Hapy Daily Driving

Well, that title might be overstating it a little bit. To clarify: Hapy is now capable of driving on a moment's notice. With the CoViD safer-at-home, I haven't been going anywhere. I may not have had an operable car for most of the last couple of months, but the lockdown has meant I haven't really needed one either. Today, I'll cover the little things that needed to be buttoned up after the big re-wire.

Reverse Lights

I mentioned the reverse lights at the end of the Electrical Gremlins saga. I had it wired up to a somewhat mystery switched 12V source before. When I tore the old wiring rats nest apart, it was left out of the new wiring. This resolution was fairly easy. Back when I set the mystery wire-up aside, I left the plastic-snap-shut fused wire in tact. So, there was just a plain bare wire to deal with. I fished it up into the spare tire well / wiring compartment from the engine bay. I spliced the wire into the switched source splice coming from relay 109 so the reverse lights will only come on when the computer thinks we are in "RUN". Since it already had an integrated fuse, this was a simple splice effort.

Headlight Flasher

When I was chasing the cause for my lack of amps during P0121 testing, I tore into the dash. I thought I had bumped something loose, and there are a bunch of things in there that could have shaken apart. Well, I didn't bump anything loose causing that issue, but I did bump something during that exploratory. Haha. During the Summer of 2020, I finally got my high-beam / low-beam flasher relay to work. It was because the replacement relay requires a source of 12V to pin 30. This pin wasn't on the old relay, and there is no wire leading to that pin in the original fuse box. I solved that before, but when I was looking for the buzzing noise during the P0121 effort, I pulled that relay and the wire heading to that pin fell out of the fuse box. I didn't notice that then. During post-testing, I discovered that the flasher no longer flashed. I found the wire, re-oriented it so it would not fall out, and returned things back to their prior cleaned-up state (zip-tied fuse-box). Hi-beam flash/relay works.

Defroster

Also in the Summer of 2020, I installed a defroster. Sort of. The defroster solution was moving the Vanagon rear heater under the belly, routing coolant along the driver side main beam and plumbing into the old air channel from just behind the front crossbeam. The air source was an experiment pulling from the old rear floor vent. The mechanical connection of the hoses to the heater was poor, and the experiment fell apart. This source needed to be remedied. Also, the switch was not operating the fan settings correctly. This was caused by poor quality wire connectors, so once the 3 at the switch and the 2 near the heater were replaced, we have a 3 speed fan again.

I decided that rather than solve for a cabin-source of air for the defroster, I would just remove the experiment for now. I have an idea for a source, but other cars need my focus. So, I removed the air supply hoses and called it good enough for now.

Mop Up

During all of the wiring work, the inside of the bus became considerably disheveled. It was one part shed, one part tool box and no part looking like a vehicle. This was easy to resolve, but made a huge difference in declaring the end of the work. The lot couch is back installed as a middle-row bench seat, for example. The rear speakers are hooked up and placed for sound again. After a quick trip with the shop-vac to get the wire-strippings and other fallout from all the work vacuumed up, he looked nearly ready.

I ran a test of the furnace, confirming that it would run on either the accessory battery or the main. It will, but the current draw for the glow-plug is so significant that I'm not sure I will want to start that heater if I am not running at least a float charger to the sourcing battery. Still, it moved the internal temperature of the bus from 43*F to 68*F (6*C to 20*C) in about 15 minutes. For the fuel-minded, it took about 500ml (or ~0.13US gallons or about 2 cups). As I understand it, maintaining the temperature requires far less fuel, so the consumption at that point dropped way off. I left it running for about an hour and the total consumed ml was about 530ml or 30ml (1/8 cup) for the remaining 45 minutes of keeping the bus warm.

I took one last step: I installed plastic kick panels I ordered like a year ago against the rear of the nose of the bus. Just like that, the cab looks like it is not an active project. It looks fairly clean now, actually. They install and remove easily, and once snapped in they really do not appear to need much more to hold them in place. The guy who makes them suggests poking holes through and screwing them into your bus. I might use Velcro, but I'll withhold decision-making until after we have had a few drives to see if they rattle or not.

Getting Legal

This last thing was actually one of the first things I did for Hapy after I set Zed aside. In fact, I think it was the registration that got me thinking about Hapy in the first place. His registration came due, and because of CoViD-19, I had to do it remotely. Since he is too old for smog and Oregon does not have inspections, I have been renewing his registration online for a few years. Still, this time I did the online steps in October 2020, but did not receive the stickers for his tag until January 2021. This used to take a couple of weeks at most. It sure felt good getting those stickers on his plates, though.

Test Drive

With the tags updated, the wiring fresh, the defroster responding, furnace functioning, etc... Hapy appeared nearly ready to be pressed into service. We just needed a test drive. For that, I did my usual neighborhood lap through a series of side streets out to the main drag, a quick 1-mile straight shot on that major street and then turning back into the side streets for home. As expected, Hapy was fairly peppy and responsive. He sounds great, and did not suffer any P0121 issues. There were a few stutters, but no codes, so I chalked that up to old diesel. That will solve with some snake oil and a fill-up. Considering that Hapy had not left the driveway in over a year, this drive was significant, albeit short.

Alt-Light

The battery light came on when the engine was revving low during the test drive, leading me to think that the unsettling "pop" noise I heard when the wiring was wrong (See Chasing the Hapy Electrical Gremlins - Part 6) was the sound of my alternator frying. This light had been popping on during testing, so the fact that it returned during the road-test honestly just reminded me. Before I jumped into anything, I in-bus tested the alternator: I alligator-clipped a fused wire to the alternator output and ran that wire on the ground up to the cab. There, I electrical-taped the bare wire to the positive probe of my multi-meter to free a hand. I set the negative probe into a small bolt-hole in the driver door frame for a good ground. First, a good base reading: 13.5V. Cool. I started the engine and it dropped down to 12.4V. Solid. With my hand on the go pedal, I revved the engine and watched the voltage climb up and down peaking above 14V. So, the alternator is fine. Since I have been running without an ALT/GEN light for 10 years, I could just ignore that light... Nah, I just can't do that. I figured that the bulb must simply be connected to the wrong wire of the 2 in the ALT plug.

I had spliced into the wire heading to the computer (DFM - or Digital Field Monitoring), and it needs to hit the one that routes to the cluster (L - Lamp). Simple fix: I cut the splice from the donor main harness to the 6-wire cable, and tied it into the other wire from the plug just upstream from the 4-pin plug. While I was back there, I added ring terminals to the sensor wires for the oil pressure and oil idiot light. There remains some wiring tidying I need to do on the driver's side, so I'll cut out the rest of the DFM-sourcing wire when I'm in there. 

As much as I'd like to say that once I completed, I took another test drive... I can't. I did test start and engine-rev in-place, however, just to see that ALT light wink out (which it did). Why did I not drive him? Well, remember Gramps (1996 VW Jetta 2-dot-slow from my folks that we gave to K2)? He re-appeared with a failed throw-out bearing after the first test drive, but before I'd solved the ALT light. So, I will have to juggle the herd to get Hapy free for a drive. And, you can probably guess what I'll be working on next.

That's it for today. While I may not need to go out much due to CoViD restrictions, I now have my beloved turbo-diesel powered microbus available-ish for whenever the need arises. While there are lots of little things I could tweak on Hapy, none of those things would prevent me from taking a drive. Sweet, sweet success. Thanks, as always, for following along.

Coast Road Trip

With the arrival of the MT3, there has been considerable chaos. Still, we were able to pull off a family gathering at the Oregon Coast. Today's post covers that. For those only interested in hearing how the bus handled carrying 6 people plus coolers and luggage, I left that for the end :) I can't get to my pictures, so I swiped the one below from the internet. Neskowin looks just like this, and yes, the beach is that empty.

Out of the City

It still amazes me how hard it is to get a group of humans to do just about anything. Kids especially. After talking about plans, setting expectations and defining what was going to be done by whom and when... rather than leaving around 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon on Friday, we left as rush hour started at 5. I guess, all things considered, that's really not too bad. My folks, T and C all arrived within a few minutes of each other. After a few minutes of strategy, we combined 3 cars into Flash and Hapy: 10 persons in total. Since it was the first weekend after the end of the school year, I had reservations about how long it would take to get to the coast. We were pleasantly surprised.

MT3
The MT3 are natural travelers. I should have known this from their epic journeys from western Montana to western Oregon, but seeing it firsthand is pretty amazing. For such youngsters, they self-assign into seats without fuss, grab a pillow and a book and belt in as soon as you say "go". They don't complain, ask where we are or how long it'll take to get there... they didn't even ask to stop to go to the bathroom. Crazy. In fact, before we hit Dundee, the 2 boys were asleep.

Dundee
No trip to the coast is complete without some mention of Dundee. For the unfamiliar, Dundee is a tiny no-traffic-light town in the middle of Oregon's exploding wine country. Once home to drab, empty storefronts, Dundee now houses many tasting rooms representing the vineyards from across Yamhill County. Sounds like a fun place to visit, eh? It can be... if its your final destination. The empty storefronts didn't slow down the passing cars nearly as much as the wine connoisseurs who flock to Dundee. To be fair, 99W chokes down from a 4-lane 55mph highway to a 2-lane 20mph drag to pass through the center of town, and has for 20+ years. The cork-sniffers just bring traffic to a stop when they want to cross the street, or make sudden left turns into particularly interesting looking wine bars. Neat. On this trip, however, Dundee did not slow us much at all, and we only came to a complete stop once between the 2 trips through it. Maybe its just too early in the season for wine yet. We did happen to notice during the coast-bound slog through town that construction has finally started on a by-way around Dundee for the Portland-to-McMinville (and beyond) traffic. Hazah!

Neskowin

Those traveling in Hapy arrived about 10 minutes after Flash. About 30 minutes before Flash arrived, my brother E landed at the beach with his 2 little girls. All told, there were 13 of us, pulling into Boo's friend's beach house. Boo had been going to this house since she was a very young teenager, and treats the house like the home she never had. The kids spent nearly all of the daylight hours on the sand in front of the house, digging holes or splashing water. A weekend without television or electronic devices had a calming effect on everyone, sending all of us home much more relaxed than we were when we arrived. Boo and I were the last to leave (with 4 kids in the bus), since we had to clean the place top-to-bottom before we left. We discovered a plumbing issue and had to solve that first, delaying our departure until after 9:PM. By leaving so late, however, we missed any traffic.

Hapy
The bus ran incredibly well. From start to end, his temperature barely popped over 190*, and he took the hills well. At no point did I need to down-shift below 3rd, and that includes that massive hill on the US101 heading north from the OR18 / US101 interchange while loaded down with 3 adults, 3 kids, 2 full coolers and 6 people's luggage. The cross-winds from McMinville to the foot of the coast range made handling a challenge, but otherwise weather had no meaningful effect. After sitting on the driveway at the beach for 2 days, there wasn't a single drop of either coolant or oil. I checked both anyway before heading home and they were spot-on. Last, how was the mileage? When I filled up on Thursday (before our Jun18-21 adventure began), the fuel jockey topped-off the tank. This skewed the numbers downwards, but even with that caveat, we got 28mpg. Based on how much fuel was in the tank when the nozzle popped (as in, if we hadn't topped off), we effectively got 31mpg between the Hoot and the coast run. Carrying camping gear, coolers, and extra people through cross winds and over mountain ranges... Hapy killed it.

That's it for today. I am still working on the music review for the 10th Annual Hornings Hideout Hootenanny. Additionally, Boo and I hit another festival this past weekend, so I have another set of travel posts and festival / music reviews to come. Thanks for following along. It's looking to be a fun, travel-filled Summer!

Commencement

It's been an odd couple of weeks and I apologize for not posting something.  I reference two major starts as "commencement".  The first, the beginning of a driving history after an accident and the second a post-high school life.

Alex Reiger, He's NOT
On the Tuesday after Memorial Day, T was asked to play taxicab for his brother.  C had a lacrosse game in Canby at 6, but his lacrosse equipment was in Beaverton and they both had been over-nighting at their mom's house in Lake Oswego.  This meant T had a couple of hours of driving to do in rush hour traffic, ending in the confusing street-design around Canby High School.  Not a good set-up.  They almost made it without incident, but while trying to navigate the weird streets off and around the high school and 99E, he got into a fender-bender with a local.

27 8x10 Color Glossy Pictures with Circles and Arrows and a Paragraph on the Back of Each One
The "local" was a brash and unpleasant 20-something woman driving a relatively new, but woefully uninsured Kia.  While T was found mostly at fault because he was turning left as she was trying to go straight at an intersection, the way the scene went down has me wondering if we got the full story.  Flash had his front corner on the driver's side folded in, damaging the front fender, bumper and hood.  The left-turn signal doesn't work correctly.  Her car got a dented driver's door.  T had already crossed the first of the 2 oncoming lanes and was driving quite slowly.  She accelerated into the intersection.  Did she think she was going to be able to dodge around him?  When T and C drew the scene, and played it out with matchbox cars, things didn't add up quite right.  Lesson learned here: immediately after impact, start snapping pictures with a cell phone of the damage, the intersection and parts of the cars which were not involved.

Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine
After the impact, both cars drove to the side to exchange information, but she had no insurance to share.  Just a phone number.  Multiple witnesses saw that and heard everyone say they were unhurt.  Yet, a couple of days later, the other driver was claiming her car was undrivable and she intended to make medical claims against our insurance.  I guess she saw an opportunity to get 6 months of free massages and a full body paint job on her car.  Multiple phone calls, phone tree navigations and conference calls later, T was assigned more than half of the blame, but not sole responsibility.  The other driver tried to get insurance after the accident and then filed a claim with them too.  Hilarious.  That was shot down, and now the insurance folks have put the sheriff onto her case for driving without insurance.  So much for those free massages; instead she gets SR22 insurance (read: more expensive) and possible license suspension.  Neat.  Then, there's the attempted fraud.  If she had realized she was driving illegally, maybe both sides could have just walked away without reporting to insurance.  Now, everyone loses.

We have had good happenings too.

K-ommencement
Yes, that's plain awful.  Sue me.  K attended a challenging high school and prioritized an after-school driving job over studying during his sophomore year, digging for himself a deep grade hole he almost couldn't climb out of.  But he did.  His junior year, he prioritized the Science Fair over all of his other work, and again, he found himself in a hole, but not one as bad as the year before, and again dug his way out.  This senior year, he again got an after-school job and through determination and focus he graduated.  Like Hollywood movies, the big ending is all the more satisfying knowing the main character had obstacles along the way, met those challenges and ended victorious.  That was the story line of K's high school career.  Greeted with loud cheers from his brother K2, mother & father, his paternal grandparents, his step-father and step-brothers, K produced a huge smile as his name was read.  He crossed the stage as if on air, and in his usual floppy way found his way back to his seat.  As the graduates left the auditorium, K skipped.

And now what's next?  He's 18 and high school graduated.  Boo and I returned home from the post-commencement brunch puzzled by that thought.  He's the first of the 4 we will see leave the nest, and he's setting a great example of how to transition into independence.

Car stuff:  I did the rotors and pads on Flash a few weeks ago, didn't apply grease nor anti-squeal goop and regretted it.  I did them again, and now they're dead quiet and stop well.  Goes to show that anti-squeal goop isn't snake-oil; it actually works.  I haven't been able to play around with the bus other than fiddling with his shifter again.  I was able to drive him to work every day last week, and that was a true pleasure.

I guess that's it for today.  Thanks for following along, and Hapy Last Day of School-

Bay City Blues

After the Timothy Lake camping trip, we felt pretty confident in our new little camper, and planned another trip right away. Three weeks after driving up Mt. Hood, we planned a trip to Cape Mears State Park. We had heard that there were interesting birds and other wildlife there, and the park wasn't as crowded as the Cape Lookout State Park just south of there. I followed the old axciom of "if it ain't broke, don't mess with it" approach to preparing Hapy for the trip. I continued to drive him to work every day, and he performed great. When the day to leave arrived, we loaded Hapy with all the usual camping stuff for a Summer weekend on the Oregon Coast (so we brought plenty of warm clothes) and hit the highway.
We took Interstate 5 to OR217 to US26 - our usual route when we drove other cars. We hadn't driven as far as Hillsboro before Hapy started some odd misfires. I verbally wrote it off as bad gas or the engine being cold to my wife, but I started obsessing about it. Thoughts of "I shoulda done a full tuneup" started crowding into my mind. Everyone else was enjoying the view out the windows while I listened to the occasional misfire and grimaced. The Coast Range passed and we could start to smell the ocean when Hapy started to really fail. I had to finally pull over on a straight stretch of road to see what was going on. Hapy died as I pulled to the shoulder, and the feelings of anger and disappointment started to really take hold. On top of that, I had to appear on top of things for my 2 very young kids who knew right away something was not quite right.
I popped the engine door and looked around. Nothing looked wrong. I checked the hoses and plug wires. Everything looked normal, but felt pretty warm. I tried the old oil dipstick test (if you can touch the oil without it hurting, you're not too hot), and it was HOT. Drat. I checked the fuel filter, even changed it, but that didn't do anything. I resolved to let the engine cool and then try to get us to our destination, but my wife was not too hip for that. The passing semi-trucks were making us both rather nervous, so we were hoping the bus would cool off fast. Luck smiled on us in the form of a passing unencumbered tow-truck heading into Tillamook - same as us.
The tow truck driver told us we were about 10 miles from Tillamook, and that he knew an old VW mechanic in the next town north: Bay City. Although I wanted to wait out the cooling engine, I knew the kids weren't safe on that narrow shoulder with the passing trucks. I knew we needed to go this route; knowing our camping trip was effectively over before it began. We all pilled into the tow truck (it had a crew cab if you can believe it), put Hapy up on the platform and drove to Bay City.
Now, if you've never been to Bay City, it doesn't have a traffic light, nor any kind of downtown, but there is a mechanic that knows air-cooled Volkswagens: Klingelhofer Auto Repair. Crazy. The name even sounded old-country. By the time we got to his shop, which was also his home, it was getting late in the afternoon, and he couldn't get to it right away. He had the tow truck driver drop the bus near the garage and then we all had a beer. Yeah, that's right. Me, the tow truck driver and the mechanic. Klingelhofer said we were more than welcome to "camp" in his driveway, and pointed out where the ocean was from his place. It turned out to be about 300 feet from his driveway, so while he fixed the bus on Saturday, we walked the Bay City beach/coast line. Because of time delays, we were unable to leave Satruday night before we lost our camping reservation, so we spent Saturday night at Klingelhofer's too. We had a big ol' barbeque with a bunch of his friends, rode around on his quad and played Frisbee.
Before we left on Sunday, we settled the bill, and he explained that the coil had gone bad. This explained the weird misfires, and really couldn't have been diagnosed until it finally died. When a coil fails, it doesn't always give you a warning, so its a good idea to carry a spare. When it starts acting funny, swapping a new coil takes 5 minutes, and you're on the road again. The alternative is getting towed to a garage and camping in their parking lot for the weekend. Considering our experience, though, that alternative wasn't really that all bad. In fact, it was kinda fun.
Until next time--