I don't like going more than a few days between posts, and its already been a week. I haven't been able to get much time with the bus, so I'm basically just posting an apology for not having anything to post. I'll touch on the little bit of work I did get done, some extra motivating camping plans, and finally some thoughts on my pop top.
Inter-cooler lower bracket
I did have about an hour this weekend, so I started working on the lower support bracket for the inter-cooler. Its not much to write about, honestly. Its a simple 1" flat bar cut about 8" long with a slow bend in it so there's about 2-1/2" of straight at each end. Because of the angle needed to match the mount-holes on the inter-cooler, this seemed to give the best alignment. The top-side will have 2 holes for the inter-cooler, and 3 on the side for riveting/bolting to the inside of the engine compartment. I discovered that my cheap carbon-tipped drill bits are starting to wear out, though. I'll be stopping at Harbor Freight or Lowes on the way home tonight to get some replacements. If time and light allow, I'll finish boring out the holes tonight, and maybe get it in-place.
Camping plans
Its that time of year when you are finally sick of the foul weather and start distracting yourself with Summer camping trip plans. For those that have large camping vehicle maintenance or repair work, this brings and extra added incentive to get-er-done. We already have a July trip planned, but this weekend, we started talking about another one... or two. My goal was to have the bus moving under his own power in time for Independence Day. This is still the goal, but he may need to be camping-trip-ready shortly thereafter. The extra motivation wasn't needed. More daylight is. Starting to feel a little stressed....
Pop-top
The 1972 Westy pop-top is the early-version of the slant-roof pop top. The luggage rack is over the rear tires and the available sleeping arrangement is a single narrow cot. On my bus, I have one extra added "feature" - the canvas has a 3' tear in it from top to bottom. When driving the bus, this doesn't make any difference. When camping the bus, though, this is a big deal. Bugs and rain easily enter, and especially annoy the boy sleeping in the upper cot. I have priced replacement canvas, and it isn't cheap. For decent canvas, its over $200, and the labor is still all yours. In the end, you still only have sleeping for one up top. The later Westy's have a full sized bed, so 2 people can sleep up-top. The ASI / Riviera pot tops (they go straight up) also have a full-sized bed that can fit 2 people. I am seriously considering purchasing a used Riviera pop top (with good canvas) as a replacement for mine. This does 2 things: replaces my bad canvas and gives my boys the penthouse together for camping. To be fair, would my bus still be a "westy"?
That's it for now. I'll be trying to finish the lower bracket tonight and maybe try to get some things done on the upper one this week. I have to re-visit the cooling system, deal with the charged-air lines and air filter, and then I'll be ready to deal with the electrical. All told, I could be doing electrical stuff before the end of February. That would be fantastic. I expect the next couple of weeks, though, to be full of Olympic distraction, though. There's just something about the Winter Olympics.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Engine Hatching
Last time I said there were 4 different things I could focus on next. Turns out, there was a 5th - finishing the engine hatch. I did 90% of that finish work today. I'll cover that, and then rough out a plan for the inter-cooler mounting.
Where'd that hole come from?
Over a year ago, I needed to put a hole over the engine compartment so I could fit the new engine. After some examination, it was really only a short section of support bar, but I really didn't like not having a hatch. (see "it's in the hole" for a longer post about the hole). Anyway, I put a roughly square hole over the engine compartment.
Don't cut your lip
In December, I posted about the radiator cowling. Within that post ("Radiator Shrouded") I talked about wrapping the edge of the hatch door with drip-irrigation vinyl tubing to protect my fingers from getting cut on the lip.
Well, I discovered today that it does a pretty good job of sealing off the engine compartment from the passenger cabin. I will have to pull it off to remove the remaining bits of blue tape, to put some paint on the exposed steel and to glue it back, but its a keeper. I did file all the way around so it isn't sharp. That took much longer than I expected, but so much of this project falls into that category.
hinging on what?
I thought about piano hinging this door so it lifted from right to left instead of front to back. I thought is would be more useful or that I could figure out a way to get it to stay put using the cabinet. I discovered, though, that the square-ish hatch and the roundy roof wouldn't support that. So, we're going with front-to-rear. The shape of the floor is all lumpy, though, so a simple piano hinge would look weird. Instead, I got 4 1" hinges at Lowes and a small packet of 4-40 1/2 machine bolt/nuts. The hinges were set into the floor of the bus with rivets. Maybe I should have gone with bolt/nut on both sides. We'll see. Once the hinges were set, it was just a matter of patiently aligning the hatch, marking, drilling and bolting.
keeping it closed
Now that the door will go up and down, how do we hold it in position? First, we need something to keep it from falling into the engine. Since the hole was cut without regard for where the supports were, the rear edge was hanging 4" +/- from the rear support. To remedy that, I got a 1" angle of steel (36" long) and cut a 1-1/2" square from each end. After bending the remaining tab, I had a 33" long angle bar with a tab for mounting to the front-to-back supports. (I'll post a picture). I had to hammer on it a bit to get it to fit, leaving about 3/8" sticking into the open space. I riveting the tab's into the front-to-back supports. That left defining a knob of some kind to hold it closed.
I rooted around in the box of spare parts I got with the bus and found an old glove-box knob. "Perfect," I thought. Like setting the hinge holes, it was just a matter of patiently aligning, marking drilling, dremeling and filing. The hole is about the size of a nickle. I found, though, that the hole was a touch too close to the support bar I installed in the last paragraph, and the catch was too low. I took on of the cut-off squares I cut off the bar and fab'd a striker. After an afternoon of messing with it, I have a hinged hatch that holds shut.
All that's left is pulling the tape, sealing the hinge-side with vinyl tubing and maybe putting down a strip of weather stripping along the support bar. I think that might help eliminate any rattling. Oh, yeah, I'll probably put some noise/heat protector on the underside of the hatch. I already mentioned a little paint and glue. That's 10% left.
Inter-cooling planning
Well, I thought that by the time I got to this part of the post, I'd have a plan. I really don't. I'm going to use some thin flat-bar that I have lying around from my different radiator mounting experiments. Now that I have a cross-bar supporting the top-side of the hatch, I can tie into that for the top support. The bottom should be able to tie into the base pretty easily. I doubt I'll get to that work during the week, but it should be a small enough job to complete next Saturday. With luck, I'll be able to finish the hatch stuff too.
That's it for this one. Thanks again for following along.
pictures-
top: after installing hinges. You can see how I spread them out. That red circle is where the knob goes.
mid-top: while installing hinges. You can already see how it will look like it used to, except for a big black square. That rubber hanging over the seat back is a rear hatch seal.
middle: close-up of a hinge install.
mid-bottom: the striker during a test-install. I cut it down about 1/4" from that to work better.
bottom: hatch closed. close-up of glove-box knob holding it down.
Where'd that hole come from?
Over a year ago, I needed to put a hole over the engine compartment so I could fit the new engine. After some examination, it was really only a short section of support bar, but I really didn't like not having a hatch. (see "it's in the hole" for a longer post about the hole). Anyway, I put a roughly square hole over the engine compartment.Don't cut your lip
In December, I posted about the radiator cowling. Within that post ("Radiator Shrouded") I talked about wrapping the edge of the hatch door with drip-irrigation vinyl tubing to protect my fingers from getting cut on the lip.
Well, I discovered today that it does a pretty good job of sealing off the engine compartment from the passenger cabin. I will have to pull it off to remove the remaining bits of blue tape, to put some paint on the exposed steel and to glue it back, but its a keeper. I did file all the way around so it isn't sharp. That took much longer than I expected, but so much of this project falls into that category.hinging on what?
I thought about piano hinging this door so it lifted from right to left instead of front to back. I thought is would be more useful or that I could figure out a way to get it to stay put using the cabinet. I discovered, though, that the square-ish hatch and the roundy roof wouldn't support that. So, we're going with front-to-rear. The shape of the floor is all lumpy, though, so a simple piano hinge would look weird. Instead, I got 4 1" hinges at Lowes and a small packet of 4-40 1/2 machine bolt/nuts. The hinges were set into the floor of the bus with rivets. Maybe I should have gone with bolt/nut on both sides. We'll see. Once the hinges were set, it was just a matter of patiently aligning the hatch, marking, drilling and bolting.keeping it closed
Now that the door will go up and down, how do we hold it in position? First, we need something to keep it from falling into the engine. Since the hole was cut without regard for where the supports were, the rear edge was hanging 4" +/- from the rear support. To remedy that, I got a 1" angle of steel (36" long) and cut a 1-1/2" square from each end. After bending the remaining tab, I had a 33" long angle bar with a tab for mounting to the front-to-back supports. (I'll post a picture). I had to hammer on it a bit to get it to fit, leaving about 3/8" sticking into the open space. I riveting the tab's into the front-to-back supports. That left defining a knob of some kind to hold it closed.
I rooted around in the box of spare parts I got with the bus and found an old glove-box knob. "Perfect," I thought. Like setting the hinge holes, it was just a matter of patiently aligning, marking drilling, dremeling and filing. The hole is about the size of a nickle. I found, though, that the hole was a touch too close to the support bar I installed in the last paragraph, and the catch was too low. I took on of the cut-off squares I cut off the bar and fab'd a striker. After an afternoon of messing with it, I have a hinged hatch that holds shut.All that's left is pulling the tape, sealing the hinge-side with vinyl tubing and maybe putting down a strip of weather stripping along the support bar. I think that might help eliminate any rattling. Oh, yeah, I'll probably put some noise/heat protector on the underside of the hatch. I already mentioned a little paint and glue. That's 10% left.
Inter-cooling planning
Well, I thought that by the time I got to this part of the post, I'd have a plan. I really don't. I'm going to use some thin flat-bar that I have lying around from my different radiator mounting experiments. Now that I have a cross-bar supporting the top-side of the hatch, I can tie into that for the top support. The bottom should be able to tie into the base pretty easily. I doubt I'll get to that work during the week, but it should be a small enough job to complete next Saturday. With luck, I'll be able to finish the hatch stuff too.
That's it for this one. Thanks again for following along.
pictures-
top: after installing hinges. You can see how I spread them out. That red circle is where the knob goes.
mid-top: while installing hinges. You can already see how it will look like it used to, except for a big black square. That rubber hanging over the seat back is a rear hatch seal.
middle: close-up of a hinge install.
mid-bottom: the striker during a test-install. I cut it down about 1/4" from that to work better.
bottom: hatch closed. close-up of glove-box knob holding it down.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
When I bite into a York Peppermint Patty....
... its like ski-jumping at the Winter Olympics. The focus of today's post is on trying to capture that same cooling sensation for the air heading for the bus' lungs - the intake manifold. So, I'll update on my inter-cooler mangling efforts and on my brother-in-law Tom. Last, a quick what's next?
Inter-cooler Placement
In my TDI Jetta, the intercooler appears in front of the front wheel. It gets forced-air through slits in the front bumper and exhausts into the passenger wheel well. Since the pressure of the wall of air through which you're travelling provides force, it doesn't need a booster fan, and it keeps the air temps heading into the engine significantly cooler. Just for background, an inter-cooler takes the air that was just pressurized in the turbo and cools it down. The charged air can get very hot because (a) it was just significantly compressed and (b) it just passed through an iron / steel block that is connected to your exhaust. HOT! The inter-cooler can drop those temps pretty dramatically by allowing the air to expand a little bit and by acting like a radiator.
So, where does one fit an inter-cooler in an old bus? Almost all of the air pressure greeted by the
nose of the bus is pressed around the sides, underneath or over the top. Within a stock VW engine compartment that is well sealed, there is negative pressure within the compartment because of the vacuum produced by the engine sucking on the available air. There is virtually no passing air. With the stock engine and seals gone, there is available air-stream flowing underneath the bus. The vanagon folks often-times will put an inter-cooler in or behind the driver-side rear wheel well. I looked at that, and in the spare battery tray, and in the stock battery tray, and next to the transaxle on the driver side... etc. I looked pretty much everywhere, and concluded that the best spot was upright just to the left of the intake. I cut down a section of the old tin-line so it would snuggle-in a little bit. The inter-cooler needs a bracket at 
the top and bottom to hold it firmly in place, but the pictures should give a pretty good idea of what it will look like.
But how does it get fresh air? I have a few ideas on that. First, I can fabricate some cowling to dip down below the bus to slurp some passing air. That should be relatively easy. Second, I have a Yamaha radiator fan that I can hook up to the rear of the inter-cooler to boost the passing air. I'd rather avoid that, but its an alternative. There's also the question of the exhaust air. In my Jetta, it exhausts onto my tire. I imagine that shortens the life of the tire a little bit, but maybe it doesn't really produce that much heat. Rather than assume that, I'll probably fabricate exhaust cowling that vents down back into the air stream.
In the meantime, the distances from the inter-cooler to the bottom
of the turbo and from the top of the inter-cooler to the intake are each less than a foot. This should reduce the amount of custom material I need to add in. I have a pile of charge-air hose from the Beetle this engine came from, so I may be able to cobble most of it together with stock parts. Considering the cost of silicone hose connectors, I'm very hopeful that I can do this with a minimum of new material.
Tom Passes (1/31/2010)
Tom lost his fight to cancer Sunday afternoon around 4:30. His mom Marianne, his girlfriend and his daughter were all at his apartment when he died. I knew Tom for 20 years, but hadn't seen him at all in the last 5. Its hard to really know that he's gone after not seeing him in person for so many years. My last mental image of him will be sitting on his brother Joe's back patio with the whole extended family playing bocce, and laughing. Tom was a pretty simple guy with a near-constant "are you kidding me" smirk. I'll miss you, Tom.
next...
I have 4 different systems in-flight, so I could really work on / try to finish any of the 4.
1 - cooling system (needs parts).
2 - exhaust (needs some better welding).
3 - vacuum (needs air cleaner, exhaust route finalized).
4 - inter-cooler. Looks like its finish the inter-cooler, and then move on to the air filter while waiting for parts, welding expertise.
That's all for now. I don't know if I'll have much time this week, but I should have a few hours next weekend.
pictures:
top - looking at the rear end of the bus with the engine door open. note the inter-cooler on the left side.
mid left - looking through the rear left tail-light at the cut to hold the inter-cooler. Note the little nub sticking out on the bottom - I'd may try to use that in the bracketing.
mid right - close up on the rear-side cut for inter-cooler placement
mid bottom - looking through top-side hatch at the clearance between the inter-cooler and the intake.
bottom - close up of the clearance between the bottom of the inter-cooler and the turbo outlet.
Inter-cooler Placement
In my TDI Jetta, the intercooler appears in front of the front wheel. It gets forced-air through slits in the front bumper and exhausts into the passenger wheel well. Since the pressure of the wall of air through which you're travelling provides force, it doesn't need a booster fan, and it keeps the air temps heading into the engine significantly cooler. Just for background, an inter-cooler takes the air that was just pressurized in the turbo and cools it down. The charged air can get very hot because (a) it was just significantly compressed and (b) it just passed through an iron / steel block that is connected to your exhaust. HOT! The inter-cooler can drop those temps pretty dramatically by allowing the air to expand a little bit and by acting like a radiator.
So, where does one fit an inter-cooler in an old bus? Almost all of the air pressure greeted by the
nose of the bus is pressed around the sides, underneath or over the top. Within a stock VW engine compartment that is well sealed, there is negative pressure within the compartment because of the vacuum produced by the engine sucking on the available air. There is virtually no passing air. With the stock engine and seals gone, there is available air-stream flowing underneath the bus. The vanagon folks often-times will put an inter-cooler in or behind the driver-side rear wheel well. I looked at that, and in the spare battery tray, and in the stock battery tray, and next to the transaxle on the driver side... etc. I looked pretty much everywhere, and concluded that the best spot was upright just to the left of the intake. I cut down a section of the old tin-line so it would snuggle-in a little bit. The inter-cooler needs a bracket at 
the top and bottom to hold it firmly in place, but the pictures should give a pretty good idea of what it will look like.But how does it get fresh air? I have a few ideas on that. First, I can fabricate some cowling to dip down below the bus to slurp some passing air. That should be relatively easy. Second, I have a Yamaha radiator fan that I can hook up to the rear of the inter-cooler to boost the passing air. I'd rather avoid that, but its an alternative. There's also the question of the exhaust air. In my Jetta, it exhausts onto my tire. I imagine that shortens the life of the tire a little bit, but maybe it doesn't really produce that much heat. Rather than assume that, I'll probably fabricate exhaust cowling that vents down back into the air stream.
In the meantime, the distances from the inter-cooler to the bottom
of the turbo and from the top of the inter-cooler to the intake are each less than a foot. This should reduce the amount of custom material I need to add in. I have a pile of charge-air hose from the Beetle this engine came from, so I may be able to cobble most of it together with stock parts. Considering the cost of silicone hose connectors, I'm very hopeful that I can do this with a minimum of new material.Tom Passes (1/31/2010)
Tom lost his fight to cancer Sunday afternoon around 4:30. His mom Marianne, his girlfriend and his daughter were all at his apartment when he died. I knew Tom for 20 years, but hadn't seen him at all in the last 5. Its hard to really know that he's gone after not seeing him in person for so many years. My last mental image of him will be sitting on his brother Joe's back patio with the whole extended family playing bocce, and laughing. Tom was a pretty simple guy with a near-constant "are you kidding me" smirk. I'll miss you, Tom.
next...
I have 4 different systems in-flight, so I could really work on / try to finish any of the 4.
1 - cooling system (needs parts).
2 - exhaust (needs some better welding).
3 - vacuum (needs air cleaner, exhaust route finalized).
4 - inter-cooler. Looks like its finish the inter-cooler, and then move on to the air filter while waiting for parts, welding expertise.
That's all for now. I don't know if I'll have much time this week, but I should have a few hours next weekend.
pictures:
top - looking at the rear end of the bus with the engine door open. note the inter-cooler on the left side.
mid left - looking through the rear left tail-light at the cut to hold the inter-cooler. Note the little nub sticking out on the bottom - I'd may try to use that in the bracketing.
mid right - close up on the rear-side cut for inter-cooler placement
mid bottom - looking through top-side hatch at the clearance between the inter-cooler and the intake.
bottom - close up of the clearance between the bottom of the inter-cooler and the turbo outlet.
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