ToyoTruck Saga Continues

Earlier, I posted about a new arrival to the fleet (a 2006 Toyota Tacoma XRunner) and the smash into a post that followed. Today's post is the next step in that saga. 

 

Where Were We

front assembled

We got a $5k repair estimate, but insurance wouldn't pay (because the agent screwed up). So, I ordered the parts, and set about doing the work myself. With supply issues, it took an incredible amount of time for everything to arrive and the largest part, the hood, arrived with a big dent in it. I successfully replaced the fender, the 6-piece bumper and the fender liner. The radio antenna was so corroded, it could not be removed, so I had to replace it as well. The hood scoop was also degraded, so I ordered another one of those. I ended the post while waiting for supply chains to support a new hood, as well as deliver the replacement passenger-side flare and the hood scoop.

Hood Gets Hammered

I decided I could no longer wait for parts while the new truck occupied my best work bay (read: prevented me from working on Hapy). Besides, there was no way to know how long it would be before a new dent-free hood would be available again. So, I decided that I would do my best to get the old hood straight enough to fit without putting pressure on the new fender nor passenger front headlight. I started with my angle grinder, removing the remaining paint from the dented area. The leading edge of the hood had been crumpled under, against a lateral bulge that rests just rearward of that edge, along the underside of the hood (see the picture on the right). Since the lip was forced against that bulge, I was unable to get a tool between the two.

the damage from the underside

I started with the stud welder and a slide hammer kit I got from Harbor Freight when I started working on Zed (1978 280ZX). With the 2mm tip and studs, I was able to slowly move the leading edge of the hood away from the lateral bulge. After about 30 minutes, and a dozen studs, the edge had pulled back far enough for me to fit a dull chisel against the leading edge. By moving the chisel up and down the lip, giving it a few smacks every few millimeters, I was able to further shift the edge away.

Once the edge had been moved about a finger-width from the bulge, I started shifting from the hammer/chisel on the lip to the stud welder / slide hammer on the top of the hood and back. My hope was that I could get some of the original hood contour back while I got the edge pulled. I spent about 90 minutes in total before I felt that it was close enough to set on the truck to see how close I was getting.

Old Hood Finish Up

time to try fitting

I was satisfied enough with the hammer work to move the windshield washer hoses and the seal. I figured that if I was as close as I'd hoped, I wouldn't want to remove the hood simply to put these bits on it. Like so many things, the first time always takes longer than any subsequent attempt. I had the bits moved in minutes. The hood set quickly as well. Some cars have a great deal of adjust-ability when the hood is mounted, but this truck does not. Yes, there is some, but not more than an inch left-to-right at the front edge. I did not need much to get the hood evenly spaced between the fenders, though.

Similar to the hood removal, I set the front of the hood on my old plastic tool box so I could get to the hinge bolts. Before I slammed the hood down, I checked the height between the headlight and the hood edge on both the driver and passenger sides to make sure I wouldn't break the light housing. I found that I had over compensated with my hammering, but only by 1 or 2mm. I started a recurring cycle of identifying where the gap was, opening the hood, adjusting, and re-closing the hood. After 4 or 5 of these cycles, I was satisfied that it was good enough for now.

finished enough

The stud-welder took it's toll on the hood, however. Some of the studs were welded on so well, that my efforts with the slide hammer resulted in a small hole in the hood. I own that, though: I believe that I held the trigger a touch too long on those studs, setting too strong of a weld. Some of the other studs would not come off no matter how hard I hammered them. I ultimately had to cut them off, but there were bits left behind. So, I pulled out the angle grinder again, and ground the dent-damaged areas of the hood smooth to the touch. I shot the polished metal with some rattle-can automotive primer and then some basic black Rustoleum. The final-for-now product is pictured on the right. That passenger flare will be installed when it arrives. I haven't decided about the scoop insert.

Weeks Later, It's Done

At this point, I felt done enough with this project. Yes, some part of what I put together will need to come back apart for painting and when the passenger side wheel flare arrives, I will attach it. One day, I hope to have a better hood, and when that day comes I need to install the scoop insert as well. Since I would like to have the whole truck painted, I may take it to Beaverton Auto Body and have them do it. We already have a somewhat dated estimate, but at least we know what ballpark they are in. Of course, with inflation these days plus all the extra parts expenses I incurred, a re-shoot could be prohibitively expensive. Expensive enough to bring that work right back to my driveway to be shot in my home-made "booth" later. Oddly enough, the extra parts (scoop insert, p-side flare, and antenna) plus a second and future $500 hood still will still be less in parts than the Beaverton Auto Parts bid. And that number includes a hood I can't use, and I have not tried to sell off any parts I got and did not actually need.

That's it for today. I will return to the hood when I get one, and otherwise I will be focusing on Hapy again. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Hammered Rims (part 3)

My last two posts on this topic have been epic, at least in terms of time consumed. Much like the floor replacement or the front end rebuild on the MG, the amount of time consumed really hasn't been captured. Still, today, I continue this Odyssey. When we left off, I had the front passenger-side (right) wheel removed. I had test-fit the new rim onto the hub and confirmed it fit properly.

Tires Mounted

Test fit

I'll start with some details around what I am installing. I picked up a set of 15" diameter XXR 533 rims. They are 6-1/2" wide with dual-mount options for 5x112 (fit older VW's like Hapy, Audi, Mercedes, some BMW's) and 5x115 (lots of GM's). For more complete lists, check wheel-size for 5x112 or for 5x115. Onto these rims, I had intended to install a set of highway all-season tires, like the Destination LE. I had looked at the BFGoodrich All Terrain KO and KO2 as well as the Yokohama Geolandar A/T G015 as on/off road alternatives. I had reservations about such aggressive tires, though. The bus is already loud. It was loud before I added the diesel engine to the point where it was like sitting in a shed during a windstorm with a lawnmower running in the far corner. Now, just trade out the lawnmower for a city bus. So, yeah, it's loud. Add road noise from the tires and its like something vibrating on the outside of the shed from the wind, adding a hum to the din.

After running various sizes through a spreadsheet, I determined that the Destination AT in 215/75R15 would fit the rims and fit the wheel wells. While they have deeper treads than a highway tire, they ride quieter, according to reviews and the Firestone guys. I like the extra tread for getting in and out of camping spots and festival grounds too.

hole saw'ing

So with the choice made, I had the Firestone guys mount the Destination A/T onto the XXR 533 rims. I had some chrome valve stems I picked up at a tire-shop closing sale a few years back, and asked the Firestone guys to use them, if they fit and held air. They did. So, once mounted, balanced and filled with air, I hauled them home in the wagon for another test fit.

Fitting
With only one free hub, I can only really test fit that one. Still, that is the rim which needs to be able to turn side-to-side, so it is arguably a more important test. I figured I could consider the straight-mount fit on the front as a rough-guess for the rear. The front was already on a jack stand, so slapping the new wheel/tire on was a simple process of raising the corner another few inches so I could get the wheel on. I fingered on a couple of the old nuts so the wheel was straight and wouldn't fall off. Then, I lowered the bus down until the wheel was holding the weight so I could verify the fit (and the spreadsheet). The tire tucks inside the front lip and rear (near the slider) very well. It appears closer to the front, but the overall arch of the wheel well is fairly consistent along the entire arc, and the tire fills the visual space without overwhelming it.... in my humble opinion.

what lies beneath

Next, I wanted to confirm steering movement. For this, I raised the front corner just a little bit, so some of the weight was on the jack. I didn't want to stress the crappy, barely-threaded lug nuts. I turned the steering wheel from lock to lock, checking how the tire set at each extreme multiple times. When turned such that the front of the tire was all the way inward (steering wheel turned left), the inner wheel wall does not touch anything, including the up-rated sway bar. The old 16" wheels rubbed a little bit there, evidenced by a highly polished strip on the outer edge of the upgraded front sway bar. The front-most edge of the tire, so the outer edge, was well clear of the front of the wheel well. The rear-most edge, so the inner edge, was very close to the rear wheel well, but it did not touch. I can't fit a finger between the tire and the rear well, though, so I will test again once all wheels are mounted, and I'll test with some weight in the front seat to see if compressing the springs matters.

More Rim Removal
With the one tire test fit success, I switched gears again. I put the new tires and wheels away, and put the rest of the bus back on jack stands. Once in the air, I removed the remaining lug nuts so I could start cutting with the 7/8" hole saw. In a marked contrast to the 2 days of cutting and sledge-hammering to get the first rim off, the other 3 rims were removed in about an hour in-total with the hole saw. Part of that is the bit, I think: a Hole-Dozer from Milwaukee Tools, and part of it was getting the smallest size I needed, allowing for the least amount of material to be removed. With each rim removal, I could see the broken-off stem from the lug nut and a little bit of aluminum rim left clinging to it. With a pair of channel-lock pliers, I was able to grab the leftovers and un-thread it from the stud. After a quick brush, the studs were ready for re-use.

Aw Nuts

So, this all started because I bought the doubly-wrong lug nuts 3 years ago. How doubly wrong? First, they had an extension on them that was supposed to help hold the rim firm, by running between the hole in the rim and the stud. I have since concluded that the shaft wasn't necessary, and helped create the jammed-on condition. That's wrong once. Wrong twice: they were made of cheap metal and the little extension broke off on every one of them. This time, I was very careful and confirmed after measuring multiple times with a digital caliper. The rim has a "conical seat". This is not the same as a stock rounded ball seat nor washered straight mag style. Because of the narrow hole, a thin "tuner" style nut was needed. There are many available, but I got a name brand set of nuts this time: KSP Performance. These have a 19mm wide shaft terminating at a nut diameter of 23mm. Unfortunately, these require a special tool for installing and removing the lug nuts, so I bought a set that delivered with 2 of them, planning to keep one in the tool box and one in the garage tool cabinet.

Rims On

destructo-tools

With the nuts sitting in a box to my side, I started installing wheels. First, the fronts. These were easy. Following the advice on the internet, I put a thin coating of copper anti-seize on the back of the rim. This should reduce the probability of the rim rusting / seizing to the hub. Most folks advise to coat the hub or rotor of drum, but since these rims are universal fit with a second set of holes, I didn't want the copper showing through the unused holes, so I painted on the rim. Once applied, the rim easily popped on, and the lug nuts threaded right on. Once hand tight, I moved to the rear. I inspected and adjusted the drums, but I'll post on that another time. To get the rear rims on, I needed to get the back end pretty fair into the air and then raise/lower the drum with a floor jack on the lower shock mount. The drum had to be low enough to tip the top of the wheel under the lip, then, I raised the drum so I could slide the bottom of the wheel under the drum, and align the studs with the holes. Like the fronts, the wheel fit the studs and the nuts tightened by hand easily.

Tight Fit
With the wheels on the hubs, and the lug nuts tightened by hand, I was ready to drop the bus and torque the nuts down. This represented the final fit test. I knew the fronts were good so I lowered that end first. Check. No binding, nothing touching, nor even close. Next, I lowered the rear, driver side first. To get it off the jack stand, I raised it up by the lower shock mount. This slowly compresses the shock so the wheel presses into the wheel well. By doing this, I could see how the wheel would behave through its entire motion. It never touches anything: suspension, nor lip... but it gets super close to the lip. I can barely get a finger between the rubber and the lip, but it never touches. Boo even jumped up and down on the rear bumper to prove it.

We concluded the effort with a test drive around the neighborhood. We took the same loop I always test the cars on, and Hapy was fantastic. These tires are quieter than the worn-down 16" ones he had, even though the tread is much more aggressive. With all of the steering work I did last fall, he handles very well, allowing me to drive over 100' without a hand on the wheel. That would have been impossible a year ago. When we returned, I checked the tires for wear spots. I couldn't find any. So, I conclude that this mash-up of parts is a winner:

15" XXR 533 rims (less than $100US each)
Destination A/T 215/75R15 tires (about $125US each including mounting, balancing and warranty)
KSP 14mm 1.5 thread-pitch (conical seat, 51mm long, tuner-style thin) lug nuts. Slightly shorter (40mm) would have fit.

Tires any larger would have rubbed and died prematurely. That's it for this saga. Thanks, as always for following along.

Hammered Rims (part 2)

Continuing the saga of Hapy's rims...

Sorry Mate

As I indicated in the last post about these rims, I tried every trick in the internet playbook to get these rims off the hubs. I finally gave up and took the bus over to the local Firestone. We met Dan the manager man and Mat the Tech and explained our situation:
We have a new set of rims.
We do not want to mount tires onto them until we know they will fit properly because we can't return rims after tires have been mounted on them.
We are unable to get the old rims off.
Please remove one rim, demonstrate the new rim will fit, then we'll mount some tires, they slap them on the bus, and we're done.

Clint cutting rim

First, Mat needed to remove a rim. Mat is an old longhair VW'er with a car he intends to get buried in, so he understood what he was working on: a family member. We moved Hapy outside one of the bays, and he chocked the wheels. Some quick work with a floor jack and a tire tool and he had the front end in the air and the lug nuts off. That was where the easy stuff ended. He tried a few of the things I had tried, and added a long pry bar to the mix, but he couldn't get the wheel off either, though he put his sweat into it. He and Dan conferred. They decided that they could not remove the wheel without risking damage to a bus that they could not repair because parts for a 50 year old bus aren't as plentiful as they once were. They pointed across the street to an old VW repair shop which I had never seen before. They figured that shop could get the wheel off, and could replace whatever parts they break along the way. They didn't charge us anything for the effort, and said they would hold the tires for a few days in case we could get the old wheels free.

Disappointed, Boo and I left in separate cars. She headed for Beaverton Sub Station (treated Mat to a foot-long 2-car for his trouble) and I headed for that old VW shop. Since it was Saturday, the shop was closed. So, after a morning of hope, I was looking at an afternoon of trying to solve it myself. Again.

Food First

First, we ate subs. Now, the Beaverton Sub Station is under new ownership. After many years, Chuck has finally retired, and sold the shop to 2 of his longest tenured employees (like 20 years there), so the shop will probably remain very much the same. With food in my belly and about 1/2 a bottle of Pineapple Jarrito's in-hand, I returned to Hapy's rim.

Cut Hammer Cut

While looking at the rim with Mat, he indicated that wheel was stuck on either by the center bore or by the lugs. It was difficult to tell for sure, but it was one or the other. It was not held on by rust between the 2 surfaces. I decided I would take the most desperate of measures and start cutting the rim down with an angle grinder until it came off. With the front right corner of the bus back on a stand, I decided I would sacrifice the front passenger-side rim to figure it out. I donned my full face-shield and gloves and then started cutting around the center bore of the rim. After a few cuts, I would swing sledge-hammer to see if it would break free. I did this over and over again until I was running out of meat around the grease cap. It was about this time when a couple of our friends dropped by for an afternoon / evening of visiting. Clint likes clowning on cars and his current living situation has him without tools and a project, so he wanted to jump in. More hammer swingers always welcome.

Clint set to work on the rim, determining what Mat and I had concluded: this is not stuck in any typical way. Since I had already decided to sacrifice the rim, Clint got bold. He suggested (I agreed), and then cut the spokes in half, removing the outer rim (see the picture above). This left the hub still attached, but with greater access. We talked about various ways we could continue, but decided that drinking by the fire pit was a better idea, especially since it was getting dark, the fire had been started and our wives were already a drink ahead of us.

The following morning, I started up again. Since it was a Sunday morning, I grabbed my quiet manual hacksaw and cut along the mating edge where the rim meets hub. I cut all the way down to the studs. No effect. By then, it was after 11AM, so with the angle grinder and the hacksaw, I cut from the outer edge of a spoke towards the hub. Then, I cut between the spokes towards the center. Then, I made a cut along the backside of the spoke. I thought this would weaken the alloy enough to brake off pieces. And, I was right. Bit by bit, over the course of the afternoon, I was able to make 3 cuts, and then hammer with the 4# sledge to free some pieces. This left broken alloy against the hub and studs, but the outer edges of the studs were visible.

So... What Was It

cut, cut, cut. then
pound, pound, pound

With the alloy coming apart, I was able to see something wrapped around the studs inside the stud-hole of the alloy (see picture below). It was the inner edge of the lug nuts. These lug nuts had a small shaft that was designed to go between the hole in the rim and the stud for a snug fit. That little shaft broke off inside the rim... on every wheel... on all but one stud. So, when you buy lug nuts, make sure they are the right ones, and don't buy the cheap ones. Cheap nuts break, and the cost could be really bad if it's while driving, or it could cost you a rim. Someone once said you rarely regret buying good tools, except at the sales counter; in contrast that is the only time you don't regret cheap tools. Replace "tools" with "car parts". My lesson learned.

So, to complete the removal, I chiseled the lug nut shaft to break it and then chiseled off the remaining bits of rim, leaving a pile of alloy under the hub. I sprayed the rotor with brake cleaner and brushed the studs with a wire brush. Last, I verified the threads were clear with an old original lug nut. Now, I could test fit the new 15" rims.

Replacement Shoes

note gunk on stud

Bear in mind, I had been cutting and hammering for about 6 hours, so I was getting loopy. Still, I wanted to enter the week knowing if the rims were a fit or had to get returned. I bought these rims off eBay marketplace, and had 30 days to return them. I had possessed them for less than a week, so I had time, but I have little trust in return policies, so I wanted to get one rim on relatively quickly. I got it unboxed and unwrapped fast, and it popped right on. There is a little wiggle around the center-bore and the studs have a little too. I can rotate the wheel/rotor as a unit and nothing scrapes. So, they technically fit. But how do they look? For that, I defer to my more aesthetically aware half, Boo.

She noticed that the lines on the rim bring out all of the horizontal lines on the bus which I hadn't really noticed: the air vents in the back, the jalousies window, and then the body lines of the pop top, the sliding door, the window top/bottom, the belt line, etc. I guess there are lots of horizontal lines. The new rims are smaller in diameter than the 16" rims, but the new tires will be taller, so the bus will look more like it did with the original tires, in terms of rim -to- tire ratio. Last, the check from the front. It looks like the rim sits a little bit deeper in the wheel well, so I may be able to fit a spacer in there, if I want to.

Regardless of that decision, the next step was easy: get the new rims to the tire shop and get the new rubber installed. The step after that, getting the other 3 rims off, was the step I was most concerned with. It took me 2 full days of cutting and hammering to get the first one off. I don't think I could repeat that if I wanted to. So, thinking "work smarter not harder", we consider the root cause: junk threads on the studs holding the rim like lug nuts that don't have anything to put a wrench on. So, maybe the right cuts to make are with a hole saw around the stud. If I can run a hole saw around each stud, I should be able to remove the rim. 9/16" is just a hair larger than 14mm, and the stud is 14mm. Since a 9/16" hole saw would bind against the stud, I'm going one size bigger: 7/8". I have a shallow one from an old hole saw kit and the size should be perfect. A quick trip to the Home Despot and I'm ready to remove the other 3 rims.

That's it for today. I'll follow up once I get the tires back, the 3 old rims off and the 4 new rims mounted. After that, I'll be able to focus on the rear brakes like I intended to when this saga started. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Oh Crud, I Broke a Stud

It's been a busy month of moving and trying to wrestle a clutch into T's Subaru, so I haven't had many adventures worth documenting. Since T's Subbie is on ramps with a transmission sitting in front of it, he is driving my car, so I've been daily-driving the bus. It's really been great, with a few little hassles. Today is about those hassles.

Shake Much? Funky Clutch
Have you ever been pulling away from a stoplight and a semi-truck next to you starts shaking like there's no tomorrow as it pulls away from dead stop? That happens when something has been introduced onto the clutch or flywheel or pressure plate causing the clutch to not completely grab correctly. When I last pulled out the transmission (Transaxle Re-Assembled) in the Fall of 2014 I must not have completely cleaned either the flywheel or the pressure plate. MAybe I got a greasy finger on the clutch disk. The bus shudders as I pull away from dead stop now.. especially when it's cold. I'll probably have premature wear-out on my stage-one clutch as a result. Grr. The shaking, though, brings about it's own troubles.

No Power Rush Hour
I was on my way home from work a couple of weeks ago when suddenly and unexpectedly the engine stopped running. Turning the key had no effect. Since I was coasting to a stop at a pretty major intersection, I let the bus roll into the bike/breakdown lane and slipped out the slider door. I popped open the rear gate and looked at the wiring that ties my ignition key to the TDI harness. Knowing that there was probably an issue there, I pulled the pins out of the TDI ignition plug and popped in the original plastic plug. The engine fired up with the turn of a screwdriver, demonstrating that my remote starter was working. Back in business, I climbed back into the driver seat and motored around the corner, only to have the ECU drop into "limp mode". I fixed the "no power" by re-wiring the relays and wiring around the TDI harness ignition switch while taking a break from the moving fun. The root cause was one of the wires had freed itself from what it was plugged into. I blame the shaking mentioned above.

Limper
The computer needs to get a clean signal from the drive-by-wire accelerator potentiometer (usually called a "pot"). In the bus, this pot is attached to the underside of the cab and controlled by the stock accelerator pedal. The wire bundle running back to the computer is probably 15 feet long. In the original donor car, the wire bundle was about 4 inches long. If you add all that extra wire, there is additional resistance which can get in the way of that clean signal. When this happens, the computer drops into "limp mode", bringing the engine with it. Limp mode pins the engine speed at 1200RPM. While frustrating, the limp mode can be cleared simply by shutting off and restarting the engine. When this happened in the Rush Hour example above, I had to get off the road to shut down and restart because the "ignition" was 10 feet behind the driver seat.

4 out of 5 Recommended
Last March, I posted about getting some new wheels for the bus. They look great, but they are thicker than the stock wheels. Since the tires I had on the bus were 12 years old, I couldn't safely go back to the old tires, but the studs don't stick out far enough for the lug nut to get all the way on with stud sticking out the other end of the nut. I pulled a classic prior-owner-worthy fail in not double-checking the 94 foot-pound torque on the nuts, and then threw 2 nuts off the rear right wheel before noticing a "wub wub wub" noise. I pulled a lug nut from the other rear wheel to get 4-a-side, but one of the studs broke off and won't thread a nut anymore. The internet is not consistent about driving on 4 nuts when the vehicle delivered with 5. I've been doing it for a little while now, and I check my torque while looking for fluid drips.

Some of these hassles represent work I need to perform. Okay, most of them do. I have replacement wheel hubs on the way from Ken at TheBusCo and I already have the over-length studs I mentioned in my post about wheels (see Wheels, Studs, Chrome and Backspace) so I'm going to start preparing for that work. It could mushroom into more things since the rear suspension and brakes haven't gotten the deserved love in a while.

That's it for now. I'm in the process of getting T's car back together and him through high school graduation before I tear into solving some of the bus' issues. Thanks, as always, for following along..

Wheels, Studs, Chrome and Backspace

Today's post is about wheels, rims and going larger-than-stock. There are so many opinions on this topic, that finding the gems of key information in the sea of religious wars is really hard. Case-in-point, there are literally thousands of threads each dating back years, covering hundreds of pages on TheSamba. Seriously, try a search for "tire" in the Samba search engine. Ridiculous. Trying to find actionable intel is virtually impossible, but, frustratingly, it is in there. There are some great sites, though, and Google can help. I'm putting everything I figure out here so I can find it again later.

RAtwell
I've mentioned Richard Atwell before. He's like the new Bob Hoover for bay window buses. I've never met him, but we've emailed over the years. His site (www.ratwell.com) has a section on tires, and it, like the rest of his site, is much more geared towards those who wish to keep their bus as stock as possible. There is a short section about going larger than stock, and the show-your-work math helped me build a spreadsheet to figure out what rims would work. If I can figure out how, I'll upload that spreadsheet so you can leverage it too. If I don't, this is a neat calculator I stumbled upon after I'd already created the spreadsheet.

Chromed

Anyway, with the info from RAtwell in my head, I found a set of Mercedes 15" aluminum 5x112 rims with flaking chrome. Yucky looking but the $50 price was right for perfectly round, undamaged rims. I started my usual way: learn how to remove the chrome first, then see if it makes more sense to pay someone else to do it. Well, with muriatic acid, it is possible to remove the chrome at home. This is strongly discouraged. No matter how many sites say that it is easy and you can handle muriatic acid safely with the right gloves, etc, the resulting chemical (Cr-6) after the stripping is highly toxic. Think "your own personal super-fund site" or Erin Brockovich. There is a reason why chroming companies are disappearing across the US. The waste produced is some of the nastiest stuff around. In short: don't do this.

So, if I can't do it, I can pay someone else to do it, right? Yes. In Portland Oregon, August 2015 it will cost $100 per wheel for an environmentally responsible shop to do it and it will take up to 6 weeks to get them back. So, my $50 rims just became $450 rims. Hmm.. Maybe I can simply scuff them up a bunch with sandpaper and paint them?

That's what she said
With the reality of stripping the chrome still stinging, I thought I'd test fit these things while I thought about it. The memory of the failed jacks (see Santa Clara by way of Wheeler) still in my mind, I slid a 2-ton floor jack under the shock absorber mount and pulled the driver-side front wheel. The kinda grody 15" rim's holes aligned, but the rim couldn't slide home. This brought up my first new discovery: many MB rims, like the ones I got, have 12mm bolt holes, some have 14mm holes. VW buses need 14mm, so the stud is too thick for the hole. This can be resolved with a 9/16" or (better yet) 37/64" 19/32" drill bit, shaving that little bit of material out of the hole so the stud's fit.

Yes, Size Matters
I also noted that the thickness of the rim at the bolt-hole is much thicker than the old steelies. Yeah, that's obvious, but its about 20mm thick. The existing studs aren't long enough to stick out the other end with enough threading for the wheels to be safely held onto the hub by lug nuts. These studs aren't very expensive, and many people claim swapping out the studs isn't that hard.

used without an "ok"
from AirCooled.net

For posterity, I derived these numbers from GermanSupply.com. The bay-window bus studs are all press-in, after 1970:
Rear (drum brakes): 37mm long, 14mm thick
Front (disc brakes): 44mm long, 14mm thick

If I were to replace the studs with a set that would fit, I would need 57mm rears and 64mm fronts (stock plus 20mm) plus or minus. AirCooled.net has studs available which are close, and after conferring with John, the 2.2" (55.9mm) should work on the rear and 2.5" (63.5mm) should work on the front. I know my history enough to know that it could take me a day per wheel (I'm slow. I make mistakes and I don't like doing too much at once). Once I run that math, I expect mounting these $50 rims to cost me thousands in my usual charge-myself-$50/hour planning. Before I take that plunge, I switched my focus to thinking about simply buying rims from Cip1 or jbugs.

Rub Rub Rub

nicked from JBugs

There are all kinds of really nice looking, shiny rims on the market. They so pretty. Unfortunately, the new rims out there are not designed for the rear fenders of the bay window bus. Those rear "flares" don't flare out very far, and most of the rubber above the top of the rim is covered by it. This limits the ET the bus could support.(from RAtwell's tire section: ET is German for Einpress Tiefe. and it's the measurement in mm from the rim center line to the mount where the brake drum or hub contacts).

The websites don't publish the ET of these new rims. They talk in terms of inches of backspace. Backspace is the distance from the inner lip of the rim to the wheel mounting face. Since we know the backspace and the ET for the stock wheel, we can figure out the ET, though. Ha! The stock rim has a backspace of 4.75 inches and an ET of 39mm. Most of the new ones have a backspace of 3.75 or 3.5 inches. These lower numbers push the wheel further out from the hub, lowering the ET. If you've ever tried to put tire chains on the stock rear tires, you know there simply isn't that much room. Once we add in the section width, pretty much any tire that isn't one of those extreme low profile (requires special tire-mounting equipment) tires won't fit. Still, let's do the math: 1 inch equals 25.4mm, so shifting the ET of 39mm down by an inch puts it around 14 (39-25=14). I ran another math model where it was closer to 20, but the point is the same: the new rims are designed for a Vanagon at best, but more likely a beetle or squareback. Some metal work, either to the rims or your rear flares, will be required to make them fit.

Hope Glimmers?
There's one last glimmer of hope for a relatively quick swap rim: the newer Passat rim. The newer Passat, and some Audi's, were shipped with a 15" steel wheel on the 5x112 base. Unfortunately, the center hole for these rims are closer to 1.5" than the required 2.5" needed to clear the grease caps and castle nut on the old bus. I happen to have a set of these 15" rims. Of course I do. You knew I would. I've read about expanding the center hole, but tire shops won't do it out of fear of getting sued. Gotta love the American system sometimes. Anyway, it is entirely possible to figure out the right line to cut and then cut it with a special drill bit, or a Dremel. Frankly, that sounds like a bad home-mechanic idea. The probability of making the rim unusable is pretty high. And, while the tire shops fear lawsuits, they fear someone getting hurt or killed because of one of their rims failing even more. That fear is contagious; now I fear that too. I suppose, if I knew a tire guy who could assure me that it could be done right, maybe my fear could be eased. Until then, that set of rims will sit, and eventually fall onto craigslist for someone to use for snow tires.

So...
I'm back to the original grody-looking rims. I picked up a 9/16 drill bit last night, and tonight I'm going to have a go at one of the rims.

UPDATE (August 24th, 2015): 9/16 is too small. While it did shave some material away, 9/16" is 14.29 mm and the threads are bigger than .29 mm. I have since ordered a 37/64" (14.68 mm) and a 19/32" (15.08 mm) bits. I'll update once I've determined which one worked best, removing the least material.

test fit success

UPDATE (August 29th, 2015): 19/32" is right. 37/64" didn't make a large enough hole for the rim to fit. 19/32 made it fit without wrestling, and the rim isn't flopping about sitting on the studs. As you can see from the picture, the 15x6 MB rim should look pretty good, once that chrome is covered up. Next, I'll have to get after the studs, etc. I'll post about that separately, when I get to it.

Thanks for following along... if you did. There's many hours of research distilled down into about 1400 or so words.