Hapy Re-Assembly Continues

First, thanks for following along. I know blogs have fallen far out of favor, with videos and such being the preferred means for getting information. I can't watch videos at work, but I can read, so for me, this is still viable. There's an old saying about not having a face for video, or a voice for radio, you can still print. That's me. Besides, I barely have time to do my thing and write about it, much less shoot and produce video. I don't know how those content producers get any sleep, especially the ones who aren't making any money at it, which, lets be honest, that's most of them. More power to them, and I greatly appreciate their efforts. When I finally wind down at night, I love me some car-fixin videos.

 

So, where were we? Oh yeah, Hapy was almost assembled. Well, his engine and transaxle were mated and they were mounted to the bus. That's the fun, exciting, sexy part. What's left is everything else. I stayed under the bus and finished everything there first before getting after the from-above stuff. I didn't take any pictures, mostly because with all the extra layers simply moving around under the bus is a challenge.

 

Transaxle Finish

I started at the front and worked by way backwards. This started with the nose-mount. At some point when the transaxle was removed, one of the mounting bolts broke off inside the threaded body mount. I know I need to resolve this, and practically every time I get under the bus, I shoot that broken-off bolt with some penetrating oil. I believe the front mount carries very little actual weight, but it does make sure the transaxle remains aligned. I gotta get that bolt out and replaced, but not today. With the one bolt in, I connected the grounding strap. I slid to the left side and connected the Bowden tube and clutch cable. I make a point of leaving bolts partly threaded into where they go so (a) I don't lose them and (b) so I know where they go when I return to a project 6 months later. This made installing the Bowden tube just the usual challenge and not accentuated with a bolt search first. To make the threading of the butterfly nut on the end of the cable easier, I prop up the clutch pedal and then put vice-grips where the cable meets the threaded end. Lots of tightening later, I then test the play of the pedal and slide back under a few times to make sure the pedal has an inch or so of travel before the pedal meets resistance.

 

The last thing on the transaxle is the reverse light plug. In my efforts to install, I smashed the reverse light plug quite a bit. Perhaps this happened when the transaxle fell of the jack this past summer. Hard to know. Anyway, with needle-nose pliers I straightened them out. The leads, have been in the same position for so many years that they were already pre-oriented for the right spots to plug in. 

 

Rear (Anti-)Sway Bar 

Sliding further rearward, I got after the rear sway bar. I will again mention how helpful this bar has been for handling, especially in a strong cross-wind. I will also stress how important it is to have it out of the way for a transaxle R&R. I raised the center of the bar with the TravisJack so I could use both hands on the various mounts. I made sure to put a small smear of clear, hi-temp grease (not black axle grease) on the hard bushings, finger-threaded everything and then nutted every thing down. The grease extends the life of the hard bushings, by reducing the direct-wear of hard bar twisting against them. I had not greased these previously, but we really have not run more than a few hundred miles since I put this bar on.

 

Starter

Now we're getting near the end of the below-the-bus stuff, with the starter going in. With the newer starter adapter, with the studs to hang the starter on, the install is much easier. It really is as easy as popping on there and nutting down with a 17mm socket. The top nut can be a challenge to reach, but the rest of it is easy. Pop on the 12V send from the battery and the 12V send-to-front onto the main post, nut down with a 14mm. Last, pop on the starter trigger. Done. Next!

from warmer summer days

Before sliding out, I hooked up the ground from the right side of the engine to the frame.

 

Fueling

For the most part, I left the fuel system in-tact. Right now, I start to feel the advantages of not pulling the motor all the way out of the engine bay. All I did to enable this job was remove the big Caterpillar fuel filter from the frame, and drape it on the engine. So, a couple of bolts later, the fuel system is back together, hopefully holding prime.

 

Cooling

Similar to the fueling system, I minimally disconnected the cooling system. So, I thought it would be just as easy. I lifted the overflow bottle and noticed the bottle was low, and could hear splashing noise coming from the driver side. I lowered the bottle and the steady stream stopped, so clearly there was a breach up higher in the system, and not a breech in the radiator cooling lines or something that would have potentially cost me all of the coolant. Sure enough, the coolant temperature sensor that plugs into the coolant outlet flange was loose and the c-clip was no where to be seen. It is highly likely that the clip was lost last Summer. At this point, I ordered a replacement, and moved on, but not without laughing at how, again, the coolant outlet flange bit me again. 

 

Charged Air

All I removed from the charged air system were the 2 silicone elbows that connect the inter-cooler to the system. Then, the inter-cooler can be moved out of the way for the work. The silicone elbows are held in-place with large clamps that require a special tool (or lots of patience with channel-lock pliers). I used both. Once complete, I noticed that the little blower fan I have on the inter-cooler was barely clinging to the inter-cooler so I fixed that with some new zip-ties. I intend to one day replace the air-to-air inter-cooler with an air-to-water system, reducing overall inbound air temperatures and freeing up some engine compartment space.

 

This was as far as I could really go without that little clip. So, this is where I stopped while waiting for them to arrive from ECS Tuning. While waiting for the coolant temperature sensor c-clip to arrive, I put the battery on the charger. Next time, we'll get after that little clip and whatever other adventures we uncover.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along- 

 

Hapy Re-Assembly

I have been waiting to do this post until after Hapy was completely back in one piece, but after many hours and days out there, he is still not quite together. Still, seems like as good a time as any to update, and, like seems to happen so often, this got long, so this is going to get split out. Perhaps he will be in one piece by the time I get the next post done. Anyway, I left off last time after having moved Hapy from the sloped and badly cracked driveway into the shop. That was in early October. With extreme work expectations, I had very little free time, so there he sat until winter break (mid-to-late December).

 

Time to Lean, Time to Clean

engine in, oriented

First, I moved the ATV jack with my wooden cradle under the engine and supported the engine. I started by removing the ratchet-straps I had used to hold the front of the engine to the frame and the axles from dragging on the ground. Then, I removed the rear mount, support tower and cross-bar. Last, I removed the rear tow-hitch / rear bumper assembly.

 

I was on a cleaning adventure, so I cleaned the engine bay and the parts I had just removed with de-greaser. Then, I painted those parts and the underside of the bus's rear end and lower engine bay with Eastwood's rust converter. I felt this set the stage for a less filthy job. Since I failed to clean the engine, however, I was only half right. But, the parts which were painted look really good now and I hope the rust growth is at least slowed, if not stopped, by the application of the rust converter. As they say "rust never sleeps" so it will remain on the inspect-every-time list regardless.

 

Transaxle Together

output flange going on

We start our assembly adventure by just returning the transaxle back to its state before I removed it. Recall that during my efforts to get the transaxle and engine to mate on the cracky driveway, the transaxle awkwardly fell off a small jack and onto the concrete, causing the left (driver in US) side output flange to pop off. This was what put the re-assembly effort into dead stop last Summer. After getting some advice, a new plastic cover and a few packets of grease from a shop around the way, I again did nothing about it for weeks. Work has been all-consuming this year, did I mention that? Anyway, continuing my cleaning frenzy, I cleaned everything (except the engine, it seems): the transaxle, the various parts, the area I was going to work in, my tools... you get the point. The little c-clip that was responsible for holding the flange to the transaxle was a little bent from it's rapid extraction by the driveway. The shop owner suggested that the original clip was higher quality than the EMPI stuff on the market now and encouraged me to flatten/fix that clip. So I did, with a vice and a hammer. With the mating points all clean, and the old little plastic cover gone, re-attaching the output flange, setting the c-clip and then setting the new plastic cover actually took as long to do as it just took to type. I was stunned it was that easy and felt rather stupid for avoiding this for, like, 6 months.

 

While I was there, I also took the shop owners other advice about removing the throw-out bearing, greasing the slide and re-installing the throw-out bearing. While the parts were apart, I hit the teeth on the output shaft with a wire brush, getting all the gunk out of the teeth. With the transaxle now back in one piece, I set it on a big sheet of cardboard and slid it under the bus, from the rear around the left side of the engine and over the rear sway-bar lying on the ground. 

 

I will make an aside about the rear sway-bar here. While it is great for handling, it is awful for getting the engine/transaxle in and out. It really is great for handing, though, especially in windy conditions. Simply disconnecting the frame mounts and letting it hang on the ground, leaving the shock mount ends connected, makes for a tall, virtually uncross-able, speed-bump for your floor jack. In the future, when I (and I suggest any reader who has the rear sway-bar) remove my transaxle again, I will completely remove the rear sway-bar from under the bus, leaving the space completely clear.

 

Tranny Meet Diesel

strapped to rotate

With the transaxle on the ground under the bus, I set to mating it to the engine. Right here is when I wish I'd remembered a few things:

1- while you can still interact with your transaxle, put the little cage on the shifter rod that comes out the front. I didn't and while it still isn't done yet I have already spent an hour trying to get the grub screw to thread in after the transaxle is already installed. Word to the wise: do this beforehand.

2- that shifter rod goes OVER the rear main frame tube. I don't know what it's real name is, but you need to put that rod over the tube before you try to put the transaxle into place. I forgot, mated the engine:transaxle and then had to do it again because I could not get the engine far enough back to get the shift rod over the tube. Total facepalm. Lost hours facepalm.

 

I am going to draft on this moment and drop a placeholder for consideration: Cutting in a removable rear valence like the earlier bus's had. I know the engineers made the fixed, permanent valence for structural integrity. Any other 1972 and later bus might still require it. For that matter, this bus may still require it. My bus, my risk ; I encourage others to not follow this advice without giving it some serious thought and even then, ask friends. My bus has 2 additional side-to-side heavy bars bolted into the side frames: one for the rear engine mount and one for the rear tow hitch. Both of these are heavy steel bars bolted in separately from each other. I submit that if I cut the rear to have a removable valence, I would suffer no structural loss. So, I think the next time I need to remove the engine, I will give this serious thought. How I do it so it doesn't look trash will be the fun part.

 

Anyway, once I got the shift rod over the tube, I set the transaxle on the "race" jack I got from our dearly departed brother-in-law, Travis (and named it accordingly). With the transaxle easily balancing on the Travis I was able to get the output shaft of the transaxle to align with the clutch. It is noteworthy that I did not use the "small" jack the transaxle fell off of this time; the big pad on the Travis is way more stable. I got the 2 to mate and threaded in 4 bolts to snug them together: 2 on the very bottom, one just above the clutch throw-out arm and one which threads through the starter mount.

 

Central Mounting

With the engine and transaxle as one large and heavy assembly, I needed to get it aligned with the 2 central mount holes: the 2 which pass through the ears on the top rear of the transaxle. I believe this mount handles the lion's share of the weight. The left side aligned fairly easily (20 minutes of wrestling) but it took a couple of hours of fighting the right side. I could not remember having such a hard time reaching and seeing. With a shrug, I went to put things away and noticed that I could not lower the overhead engine lid I'd cut in all those years ago. It was bopping on the intake. I realized that the engine and transaxle were clocked for an upright install, not a "stock" orientation (same tilt as native install in a Jetta or NewBeetle) as I had before. I had mated the engine and transaxle wrong. I called it a day, and took a long shower.

 

For Clock's Sake

nearly buttoned below

I have some of my best (and sometimes worst) ideas in the shower. I figured that I could put a ratchet strap around the front of the engine, hooking the ends on the frame like I had it when I moved the bus, and use the webbing as a cradle for rotating the engine, re-clocking it against the transaxle. Suspending the weight of the engine on some webbing was not going to be enough so I put in the rear engine mount cross bar and tower. Then, I connected the engine mount to the engine, letting the body-side of the mount float free. As an extra precaution, I moved the ATV jack and cradle under the engine and raised it so it was just below the engine. Then, I put the ratchet strap in place and cranked it down as snug as I could. Feeling a little anxious, I removed the 4 bolts and nothing moved nor settled at all. So, feeling bold, I grabbed the engine by the alternator mount with my right hand and the turbo with my left and slowly rotated the engine anti-clockwise. I was able to key off of the bottom bolt on the left side, switching from on my back with the bolt in hand to on my feet and shifting the engine and back again. Ultimately, I found that using a small screwdriver to help fine-tune the bolt location was most effective, but once I had that one bolt, the upper left and starter-bolts went in easily. I was unable to seat the lower right bolt and I will have to go through my notes to see how many bolts I've used before to see if I'm chasing something a false memory of 4 bolts.

 

Once the bolts were through, I removed the ratchet strap, wrenched down the engine mount on the engine side and then connected it to the tower. I am going to stop here, mostly because this is as far as I've gotten. By next time, I will have solved the grub-screw in the shift linkage and have the rest of Hapy put together. I hope I will even be able to tell a tale of a test run.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along. I know my posts have become few and far between. We had some staffing changes at my employer late in 2024 and that meant lots more work for me ever since. I do not anticipate that significantly changing, so my attitude about it needs to. Working on it.

Hapy Engine-Transaxle Dropped

Around the concrete work, I ordered a replacement flywheel, clutch and pressure plate from Kennedy Engineering for Hapy (TDI-powered 1972 VW camperbus). The flywheel entered fabrication early last week, so I spent part of the Independence Day weekend dropping and separating the engine and transaxle not-in-a-shop for hopefully the last time. Today's post covers the drop and separation; it took 10 hours spread across 2 days.

 

How Did We Get Here

hockey player smile

I have been queuing this most recent engine drop for over a year. Recall all of the starter swaps I have made in hopes of solving the intermittent starting issue. And, I replaced the starter adapter hoping that was the issue. Nope and nope. The flywheel had suffered sufficient incomplete meshing of the starter gear with the flywheel's ring gear, chipping teeth and wearing down others. During my research, I learned that oftentimes (not always) engines will tend to stop running at the same spot in their rotation. So, if the circle is 360 degrees, the engine will stop most of the time at the same point. I know that seems counter-intuitive when you assume an engine is a well-balanced smooth machine, but the 4 cylinders and the 4 steps in the combustion cycle create a frequency, if you will, that for some engines means that when you kill power it will naturally stop at the same point. In those cases, you would think having a complete ring gear is unnecessary, right? I mean, if you only ever use 15 degrees of gear, why have 360? Ok, in re-reading this, obviously you need an entire gear for the starter to spin the engine. LOL.

 

I found on my flywheel there was one spot in particular which was especially bad and 3 other spots which looked like there was wear, but not so much that the starter was really having trouble. This would explain why all the other times I looked at the flywheel I could not see an issue. The starter was not on the really bad spot, just one of the not-so-great spots. When I was unable to get the engine to start on the first try, but I got the gear-on-gear sound, I think I was starting on one of those spots. Inevitably, the engine would eventually land on the really bad one, and the sound would change from gear-on-gear to gear-in-the-air. 

 

Continuing this nonsensical thread, the TDI engine's flywheel can only fit on the engine one way, based on the bolt pattern. If there were any way I could have retained the flywheel and simply removed and re-installed it so that the really bad spot was in one of the zones where the teeth are never facing the starter at dead-stop... I would have. I mean, this flywheel has lasted 15 years of starting issues and abuse and for the most part it's fine. Well, fine except for the 1 big chunk that's missing and some other kinda-worn spots.

 

Getting Down

So, we enter Saturday, July 5th, the traditional first day Pacific NorthWest summer, tools in hand, blues festival on the radio, ready to get after the engine drop. To prepare, I re-read the last engine drop I can remember doing on this bus: to swap the transaxle from the original 002 to the AA Transaxle (Seattle) 1975 CM 002 transaxle. I did that on Labor Day 2012 in my real estate agent's driveway (See Transaxle Transition). It took 1 day to get the engine/transaxle out and separated. It took 1-1/2 days to get the new transaxle mated and the whole operation installed. I figured I would have a similar path, but my real estate agent's driveway was flat and smooth. The square of concrete outside my tiny garage is neither flat nor smooth. Quite the opposite, actually, it slopes away from the garage slightly and it has massive deep cracks in it. Like 2 or 3 inches deep cracks where blocks of concrete are lower/higher than the section next to it. This makes moving an engine on a jack much harder.

 

air disconnected

High level, my plan was to not raise the bus, and to only remove that which was necessary to allow me to separate the transaxle from the engine (and the bus) so I could do a clutch service with a flywheel swap out. So, I chocked the front tires and got after it. I started with the easier stuff: disconnect the air side first (cold air/filter to intake, unplugging the AFM and a vacuum line, then removed the charged air from turbo to intercooler). Then, the 13mm nut/bolts on the exhaust side of the turbo and removed the exhaust. Since I did not have to really move the engine other than up and down, I chose to leave the coolant related systems alone other than disconnecting the overflow bottle to prevent tension on the hoses. I made the same decision wit the fueling system, and chose to only disconnect the large filter, again to eliminate potential tension on the fuel hose. Last thing on the engine was to disconnect the battery and the 12V exciter from the alternator.

 

Shifting to the transaxle, I set a small jack under the center of the ribs and started removing things. First, I removed the CV joints and stuffed the greasy bits into plastic bags held on with rubber bands. The clutch cable and the mount for the bowden tube were next. Once free, I disconnected the shifter at the front of the transaxle, the grounding strap near the front and finished with the nose mount. At this point, the only things connected to the engine/transaxle I needed to address were the rear engine mount and the main carrier mounts.

 

simple coolant solve

I located and set the engine cradle on the ATV jack and supported the engine while I removed the rear mount and the tower between the support bar and the mount. With the engine supported, I removed the 2 bolts which attach the top of the bellhousing to the main center carrier.

 

Well, Now Its Down

This was all I thought I had to do to drop the engine. When I read the old steps, this was how far I had to go. Since then, however, I added the rear sway bar and it was set such that removing and then re-installing the transaxle was going to be more difficult. I removed the 4 14mm nuts that held the middle of the bar to the frame and it swung down far enough for the transaxle nose to clear. But there was not enough room for the shifter linkage above the side-to-side main support to clear. The engine needed to move backwards a couple of inches. So, I removed the rear engine support bar. In retrospect, I realized that I had removed that bar last time too. Now, I could pull the engine far enough back to get the transaxle off of the engine, rotated and then onto the ground. Sitting on cardboard, I pulled the transaxle out the driver side. I regret not taking a picture of the inside of the bellhousing, but it had so many little metal flakes (from the flywheel). I shot the bellhousing with brake cleaner and then, after I had wrapped the cv-joint mount points with plastic film, I shot the whole transaxle with de-greaser. I hosed it off and let it dry in the sun. While I had the de-greaser out, I cleaned the rear engine support bar too.

 

Pressure Plate and Flywheel

jack on crack

Now, I was basically ready for a clutch job. The pressure plate came off with little fanfare. It looks like its in great shape. The clutch still has most of it's friction material, so in a pinch I could probably reuse them. I got new replacements for both, so I may retain them for an emergency. Honestly, after 12 years of running this clutch and still have that much friction material left, I figure I may not have to replace this clutch ever again. I did notice a couple of spots on the flywheel which had a slight blue-ish hue, though. That's usually a sign that the clutch got hot and sticky. Something to think about. Maybe going with the stage 1 clutch this time rather than the stock pre-1972 VW bus clutch was the right call after-all, and the old clutch/pressure plate are not worth keeping.

 

Last, I had to pull the flywheel. Fortunately, I have a flywheel lock for old VW's and since this is a 200mm flywheel designed to fit inside a 002 transaxle, the lock fit. I could not get good leverage lying on my back under the bus so I smacked a rubber mallet against the end of a ratchet to pop the torqued bolt. All 6 came out without too much trouble. Applying a torque wrench on install will be interesting. Because of how snug the flywheel mates to the engine output, I needed to work the flywheel off with a small prybar. Once on the ground, I could more clearly identify the really badly worn spot (pictured above), but the other spots did not look as bad. Perhaps, once I have the new one to compare, the damage on this flywheel will be more apparent.

 

Conclusion

no downhill roll please

That's as far I've been able to get. I am still waiting for the flywheel, clutch, pressure place, throw-out bearing, etc. It took me most of 2 days to get to this point, so I expect the re-install will be similarly extended from 1-1/2 days to maybe 3. It is interesting to see how an uneven surface and 12 years of personal aging can slow a process down. The sway bar and engine support bars each represented maybe an hour of extra work, so I can't attribute it to them. This is probably really about me getting slower and the work location making everything that little bit harder.

 

For those tracking on the shop construction, we may be falling onto their schedule as early as the end of next week. Fingers crossed, I may have a structure before I have Hapy back in one piece. 

 

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

Put Your Home Where Your Sign Is

Limited bus (or car) content today, and this will be rather short.

Yard Sign
A couple of years ago, mr. trump started making changes about which countries could source travelers into the US. This was met with protests at airports and in front of government buildings. Eventually, some states sued, and the restrictions were relaxed. Remember all that? Well, the day after that started, my neighbor down the street put a yard sign on her front lawn declaring "Refugees Welcome". It wasn't a home-made sign, so I figured there was some political movement she subscribed to which gave her the sign to raise awareness. Honestly, unless you were without access to any media, pretty much everyone knew what he had started. After all the lawsuits and protests, her sign persisted. We had neighborhood barbecues (yes, our neighborhood does that) and picnics and her sign was a point of conversation. Oddly enough, no matter the general political tilt of the folks who lived on the street, the underlying sentiment was "we're all from somewhere else" and the huddled masses phrase from the Statue of Liberty still resonates.

Refugees Really Welcome

it kinda looks like this

Fast forward to a few months ago. Our neighbor who started the conversations with a simple black and white sign kicked it up 5 notches: she adopted a family of refugees from Syria. That is taking "putting your money where your mouth is" to a whole 'nother level. This family was bombed out of their home and have been on the move in one form or another ever since. When they last had a home of their own, their youngest son (now 4) was in his mother's womb. As the weather has gotten nicer, the boys are playing outside, using the street like a soccer field, complete with the hooting and hollering that comes with 3 boys playing outside.

Consider this short street with a cul-de-sac has, maybe, 20 houses on it. Most of them are occupied with older couples with grown children or families with teenagers. It's quiet. There is no thru-traffic people drive super -slow down the street waving at each other, and everyone pretty much knows everyone else. Yes, it is like Smallville, but it is actually a fairly good cross-section representation of the ethnic diversity on Portland's west side. I can count the number of young families on 2 fingers, though. So, the new family is changing the dynamic and increasing the number of young families by 50% along the way. How the neighborhood is responding is quite telling, and heart-warming.

Shifts
We have one neighbor, she's single, retired and has 2 Corgis. Rather than just throwing the ball for her dogs as she used to, she encourages the boys to play with them too. I saw another neighbor bring out some cups of juice one warm afternoon. The younger families now have more kids on the street to play with, so the games are getting bigger and louder and longer.

Boo and I hosted the three boys for a couple of hours this past weekend. While Boo entertained the younger 2 with games, toys and snacks, the 11 year old older boy (M) helped me get Hapy back down off jack-stands following an unsuccessful attempt to get the rims off. There's a post in the works on that saga. He loves cars ("second only to family" he said), and is interested in our collection of mid-project pieces. I can totally appreciate where he's coming from. I loved cars when I was 11 too, so I'll be welcoming our new neighbor whenever he wanders over and is looking for something to work on. Our corral is definitely a target-rich environment for car-mechanic-ing.

Our involvement has been very light, and depending on what they need, it may remain so. This post is really not about us, though. I am humbled by our neighbor's huge leap from posting a yard sign to hosting a family of 5. So many others, myself included, will wring hands or shake a fist at the news, but will do very little otherwise. Some will vote with their feet and not go certain places or vote with their wallets and not buy certain things. Fewer will make donations. Our neighbor is that extremely rare person who opened her home. That's every day, every night with a family of 5 people you don't know with kids ranging in age from 4 to 11.

2 Sentence Bus Content
I have uncovered the bus for the summer, and expect to do a great many things before camping / festival season starts. I expect my new friend M will be helping when and however he can.

I think it is much easier to want to close the border or refuse refugees when you haven't ever met one. M is my friend and I would like to believe he now has an opportunity to achieve his great potential. He and his family endured difficulties most Americans, including me, couldn't imagine. Maybe learning of their perils will help us realize just how blessed we are, and how truly "first world" our supposed problems are. I think the steady introduction of refugee reality over generations has traditionally kept we Americans humble and appreciative. I hope we can remain that way, and not react with walls and policy intended to protect us, but will only further isolate us from our neighbors.

I guess that's it for today. Thanks for following along. You know I don't usually get political, and this wasn't meant to be. I am just amazed by our neighbor's capacity to give, and needed to share it. Thanks-

Santa Clara by way of Wheeler

While so many folks around the San Francisco area were celebrating the Supreme Court decision to allow same-gender marriages, deadheads looked to the southern end of the SF Bay to the final pair of concerts to be performed by the guys who used to be called "Grateful Dead" on the West Coast. The well-heeled or well-connected got tickets at exorbitant prices while the rest of us watched with wonder... through $100 worth of simulcast access. Today's post is about how I saw the Santa Clara shows with some family and friends, complete with a bus repair adventure!

Getting Out
I've mentioned the MT3. Up until late Friday evening, our plan was to take a car and a bus (8 people) to my friend Mayhem's place in Wheeler to camp in the bus for the Santa Clara shows. As the evening got late, though, it was clear that Boo needed to stay home to get some work done and the MT3 wouldn't be going. So, rather than 8, only the older 3 boys (T, C and K2) got to go. My boy's mom got herself tickets, travel and hotel (once the support check clears, no one really knows where the money goes, do they?) to get down to the show in person, so T and C knew a little bit about the shows' significance. Saturday morning, I got up like it was a workday. I hit the grocery store for supplies, and loaded the bus. We were loaded with fuel and ice and ready-ish to go when Grateful Ed arrived with Belle.
MPG note: 35 MPG since the last fill. That's high, but should we factor in the top-off?

To Wheeler

With 2 boys in the middle row and T as my co-pilot, we set off following Belle to US26. As always seems the case, we were met with smiles and waves as we passed. Or, more often, when we were passed. Hapy ran great again, through troubled traffic between the US26/OR6 interchange through the US26/OR47 interchange. It's pretty farmland out there, but someone did something they weren't supposed to and for a stretch that should taken about 10 minutes, we slogged for over almost an hour and a half. In intense sun. Where no AC means hot driver. Still, the traffic let up just past the Dairy Queen in Manning, and we got back to normal pace: 55 downhill, 35 uphill. We proceeded like that through the Coast Range to the US101 interchange and down the 101. Just before Hug Point, Belle pulled into a view area with a deep lot. Driver Ed was hungry, so we parked with sliders facing each other, popped the tops and broke out the hoagies.

Summer Sights

No sooner did we shut off engines than the folks who had been taking pictures of the ocean were now taking pictures of the 2 buses. Of course, I should have too, but I was hungry... and then the small crowd formed, and there were questions to answer, and such. There's s great line in The Bus Movie about a menu of things you can ask, and how much you get to pay for the driver to listen to the question and maybe answer. Very funny, but I love talking to folks about the bus. You have to, if you're going to drive one. After the last visitor left, we fired up the buses and completed the few miles to Wheeler. I'd never been on the stretch of US101 just south of Manzanita before; it is very pretty and seems less touched by the micro-mansions that have appeared along other areas of Oregon coastline. As you pass through, do remember: the stop sign in Nehalem is right turn permitted without stopping. It creates quite the stir among the locals when someone stops and confuses everyone :)

Casa Mayhem
We arrived to two little Mayhem's watching the Octonauts with Grampa Mayhem. Some times, arriving at someone's house can be like arriving home, and Mayhem's felt that way. The boys settled into the easy conversations between familiars, and before long we were trading stories and laughing. Grateful Ed broke out the flags that usually adorned Belle and presented them off the front deck while I readied Hapy for "camping". The boys decided to sleep on the front deck with a view of the bay to wake to. Great choice. Once our sleep arrangements were set, we grilled up our traditional post-Jerry music food: meat snax. There's nothing quite like grilled steak in small bite-sized chunks, only improved by chilling after cooking and then service cold. Yummy.

Santa Clara, Day One

With food in hand, we fired up the simulcast of the Dead show going on in Santa Clara. The fine folks at Jambase (see here) have a much deeper set list and opinion piece about the performance than I could possibly create. I don't agree with their glowing report, though. I thought most of the performance was mediocre, the vocals thin, and the timing was off. There were a few missing pieces: first, none of them would assertively lead. Bob would try to get Trey's attention after he disappeared into his guitar solo (staring at his feet), only to become frustrated and give up on the segue. They almost gave up on the Eleven entirely. I would agree that the show-ending Morning Dew was pretty good. Bob found his vocal strength in time to nail that number. The encore Casey Jones (lead-vocal by Bruce Hornsby) should have reminded everyone that he has a great voice, and that was what singing in front of 80k people was supposed to sound like. The vocals was another missing piece. Furthur used to travel with backing vocalists to help make the sound fuller. Without them, the vocals were thin and pitchy. The last missing piece was the ability to either segue or stomp and ending. Most of the songs just petered out, especially in the second set. Lots of miscues and bumbling endings. Overall, those at Casa Mayhem reflected with memories of plain-Jane shows of years past, or some of the performances during Jerry's last year with us. Not good, but always hope for another day. Like the next day...

Santa Clara, Day Two

Sometimes, the Dead was a Jekyll and Hyde routine. One night coming out flat and disinterested and the next night firing on all cylinders. With a train-wreck in the rear view mirror, we hoped for Dr. Jekyll on Sunday. We got something close to it. The JamBase folks liked it too (see here), but I think they again oversold how good it was. To their credit, the band tried much easier songs the second night, increasing confidence in the singers that Trey wasn't going to screw it up. Also, Trey pulled his head out of his ass and looked at the other members of the band for cues. There were still plenty of awkward endings and missed transitions, but the meat of the songs went well. Unlike the first night, when it felt like any song could fall apart at any second, the songs held together well the second night. The first set had many more songs sung by Bruce Hornsby and fewer sung by Phil, also good. The Death Don't Have No Mercy was probably my highlight of the 2-night run.

Like the night before, we wished John Kadlecik had gotten the gig, but after Kreutzmann's comments in late 2010, it comes as no surprise John didn't get the spot. Well, Billy, your chickens have come to roost. Warren Haynes is great, but John had the right vibe for the spot. If the band intended to do more than 5 shows, do a tour or two, for example, I could see the point in working with Trey. Eventually, he could be pretty good with this group. I don't think there's enough time for the band to fully gel before the final note in Chicago, much less before the first. I'll be watching anyway, because with Phil and Bob, you just never know. They've pulled some magic before.

Pair of Jacks to Open

Between the two shows, Grateful Ed noticed that the right rear tire on Hapy looked awfully low. He was right and it seemed like a simply fix, what with the full-sized spare sitting on the nose. While everyone else lounged about, I pulled out the BusDepot jack and started raising the bus. Within a few minutes, the jack got much harder to raise, but we couldn't tell why. Soon thereafter, the handle of the jack broke off. Drat. Good thing Belle is here with her original (40 year old) jack. Before we started this time, though, we pulled the sleeping bags and tent out of the back of the bus. Not much weight, but we figured it was better safe than sorry. The jack went in, the bus started to rise, and then the part that slips into the jack-point split in two. One flat tire, 2 broken jacks. So, we dug into the trunk of Mayhem's modern Lexus SUV for a third option before resorting to AAA. Since it didn't fit into the jack-point, we tried something entirely different: putting the scissor jack under the rear hub where the shock absorber is bolted. the wheel left the ground, and I was able to get the rim off the hub, but I couldn't get the tire and wheel out from between the hub and the rear wheel arch.

Now, we're really getting that Dead parking lot feel: solve with people. We arranged everyone around the rear corner of the bus, grabbing rear bumper or the underside of the body and lifter together while I quick pulled the tire out. The new tire, with much more air, couldn't fit in the same way and the hub was too low even if it could fit. We needed to raise the bus more, so we team lifted while Ed turned the screws on the jack. After a few attempts, we had it high enough to slip onto the studs. I threaded the nuts on while Ed lowered the jack. The boys quickly disappeared on their skateboards.

Homeward
We left shortly after the second show ended. In fact, the show ended a minute or two after 11 and we were on Hwy101 before 11:30. We arrived home a few minutes after 1:AM this morning. Hapy drove like a dream. With a low purr, he took the hills well, carved the fog and never broke 192*. I had the opportunity to try the new windshield washer, and it works great, mechanically. I need to adjust the spray pattern: it currently shoots straight up, so if I'm driving fast enough, it ends up on the windscreen... sort of.

That's it for today. Next weekend, the Dead invade Chicago, and I'll be there by way of Grateful Ed's back yard broadcast, camping music festival style under the trees. As always, thanks for following along-

Back Together, Test Drive

In my last posts, I covered the hazardous re-assembly of the engine-to-transaxle and the install of the combined unit at 15*.  Today, completes that journey.  In order to do the re-assembly as quickly as possible, I tried doing it a little differently.  I usually do system by system.  This time, I did it based on where I was and did everything I could before I moved.  I'm not sure I'll do that again, but it was interesting.  I cleaned every part with brake cleaner before installing it.  It made a world of difference, and I'll do that every time now.  Handling a clean part is just so much better than the oily, greasy alternative.

Lower Right Rear

Starting below the right side of the engine, there are a few things to do, starting with the CV joint.  I place a jack under the lower shock-absorber mount and lift until the tire just barely leaves the ground.  Then, with 6 new Allen-head bolts (one striped last time), attach the CV joint to the side of the transaxle and drop the tire back onto the ground.  At the front of the transaxle on the right side, is the ground strap.  It requires a 13mm socket.  Install the starter.  It requires a 17mm socket (need to verify) for the 2 bolts plus a 13mm for the B+ cable from the battery.  Plug in the trigger signal wire to the starter.  Connect the B+ wire to the Atlernator and plug in the sensor wires.  Double check all the other visible sensor wires (like on the cooling system) are plugged in.  Last, zip-tie the cooling pipes up out of the way from the axle.

Rear

Put in the rear support bar.  Don't forget to put the rear bumper mounts back in when you do the bar; they use the same bolts.  Install the support tower and the rear engine-frame mount.  If you get this far and the mount isn't lining up, check the support bar install.  If the mount and tower are on different angles, you probably mated the engine to the transaxle at something other than 15*.  Go back one posting :)  Once the rear mount is in, hook up the exhaust.  The muffler pipe has a hook that fits onto the rubber mount which is hanging off the right side of the rear support bar.  Once hanging, it should fit with enough room to maneuver the rest of the pipe without it hitting the ground nor the bus and no jacking required.

The exhaust-to-turbo mating has a gasket and 3 13mm nut/bolts.  One mount is a stud coming out of the turbo.  Because of the design, at least one of the 13mm needs to be tightened with a wrench instead of a socket.  Next comes the intake system.  Start with the non-charged air pipe from the air cleaner to the turbo.  This is held on with 10mm bolts, and most of the work is from above rather than through the rear hatch.  Next, the charged-air plumbing with the intercooler is most easily installed as a unit.  Slide the turbo-end on first, then set the intercooler and complete the system to the intake last.  The pipe clamps are a combination of slotted-screwdriver and 10mm socket.  The intercooler is held in place with bailing wire (yes, bailing wire) looped between the mounting hole on the intercooler and the open loop in the engine mount attached to the engine.  This allows for the vibration of the entire system to resonate as one.  Route the vacuum to the turbo and snap it into the channels on the plastic tubes.

Lower Left Rear

Shifting back under the bus, repeat the CV joint process for the left side.  Verify what's been done thus far from the new perspective: the turbo plumbing, the air system, the vacuum.  Hook up the bowden tube and the clutch cable to the clutch activation arm.  If you run out of adjustment threads, you need some head-washers (I used 4) between the bowden tube and the mount it slides into.  That mount is held on with 2 13mm bolts.

Lower Middle
Mount the nose of the transaxle.  Plug in the reverse wires for the reverse light switch.  Don't brain yourself on the radiator.  Thread the short hollow tube to connect the gear selector at the front of the transaxle to the long gear shift tube coming from the front of the bus.  Zip-tie the tube into place.  I'm sure that last line will upset some purists (as if the whole project hasn't already), but the original bolt/nut solution falls out; the zip-tie doesn't.

From Above

There's little left now.  Mount the coolant overflow bottle, verifing the top coolant line runs where it's suppoed to.  Plug the sensor into the bottle.  Note the coolant level, and come back and check again if its not spot-on.  Verify the vacuum bulb is set and tight.  Put the fuel filter into it's mount and tighten it down, making sure that the lines run properly.  I have a cheap $1 clear filter in front of the spendy stock filter to extend its life, but it also shows me that fuel is getting that far.  I check that for a fuel level at this point.

All Over
Last, the battery is hooked back up.  Before that, all of the electrical connections, including all sensor plugs should be double checked.  This is where the "do everything you can see" model falls apart.  By doing it one system at a time, you know everything was done.  By working zonally, you don't really know for sure without checking system by system.  At that point, you may as well have just done it that way.

Testing
This is the part everyone wants to jump to: grabbing the keys and giving a test fire.  The first time I tried this time around, I got nothing: I'd failed to hook up the battery.  Once resolved, he started right up.  I applied the clutch and shifted through the gears.  Nice and smooth.  Seatbelt on, and on the road to test.  There was less noise than I remembered.  The gears shifted easily up through 3rd (never got to  4th), and the bus felt peppy.  Overall, it was a great, albeit short, drive.  I declare the bus road-worthy again.  By the way, there wasn't a single drop of oil on the transaxle nor engine after the test drive and cool-down.  Success!

Thanks for following along.  Next time, I look at the ceiling of the bus and/or knocking the dents out of and painting the rear bumper.

Engine into Bus, Part III

Simply put, the ALH TDI engine from a 1998 VW New Beetle is in. Once the hole was cut, it was a matter of jacking it up into the air, and hooking it up. I'll give greater detail below, but this was a huge "diamond" on the project plan. Now that the engine and bus are a single unit, I can roll the bus into the garage for the Winter. I need to re-assess what I'm going to do next, but the huge blocking task has been completed.

So, how'd I do it?

Because I haven't built a wooden jack adapter yet, it wasn't as easy as the next and all future ones will be. I tilted the engine as much as I safely could with stacked 2x4's on the ATV jack arms, but I couldn't get it all the way to 15*. So, I put a 2-ton rolling jack under the front (front is front) of the transaxle and the ATV jack is working the engine. I slowly jacked up the unit to just under the rear transaxle mounts. At this point, the lack of a hole was previously getting in the way. Now that there's a huge opening, I was able to get the engine that little bit higher. To be fair, the barrier wasa a support beam running under the ceiling, not the ceiling itself. I probably could have made the engine fit just by removingthe beam (in retrospect). Regardless, it would have made the rest of these efforts much more difficult had the ceiling remained.

Between shoving and manipulating the angle of the engine/transaxle unit with the jacks, I was able to slide the left (driver's) side bolt through. Much more angle playing, and I was finally able to thread the bolt through the mount-nut on the rear side of the mount.

Next, I switched around the ATV jack a little bit by lifting the engine (with my hands/arms) and moving the jack with my foot. This would have been a great time for a neighbor to stop by to ask what I was up to. No such luck. So, with a little good fortune, I was able to get the engine cranking back up again. With the right side rising, the left was relatively still, but I was losing control of the pitch. The front of the transaxle was getting far too high, so I couldn't slide the bolt through. New tack: lower the engine a little bit until I can attach the transaxle front mount. I connected it loosely - enough to hold the transaxle level, but it still allowed movement. Then, I moved the jack again, this time so that as I cranked it up, it would move with the rotation a little better (jack was parallel with the rear bumper). Upwent the engine right into the mount. I was able to thread the second bolt pretty easily after that.

So, now the engine is in. I lowered the jacks and danced around my driveway. By now, it had gotten dark, but I was able to snap a few pictures with flashlights, cliplights and dwindling daylight. I need a rear engine mount still, but I can do that on my schedule. In the meantime, I can focus on detailing the next steps and determine the order based on interest, desire and dependence instead of what needs to be done because the bus is sitting in the driveway.

Engine into Bus, Part I

The engine left the garage on Sunday. It is currently sitting under the bus, where it ill sit until this Sunday. I'll hoist it into place then, but just getting it out of the garage and into position took more effort than I expected. Today's post covers those efforts.

Measure twice..
Before I did anything, I took a level and set it on top of the highest point on the engine. As you can see from the picture here, that's about 33 inches. Then, I measured how far off the ground the rear end of the bus was, to get an idea of how much higher I'd have to get the bus to fit the engine in. From the picture on the right, here, you can see that I was only at 25 1/2 inches. Simple math later, and I need over 7 inches more clearance. The fact that I really didn't have 7 inches of jack stand lift remaining didn't really matter. I was not too hip to the idea of jacking the bus that far up into the air. So, what to do?

then measure again.
I got to thinking about rolling the engine onto its side and sliding it under. Then it would just be a matter of getting it upright again. Its funny how something that sounds so simple just isn't. I measured the width of the engine (no picture) and it was around 25 inches. After double checking all the measurements, I started loading up the right side of the engine with rags for padding. Right side: side on the left when looking at it from the back of the bus. The turbo is on the left side.

skateboarding I rolled the engine and transaxle, as a unit, onto 2 skateboards. The 5 seconds it took to type that describe a 60 minute effort of roll it on, test move, get it off, repeat. The picture on the right here was posed to illustrate how the skate ultimately fit on the engine. There's a bracket on the rear of the engine that I got caught on one side of the board. That helped hold it in place. I had to jam the other end under the front of the engine with my boot while hefting the transaxle up. Heavy, man. Then, I put a second skateboard under the transaxle. Why didn't I use the ATV jack? I wanted it available to slide under the engine/transaxle unit under the bus.

ready for lifting
Once the engine/transaxle were set on the 2 skateboards, I rolled the engine out of the garage and into the driveway. With that much weight on the boards, they really don't steer, so it took a little muscling. As you can see in the picture on the right here, it just fit under the rear end. After it was under the rear beam, I wiggled the engine around until it cleared the beam, but wasn't past the transaxle mount. Then, I dropped the bus. That was a big moment. I mean the bus had been up on stands for over a year waiting for this.

A little more wriggling and the engine is upright (slight lean) and ready for lifting. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I worked it, I couldn't get the ATV jack under the engine. So, it will be more than just sliding into place. Until next weekend, though, it looks like this picture on the left. That's a big change from where we've been.

I probably won't post again until next weekend, as I don't expect to do much on the bus during the week. It is just geting too dark and too cold to work in the driveway.