scattered and dashing

I've been kinda zig-zagging on this project lately, but at least I've been tacking in the right general direction. Its another weekend day without the boys, so I've been trying to get a bunch of different things done all at once. None of them are necessarily finished, but I'm making some headway. I'll hit the highlights.

Clutchy
After some additional poking around the 'net, and remembering the condition of my bowden tube from when I replaced my clutch cable (that's a story I don't think I shared, actually), I think my clutch troubles are a bad bowden tube. So, I got one at Discount Import Parts here in Beaverton. I didn't feel like sliding under the bus today, so I focused on other stuff. I know, I know. I can't put it off forever, but the interior stuff is more fun.

Carpet
I rough-measured everywhere I figured I was planning to put carpeting. With these numbers, I should be able to tell how many square feet I need. Like everything on these old cars, every project gets bigger than originally planned. I did resolve to a color scheme, though, that will mirror my plan for the outside. These old bus's have a 2-tone tradition with the upper 1/3 white and the lower 2/3 under the belt-line being something else. I'm going with a nice dark blue. To mirror this, I'm putting a door-outdoor carpeting on the interior up to the belt-line. At the belt line and above, I'm going with a beach-sand colored carpet. White wouldn't look white for very long, and the sand color should visually soften things a little bit. It should soften noise a lot.

Insulation rip-out continues
I focused on getting the passenger side to the same place as the driver side within the main cabin. This meant removing the interior walls next to the bench seat and removing the interior wall on the slider. This was messy. I didn't take the bed (bench seat) out, but it was not installed when the walls were first put in. Nothing broke, but the cleanup of the loose insulation was a pain. Nothing the shop-vac couldn't solve tho. Just like the driver-side, after I got the last scraps of insulation out, I shot the cavity with rubberized undercoating. It was still drying this evening, so I'll lay the reflecty-flashy insulation in tomorrow.

15A Inlet revert
Last, I attacked the power inlet. I never really liked the solution I had before. When I removed the original 1972 power inlet a few years ago, the socket broke. Rather than try to repair it, I tried to make the 1979 power inlet work. It didn't quite fit in the same hole, but it worked well enough. Now that I have everything open again, I've decided to fix the old inlet, and sell off the 1979 inlet. This meant separating the broken plastic socket from the steel. After hitting the rivets with a 1/8" drill, I was able to rough-fit the new socket. The old inlet was tired and rusty looking. I mean, it looked bad. I hit it with Naval Jelly, and some 240 grit sandpaper, and it cleaned up pretty nicely. Knowing that I plan to paint the top 1/3 white (as well as the pop top and bumpers), I figured painting the inlet white would tie it in nicely. It certainly looks better. It will need another cuff-down with 240 grit and a light mist-coat of white to be done, but it sure looks close. Unfortunately, when I removed this inlet 5 years ago, I misplaced the body panel that fits around the inlet to help make a better body seal. I put out feelers for a replacement, but I haven't landed one yet. Since this effectively stops me from re-installing the kitchen, I guess I'll have to go back to the clutch and engine wiring stuff now.

That's it for today. I'll be putting in a few hours tomorrow before my nephew's birthday party, and then its another fun-filled work week..... and a Stanley Cup game on Monday. I probably won't get much done before Wednesday, if even then. Gotta maximize these weekend opportunities.

pictures-
top: inlet after brushing it off, removing old (all scratched up) warning sticker
middle: inlet after cleaning and Naval Jelly
bottom: inlet (and inlet door bits) drying in their new white coats

More sound killing

Sorry I didn't get back to the final bit about Memorial Day weekend. I covered most of it in the last 2 posts. Today, I'll focus on additional sound dampening, but this time without the batting. There are 2 different kinds of noise we need to deal with, and I'm looking at reducing both of them but without killing my budget in the process.

Vibration Noise

I think the stuff I bought all those years ago was called Dynamat. I blew about $200 on vibration deadener, betwen this stuff and the McMaster-Carr rubber sheets. The "Dynamat" is basically a sticky asphalty black tar with a shiny foil side. The sticky side comes protected with a wax paper which peels off as you stick it. The general concept of Dynamat (or Brown Bread or any of these contact noise dampeners) is to convert the vibration into heat, reducing the noise. For it to be effective, it needs to seal with the metal as completely as possible, so really work it in when you lay it down. On the websites that I visited at the time, the manufacturers and the sound installer experts all said you only really needed to cover about 50% of the exposed steel to notice a meaningful reduction. More often than not, no sooner was this said than the poster/manufacturer shows their install, and they used 2 layers of the stuff on every square inch of metal. What gives?

I guess it all comes down to what you're trying to do. Personally, I want to be able to drive down the freeway without feeling like I'm sitting inside a jet engine. Or a diesel engine. Or any engine.

Others (like those posters I mentioned) are trying to get to an acoustic nirvana where all you can hear is the slight whistle of the road.... until your 2000watt stereo kicks in. Okay, I'll admit, I want to hear some music when I drive. One of the reasons I'm doing the TDI conversion is because driving with one ear listening for an engine failure is tiring. And its boring for your passengers who plainly don't understand the tonal changes of an air cooled engine. Pooh on them, but I guess I'm one of them now. I kinda want to hear some Jerry when I'm driving around sometimes. Anyway, on to what I did with the Dynamat I found.

First, I double-checked the exposed wall where I removed the old insulation. This was before I shot it with the rubberized under-coating. This "check" was basically light rapping on the metal with my knuckles to hear for a rattley clang. I had put Dynamat over about 2/3 of the exposed sheet metal before I'd insulated before. The knocking produced an acceptable thunk-thunk, so I left it and moved on to the rear end.

When I drove this beast to and from the muffler shop (and to/from the tow-trailer), it was loud. I mean real loud. Like "I think there's an airplane landing behind me" loud. I looked at the rear engine hatch. Dynamatted. Rear cargo access? Dynamatted (but only on the large sections of sheet metal). Top-side engine hatch? Nada. Ah ha! I covered it almost completely with Dynamat. Each time I test-closed the hatch the "chunk" became more certain and the "clatter" disappeared. Now, I can drop the lid from about 6" up and it slams shut. Then, I attacked the last 4" of rear deck from inside the engine compartment. And then the short stretch between the spare wheel well and the left side of the top-hatch opening, test knocking along the way. This should meaningfully reduce vibration noise.

Ambient Noise

So, with a well adjusted clutch, a new engine mount and a warmed up engine, how much vibration noise is getting produced compared to the racket of a 100+ HP diesel engine? My guess? Not much. So, how do we reduce the ambient noise? Well, think about your house. In the rooms with the hardwood floors or tile, everything's loud. In your carpeted rooms, its a lot quieter. This simple case explains how we can address ambient noise in a bus: carpet the bugger. We can reduce noise with a vehicular version of a carpet pad first - closed cell insulation. You can buy 1/4" reflective insulation at Home Depot or Lowes that works great for this. I can't remember how much I paid for a roll, but I don't think it was more than $20. It covers a large area. I put some of this same roll under the floor of my bus years ago (between the 2 layers of thin plywood), and it definitely helped noise-wise. I still have a bunch left. I put some in the wall where the old batting insulation was. I'll be putting more behind every spot where I put carpet: walls, ceiling, doors.

This simple step should reduce more noise than the dynamat does. Why? The dynamat enthusiasts mostly are driving cars which have little ambient noise. They have nice foam headliners and plastic interior parts which absorb sound. The 1972 VW Bus has a wood ceiling and steel walls. No wonder it sounds like I'm launching a Mars probe when I'm driving! Once the dynamat is in, followed by closed cell insulation, topped with carpet, it could be a conversational volume in there. We'll see...

More next time,

pictures:

top: top-side engine hatch with dynamat applied.

middle: behind the stove/sink unit closed-cell reflector insulation installed

bottom: behind refer/storage unit closed-cell reflector insulation installed

From Fridge to Storage

the saga continues.... so, last post, I talked about Saturday, and the interior tear-out. It was fun. Sunday, I laid low and Monday I got back to it. I'll get into some of it, but I'll probably split into 2 posts anyway.

Using that Fridge?

In the 5+ years I've had the '79 interior in my bus, I've used the fridge exactly 0 times. It's heavy, takes up a bunch of useful space, and can't really fit much. At least that's my opinion. So, I decided I'd yank the fridge unit out of the cabinet, and do something else with it.

Pull the Dometic

First, a quick review. Looking at the cabinet with the icebox looking part to the right, there are 2 top-load covers; the left (rear) one is vented, the right (front) one has a thermal thing on the inside. The hinges on the back are attached to the metal trim, which is attached to the cabinet with Phillips head screws. Some of these screws double as a means of attaching the cabinet to the neighboring cabinets.

The ice-boxy thing is also held in with another screw from the side. Within the left-side cabinet, is the compressor, under a weird wood shelf thing. That shelf thing is attached with a metal bracket that also is attached to the metal trim with Phillips head screws. Underneath, the compressor is only held in with 2 more small Phillips head screws. Then, the whole unit slides out through the large opening behind the ice-boxy thing. There are a couple of electrical plugs in the circuit, but only the 3-prong should need to be unplugged to separate the fridge completely from the bus.

More Storage

It occurred to me while camping one time that the big cabinet holding the fridge is wasted space. The fridge unit was so small with the cooling bit in the middle of it that you couldn't even put cereal boxes in there. Once I pulled the ice-boxy thing and compressor out, there was all kinds of space. However, without the ice-boxy thing, there was nothing separating the two seemingly separate sections. So, I bought a single glue-board shelf (11.8" x 36") at Home Depot for $7. Cutting a 16" section off, I created 2 spaces by screwing the section into the wood base for the ice-boxy thing and then a single screw from the top.

And Even More Storage

The left-side (where the compressor used to be) was a little more tricky. First, that's the part of the cabinet that contours to the rear driver-side wheel well. Additionally, I decided to move the battery control panel from the wall into that cabinet. I thought it would look better anyway, and I have other ideas for how the wall will be redone. I'll get to that later. Anyway, the control panel mounting took a little time to get right, but I made the wall-side mount with some leftover flashing. I pop-riveted it to the side (with some more flashing on the opposite side for strength, and screwed the panel to the flashing.

For the other side, I sacrificed some of the wood bits from that weird wood shelf thing. I took some of the remaining shelf and cut another section about 12" long for a shelf for the "rear" section. This was screwed in with 2 Phillips head screws from the "front" cabinet and one from the side (near the back). Underneath the rear shelf, I stapled some closed cell insulation in hopes of stopping some radiant noise.

The end result is a nice solid storage spot for travel items reachable by the passenger riding in the seat behind the driver. I expect stuffed animals this Summer, but I'm sure it'll evolve into iPods and other electronica. The rear of the storage area is still open, but I need to be able to access wires and stuff, so it'll stay that way. I suspect a day will come when I hear my son exclaim that his something-or-other fell into "the hole".

That's it for today. After I finished the assembly, I deep-cleaned the whole thing. Its nice a purdy now. Next time I'll go into the rest of my weekend working on the bus. See, I told ya I totally tore it up this Memorial Day weekend.

Pictures:

top: yes, that's my boot and yes I do need a newer pair. In front of that is the battery control panel as I'm working thru attachment ideas.

middle: sizing the separation panel between the 2 new storage cabinets

bottom: finished cabinet.