Signs of Life

My suspicions that something was 'not right' with my diagnostics proved true.

I decided that the best way to test was a fuel pressure gauge, which had been on order since Christmas. I'll say this for JEGS: they might be Chevy/GM/Mopar centric, but they got that 60 psi VDO pressure gauge to me pronto. So I hooked it up and, with 40 lbs of pressure in the fuel ring, tried starter.

Nothing. And the 3/4 injector bank was disconnected so I should have soaked the left side of the engine with fuel. Conclusion: either the injectors are gummed solid, or they are not having a signal sent from the ECU to trigger them. I pulled off the connector on the #4 (left rear) and hooked up my test lamp.

Sidebar: Why a test lamp? Why not a meter? Wouldn't a meter be more accurate? Sure it would, if the voltage signal stayed around long enough for the slow LCD display to register the change in voltage. But I didn't care presently about whether the amount of voltage was correct, but merely that it was THERE. A lamp is much preferred for this, as it can light and be seen by the naked eye much faster than an LCD display or even a meter can register. An LED is best, as it is almost instant on: no warm up time for the filament; but watch your polarity or you'll cook it. Unless you're trying to see injector pulses when the vehicle is idling, stick to a dumb incandescent bulb; its fast enough.

With the test lamp in place, I cranked the engine over and got nothing from the test lamp. I reviewed my service manual (Bentley) and discovered that ALL of the injectors must be disconnected, or the resistor pack will soak up your charge (which isn't much anyway) and won't even light the lamp. I disconnected the rest, praising and cursing the injector designer by turns; they are very robust, yet don't want to come off very easily when they need to release. With all four off...cranking caused the lamp to light rhythmically.

So here's what we know:

• The fuel regulator and pump pressurize the fuel ring to 40psi, which is correct. 
• All of the injectors are in good conditionally electrically. No ground faults through the body.
• Despite power at the connectors and good fuel pressure, the injectors will not spray fuel.

Therefore: The injectors, all of them, are clogged.

Having come to this conclusion, I wanted  to trace down one more peculiarity: why didn't the cold start injector open. There was pressure, there was power, and the cold start injectors is even lower tech than the standard injectors: it is pretty much just a spigot which pees fuel into the intake plenum for a set period of time when cold. Why didn't the cold start injector provide some fuel?

After reviewing all of the particulars, I discovered that the red/white wire on the starter (which, when energized, powers the cold start injector) has been removed...by me. Hey, who knew? There are TWO red/white wires, same gauge, both leaving this junction. Disconnecting the other one would have merely disabled the cab fan motor.

So with that hookup restored, and all of the other components back in place, I switched the key on, closed the starter switch.

The engine turned over and coughed several times, trying to start!

Hot dog! There's life in the old guy yet. Having made the commitment about a $300 stopping point to test the engine's ability to run, I promptly used up 1/3 of those monies and bought 4 new GP Sorensen injectors and 4 new copper resistor plugs. I'll replace the Bosch injectors and plugs, and we'll try this dance again. I wonder if I'll get away with re-lighting the engine with only an oil change, tuneup and injectors? Wouldn't that be sweet!

Since I had run out of things I could do on the engine (for lack of replacement parts) I used the time productively to go peek under the vehicle: This bus has the BA6 gas fired heater between the front and rear crossbeams, bang-slap in the middle of the vehicle. This whole boxed in area is covered with a corrugated steel plate that protects the heater's body from flying debris that might compromise it. That steel plate had to come off, both so that I could evaluate the state of the heater, but also just to evaluate the state of the body! The plate is put on before the factory undercoating is sprayed on, so all of the metal in this cavity is unprotected other than by a thin skiff of primer. THIS would tell me what condition the vehicle was in.

There a some ten or so bolts that have to come off, and with the aid of PB Blaster and a 4 foot cheater pipe placed over a ratchet and 13mm socket, I coaxed 9 of 10 bolts to come out after having been corroded in place for thirty five years. But that last character wouldn't yeild. It turned, but the bolt neither backed out, nor did the head twist off; it just spun in place. So I took it off with an air powered side cutter.

CLANK! And the cover plate was off for the first time ever. Well, it wasn't that bad. Surface rust but quite tolerable. And most importantly, there was no penetrating rust anywhere. So now I have a better view of where that Fellows Speed Shop style radiator is going to have to go. And I have no idea how I'm going to put it in a place that small....

Reverting to Normal

Entropy increased. I was being too productive on this project, and the Cosmic Pranks and Pratfalls department noticed and intervened. Two weeks ago, my wife and daughter were in a serious head-on collision in our 2008 Scion xB. Kyrie Eleison, no one was seriously injured. Belt bruises only. But that put me back in crisis management mode. Take care of things at home, take care of the paperwork with insurance,  research, shop for, evaluate and purchase a new car. (The research and evaluate parts are ones that I won't stint on, as they are the only thing that has saved me from expensive mistakes.) Obviously this all takes priority over the Bus, and quite thoroughly wrecked my time-table for a running solution by Christmas.

So, having put the new vehicle on the road and otherwise having slid past the crisis with only bruises to show, I must now re-factor my schedule as Christmas is, well... tomorrow.

The 'revised schedule' has been altered to 'situational' rather than a date. This is because I can't guarantee any sort of time table of my availability to work on it because of horrors like this accident coming rolling down the mountain and smashing my timetables flat. But there needs to be some cut-off so here it is: Money, not time. I have, from this point, $300 to get the Type4 engine running or walk away from it and start directly on the subaru conversion. This cost is for parts, not tools. (So a generic fuel pressure meter doesn't count against it, as it has other applications, but weirdie volksflammermechanik unique to this engine DOES count as it is as much sunk cost as any of the parts that I will buy to put on the engine.)

So prior to being rudely interrupted by almost having my wife and daughter die in a car accident, I had purchased a quartet of 6 ton jackstands and with some quite awkward struggling, got Ferdinand up on to them at their full extension: 24 glorious inches underneath the vehicle, which is 80% arm extension length when I'm on a mechanic's roller. The struggling was because my 3 ton jack, and beefy as it is, only has an extension of 18" vertical. So I did things in two steps: Get all four corners up on the stands, at the 18 inch lift.  Now the tires are nicely off of the floor. Slide the ATV jack (which has a pair of skids eight inches apart) under the tire and lift. The additional extension of the ATV jack afforded by lifting from the bottom of the tire rather than from the bottom of the body, did the trick. 24 inches, free and clear. 

Once up on the stands, I discovered that the only practical way to work on the engine from the top hatch was to stand on a chair behind the Bus, supporting my weight on my gut so that my arms are free to reach in. Very awkward, and made more awkward my unfamiliarity with the design of the engine.

I put the AFM battery on charge, and then went to work on replacing the points. Remember I said that they're in front of the rotor shaft? I need a third hand to hold the mirror. Tried access by the top hatch and I have to reach 'back' to get to it. Very, VERY awkward. Got the screw back into the breaker plate through the points after 10 minutes of futzing with it and couldn't thing of a time when I'd ever had so much trouble on a Beetle engine. Set the gap to 0.45mm, put everything back together, turned the key to run and turned over the engine with my foot switch. Nada. Pulled off the coil wire, held it near a ground point and did it again. Zap-zap-zap-zap....right in rhythm. So...fire.

This puts the onus back on the fuel. And I am starting to suspect that either the injectors are not getting juice, or whether they are getting juice or not, they are glued shut by varnish.

Now I struggle to imagine that ALL of the injectors would be glued shut. So there SHOULD be some fuel getting in from at least one, which should be enough to cause the engine to cough with a partial ignition. But in the spirit of due diligence, I pulled the resistor pack, left hand injector bank (since I'm new at this engine design) and the double relay, took them inside and measured resistances.

Resistor pack came in at 4.7 Ohms, and the injectors came in just over 2 Ohms. Something ain't right here, because all of that is dead on. No shorts to the body in the injector windings. I tested the double relay within my ability to do so with a meter. Fine, though certainly not conclusive. Only way to test that conclusive is in the vehicle.

I have started to suspect that I have missed something with the double relay. Is it possible that there is a connection that isn't configured correctly? Not connected or possibly corroded. That is one of the things that just kills me about this EFI design: it is not as ruggedized as modern systems, as if it was enough to just get it running in the lab, but never test it in the field when it would want to corrode itself.

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.)