Kettering and Company

Moving the bus into the garage was like stuffed 10 lbs of baloney into a 5 lb bag. But it is in there now, and after spending some time catching up with my family and at work, I am back puttering on the bus.

The dilemma now appears to be that the ignition system is either shot from neglect and corrosion, or the engine is completely miss-timed and I'm going to be up a creek getting it re-timed. I don't intend to touch the timing until I have exhausted all other solutions.

Last night, I put the right rear up on jack stands and dug around to hook up the manual starter lead. Despite a working over with a pressure washer, the underside is still quite dirty and I got a mouthful of grit to remind me to keep my mouth closed as well as to invest in a new set of jack stands, preferable ones that will put the bus UP far enough (24 inches is my target) that I'll have a chance to dodge falling dirt rather than wearing it.

Having got that hooked up, I realized that working on this engine is going to be a completely different experience than the Beetle: everything is IN that cavernous engine compartment. And you either have to crawl halfway in with it, work through the top hatch, or invest in an inspection mirror. At $2, I'll be investing in the mirror.

Anyway, I powered up the ignition, pulled the coil HT lead off, cranked the engine over while holding (insulated) the lead near engine tin that was exposed. Orange spark. So either not a lot of juice getting to the coil, or the coil is shot. I noted that there was a rhythmic jump to the spark, so the points probably work.

Then I looked at the points. Ugh. Corroded, and raggedy looking. and since the points are in front of the rotor shaft ("Front is Front," a common reminder when working on rear-engines) I can't see them open and close. Thus the need for an inspection mirror. So I decided to pull the #4 plug....and discovered that I couldn't get enough leverage to get the boot off. You can't pull straight up from the top hatch, and you're pulling perpendicular to your greatest strength when pulling up from the rear hatch.

I could buy a bunch of tools that I might use once to analyse this problem and get things running...but I'm trying to do the diagnostics on this engine to get it rolling on a shoe string, or discover quickly that it is permanently dead so that I can get on with the conversion to Subaru power. But either way, I want the engine running or proclaimed dead by Christmas. There, I just put a stake in the ground. Christmas.

So buy the bits that you must have to do the diagnostics in a timely manner, like those tall jack stands, inspection mirror (which is a duplicate for one I have, and have mislaid.) I'm also going to have to figure out how in the world I'm going to disconnect those plug wires, and then not lose the socket down the hole. (The mantling over the engine sits a long ways from the top of the spark plug. These engines are reputed to 'eat' sparkplug sockets.)