What have I done....

Well, proof positive that I have lost my mind. I am throwing caution, prudence, and conservatism to the wind, and trusting this thing called 'community' to get me through a full rebuild on a vintage engine that NO ONE wants to touch.

There is a real possibility that I'm going to flush a bucket of cash down the toilet, "drop the baby", do it wrong, miss a step. But here I am, out on the edges of my experience again, pushing up against the unknown and hoping I don't take a wrong step and blow a lot of cash on my own hubris.

The old hands on thesamba.com have convinced me that I can do this with the help of Tom Wilson's "How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen Aircooled Engine", the official Bentley shop manual, and Johnny Muir's Compleat Idiot book, plus majority assistance from the community. Rick Higgins

The deed is done. One head and cylinders off.
The case internals are now compromised to the environment.
There is no going back now.

I should place more trust in the community. it is rather a whacky thing, and often an echo camber of unreliable information. But I'm going to have to make the leap of faith and hope that they don't drop me.

Lots of things can go wrong:

• Vendor parts can be junk or 'not as advertised' or not to spec. 
• The community can abandon me partway through the process and leave me with a box of parts and no way to know how to reliably put them back together.
• The print resources (Wilson, Bentley, Higgins, Muir & Muldoon) all cover different sections in ferocious detail. Wilson and Bentley have specs, Higgins has video but skips steps in interest of time (and its still a three hour video.) Muir offers practical observations but they are tempered by procedural advice that is forty years out of date.
• Most of all, as Steve Kent (aka Merlin the Wrench) of Sacramento, California says, "Type 4 engine parts can go NLA while you're on the phone ordering them."

Apparently none of this matters to me, because I'm charging ahead anyway.

I contacted Vince's Auto Repair in Clementon, NJ as they have a machine shop and my father has a pre-existing relationship with them. When I asked for a quote to have two gears pressed off of the crankshaft and have the engine case hot-tanked (to get it scrupulously clean) I was met with what I can only describe and nervous caution. They would need to see the parts, see how bad the case was, etc. etc. Which surprised me. I'm given to understand that a hot-tank job ought to run about $25, and be a cash and carry sort of event. Pressing two gears off? This isn't even machining...yet.

Frankly, this is the kind of nonsense with which I expect to be met at every turn. "We don't work on those."

What...like it might ruin your reputation?

Suck the Oxygen out of the Room....

I completed the teardown of the engine mantling last night, and went to bed feeling a bit sick.

Here's what I found, and why I felt queasy:

Great Ceasar's Ghost! Poo, Everywhere! No the mouse kind, the engine kind. If I understand what I'm seeing correctly, each one of those arrows (with the possible exception of the bottom one) represents a place where the engine overheated, and lost compression, allowing exhaust gasses to leak out at the points on the arrow, thus the mess. It is possible that since these appear the be the original heads, this is just what a tired engine with 167k on it looks like.

Similar mess on the 1/2 cylinder side. But look at that yellow arrow; does that plug seem a bit high?

I pulled the #2 plug (to the right) and it took 11 turns to disengage the long reach threads. The plug on the left had the threads buggered and would hang up after about four turns. So now I must pull the heads to inspect the valves and if they are marginal (probably) replace the whole head. if by some miracle they are ok, I'll still need to timesert the #1 thread bore.
This brings up the very real possibility that the top end of this engine, while run-able, may be too tired out to justify putting back into service, only to expect to have it fail permanently within a couple of hundred miles of use. Since the R&R of the engine is a multi-week process (yes, my time is that spare) I don't see how I can justify putting these heads back into service if the valves don't check out. And somehow, I can't imagine that after 167k miles that they will.

Still...

The cold compression is:

Cylinder #3 100 psi
Cylinder #4 150 psi
Cylinder #2 100 psi
Cylinder #1 120 psi

These are not bad numbers considering the age and circumstances. But when this engine gets hot (425F at the head end) and that goo liquifies again, do I suddenly have a huge compression leak? Probably. At right is a reference photo taken from Richard Atwell's ratwell.com site. This is what happens when the stock cylinder head gasket gives up the ghost. This does look REALLY familiar.

So it is not impossible that I was up a creek the moment I bought the bus and didn't know it. But I had already told myself that even if I had to replace the whole engine, I was moving forward with the project. Therefore, I have no excuse.

I started shopping the Usual Suspects for head replacement. I knew it would not be cheap. Here's what I found:

• Gowesty AMC New, Unmodified $423 each
• Bus Depot AMC New, Unmodified  $524 each
• German Supply AMC New, Unmodified  $586 each
• German Supply AMC + SS Valves + Ground Keepers $696 each
• German Supply AMC + SS Valves + 3 Angle Grind + Ground Keepers $777 each
• Bus-Boys AMC New, Unmodified  $450 each
• cip1 AMC New, Unmodified  $550 each
• Wolfgang International AMC New, Unmodified  $429
• GermanSupply AMC Upgraded $1597 ($799 each, sold in pairs)
• Headflow Masters, AMC + keepers +seats +valves +guides: $825 each 

As you can see, the cost slews wildly by almost as much as 40%! For the same new, unmodified product! When you get in to modifications to this head (great casting, but terrible seats, guides, and valves) that's when I can see different companies being able to differentiate themselves. But seriously.... 40% based on vendor?

I chucked my info up on to itinerant-air-cooled.com and thesamba.com to see what my peeps there had to say. The comments were not encouraging. Heads at a minimum, probably Pistons & Cylinders, too. And make sure I get the case exterior scrupulously clean before I disassemble the heads. If I have to do the Piston's and Cylinders, I also have to get into measuring deck height, calculating compression ratio and adding shim rings that the base of the cylinders to make sure they're the same height and the same compression ratio. And raise the deck only enough to clear the Piston.

Thank God I bought Tom Wilson's How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine twenty years ago.

I have a feeling that it is going to get the greatest workout of my ownership.

More cleanup

The floor has measles! Its just Corroseal, which converts
surface corrosion to magenetite.
Now the floor is as sealed as I can
get it before loading carpet in.

Well, I'm away from work for three days for work and non work related excuses. But I got some nice stuff finished, and wanted to share:

I spent a lot of time scrubbing the cab floor down to wear off the majority of the rust where it had become a problem around the seat hold down fittings. Plus nicks and spots all over. Since these problems are still small, I want to address them now rather than having to weld later. That and I want the mess sorted before I put the interior in.

I also took seriously the need to use a self-catalyzing primer on the rusty stamped belly pan. I'm not especially concerned about making it pretty, just durable. If it looks good too, that's just a bonus.

In the case of the stamped pan, it would have difficult to make it worse. And I got to use up some old paint, too.

The top and the bottom of the pan needed primer and top coat. I didn't need to spend extra money on new paint, so I re-used some old lacquer based paint to topcoat with. Why not? It is never going to be seen unless the pans are off for maintenance.

This gives me a nice tough underbelly to protect the gasoline fired heater with. (This is assuming I keep it. I may not, since the earlier heat exchangers that I am retrofitting in should completely remove the need for augmented heating. But I'm keeping my options open.

Bottom, covered with primer and undercoat.

Not surprisingly, I'm quite pleased by this. Because these two items are so toughened, they can go out in the weather now and stay there instead of taking up space in my garage. Which is yet more swing space for me to work inside.

The bottom of the splash pan is an almost
flat black rhino hide.

The forthcoming matters of urgency are these: 

• I want the upholsterly off to the trimmer, but we are still negotiating price and products.
• I am at a stand still with the engine, since I didn't want to start taking it apart until I had all of the pieces to put it back together. Many of these are the tins that are compatible with the older heat exchangers that I am using. If the purpose is to make this engine run, as long as the tins may be installed after installation, then this should not be allowed to be blocking.
• All of the fixed window stampings have been cleaned up, de-rusted and then re-sealed. So it is time to buy gaskets to reinstall the side windows.
• Reinstall fuel tank and filler, which I have neglected because the tank, when completely hooked up, is paralyzed in place, shot through with restraints at five different places (filler, output, return, and two vents.)
• Reinstall the fuel loop including fuel pump, filter and inlet side of loop.
• Reinstall the firewall.
• Reinstall the ECU and the 'paint can lid' access panel.



The inside of the front splash pan looks
foppish in the metalized paint.

• Remove the Throttle valve assembly and clean it up to the best of my ability.

The reason for the increasing urgency is the show season is upon me. Not that I expect to get the bus running by show season. Ha! Not at this rate! But certainly I want to know what parts I need to source so that I can be on the prowl for them at swap meets.

Any Color You Like

I'm finally moving forward again with the trimmer for rebuilding all of the seats and recovering them. We spent a pleasant evening on the phone discussing foam densities, piping and general availability of the colors that I want. He a great guy, and I hope to see him prosper. We need more like him in the business.

In that vein, I've spent some time with a fantastic online app called Color Scheme Designer that lets even a dummy plunk in a thematic color and then, through the magic of software, see all of the variant schemes of colors that go with it to generate a cohesive look. You can buy a color wheel at an art store, but it is a pretty non-precise tool. CSD is a very precise tool, so that you can easily see triads, tetrads, monochromics, analogics and even accented analogics. When you're done tweaking, it can generate the data in many delightful ways that you can then take across the street to a shop and say "that color" with reasonable precision.

Now I would try to grade a priceless work of art with one of these kinds of tools. They're good to get you into the ballpark. But if you already know what some of the unchangeable colors are, and you need to quickly narrow down what your choices are for compliments, accents, and analogs, This is a great tool. Try and enjoy. I guarantee you'll waste at least five minutes playing with it just to see what it can do and how it works.

The two colors unlikely to change soon are the primary color on the Bus (Senegal Red) and
the color of the carpet I've chosen: Dark Chocolate. Nosiree. Not budging. So for the inside, I left the Red out of the equation and just concentrated on colors that would sync nicely with the Dark Chocolate carpet. I had two colors to pick: The vinyl edging for the seats, and the fabric material for the seat faces. I intended it to go nicely from a very dark color near the floor (where the dirt lives) up and up getting lighter as it goes, until visually, you 'hit the ceiling' which is white.

So I plugged in the dark brown and twiddled nobs and dials and here's what I have:

Carpet

Vinyl Edging and Seatbacks

Seat Facing

Perhaps this doesn't look right to you. That's ok. Everyone's monitor stinks. I checked this again three different monitors I know that are calibrated, so this actually does look 'right.'

For those of you having difficulty with the imagining, here's something a bit more literal:

So above is the color study for the bus interior. To the right is the Bus in its present primary color.

Now I say present color because I never was a fan of red. It is an attention getter and I'm not sure I want the attention. This is the golden bit for the CSD app listed above: By having it generate a color palette that has lots of compatible undertones, the bus could be repainted several different colors, including my favorites: Glasurite L630(07) Cobalt Blue, and L66B(60) Deep Sea Green. How do I know? I tested it against those colors. This really tickles me because it lets me grapple with the visualization problems without blowing my mind, and it leaves my options open to change the color of the vehicle later I choose to.

A complete breakdown of all of the colors in the triad (top row)
and two secondary color schemes that would be compatible with
the first scheme. This is much easier that just thinking, "brown would be nice."

So soon, I'll make my choices, pays my money, and hand the seat skeletons over to Vinyl Creations so they can be made beautiful. I have a dollar figure in mind. $1000 

We'll see how close he can hit that.

Tanks for the laughs

Three big jumps forward, despite being sick as a dog for four days.

The first kicker is that the fuel tank is finished up. As in, all of the parts necessary to reinstall are at hand and test fitted.

All parts in place, and easily visualized into place.

VW part on right, replacement Mercedes part on left.

This includes a very special part, that hose junction between the metal filler and the tank. The original is NLA, and back in 2007/2008, some German Bulli (Bus) enthusiasts came up with a solution: A replacement part made by Mercedes for the 2003 Sprinter: part 9014760026 

In 2010, a member of that German forum posted the solution on thesamba.com here in the USA. 

In turn, I did the legwork to run down the Dodge part # that it is commonly sold under here in the States. So now anyone who needs a replacement can buy this Dodge part 5119668AA  for $14 (at the time of this writing) from their Dodge Dealer.