Flash Panzer Plated

I had an unexpected gift this past weekend.  My wife, Boo, took a brief trip to the OR coast with a girlfriend, so I had Saturday to myself.  It being NHL playoff season, I caught 4 games, of course, but I also finally addressed the old Jetta, Flash, with a long-awaited Panzer plate.  I'll give a run-down on that today.

Panzer Plate?

Evolution plate

So, what's a Panzer Plate?  In the early 2000's, VW engineered a very tall diesel engine to tuck under the bonnet of the Jetta IV, Passat and New Beetle.  I say "very tall", but its really relative to the available height between the underside of the bonnet and the ground.  From the factory, the underside of the engine was shielded from the ground by a thin sheet of padded plastic.  This kept dirt and small gravel from getting up under the hood and into the engine bay, but did little to protect the engine from rocks, manhole covers and any other kind of road-borne debris that we regularly encounter.  The most exposed part of the engine, down below the front beam, is the oil pan.  Many engines have given their lives to road hazards because the hazard popped a hole in the pan and all the oil ran out before the driver knew anything was wrong.  There are aftermarket oil pans to help address this, but they don't act like a skid-plate defraying the impact along.  They are designed as a hard-edge that is simply strong enough to take a frontal impact.  I'm not convinced they can withstand the same abuse that a skid-plate can.  If they did, off-roaders would do that instead of installing skid-plates.

Which One?

DieselGeek
full metal jacket Panzer Plate

There are at least 2 skid plates available on the market, one from Evolution and one from DieselGeek.  I've heard there's a VW one made of steel, but I've never seen one.  I tried to find one via an on-line vendor, but it wasn't nearly as clear what I was looking for as, say, a rear tail light.  If VW makes one, why wasn't it part of the car in the first place?  Or, why wasn't it part of a recall once they realized it was necessary to save your engine?  Last, why are they so hard to find?  Sigh.  Anyway, I read a little about the Evolution, and it seemed as good as the Dieselgeek one except for issues stemming from the way the oil-drain hole was engineered.  There was some feedback about the support around that hole actually causing a puncture in the oil pan.  Yikes.  While that played in my mind, the need for the "full metal jacket" available from Dieselgeek was a real decider.  I had long lost the padded plastic shield and the side supports went with it.  All-in, I paid around $380.  That's painful, but killing the engine would have been 10x that cost.

So?
It was so easy.  I read the printed instructions while watching hockey Friday night and they didn't make any sense.  Re-reading with a beer didn't help, so I just pulled out the parts and made sure I had everything in the parts list.  Check.  Saturday morning, with KBOO's bluegrass show playing in the background, I drove up on the ramps and took my college try.  Once you get under the car, the instructions make sense, everything is where they describe them to be, and it all fits right together.  Even the RivNut installations were easy.  It took me less than 3 hours to get the thin aluminum sides in, the front mounting posts in and the Panzer plate on.  Before KBOO switched over from bluegrass to the Grateful Dead & Friends show, I was done.  Shazam!

Unrelated, I drove the bus to work today.  So nice sitting behind his steering wheel :)
More next time-

Hanging Cards

Today, I'll cover getting the door cards hung.  They still need vinyl or carpet, but they are now hanging on the doors.

Clarity, maybe
I re-read some of the posts about the door cards.  While my detail was accurate, I don't think the high-level explanations were very helpful.  So, first, I want to fix that.  I bought a bag of 100 rubber door clip-seals and clips from BusDepot so I can hang the door cards properly.  Like it says on their website, the bus-specific seals and clips aren't available any more, so the common-use ones for all the other same-era VW's are all they sell.  These are a little larger, so the holes in the door need to be opened up a little bit with a drill.

vapor sealed

I used kitchen garbage bags as a vapor barrier between the door card and the steel door.  To attach the vapor barrier, I used 3M's version of BlueTak (available at Office Depot) spread in 1/4" wide strip around the edge.  A circle of sticky stuff was run around every door-clip mounting hole as well as the pull handle mount holes, the window winder and the latch pull.  After the vapor barrier was in place, I pressed the door seals (cone-shaped rubber bits) through the vapor barrier into the holes.  The barrier, because it was a kitchen trash bag, stretched, but didn't break.

The door cards were cut with a Dremel from 1/8" MDF I bought at Home Depot.  I drew the shape of the door card using the old worn-out and beat up card I had lying around.  I traced the holes for the window winder, door pull and latch.  Last, I drilled out the holes for the door card clips by driving a 3/8" drill bit through the original card and into the MDF.

Clipping Cards

MDF card clipped in

Once the cards were cut, the vapor barrier set and the seals inserted, it was time to get the card installed with the clips, starting with the passenger door.  Based on orientations I'd seen on the internet, the clips should have slid into the MDF so the clip was on the point closest to the edge.  This was mostly true, but each clip setting required some tweaking to get it perfect.  I mirrored the clip placement from the passenger door onto the driver door card, and it required tweaking anyway.  Once on the door, I attempted to get the door pulls, etc installed, but the holes didn't align perfectly anymore.  They are close, and with a little shifting, they fit.  I recognize, however, that the pulls and such won't fit so perfectly once a material is on top of the MDF, so the holes will need to be increased a little bit.  More fun for later.

Anyway, the cards are now in, and I found and installed the old foot-kicks against the front of the cab.  The front area looks a lot better.  The old kicks are in pretty horrible shape, though, so I'll probably get a new set of all-plastic from BusDepot.  I may cut new ones by tracing the old ones, but I'll need to figure out how to keep them from getting wet.

9th & Salmon, Portland

Its been an interesting few weeks.  NHL playoffs, the Premier League is winding down and T worked through getting his driver's license.  Last, T had prom this past Saturday.  Through a fluke of events, I met his group of friends between the limo and the restaurant.  The blurry picture on the right, here, is of him and his date as they enter the restaurant... as viewed through my rain-drenched windscreen.  They are the blurry black spots in the center of the picture.  I posted it in the spirit of the name of the blog, its a view from a bus-driver sitting in a VW Jetta :)

Thanks for following along.

Timing your Purchase

A friend of mine asked me about getting a VW bus this past week.  I thought I'd do a little post about what advice I gave.  T and I spent Saturday playing in the snow on Mt Hood, so I'll write a little about that too.

Spring in the Air, Snow on the Mountain
This has been one of the weirdest ski/snow seasons I can remember in the Pacific NorthWest.  We had virtually no ride-able snow until after the Winter Solstice.  SkiBowl wasn't officially open until well after New Years Eve (and they've been closed since the first weekend in April).  After a lame early and mid-season, the late season snow has really been coming on strong.  I'd seen that Timberline had been getting consistent snowfall last week, so after hosting a family friend from Australia and helicopter-parenting C to an 8:AM lacrosse game, T and I spent Saturday on the mountain.  The roads were wet from the steady rain, SkiBowl looked like late Spring and the Summit ski area looked like a spring meadow.  Our expectations for sliding were quite low.  As we ascended Timberline Highway, though, the rain slowly gave way to wintery-mix and then a steady snow.  The parking lots were nearly empty, but the falling snow wasn't sticking... to the asphalt.  It was definitely sticking to the slopes.

The smaller terrain parks on Thunder and Walt's Way had been taken down, leaving just the jumps.  So, while the high-fliers and hard-core terrain riders played on the big stuff fed by the Stormin' Norman lift, T and I had Thunder and Walt's Way to ourselves.  Neither of us had been on the snow much since his concussion, so it was really nice to just feel the snow under our feet and hang out together again.  As the day wore on, the snow got better, and the jumps less scary.  By the last run, we were both getting air (T doing tricks, me mid-air panicking) and sticking landings consistently.  It was a great day to play in the snow.

Pick One
As I mentioned at the start, I was asked about buying a VW camperbus.  I obviously love the idea.  There are 4 viable used models to choose from: splitty (T1), bay-window (T2-called "bays"), vanagon  (T3) and eurovan (T4, T5).  They all have their upsides and downsides.  Splitties look neat, but they are the most under-powered and probably the most rusty.  They can be very spendy as collector cars since they fell out of production in 1967.  Bays were sold from 1968-1979 in the US and were the most widely built/sold around the globe.  They were manufactured through 2013 in Brasil, making part availability unequaled.  Of the 4 styles, these are probably the least expensive.  The vanagon (1980-1990) is probably the most roomy, or at least it feels the most roomy, and is more powerful than most bays.  Called water-leakers by many, the early cooling systems are prone to rusting and failing.  Still, the Synchro (all-wheel-drive version) is really cool, and the camping portion of the vanagon is well done when compared to the bay (especially the early bays).  The Eurovan (T4 1990-2003, T5 2003-current) doesn't feel like you're driving a bus, but the interiors are very nice.  It could be the most reliable on the day of purchase, but also the most expensive to maintain, and it still feels like a standard mini-van behind the wheel.

When to Buy, When to Sell
Once you've chosen a target vehicle make/model, the next most important step is deciding when to buy it.  While this may not seem terribly important, it very much is.  You could considerably overpay if your timing is wrong.  I'm kind of a used-car market geek, trolling craigslist and eBay alot, and I've noticed distinct patterns.  We are entering the worst time of year to buy a car.  Car dealers hold "dad's and grad's" sales, so you'd think there would be excess inventory they are selling off.  In reality, there are lots of buyers in the market heading into Summer, and the car lots are trying to get those shoppers.  Who doesn't want a new-to-them car to play with all Summer?  Lesson to shopper: wait.  Wait until July when the price spike starts to pass.  As Summer wears on, prices drop until they bottom out in October.  By then, anyone who wants to get rid of a car before Winter is willing to take a loss rather than store it.  What remains after mid-October are cars held by sellers who think their car is worth more than it is, or very unusual cars which hold their value, but are only interesting to a niche market.  Over the Winter, the supply is thin so prices stay somewhat stable; not at late-Summer deal prices, but not as high as late-Spring either.  By March, prices start to climb again.  So, if you want to buy a bus, wait until the end of the Summer when the last guy who had that dream has decided he doesn't want to deal with it over the Winter.  Deal for you, and they found a new loyal owner.

That's it for today.  Sorry I didn't have any pictures of us playing in the snow.  We were too focused on enjoying the conditions to record how good it was.  Seriously, there's still snow in them thar hills.  Go play while you still can!