Ignition Re-Assembly

In my last post, I described the tear-down of the ignition assembly of the old 1972 VW microbus. Today's post covers the re-assembly.

Some Part Suppliers Are Better Than Others
I mentioned that I found a bus wrecker in Washington who sold me a lock housing for $75 plus shipping. What I learned when I opened the box was that the lock housing came with an original key cylinder and key. The seller had stored the housing, cylinder and key all oiled up and in a zip-lock baggy. The key works the mechanism flawlessly. They included the small set-screws which hold the housing into the black box. Avery's Air Cooled, you rock. I wish I'd found you years ago. You'll be my first call now.

Lock Cylinder, Housing and Sub-Harness

new plug has exposed
solder so I taped it off

The Bentley has re-assembly instructions. I tried them. They didn't work. The book says to install the housing, then put in the lock cylinder and then, once everything else is in place, install the electrical sub-harness. Yeah.. that last bit doesn't work. The harness is constructed so that the wire bundle comes out to the side, not straight out. In general, that's good, but once you orient the plug to the housing, you realize that the wire bundle comes out the completely wrong way, running almost rear-wards. Holding the housing up with the plug facing you, it comes out around 4:30. Ideally it comes out around 9:00. So, to plug it in, and have it click home, the wires needs to double-back on themselves in a very tight area while you are somehow applying leverage for it to snug in. Physics just won't comply.

So, we do it differently. Before I started, I removed the lock cylinder from the housing and test fit everything. First the harness, then trying the lock cylinder first to see if there were any serious issues with doing the lock cylinder last. Nope. Since the harness was already wired into the bus, all of this was done using the driver seat as a work bench. So glad it's Summer, by the way. I plugged the harness into the lock cylinder and made sure it clicked home. There is only one way to get this all the way seated, with a larger tab fitting into the larger slot and a smaller tab into the smaller. I even tested whether the key, housing and sub-harness would trigger power, so I hooked up the battery and turned the key to the run position. I could hear the click-click of things getting juice, so I considered the test a pass.

Into Darkness

turn signal wire bundle

With the harness in the housing, we now twist into a pretzel to fit the housing into the black box. For reference, consider that the entire steering post, etc had been back together only to discover that the old housing wouldn't work. Recognizing how difficult the tear down was before (3 full days), I wasn't going to do that again. So, the black box is on the steering column with the rubber bushing, and such in place. The housing takes some fiddling to get into the right orientation, in part because the harness is plugged in, but mostly because it is not exactly parallel to the bottom of the black box. It tilts up to the right (towards the key opening). Once the tabs find the slots, you need to press the housing firmly as deep as it can go into the slots while tightening the set screws. This took a few tries, but once it was in the right place and the set-screws cinched down, I could start to see the light out of the dark

Key Lock
With the housing in-place, the lock cylinder can slide home. This is a do-it-once kind of thing. If everything isn't lined up right, and you need to pull the lock cylinder again, its a multi-day job. Things looked good, so I slid it home. It fortunately had no issues.

Other Discoveries
In my case, we believed the ignition fry was caused by either the heat/defrost fan or by the headlight switch. So, I removed the wiring for the heat/defrost fan and replaced the headlight switch. As happens these days, the headlight switch was faulty out of the box. I had to wire both the running lights and the headlights out of the same pin because the pin for the headlights simply didn't work. Also, the new switches don't come with a pin for the idiot-light on the dash, so I wired that into that same pin. Now, when I pull the stalk out one spot, the running lights, headlights and idiot light all illuminate. Nice.

While I was removing wires for the heat/defrost fan, I installed a new switched 12V wire along the same route. Following older VW coloring, I used black, and tied it into the furthest right fuse, the switched 12V for the coil used to come from. Now, when I turned the key to run, I have a nice strong signal for the new-engine electronics. But there was more darkness ahead. I'll get into that next time.

Thanks for following along. I'll wrap this up next time

Ignition Switch Teardown

This will be the first of 2 posts covering the efforts to resolve the damage caused during the electrical fire we had while driving home from 4Peaks (See 4Peaks 2018 - Road Report).

Recall... I looked down and smoke started first as a wisp and then as a billow from between my knees. We were fortunate to have a small road intersecting with the highway, so we dodged onto the shoulder at the corner, turned off the ignition and flipped on the hazard lights. I jumped out to make sure the hazards were on and saw the headlights were lit even though that switch was off. I went around back and removed the positive battery cable, thinking that the electrical was completely borked....

Roadside Findings
As I mentioned in the road report, we pushed Hapy under a tree. While Boo made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I twisted into a pretzel between the front seat and the steering column to see what was going on. The wires leading into the steering column were still hot. One of them was down to bare copper wire from just past the fuse box all the way past where my fingers could reach: a goot foot of plastic insulation had vaporized into smoke. I think if we'd gone much further without killing the electric, we would have either fried the battery or had the fire spread into the fuse box. Either could have spelled ruin for Hapy. As I said in that prior post, getting into the electrical solve required a 27mm socket to remove the steering wheel, so we got a tow.

Home-Drive Findings
160 miles (and $300US) later, Hapy was back in his usual tarmac-paved spot in front of the house. With the camping gear removed, and a good night's sleep, I was able to look at what was going on. My initial fears that my entire wiring harness had failed were not realized. I don't think. The sub-harness that runs from the fuse box to the ignition switch, however, was completely toasted. I concluded that the headlight switch was in need of replacing too, since the headlights flickered on the way to 4Peaks and were on without explanation when we broke down.

Extractions
I started following the Bentley to get access to the badness. Bentley documents this fairly well: remove the horn button and cancel ring, remove the steering wheel nut (27mm socket). Using a gear puller, remove the steering wheel, but they don't say anything about pushing the wire for the horn into the steering column. If you don't, the gear puller will probably cut it off for you nice and cleanly right where it comes out the steering column. Ask me how I know.

With the steering wheel off, you can remove the turn signal housing, leaving the turn signal hanging by it's bundle of wires from the black box. The black box is held to a silver support with 4 Phillips bolts. When these are removed, the steering column can pivot at the bottom. So, it is wise to remove the clip-ring, washer and rubber bushing. At least that's what Bentley says. The top of my clip-ring was so full of crap, I couldn't get to it. Also, that rubber bushing had never been off, so it wasn't inclined to move. Fortunately, the ignition sub-harness had burned so badly that it just fell out of the black box. So, the only things holding the steering column and wires was the column base and the wire bundle for the turn signal. The turn signal wires unplugged and the whole steering column came out as an assembly.

I had to loosen the black box from the column thru judicious use of a rubber mallet. First, I cleaned the top, removed the clip-ring and washer and shot lubricant around the rubber. It wouldn't give without a fight. Once apart, I could focus on getting the ignition cylinder separated from the housing. Now, the housing and lock cylinder were also original, so they had become very friendly. The housing removes (with the lock cylinder still attached) by removing these 2 little hidden bolts from within the rear-most bolt holes that held the black box to the silver support. With a little coaxing, the housing will come out with the lock cylinder still attached. The 72 and later (not sure about how much earlier) lock cylinders are held in with a small spring. This spring can only be compressed through a hole through the housing near the end where the cylinder goes in. This spring can also only be compressed if it hasn't been compromised. Mine was. Badly.

Pieces
I tried compressing the spring in the hole with various pokey tools. None would budge it. Lubricants couldn't do it. I finally resorted to drilling the lock cylinder like a safe cracker. It didn't matter. When I finally got the cylinder pieces out of the housing, the housing was unusable. The fire had melted some of the plastic inside and my man-handling of the housing and cylinder had made it's use uncertain. I figured I'd just order another one and be on my merry way. Uh... no. This housing isn't manufactured anymore. It's not on the internet enthusiast site classifieds. I found one on eBarf for almost $180 (shipped), but the seller wouldn't guarantee that it either worked nor that it would arrive within a month. So, I spent several hours hunting down small VW crackers, and found one in Washington who had one and sold it to me. $85US shipped.

Costly costly
So, the running tally for this mishap.... $300 for the tow home. $20 for that old switch I had lying around. $85 for a new housing. $25 for a new ignition sub-harness. I decided to replace the headlight switch, in case that was part of the problem, so add another $25. Add in the $180 for the complete wiring harness I bought but BusDepot won't accept as a return. Add in the $200 spent on a hotel for the shows in Eugene where we intended to camp but couldn't because Hapy was stuck in the driveway. Add $150 for a replacement steering wheel after I chipped my original during the extraction. AND, I haven't even done the assembly yet, so there may be more costs yet to come. Running tally: $785.

I'm ending this post genuinely more optimistic than I sound. This is an opportunity to improve lots of things as I go. The black box and the turn signal housing can get cleaned up so they look nicer. I can upgrade the steering wheel to one of those fancy wood ones for another $100. The key cylinder will be new so turning the key will no longer be a frustrating experience. All told, the ignition control and the area where I spend the most time will be much improved once this is done. Oh, and the engine will start and run again. So that's nice.

Thanks, as always, for following along.