Don't start anything!

Beer. Now there's a temporary solution.
Homer Simpson

While the engine's out it seemed like a good time to have a closer look at the starter motor. It has been rather erratic since we worked so hard for so long to get the engine running again. Since then the starter only seemed to "kick out" and engage properly about one in five attempts, producing a clank and a whine for the other four.

A strip down showed the damage, I have not done this before but I imagine that this is probably usual wear and tear for something of this age.

Luckily I managed to pick up replacement bendix assembly from my local Midas spares store, lovely helpful people and good service. The old one is on the left in the pic below, the new one on the right.

Reassembly and testing is planned for the upcoming weekend - onward ho.


Thanks for calling in
CooP

Getting exhausted

Kilometres are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometres.
George Carlin

As I had hoped, we managed to get an early ride to to the east Rand to Volkspares in Jet Park. They have a lovely selection of after-market goodies for air-cooled VWs, both standard original and custom. I chose a neat, light Empi setup for R2000, others varied from R2500 to R4000 and over.

We also made a turn around the corner from there at Pro Auto Rubber, a fabulous resource for all auto-related plastic and rubber extrusions, mouldings, carpets, mats, plugs, stoppers, grommets, clips, rings and so on. I managed to pick up a seal to go around the engine tin to help to keep the engine bay airtight, as well as a handful of other clips and goodies needed to assist with the reassembly. Happy days are here again.

Once again I owe a debt of gratitude to the ever-cheerful and always helpful neighbour - thanks mate!

Thanks for stopping by
CooP

Return of the lump

A reasonable man accepts the world as it is. One therefore depends on the unreasonable man to change the world.
George Bernard Shaw

I am delighted to announce that the engine work has been completed and the lump has been returned to me, months early and as pretty as a picture. It now has been honed and cleaned and aligned and polished and overhauled and bored and balanced and fettled and lubricated and . . . lots of other fancy words that I can't pronounce. It also has a lovely new carburettor and air filter setup that should be just the job for giving us the extra torque that we need to get this bus up the mountains without too much distress.

There is a two-page, closely-typed list of all of the tasks that have been completed on the job - it's an amazing list that includes a total of 99 hours of labour! I have been exceedingly fortunate to have had all of this work done at a very low price and in super speedy time by a real aficionado of the aircooled VW. Mr van der Merwe, a thousand thanks to you; I shall be forever impressed by - and grateful for - your skills and knowledge.

All I have to do still is organise a new exhaust as the old one has rotted away. Summat to do on the upcoming weekend, I hope.


Thanks for the visit,
CooP

An ugly pair of bumpers

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso

I have been pretty daunted by the massive amount of work that is still to be done to prepare the body for paint. I have had two quotes by professional panel-beaters, each amounting to R35,000-00. Gulp. That's rather outside my meagre budget so it looks like I shall have to have a go myself.

I figured that I could start with summat small, like the wheels or the bumpers and see how it goes. If I cock it all up then there's no real harm done and it can be repaired by a pro later. A lot later. After I have saved up a mountain of cash. So there's the motivation anyway...

So it's bumpers - here is the pic that I took of the bumpers just after I removed them in August 2010 (2010? Geez this has been going on a bit, hasn't it?):

Pretty rough hey? They are scratched, dented, twisted, battered and generally quite rough; a bit like their owner. I have a lot to do here.


I started off by separating the bumpers into their individual parts and then sanding and wire-brushing them to remove the rust and loose paint. Despite a lot of bashes the metal seems to be in good condition and the rust is only on the surface. After a bit of thought I decided that I did not want to mount the spare wheel onto the front bumper in future - perhaps I'll stack it up on the rear roof-rack or a waist-high bracket stuck on the back. So the welded-on bracket was ground off and smoothed over.

There were many layers of paint which were cracked, worn and faded so I chose to strip it all off of the face sections; those "inside" parts that are out of sight will just be sanded down and primed.

Seems that the old man did some damage to a lot of kerbs and trees, potholes and pedestrians before I inherited this old thing! We got busy with some borrowed panel-beating hammers, sandpaper and wire brushes.

I dug out the mounting brackets from the store. I had cleaned these up previously and given them a lick of good enamel paint. I was also happy to find a selection of brand new mounting bolts and bits which I had forgotten about. Joy, that's one less immediate expense to worry about thanks to my unusual pro-activity! 

So I have loosely assembled them to check for obvious major flaws and missing bits - all looking good so far.

Next jobs will be to fill the few minor dings and scratches that remain, then to bang on a primer coat.

Thanks for stopping by
CooP

Got ya covered

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the things you did.
Mark Twain

We managed to remake the door cards by tracing a combination of the two existing - rotten - ones onto some new hardboard, then cutting off all the bits that didn't look like door cards. It took quite a bit of fiddling and sawing and filing and sanding and drilling and swearing but we managed to make two perfect replicas of the door cards.

We cleaned up the other plywood interior panels which were fitted by Westfalia in Germany, 44 years ago. They were never covered by anything besides a thin coat of varnish and looked presentable in their day I suppose. But not suitable for the new look that I am planning.

I have been saving up for a while to get a new step done in this s-l-o-o-o-o-w process. This one was not urgent really, but it was fun. And one that involved very little participation from me. Have a gander at the photos below and lemme know what ya think.

(click the pics to enlarge)

Soooo...the job done was not brilliant, nor was it quite to my specification and requirements. But the price was reasonable (I am still on a really tight budget here) and the guy was nearby so it it was convenient. I am not going to recommend him as it appears that he has gone bankrupt - quelle surprise.

Never mind - the colours are just what I wanted, the padding is delicious and the "napa leather" vinyl has a lovely feel to it. Over-all I am pretty pleased with it. Another step completed on an increasingly long road.

Thanks for visiting - next time I hope to have some news on engine upgrades and tuning improvements

TTFN
CooP

Eureka!

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso

Tonight we persevered with the hunt for the elusive idle. And tonight we found success!

My patient friend and fellow enthusiast brought over three-quarters of his own engine from his (smooth-running) beach buggy so that we could swap out the parts one by one and find the problem. And it turned out to be the manifold, specifically an additional outlet pipe supposedly meant to operate part of an automatic gearbox. Which I have never had. But this pipe presumably went somewhere at one time, now just went forward to towards the front of the bus and stopped, open-ended. Good grief!

Not only have we seen this this pipe before but we have carefully reconnected it without question on each of the times that we have checked, tested, even removed the engine completely! Amazing that we simply never wondered where it went nor what it could used for. So chopped the tip off the handle of my wooden spoon, bunged it into the end of the pipe and clamped it tightly. 

Surprise surprise, the engine immediately settled into a smooth idle after re-starting and easily maintains the idle whether hot or cold. Now that it is not gulping great, uncontrolled lumps of air it seems to be working beautifully. A trip around the block shows that she runs with a lot of power, considering the 44 year age and the all the new weight she carries around the middle.

Whew, a struggle taking many months is finally over. Time to move on to new challenges.

Thanks for the visit :)
CooP

No time to be idle

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.
Robert Burns

Tonight we continued with the seemingly endless search for a steadily idling engine. We stripped down the replacement carburettor that was kindly donated by Marius' dad. Despite it being in superb condition, and having worked perfectly in the source engine, it still wouldn't allow Marigold's engine to maintain a steady idle speed.

So we stripped it down to all it's component parts and cleaned every bit of it until it was spotless. We reassembled the whole and carefully refitted it. And all of a sudden . . .

. . . nothing happened. She starts easily and revs it up nicely if you keep pumping the accelerator. But still no smooth idle. No matter how carefully we adjust and set all of the variables it makes no difference. Aaaargh!

I can't shake the feeling that we are missing something obvious.

Till next time, in frustrated confusion...
CooP