Cavity 

The left (driver) side tail light is hidden behind a panel I added to offer colder air to the engine (See VW Bus Cold Air Intake). I had forgotten how much of the ugly TDI wiring was also hidden back there when I removed the panel. Anyway, first, I disconnected the cold air pipe at the last rubber coupling before the turn into the hidden cavity under the spare tire well. Then, I removed the 4 nuts holding the pipe flashing, and removed the air filter "assembly". While this was out of the bus, I thoroughly cleaned the air filter and shop-vac'd the cavity. With the air filter out of the way, I removed most of the screws holding the panel in place with a slotted screwdriver and bent the panel out of the way to access the tail light assembly.

 

Grounding

left side panel under spare

Immediately after sticking my head and a small flashlight into the space, I spotted a ground that had fallen off the grounding tab on the rear next to the light assembly. I popped that back onto the ground tab and tested the lights. There was no noticeable impact, but those grounds were probably used by something, so some other issue just got resolved.

I decided to add a ground directly from the metal back-plate of the tail light assembly to the unused grounding tab next to the one I had just resolved. I added what I call a "chair" tab splitter (because it looks kinda like a chair), that turns one tab into 2, to the grounding tab on the rear of the tail light. I re-attached the existing ground to one side of the "chair" and added a short brown wire to the other side, connecting it to the unused tab on the rear body. I then retested, and the crazy light show was over, and the left tail lights were much brighter. So much so, that I decided to add a ground the right side tail light, in hopes of balancing the lights.

 

The right (passenger) side is much easier to access on Hapy, but probably harder for anyone without a cold air intake cavity thing because the battery makes things tight. Unlike the left side, I disconnected the light fixture from the bus and hung it out the rear while I worked. I basically did the same thing as I did on the left/driver side: chair splitter, used an unused nearby grounding tab. Once reassembled, the left side did not see as significant an improvement, but I think the original grounding wire is shared between the lights so the right side was already getting benefit from what I did on the left side before I started messing with it, I just hadn't noticed during the left-side test.

 

Test Drive

At this point, I felt that I was safe enough to travel on a shared street. So, I backed out of the shop, down the lane-way and out to the street. He easily went into 1st gear and away we went. I did not have the little UltraGauge plugged in, choosing instead to use my senses to vibe the test loop. Hapy ran great. Power on demand at my foot, easily shifting from gear to gear, and getting into 4th but only barely before dropping back down. He still popped out of second when I quick-decelerated, but it was not as immediate and on a light decelerate he stayed in gear. So, there's some improvement there; I did not expect any. The exhaust was much quieter; I think some of my "wow this bus is loud" that drove to all the sound containment may have been at least in part from the broken exhaust-to-muffler joint. Facepalm.

 

The drive was not without its issues, tho. While the cooling fan and intercooler fans both came on by the manual switch, the intercooler fan was louder than I remembered. This could in part be because I couldn't hear it over the exhaust. Also, the noise of the turbo through the right cooling "ear" (behind the rear-most right side window) was unexpectedly loud. Again, this could have been masked by the louder exhaust and isn't really a bad thing. In a way, it's kinda cool and I can't hear it from inside the bus. Its only when walking around it did I hear any of these things and none of these are deal-breakers or send-him-to-the-shop things. I did notice that the dual-gauge I installed during the CoViD lockdown was acting funny (See Oil Temperature and Pressure). The pressure rose to the top and never came down and the temperature basically sat just off the bottom. I figured either the wires fell off on one end or the sender went bad.

 

Fixing Oil Gauge

left nut missing

Having the UltraGauge is great, but I really prefer just using the simple dual oil gauge. I can see if the temp is getting too high without a digital readout changing every few seconds. In fact, I have a VDO coolant temp gauge in my stuff somewhere that I have thought about adding into the dashpod and then I really wouldn't need the UltraGauge anymore. Anyway, solving the dual-gauge was fairly straightforward, starting with the engine-end. I figured that I did lots of moving things around, so simply disconnecting and re-connecting those wires to the sender would remove that variable. One quick peek, and clearly that was the problem: one of the M4 knurled nuts had shaken it's way loose and completely fell off. I ordered a set of 5 (the smallest set I could find not on amazon, and it still cost, like $15US). When I installed, I put some blue locktite on there so these don't shake off either. I was very grateful to not have to open the dash.

 

Diesel Leak Persists

catching the leak

Two years ago, when Hapy first started having hard-start issues, it was a fuel leak coming from his injection pump. Back then, there was literally fuel flying all over the engine bay. I spent time getting the top-end of the pump sealed, and that resolved the flying fuel and most of the hard-to-start issues, but it was during those months that I ground down the ring gear, putting us on the last 18 month trajectory. Also, I continued to lose prime in the pump, but without visible leaks. Now, I can see the pump dripping on the ground. So, the seal between the body and the head appears to be the problem, and its getting worse. I ordered a replacement deluxe kit from DieselGeek. Rather than do that seal myself, I have asked our old friend Justin (OldPoopie) to do it for a couple of reasons. First, he does these all the time, but more importantly, he has the computer bits to really get the timing spot-on. I expect that once the pump has been re-sealed and the timing set, Hapy will be a monster.

 

Well, that's it for today. Justin is super busy, so it will be a month or so before he can get hands on Hapy. In the meantime, I will be shifting focus onto doors for the shop, we have some house projects to chase and maybe I will be getting my hands on Oliver, the 1978 MGB. It feels like nice weather is not too far away, and taking the MG on a picnic run with Boo would be awfully sweet. Thanks, as always, for following along- 

Hapy Heat Repeat (Part 2)

Continuing the efforts on creating some cabin heat in the old microbus, today's post covers sourcing the air for the heater from inside the bus.

Grounding

air sourcing from inside

In the last post on this topic, I mentioned that the prior attempts, and the original heat, for that matter, all pulled in air from the outside. The original heat pulled from the engine bay, sent it through heater-boxes (insulated boxes around the exhaust manifolds) and then up to the front of the bus. There was even a booster fan to push air when the engine speed was too low to push air. Years ago, I added a bilge-blower fan mid-stream to help get the air forward, and replaced large sections of pipe with insulated hose. In the end, the original system at-best, delivered warm moist air when it was raining (again, it's Oregon so that's 8 months of the year). When not-best, we got cold moist air that smelled like oil or exhaust.

When I did the ALH-TDI engine swap, I removed the original system rear of the front frame, setting a Vanagon rear-seat heater against that frame crossmember. While it didn't leak for a while, it started leaking again this past year. The unit was really never up to the task, and since it was only designed to heat the rear of a Vanagon cabin, I was probably asking too much of it. Still, it was a significant improvement over the original and bilge-blower-enhanced systems. The air was warmer more often, and exhaust-smelled less often. Overall, though, it was not "warm" in Hapy from the use of the heater, and the issue with moist air remained.

Fast forward to the Maradyne heater I just installed. Unlike the Vanagon rear-seat heater, the Maradyne is a 3-row heater core and it is almost twice the width. The core alone could provide considerably more heat. The fan is way more powerful too, so moving that heat into the cabin will be that much more  effective. What remained, however, is the air is still sourced from below the bus, so the wet roads will provide an endless supply of moist air to fling onto the inside of the windscreen. I hope I resolved that with the changes below.

Maradyne Heater Prep

purists love this

In the last post on this topic, I described how the heater was installed on an angle to minimize the ground clearance impact and so the outlets point more directly at the original air pipe. This orientation, however, meant that the brackets were hanging into the space where air intake hoses would go. So, first order of business was cutting those brackets down with the death-wheel (angle grinder). Once cleared, I could easily see that the coolant outlet jutted too far into the same air-hose space so I cut it down as well. Last, I changed the hose from the outlet from a straight hose to a 45* angled hose, routing the coolant above and away from the air inlet. While the inlet is not completely exposed now, it is considerably better. The inlets are 3" diameter and have a lip that's maybe 3/8" for a hose to fit onto. I had intended to add something more substantial for the hose to attach to, but once I got into it, I concluded that the original fan housing could hold a hose and clamp. Time will tell, and I am retaining the extensions I bought for this purpose in case I need to add them in later.

Holy Bus

Well, more like holey bus. In order to send air from inside the bus to the air intake on a fan system that is outside the bus, I need to add a hole or 2 for the air to pass through. I did not want to put air intakes in places where I would accidentally spill water (or other beverages), or get dirt and the like into it. I also did not want the air intakes to be so close to the front that the fan was effectively pulling the warm air right out of the outlet vents. I applied some cold-air-return thinking and chose to put one intake inside the rock-n-roll bed base cabinet. This cabinet is probably the coldest space in the bus (second only to my feet) and the vacuum created by the fan will draw air from the front to the back, creating room for the warmer air to enter the bus more freely. Of course, it's not like a 50+ year old microbus is sealed, but my 70+ year old house isn't either and once I tied the cold air intake into the house system, the house grew measurably warmer.

From underneath, I considered where there was a space without structure nor pipes to interfere with the air intake plumbing. With the radiator, wiring, original stuff and everything else, it is quite busy under there, but there is a space just behind the rear cross-frame (think: rear jack-point) but in front of the rear wheel well that is inside the cabinet, nearest the front outer edge. I tested a few spots with a drill to make sure that I could fit a 3-1/2" circle without hitting something neither underneath nor inside the cabinet and found a good spot. I cored a 3-1/2" hole with a hole saw. Why 3-1/2"? The inner diameter of these hoses is 3", and I felt that leaving a little extra room for wiggling was better than having it tight as would have been with a 3-1/4" hole. This turned out to be a wise decision. Once the hole was cut, I shot it and the support brackets with paint to delay (can it really be stopped when it rains 9 months of the year?) rust.

Fitting

cabin air intake

Once the hole was cut, I was on the home stretch. I found what look like air outlets with metal grills that fit a 3" hose to act as an air intake screen. I a-fixed one end of the hose to the grill, cable-tied it to be double-sure and passed the hose through the hole from above. The hose barely fit. It was so tight, I had to cut off the cable-tie because the cable tie end prevented the grill from sitting flat on the floor. Anyway, I chose an orientation that pointed the grill away from the center of the cabinet so things don't accidentally fall in or over it and then screwed it down to the wood floor of the cabinet. From underneath, I stretched out the compressed hose, stretching it along the side of the radiator, and turning it towards the fan.

I had initially planned to have 2 air intakes, one per fan intake, but after cutting the passenger-side hole, decided that I had 3" of outlet, so having only 3" of inlet was actually a fair balance. So, rather than run 2, I added a 3" wye along the passenger-side frame rail. I sent the stretched and then cut hose into the base of the wye and shifted to the fan inlet on the driver side, knowing it would be the harder of the two. I can always choose to add a driver-side inlet, but with the furnace on that side, there will be additional complexities.

The driver-side was definitely harder, but simply because the coolant outlet hose still ran across the air flow path. I twisted and bent the air hose and jammed it onto the inlet lip. I added a hose clamp while pressing the hose onto the lip, threading the clamp until it was quite secure. Content, I stretched out the hose, threading it behind the fan housing, but in front of the radiator intake to the passenger side. I added a cable-tie on the driver-side to hold the air hose in place. I cut and then sent the other end of the hose into the wye. It got another cable-tie up to the underside of the bus before it entered the wye.

The section from the passenger side air intake to the wye was a little over a foot, and was the easiest part of the install. I attached to the fan intake first, adding a hose clamp, of course. Once stretched and cut into the wye, I cable-tied the wye up near the floor of the bus, mostly out of sight. I cable-tied the passenger-side hose as well so there would be minimal pressure on the hose clamp. At this point, the air intake for the cabin "climate control" sourced from the inside of the bus.

Testing

ground clearance mostly unchanged

All that remained was testing the system, both for air flow as well as coolant. I started with the air flow, accepting that I could confirm that without running the engine. As expected, the fan blows hard, and draws through the inlet. Because the inlet is inside cabinet, it make less noise than it might have had it been placed elsewhere. Still, I will need to be aware of it when we pack things so it is not even remotely blocked.

Satisfied, I exposed the top of the engine and started it up. I had expected to simply add coolant/water while air bubbles appeared but 2 things interrupted that plan. First and worst, the injector pump started leaking all over the place. Now, to be fair, I had smelled diesel on my last couple of drives, so this was not 100% a surprise, but it still was a little bit. Second, air bubbles did not really appear. I will need to bleed the heater core segment, once I replace a seal or two in the injector pump. A seal set has been ordered, so until the kit arrives and is installed, Hapy will sit.

That's where we are at this point. I may try to bleed the heater while I wait for the seal kit, but it will depend on the weather and my workweek. Thanks, as always, for following along. More next time-

Furnace Finished

Today's post covers the final steps of completing the furnace in the NewOldHouse. In my last post, we had cut the hole for the intake and lined it with venting. Our no-longer-an-HVAC-guy electrician was coming over to test the system so I needed to solve a couple of things first. Like the exhaust venting.

Exhausted

operational furnace

When I disassembled the furnace last summer, I saved all of the exhaust venting. I figured I could reuse all of it and but whatever pieces I needed after that. When I did my test fit to confirm the angle (minimum is 1/4" per foot or 1" per 4 feet, I did 1" per 3 feet so better than minimum), I determined that I had more than enough pieces, but did not end-to-end assemble it. These double-walled vents are built to twist-lock and they only assemble one way, indicated by the arrow on the sticker on the side. They are kind of like big-boy Tinkertoys. The sections which can turn are an engineering marvel. They can be twisted into all kinds of off-set shapes or simple angles to get the venting to go where you need it to. My needs were simple, however. From the top of the furnace, I turned it 45* towards the chimney, ran a straight segment and then another 45* angle to head straight into the chimney clear-out hole and the liner contained within. I had retained the collar that threads onto the liner and rests in the brick and I had retained the connector at the end of the vent that abuts the collar, and it tightened down with a set screw. I had expected a couple of hours, and assembly of the chimney was less than an hour.

Using stainless steel pipe-hanger strapping, I suspended the chimney from the floor joists in 3 spots, all closer to the chimney than the furnace. I recalled from my angle testing that I needed the exhaust to enter the chimney near the highest point in the hole. So, I started there, pressing the vent up against the hole, and then worked towards the furnace from there. I used screws instead of nails so the straps could not work their way loose from vibration. Before crawling out claiming victory, I grabbed the cloth webbed strapping that I used to suspend the HVAC and supported the gas line from the floor in a similar fashion. Like the exhaust vent, I do not want the gas line to shake itself loose, potentially creating a leak. I chose to use the fabric webbing instead of the stainless because I thought steel-on-steel could either create a spark or slowly cut into the pipe. Cloth don't cut. Content, I contacted our electrician to test things.

Furnace Active

suspending the vent

Our electrician connected the thermostat to the control wire (which was just run out through the big hole in the floor) to test the system. He knew the state of the gas line, the electrical, etc, so I wanted him to run the test. Besides, I wanted a final review of the work too. The review was quick and positive, so he started a test.... shazam (not boom) we have central heat. While the cold air side of the furnace is just an open plenum reaching into the crawlspace, the test was successful. We ran the system for a bit while he checked for leaks and CO. Everything came back perfect, so we just let the furnace run and bring the temperature of the house up from 58*F to 68*F (14.5C to 20C). The following weekend, I returned to the cold air intake.

Return to the Return

With the furnace operational, I could get back to the intake with a little bit of time flexibility. I had the start of the intake from the floor side and I had the plenum jutting out from the intake side of the furnace. I just needed to connect them. I started with what I thought would be the hardest part: the sides from the plenum to the intake. In retrospect, I probably should have started with the floor of the floor-side to keep it square, but it's done now so who cares. Because the furnace is not 100% square to the house, the sides were not exactly the same length. I cut them the same though, so the south side is a little longer, jutting into the floor-side box by an inch or so. Regardless, the installs for the 2 sides were the same: I set the plenum side into the S-clamp, screwed in 2 sheet metal screws and then attached the other end with another pair of sheet metal screws. I shifted to the top and bottoms next.

Because the floor-side is not aligned with the plenum, the top and bottom were parallelogram shaped, with the ends measuring 20" and the sides at a angle around 45*. Again, because the sides were not exactly the same length, one cardboard template did not suffice. In the interest of conserving materials, the top was completed with multiple smaller sections and then seam-taped. The bottom, however, is one shaped piece added after the floor of the rectangle intake was in place.

Last, I got to the rectangle at the bottom of the intake box I built earlier. For this "floor", I cut another piece of sheeting 23 inches long by 16 inches wide and cut 1/2" notches out of each corner. 3 edges were then bent 90*, leaving the edge facing the furnace flat. I set the floor in from below, sealing the seams with tape, before shifting to the bottom of the intake-to-plenum connector.

 

Filtered

I had intended to get clever with brackets and such to hold the filter in place. I abandoned that simply because I ran out of give-a-shit by now and simply wanted filtered air. Since the south-side ran long into the airbox, that provided material to hold the upper corner of the filter. Using a filter to guide the shaping, I bent the overhang into a tang to hold the filter. The other corners simply stay put, and the 16 x 20 opening is perfectly covered with the filter.

where we started

We have been running the furnace since the filter was added and the air in the house is steadily getting less dusty. After all the work that's been done around here, the dust has been considerable. We have run a small portable filter, but it has not been as effective.

Well, that's the end of this epic effort. For a timeline, the furnace was disassembled in August and moved in September, the chimney repaired and lined in early October. The crawlspace patio was dug out, graveled and patio-blocked in late October; a stand attached and the furnace secured in early November. Air distribution was disassembled, cleaned, reassembled and insulated from mid November to early December. Everything else was crammed into the following 2 weeks. This job was quoted to me for $10kUS. If I paid myself $100US per hour, I still would have paid the HVAC company more for this.

 

This effort took place around a music festival, a family wedding, multiple holidays, kitchen planning, prepping and seeding a lawn, gigs, jams, love and life, and of course, my band (shameless plug: Sunkicks) recording, tracking and mixing an EP (release date 2024-Feb-2). Life is full. I expect there will be more construction posts, but Hapy needs some work done so I expect there will be a post or 2 on that, once I get to it. Thanks for following along-

Planning the Intake

Today, I further document the efforts to put heat into this old farmhouse. First, Hapy New Year. I absolutely recognize that it is past Winter Solstice and we have not had central heat since last spring. We have been getting by with small oil-based space heaters, as opposed to the ones with bright orange electrical coils and blower fans. Except for the sub-freezing cold snaps or windy days, the space heaters have been up to the challenge. On those sub-freezing days and nights, we have closed off sections of the house and hung blankets over doorways, etc. It has been an adventure. A couple of weeks ago, we had that which had once been thin gross cellulose insulation in the attic removed. So, what little heat that grot held in was now escaping to atmosphere. If being cold were not enough of a motivator before, it just went up another notch

In my last post, I could see the finish line. The furnace had been moved, mounted on a stand and angle-confirmed for safe exhaust. The conditioned air side had nee disassembled, cleaned, re-assembled and insulated. The gas line had been reconfigured to feed the furnace, with a "T" fitting so we could tap into it for the stove later. The electrical had been completed to the furnace, with an integrated worker-safety switch. The thermostat control cable had been wired into the furnace. So, what remained? Connecting the thermostat to the control cable, the exhaust vent and a cold air return. I started with the cold air intake, but shifted midway once I concluded that we could get the furnace running for a short time without a cold air return, drawing air mostly from the crawlspace.

Best Laid Plans

completed box

My original plan for the cold air intake was, again, to reuse as much of the HVAC stuff that I had removed from the furnace as I could, and add what was needed. When I looked at the pieces above the plenum, though, I decided they were not up to snuff. Whoever built that intake restricted the airflow considerably. Consider that the plenum is 16x20. The intake grate and filter are also 16x20. In between, they built a 90* turn using a 15x15 box. No wonder the furnace made so much noise when it was running; it was begging for more air. Simple math: 16x20 = 320 square inches. 15x15 = 225 or over 30% smaller. When discussing this with our electrician, he indicated that the restriction was probably not as bad as I thought. I never sought to be an HVAC expert; I just want heat and a quiet running system.

My plan was to install the original intake-side plenum and simply reverse it back on top of itself and then route over to the hole in the floor where the furnace used to sit. In theory, this was a great idea. There's an old Yogi Berra quote about theory and practice (In theory there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice there is). I think it applies here. The intake plenum was nearly as big as the conditioned-side plenum, and once attached it took up more than 50% of the space between the floor joists above and the vapor barrier on the ground. There would be no doubling-back on itself. For a moment I thought about having it turn on it's side, but that would route it where the exhaust vent is. We can't have both things in the exact same space.

I could route the cold air intake around the chimney and under the main beam of the house twice to leverage the existing hole where the furnace was. I started to take measurements and discovered that the space between the bottom of the beam and the top of the concrete curb underneath where the furnace used to be... was a little over 12 inches. I can't run a 16x20 rectangle through the 12" space. I could neck it down, but that would decrease air flow, create noise and potentially shorten the life of the fan since the reduction would be, like 25% (16 to 12). We have already suffered a 30% reduction before, and all of the downsides with it. Now, I could create a pass-thru that's like 12 x 26 so we don't restrict air flow, but when I took a minute and considered how long that intake would be, I figured it was time for a new course.

Before I got too wrapped up in the next step, I installed the intake plenum, sheet-metal screws, tape and all and then suspended it from the floor joists with webbing. With the plenum in a fixed location, I could take some measurements and make some plans.

New Plan, New Hole

simple floor grate

I started by determining where the joists were and marked them on the floor above. Since the joists are 16" on-center apart, the usable gap between the joists is about 15". While obviously that is less than 16, it is greater than 12, so I could put a hole anywhere without touching a joist and the neck-down would be significantly better than running it in a big circle around the chimney in the crawlspace. I also figured that the shorter the intake, the fewer opportunities for leaks. Consider that the area of the house above the furnace is our emerging kitchen. We had been making plans accommodating an intake along one wall, making an allowance for a space without a cabinet for that intake. Now that the intake will no longer reuse that big hole, we can reconsider the cabinet plan there, and have that floor fully repaired by our flooring guy (Thomas).

Both Boo and I have lived in older houses before and we both recall having air intakes in random places in the floor. For whatever reason, they seem to usually appear in hallways, so you get to walk on them a lot. Since there doesn't appear to be much reasoning other than have them centrally located, We are going to make the intake run as short as possible, setting the intake alongside the chimney. This will allow for a simple 90* turn at the end of the plenum straight up to the floor. I will add a little bit of ducting to align between the floor joists, but it will be quite short.

Cutting a hole in a perfectly good floor is hard to bring myself to doing. I ultimately asked our general contractor to do it. I figured he could get the cut straight and along the top of the joists on his first try. In the picture on the right, here, you can see the floor grate I got on Etsy from a guy (Doug) who hand makes these in Minnesota. Big fan of Etsy's handmade stuff.

Return

building the box

With the hole cut, I had a clear target for building the rest of the cold air return. My plan was to have a simple straight down, 90* bend to the plenum. At the point where the venting turns, the air filter sits and it is replaced from above, after removing the air return grate. To help hold the air filter in place, I planned to add a small rib an inch to the plenum side of the 90* bend. Last, I added a flip-down tab above the filter so that after the filter was set in, the tab would rotate down to hold it in place. Back to that Yogi Berra quote, the reality, however, was not simply applied theory. I mean the applied Yogi Berra theory would be there's no difference between what you plan and what you build until you start building. In that spirit, I got after it with a stack of 24" by 36" HVAC sheeting.

I started with a simple box that lined the sides of the joists down to the level where the plenum was. The top of the plenum is about 1 inch below the floor joists, so the box was little more than a 3-sided rectangle. With one sheet, I bent the side furthest from the furnace into a wide U, with the center section 22" across. I pre-drilled holes to connect additional pieces and screwed it into the floor joist level with the top of the joist. Adjacent to the shorter sections of the "U", I added 10-1/2" and 12-1/2" sides (also 24" long). The wider of the 2 sides was bent 90* for the final 2-1/2", and that short stretch runs along the furnace-facing side, reducing the aperture from 22" to 20" to align with the size of the plenum. I left an extra 1/2" of HVAC sheeting so I had something to connect the next pieces to. Along that 4th edge, I ran an 8-1/2" strip of HVAC, covering the floor joist plus an inch. That last half-inch was angle bent rear and upwards to provide something to attach to. Once I got this far, I shifted gears over to the exhaust vent so we could get the furnace tested while our electrician was available.

I am going to stop here since things got moving really quickly around the electrician's visit. Thanks, as always, for following along-

VW Bus Cold Air Intake

Back when Hapy was getting regular long summer drives, I noticed that the engine bay would get pretty warm. Recall back to the Newberry trip report for example. So, I put together a cold air intake concept to drop the temp going into the turbo inlet. I really do not expect to notice much of a performance difference. While I understand a cold air intake can reduce intake temps, and improve engine performance by a handful of HP, I just don't think what I did will have that kind of impact. Still, it was fun to do.

For someone running the original engine, with the engine tins and surrounding foam in place, this modification makes absolutely no sense. The tins already effectively separate the hot side of the engine from the air intake. If you have lost your tins (or foam), and for some reason cannot replace them -or- you are running a modified engine where tins cannot be fitted, something like this might work for you too to keep the hot side from meaningfully impacting your intake air temperature. This whole bit is triggering memories of that old Burger King advertisement about keeping the hot side hot and the cool side cool.

 

Before I begin, today marks the Ides of March. I am not really sure how to recommend ways to celebrate that. Pay off your debts? Enjoy a celebration picnic with revelry and drinking? Wander out of town in an animal skin? Perhaps we can all just hope Putin will suffer Caesar's fate this day for the inhumanity he is visiting upon our Ukrainian friends. Whatever transpires, in a couple days, it will be St. Patrick's Day. So, I will just get some rest to prepare for that. Hopefully, we can tip a drink within 2 meters of dear friends to celebrate a post-pandemic Spring.

Orientation Thoughts

On topic, consider the VW bay window bus engine bay from the rear hatch (picture on the right is of a '68). Most to the rear on the left is an otherwise unused battery tray. Some folks (like late-bay Westy-drivers) have a luxury battery there to power the fridge when shore-power is not available. On Hapy, there are just a lot of wires, so it's actually not much to look at. The spare tire well hangs down towards the front, meeting the rear tire well. Above to the rear there is a tall open area that eventually reaches the finned ear behind the rear window. Running along the bottom edge, front-to-rear, there is a small lip or perhaps a pinch weld that's about half an inch tall. My thought: wall this in, and create a pass-through for my engine intake, isolating it from the heat generator (engine exhaust and the turbo). Keep the cool side cool.

Parts

My go-to for all things metal fabrication these days (at least for air movement) is HVAC flashing, and this is no exception: I started with some basic 20ga HVAC flashing that I had lying around ($0). Onto the air intake, I need to add a 90* turn ($14US from siliconeintakes.com) so the air filter which used to sit next to the rear end of the spare tire well can instead go into the new cavity. The last piece is pipe flashing (like this) which cost me about $18US to provide safe passage for the aluminum pipe through the HVAC. The air cleaner needs to fit through the hole left in the basic wall when the pipe flashing is removed, so getting one large enough for this purpose was important. I had some HVAC flashing lying around, but at the time I did this, a 4 foot by 3 foot sheet (common size) would have run about $20US. A smaller sheet would cost a little less, but not much. So, all-in this would cost around $50US plus your time.

Cleanup

paper model

I learned along the way that this wall idea is not as straight-forward as it looked. As I started trying to model with a large sheet of brown paper, I realized there were some wiring clean-up items left undone. I tidied up the wiring a little bit, and strung as much as I could into the upper rear corner where the fuel vent line passes into the new cavity, securing them together (and to the vent line) with a cable/zip-tie. Below this bundle of wires, at the rear-most bottom, a couple of wires need to pass as well, so that makes 2 gaps to manage. The front-to-back T-12 cable (See the Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins posts for context) routes into the engine bay where the flat rear meets the upward angle of the rear tire well, so that's a third gap to seal. Last, the stock TDI engine management cable routes into the engine bay from under the center-point of the spare tire well, so that's 4 gaps. Had I planned for this when I did the wiring, I could have potentially cut this list in half, or even reduced it to one. I preferred to not revisit the electrical again this winter, after last winter's adventure. So, I made 4 distinct gaps for wires to pass through. I numbered them in the image of the paper model on the right, here.

Model with Paper

With the wiring bundled, I could start working on the wall... with a model. I started with brown packing paper. These days, so many things ship with large sheets of brown paper as the padding, and that stuff is nice and thick, and sometimes wide enough for things like this. It is also 100% recyclable (unlike the bubble wrap), so I'm doubly a fan. Anyway, I started with a basic measurement: 22 inches deep by 16 inches tall. Of course, I discovered that the hole is not square, and the 22 inch measurement is correct from the bottom of the rear wall to the point where the engine bay curves towards the fuel tank. The top is more than 24 inches from rear to top of fuel-tank compartment. Also, the section is not flat: the bottom curves slightly inwards while the top remains straight.

 

cardboard model 1

Then Cardboard

After a few rounds of test-fit, measure/cut and some added painter tape for strength, or for adding material for sizing, I arrived at an approximate paper model. I transferred the paper model to cardboard with a pencil using some tracing and some angle-square. Consider: the rear wall makes a 90* angle with both the top and the bottom, and (I thought) the rear wall is straight. The top run is straight, though I chose to cut some of the area away which would have been pressed against the spare tire well. I made this choice for 2 reasons: first, the vacuum control valves are mounted there, and I did not want to move them. Second, having a sheet of metal against metal like that would have created rattle noise I would have to solve. With my outline and wire bundle cut-outs defined, I cut the line with a razor blade and cleaned up the edges with scissors.

test-fitting a model

With this stiffer model, I performed another few rounds of test-fit, measure/cut until the cardboard wall completely covered the gap, the wire bundles easily fit through their respective gaps and the edges of the wall were clearly in a place where I could envision mounting. The final cardboard model, in-place in the picture on the right, also eliminated a large triangular shape from the lower front corner which would otherwise have set against the driver-side wheel well. Similar to the cut out from the spare tire well, having a large metal-to-metal contact area would create a vibration-noise opportunity. Looking back, this cardboard wall looked at least as good, if not better than, the final metal wall.

Then Model with Cardboard Again

The front and bottom have a lip I can easily attach to. The top and rear will need some kind thought and some creative drilling. One additional consideration: on the rear pillar, there are grounding points which cannot be disturbed. I decided to add a small tab on either side (above and below) to hold the new wall to the rear. The top will mount directly to the spare tire well for the front 2/3rds. The rearmost section of the top, will not get any treatment at all. I thought about it, and decided that there were already enough planned fastener points to hold the wall stable without adding another hole in the cabin floor. I transferred the cardboard model to another sheet of cardboard after a few repeated fit-attempts. I want to make sure the HVAC, when cut, will fit correctly. Last, I modeled mounting tabs with scrap cardboard and more blue painters tape so I would have them in the right place and the right size when I cut the HVAC. The picture above was taken before I added the mounting tabs to the model.

Plan the Intake Pass-Thru

note imperfect rear line

With the cardboard wall in place, that side of the engine bay looked considerably better... well, it hid what looked bad, anyway. Motivated, I planned the intake route based on the placement of the new 90* aluminum intake pipe. I made a rough cut in that general area of the cardboard wall and put it back in. The 90* pipe is too long on both ends. I needed to remove about 4 inches from the end that juts into the cavity, so there would be room for the air filter (7" tall from rubber grommet to chrome top) without it touching the side of the bus. The filter housing allows for up to 2 inches of pipe before it bottoms out, so there is some wiggle room for my cut on that end. Similarly, the engine-intake end of the 90* pipe needs to be shortened. Again, the silicone collar that attaches the new pipe to the air flow meter on the end of the intake allows for a couple of inches of play. I did not make the actual cuts to the pipe at this point, though.

 

The intake looked about right, so I added in the pipe flashing. I drew the edge of the flashing on the cardboard and then drew another set of lines 3/4-inch to the interior of the tracings. I cut the smaller square out of the cardboard, making a square that was about 6-1/2 inches per side. I tested that I could pass the air filter through that hole. Otherwise, maintenance of the air filter would require removing the entire wall. It fit, but barely, leaving about a quarter of an inch on each side (the widest part of the filter is 6-inch diameter).

Adjustments

HVAC test fit

I transferred the last model above to a sheet of HVAC, but I did not fit properly and had to do another round of cardboard before I was able to get a good HVAC design. The big barrier for me was the location of the vacuum valves (so probably not an issue for anyone else). Ultimately, I removed the valves that were no longer being used (anti-shudder and EGR), and moved the turbo controller to the rear mount. This freed up the front edge of the spare tire well. The second issue will appear for everyone who tries this: I thought that the rear inner wall was perpendicular to the floor and ceiling. It is not. Consider, the contour of the rear of the bus has a slight curve; the inner skin does as well. The picture just above on the right shows the deviation from pure vertical / 90* angle. That picture also shows on the bottom rear corner that the body panels do not have clean 90* transitions either. I cut off that little tab in future efforts. With these considerations, the models were working: showing me how to get to a viable wall.

 

Assemble

prepping the wall

For the second time, I transferred my cardboard model to HVAC flashing, complete with marks for mounting tabs. I cut the HVAC with my tin-snips, and formed the wire pass-thru's with pliers. For clarity, I marked the outline of the hole and then cut crossing lines through the center of that marked area. I folded the triangular bits of HVAC back upon itself to create the opening while also avoiding a sharp edge where the wire bundles would pass. With a hammer and dolly, I smashed the fold-back flat. By doubling the material at the openings, the wall was effectively stiffened; I had not anticipated, but will definitely appreciate that. For the upper rear wire pass-thru, I left a tang or tab nearest the rear wall that I could bend back into place, so the rear edge of gap #1 (visible in the pictures of the installed cardboard model) could get covered up once the wall was in place. Once I drilled the mounting holes in the tabs I set the wall in-place, marked the holes on the bus and drilled them out.

Pipe Flashing

wall installed

At this point, I considered how I would attach the pipe flashing to the HVAC. First, I transferred the square-ish hole from the cardboard model to the HVAC, and cut it. I need to be able to remove this section so I can clean the air filter. I drilled out 4 holes in the pipe flashing, one each per side, where the rubber had dimples for that purpose. I set the pipe flashing in place and marked the HVAC. These spots were within the folded-back HVAC, making the area thick enough to tap. Sweet! So, with a M4 (.75 thread-pitch) tap, I tapped the 4 holes in the HVAC. Into these threaded holes, I sent bolts from the cold-air side with thread-lock so these bolts will act like studs for the pipe flashing. The picture above on the right shows the studs through the HVAC.

Finishing

cold air intake

I moved the wall into place and secured it to the side of the bus with sheet metal screws. I had thought about tapping the holes and using bolts instead. The holes were too hard to access with a tap and I don't think this wall will be coming out with much frequency anyway. Even so, removing some sheet metal screws is not hard. With the wall in, I re-checked my measurements for cutting the aluminum pipe. Once verified with the permanent position of the pass-thru, I cut the pipe down. I pushed the shortened 90* aluminum pipe through the rubber collar and attached the air filter. I sent the air filter into the cavity, and maneuvered the not-filter-end of the 90* pipe through a connecting silicone collar to the rest of the intake. I set the pipe flashing against the HVAC and threaded on the 4 9mm nuts.

 

When I maintain the air filter, the process will be the same as this initial install: remove 4 nuts, loosen the hose clamp and remove the cold air intake assembly. After I clean the air filter, I would re-install by fitting the flashing atop the studs, finger on the nuts, get the pipes connected and then cinch down the nuts.

final install

Now, Hapy has a cold air intake, and the left side of the engine bay is no longer a complete visual downer. Instead, we have a nice clean wall and the engine will get colder air than it used to. This wall does have some small gaps, of course, so the air will not be as cool as it could have been. Perhaps I will circle back later with something on top of the wall to better seal the edges and pass-thru's. Longer term, I may apply a thermal layer onto the engine-bay side to help reduce temperatures even more. The picture on the right, here, shows it in its current (final) state, though a keen eye will see that I had not yet plugged in the AFM (air flow meter) when I took the picture.

 

This took quite a while to actually complete, having started before the 2021 winter holidays. I had other things going on, and this was a lower priority for sure. Also, there were multiple modeling cycles as I figured out the unique puzzles added to the driver side of the engine compartment from adding a TDI (and related vacuum control valves) to the mix.

That's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along-

MGB - Finding Vacuum Leak

Following my last post about Oliver (the 1978 MGB) when I got his timing square, I knew I needed to get his carb tuned. Today's post covers those efforts. This continued in parallel with the body work on Zed (until the weather turned, when Zed work stopped). These spring days, when the sun doesn't go down until 9PM creates LOTS of play-on-cars time. Love it.

A-typical Carb

We start with the most basic learning: what kind of carb is this? When I bought this car, the prior owner had been executing some improvements. For the most part, I can't complain about any of them... except the hack-job on the exhaust. Honestly, he could have been just making do until he had the cabbage to do what I did. Anyway, one of the improvements was to eliminate the stock dual Skinner Union (SU) carbs and swap in a side-draft carb. This isn't your standard Weber DCOE, though. Instead, the prior owner went with a SK Racing carb. The SK Racing (now known as OER Racing) side draft carb was (according to Dog283) one of the best engineered side draft carbs built, just as carburetors were falling out of favor for the new computer-assisted fuel injection systems. Dog283 continued "(the SKRacing side draft) combine(s) the best of the the Mikuni Solex PHH, the Weber DCOE and the Dellorto DHLA". That's a fairly strong statement. Unfortunately, the implementation on Oliver had fallen out of tune, so our MGB was not getting the lofty results this statement describes.

We start with looking for, and ultimately finding, a shop manual for the SK Racing side draft carb. If you have one of these carbs and need a copy of this manual, I'll happily share it. Near the back of it are the set-up steps detailed in the image of the page on the right. Basically, set the idle speed screw so it is just barely touching the tang, thread the idle adjustment screws all the way in until they just barely seat and then rotate them back out 1 full turn. Start the engine and get it to normal operating temperature. Then, tune the adjustment screws first until the engine runs smoothly, then set the idle speed. I did that, but I still got sporadic backfires when I rev'd the engine. I was starting to think that all that ignition work was for nothing.

Exhaust Leak Checks

Before I started investing time in the carb, I figured it would be a good idea to see if there were any leaks in my exhaust which could account for the backfiring. There were. To test, I started by cleaning out my shop-vac (washed out with a hose) and grabbing a squirt bottle of soapy water. I thrust the exhaust end of my now-clean shop-vac up the tail pipe and turned it on. This created backpressure through the exhaust. The tail pipe was not completely blocked so lots of air rushed right back out, but there was enough pressure to execute my test. I started up front, in the engine compartment and shot soapy water on the mate-point between the header and the head. No bubbles. I then got under the car and hit every joint, and found some bubbles. I concluded that I created leaks when I added in the catalytic converter. I turned off the shop-vac, loosened the joints, slid the pipes apart and applied some copper exhaust gasket maker and then re-connected the pipes. I nutted them back down and re-checked with the shop-vac. Things looked fixed (no bubbles at all but one joint where there were very very few), so I moved on to tuning, expecting my backfire issues had been identified and resolved.

Gunson ColorTune

Back when I was doing the other work on Oliver, I kind of expected difficulty with getting the carb to adjust. So, before I finished getting the ignition installed, I ordered a Gunson ColorTune. These things are pretty neat, but not terribly useful, I suspect, for the computer-controlled fuel injected systems. The kit includes a looking-glass spark plug, a lead, a tube with a mirror and a brush. I only needed the glass spark plug and the lead. The looking-glass has a solid-center where the spark is produced, with a ring of glass around it. The glass ring is then encircled with threaded metal so it can be threaded into an engine. The tube with a mirror is for spark plug holes that are hard to see. To use the kit, you remove one spark plug and thread the looking-glass plug in it's place. You connect the spark plug lead to the end of the lead from the kit, which is threaded onto the glass plug. Then, you start the engine and look at the color of the combustion in the chamber through the glass. If the color is orange or red, your mixture is too rich. You want the color to be "Bunson blue" = the color of a Bunson burner, from, like science class. The images on the right, here, help lead you to a good tuning. Notice that light blue or white-ish is not on here. If you are in the white-zone (Airplane, the movie reference here), your tune is too lean.

I was unable to get cylinders 1 and 2 anything better than a very light blue even after adjusting the idle mixture out past 1-1/2 turns. Cylinders 3/4 did not do much better. Based on the manual, I believe the idle jets may be too small, so I ordered a pair of 50F9 jets ($7US each). If I am correct, the current idle jets are 45's and this change will allow idle-mixture within 1-1/2 turns of fully seated to sit in the Bunson-blue color.

Still, I kept going, wanting to get the tune as good as I could. While looking through the glass I increased the fuel mixture incrementally, but the misses and backfires persisted. I could see the backfiring through the glass in cylinder 1, and concluded there had to be a leak somewhere. I also figured that backfires within a cylinder that has a glass plug was probably not a good idea. I had already looked on the exhaust side for leaks, so that left the intake.

Intake Vacuum Leak Checks

There are not many places where a leak could appear in the intake: the mating point at the head, the mating point with the carb, the carb itself and the brake booster. With the engine running, I carefully sprayed some WD-40 onto the various mate points. If there had been a vacuum leak, the vapor would have been drawn into the engine and the RPM would have bumped in response. Spraying something flammable onto a hot engine is dangerous. I strongly urge you to keep a fire extinguisher handy if you do this. In my case, the engine did not change and nothing caught fire.

So, I shut everything off and considered the brake booster. I removed the hose from the check valve, which is threaded into the intake manifold heading to cylinders 1 and 2. I checked the vacuum of the brake booster through that hose with the MityVac. It would not hold vacuum. I removed the check valve and cleaned the valve and the intake manifold where they met. Then, I put some copper gasket maker on the threads of the check valve and threaded it back in. I figured if that was the leak, I just solved it. I jabbed the hose back onto the check valve and hose-clamped it tight. Then, I eliminated the brake booster by threading a bolt into the end of the hose which had previously been attached to the booster, and started the engine. Oliver ran great! I could rev him up and down without any backfires demonstrating that the brake booster was my vacuum leak.

check valve in foreground,
intake in background

I wanted to prove it for sure, so I hooked the booster hose back up to the brake booster and started the engine again. I rev'd the engine up and down... the back fired returned. I pinched the vacuum hose with a pair of pliers and I could hear the engine RPM's settle. Neat. Rev rev rev... no back fires. Remove the pliers, RPM increases... rev, rev, rev... backfires.

Fortunately, these brake boosters are being manufactured now. I didn't realize these were not available until recently, so as much as I would like to self-blame for not replacing the booster when I replaced the brake and clutch master cylinders, it wasn't available then and they are fairly expensive now (~$200US). As of today, they are not available through Moss yet. I had to go through another vendor (EnglishParts.com, they're lovely). I concluded that any carb tuning I had done would need to be redone once the brake booster swap was completed. 

That's it for today. I will install and post about the brake booster when it arrives from the MidWest. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Nemo Rides Again

Returning to the Nemo work, today we button everything back up and test things. In the first of these 3 posts (See Sadist Engineering), we diagnosed and removed the head. In the second (See Nemo Head Install), we took the head to a shop, had it tested and decked and then installed it back onto the engine. So, we start with the head and engine back together again, and torqued down.

Intake and Turbo

With the head on, next came connecting the turbo: slip a new gasket between, then slide the other 2 bolts through. I held the turbo from below and got those 2 bolts to thread in by hand. Once I was able to get them tightening down with a spanner, I could get the bolt closest to the head through to the turbo and finger-thread in. Tighten to spec. The intake was a bear to remove, but it was actually kind of easy to install (with a new gasket). I did not need to replace that one bolt, either. In fact, upon inspection, I couldn't easily distinguish it from the others. I was able to get them all snugged down tight. Torque spec was lower than I expected (like 20 pounds or something), so these were on too tight when I removed them.

Timing Belt
The last big/hard piece was the timing belt. Luke had really cleaned the head, so there weren't any paint-markings on the gear on the cam sprocket when I got it back. So, getting the belt in the exact same spot threatened to not be the simple case I had expected. I did know, though, that the engine hadn't moved and the head was at TDC, so I just needed to get the belt perfect-tight on the left side (front-is-front) and make sure I did not shift the engine timing when the belt was tightened. It turned out that I was smarter than I thought, and had put the head cam mark on the belt where the timing dimple appears on the gear. So, the alignment was actually a snap. That's one to grow on: mark the belt based on the timing mark and the shop can't erase them on you. I was able to re-use the belt tensioner (belt was replaced less than 20K ago) by slowly re-compressing it in a vice and sliding a paperclip into the hole to hold it compressed during install. Put on the tensioner roller, put on the tensioner verify everything is right and pull the pin. There are much better instructions with the belt kit than I could provide in this space. Regardless, once the belt is on, it is recommended to rotate the engine one full rotation by the crank and then verify that the timing marks are still spot-on. I apologize for not taking any pictures along the way, here. I got going and kinda forgot to.

Accessory Belts
After the timing belt is on, the lower timing belt cover is added and then the lower crank pulley. At this point, I put on the accessory belts, and the belt tensioner for the longer serpentine belt.

Hoses
With the timing belt and corresponding covers on, the hoses were next. Since I did not swap any hoses, and I removed as few ends as I possibly could, the hoses flopped back to where they were, and it was rather simple to plug hoses onto nipples. Getting the evil outlet flange on, though, was it's typical challenge. I used 10mm bolts instead of the Allen-keyed bolts and found them much easier to start and torque. I consider this an upgrade. Before I switched from cooling stuff, I mounted the overflow bottle.

Vacuum
Once everything else was in place, the vacuum lines just flopped into place. I didn't expect that, but I had only disconnected a few of them. I needed to find one that simply disappeared: the line from the intake manifold to the fuel pressure release. This is only about 4 inches long, and I had thought that maybe it wasn't on there when I started tearing things down. Turned out, I simply dropped it and found it on the tarmac after we moved the car. By then, I had put on a fresh hose.

Electrical
Re-installing the spark plugs was next for me. I could have done this earlier, but I got to it now, when I needed something that didn't require me to be bent over because my back was starting to flare up. So, I gap'd the plugs (.028) and installed them. Then, I plugged in the coil packs, bolted down the related grounds and verified everything I could reach was plugged in. I noted a few that could only be solved once the front end was re-attached, but that was becoming a very short list.

Front End Assembly

test ready

And just like that, I was ready to put the front cowl / radiator support back on. This would have been much easier with a helper, but I started with the passenger side, getting one of the upper bolts by the fender loosely threaded in. Then, I repeated the driver side. Now, I could arrange the large steel bar which runs behind / below the radiator and the lower mounting points of the cowl. Held in place with my knee, I set first the passenger side, then the driver side bumper supports with a single bolt. Bouncing from one side to the other, I threaded in the other bolts, and then tightened them down.

With the front end mounted, I could complete the hose connections to the radiator and confirm the route of the charged air. I swung the A/C condenser around and mounted it to the radiator and then added the large front inter-cooler. I plumbed the large pipes for the inter-cooler, and then checked for missing connections and not-plugged-in things. I plugged in the horns. I mounted the headlights and plugged them in. I found and plugged in a small green plug below the radiator and the sensor just above the lower radiator outlet. Or is it an inlet?

Test
I had run out of time and daylight to do anything else, but I knew the next step was to fill the system with water and test fire it. I wanted full daylight for that, and a night to sleep on it so I could come back and inspect with fresh eyes. The next morning, it passed visual tests and T dropped by for the test start. I filled the system with plain water.. yes, I know that's not a good thing to do long-term. This was simply to see if it started. I figured if it didn't I would be draining the system to fix it and didn't want to waste good coolant for that. We hooked up the battery and turned the key. Vroom-vroom.

We let the car sit and idle while the temperature came up. There were no drips so I ran my gloved fingers around the various coolant components. The gloves came back without moisture, so we took it for a spin. We drove for 15 or 20 minutes and watched the engine temperature rise and fall as we pushed it and let off. When we returned, we backed Nemo back into the service parking spot and let it idle again. No drips, no coolant loss. And, the temperature sat still.

Road Ready
We turned off the engine and did our little happy dance. The next day, I drained the coolant system and filled it 50/50 with G40 coolant and water. Once the system was burped of air bubbles, it was ready for T to take back home.

So, that's pretty much it for Nemo. I replaced a couple of fuses for the tail-lights, and the registration has expired, but otherwise, the car is ready. T collected the car, drove home to Eugene without incident and has driven it on errands and fun-runs multiple times since. We'll call that a win. Thanks, as always, for following along-