Guessed right the first time!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Matt Steedle is a hell of a good transmission guy.

So after reviewing my gear ratios which I brought with me when delivering the 091, he gave me a slow head shake and said, "I'll build whatever you want: you're the one who's paying. I'll just say that based on what you described wanting, this gear ratio won't give you that."

I was stunned. After all of the work I'd put into the gear selection (dropping to a .70 for 4th gear, which would give me 65mph at 2700rpm, the same as the donor Impreza the engine came from) hearing that it was a bad selection was kind of demoralizing. So I asked and Matt replied, "The .70 will work on the flat. The moment you come to a hill, you're going to find yourself back in 3rd gear, and based on your 3rd gear choice, you're going to be spinning the engine like a dynamo. You're trying to stretch things out to artificially get the numbers to match the Impreza. I know they weigh the same, but the Bus had an enormous amount of wind resistance by comparison and your gearing doesn't take that into account."

I finally saw what he was getting at. My EJ22 NA Impreza engine makes 145HP, about twice what the original Type4 engine did on its better days. But without gear ratios (both individual gears, as well as the big Ring & Pinion) that produce a similar final drive ratio (which includes the diameter of the tires!) there was never going to be a smooth set of gearing for the 091. Not only that, Weddle Racing is the only USA source making gears for the 091, and those gears are meant either for racing, or for Sand buggies which make heavy use of the 091 because it is very robust. As a result, while you get a variety of Weddle gears, they are expensive and meant for the sudden, heavy loads of drag strip or sand, not for consistent, long hauling. They're good; they're just meant for a different application.

So what do I have now? Well, a stock 1977 Bus with an 091 manual (which may have a different transmission or gearing than your Bus has!) is geared like so from the factory:

1st: 3.78:1 / 2nd: 2.06:1 / 3rd: 1.26:1 / 4th: .82:1 // 4.57:1 Ring & Pinion. // 185r14C tires (special tires, but have a diameter of 25.7)

Using Richard Atwell's formula, I'll fill in my correct variables (if you want KPH, change 336 to 210):

MPH = RPM * TIRE DIAMETER / GEAR RATIO / Ring&Pinion / 336
65MPH = 3300 x 25.7 / .82 / 4.57 / 336

Lovely! Only one problem: While 65 MPH may be John Law approved, driving a reputedly slow vehicle in 2017 at 65mph is bound to attract the kind of attention you don't want. So with the engine and transmission package going back in as stock, I've got to get a better final drive.

At Matt's suggestion, I returned to bigger tires: 27x85R14C (orLT). These are only made by a few manufacturers but are popular for VW offroaders. I had run this size of tire in 1992 when I lived in Oregon and Washington and ran them (BF Goodrich) on my 1971 Deluxe Bus. So I have some experience with them: great off road, but noisy with poor traction in the rain on the highway. (After 6000 miles of highway on them, I felt like I knew what they could and couldn't do safely.)

Today the tires of choice in that size are the General Grabber AT2, which has all of the benefits and hazards of the classic BFG I ran 25 years ago. But at Colin Kellogg's (Itinerant Aircooled) suggestion, I've decided to use the same tire that he uses on all of his buses for 80% onroad / 20% offroad: The Maxxis 751 Bravo. The Man did Death Valley in them and the rest of the country to boot. Because Colin has been good enough to share his experience, I'll have a decently mannered road tire (and the spare, which will be in regular rotation) and be able to meet my target of 65MPH @ 3300 (good for flatland and passes without downshifting) and 75MPH @ 3700 for when the traffic around me gets pushy. Viva la Itinerant Aircooled! Viva la Matt Steedle! Viva la Comunidad!

It is more complicated than that...

The first job is to take it all apart again.
No! I have not lost my marbles! I've actually got two purposes for this apparent lunacy.

1. I don't have all of the details in my head of how it went together, and there is too much left undocumented between times that I took photos and annotated them. So I need to get my groove back. Take it apart and put it back together again is actually a pretty cheap way of doing that.
2. I'm pulling the engine and the 091 transmission as a package. That's right: together. The Bentley shop manual recommended pulling the Type4 engine and the transmission together...why not this? The purpose isn't so much to take the engine out for fun and put it back in again just to see how fast I can make the parts line up again. The major reason I'm doing this is simple: I'm exploring having the 091 regeared.

Why for regeared? Because as described a few years ago in Top Gears, the torque and horsepower curve of the Subaru EJ22 NA engine is grossly WRONG for mimicking a 2.0L Type4. All of your shift points are in the wrong place and too close together and your cruise rpm will be stupidly high on the EJ22 when they don't have to be. The other challenge is that from 1968 to 1979, there were several transmission variants: The 002, the one year only 1975 002 'pyramid', and the late 091 that later morphed into the 094 that was used in the Vanagon.

Just because the transmission model stayed the same for a few years didn't mean that the gearing did. The Ring & Pinion gear (which controls the final drive ratio for all gears) changed several times across the three different transmissions, and the 4th gear changed as well. All of this was based on the changing torque and Horsepower from different engines over those years: Starting with a 1.6L single port engine, then 1.6L dual port, then the Type4 1.7L, then the 1.8L, then finally the 2.0L. All of these engines had different emissions accessories even if their displacement was the same and gearing within the transmission changed convulsively to make the most out of the meager power that was available from the engine.

So while a few model years kept the same transmission ratios, it is actually pretty rare when the engine power output stayed the same to produce the same driving experience. This is why regearing should be considered. Of all of these transmissions, the late 091 is probably in the best position to be used without regearing...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Why bother spend the dough? The EJ22 can take being run faster than designed, right? Consider this piece of fortune-cookie philosophy: Just because you can do it, doesn't always mean you should do it. Every extra revolution on that crankshaft is one less that the engine has to give during its lifespan. Would you sprint flat-out all of the time just because you had good cardio? When you're mowing the lawn, walking the dog, shopping for groceries, etc? Of course not. Every revolution is wear and tear, on every moving part, even the external parts: belts, injectors, IAC, alternator, etc.

I've been consulting with Matt Steedle, a local transmission builder who is really doing some amazing work in the Subaru to VW world. (He does lots of makes of transmissions including the Subarugears, and comes highly recommended nationally.) I took my 091 to him and we had a long talk over what I wanted to do with the Bus. (This is always a good sign to me: It means my vendor is trying to find out what my goal is so that they can help me reach the goal, not just upsell me every goodie they can load on. Whether someone is selling washing machines or excavation equipment that should always be their first question: What is your use case? How often? How hard do you plan to run it? If they don't start with those questions, or unless you are an expert in the field already and know exactly what you need, hold on to your wallet or go somewhere else.) Some Subaru/VW friends like to put taller gears on just 3rd and 4th, some prefer to do that plus the Ring and Pinion, and many variations thereof, including the addition of a Limited Slip Differential. That's because each of them have different needs: One wants to crawl rocks, another is running a monster Subaru Franken-engine and likes to fly through the gears like he's using the shifter to crack a whip. (0-90mph in nothing flat and I just about soiled his new upholstery: It was like being strapped to the front of a rocket sled like an Aztec sacrifice!)  Everyone wants something different. So everyone needs to make different decisions about what gear ratios are going to scratch their itch.

Me? My requirement is just this: Drive...and don't even think about it. No jack-rabbit starts (it's a Bus for Pete's sake!) and no ball-bustin' burnouts. No sleeper stunts. Just breeze around town, pick up the kiddies, Sunday School picnics (not quite, but almost), occasional camping, and occasional runs to move several sheets of plywood or stacks of drywall for friends. Looong cross-country drives, where you just climb up through the gears as you enter the Interstate and then stay in 4th and not think about it. Sure, a 5 speed Subarugears unit would be nice. Put a 3x multiplier on the cost of the transmission and it isn't THAT nice. In short, reliability and as smooth as you can make the 091, considering what you're starting with: A truck transmission.

Looking from the mid-point of the Bus toward the rear. Engine and transmission
removed from the chassis. The bolts mentioned below hang the bell-housing
of the transmission from the chassis. (Pardon the wiring mess; it looks
worse than it was. Also note the CV joints disconnected from the trans,
bagged (to keep contaminants out) and suspended by coat hangers.

So two weeks ago (my birthday, it happened to be) I got out to the shop and said, "Hey Iron-Toe, ya old bastard: Let's rearrange your guts a little." As I began to work, I began to remember, and I was jotting down notes as I went. 2 hours and a pail full of swear words later, I had the bolts out.

091 Transmission separated from the engine and removed from under the bus to the side.
Note how relatively CLEAN it is. That's because it got a scrubbing and a bath before I installed it three years ago.
Most transmissions look like corndogs. Do your transmission professional a favor: take an hour to clean the
transmssion. They don't like to start with a greasy pig either. A little respect goes a long way.

So hilariously, I lugged the 091 down to Matt Steedle's place down in Atco, NJ and we spent about two hour jawing about VWs with each other. I showed him the gear ratios I wanted to run and...

The surprise of my life, next time.

Why I write this stuff...

I've been asked on more than one occasion why I write this stuff. Why do I bother? In short, who the hell are you to tell me what to do?

There are a list of answers for those questions-- a much larger list than there are questions. Before I share that list with you, let me correct the most aggressive one above:

Who am I to say what you should do?

It is a misunderstanding of the purpose of both the site and the VolksarU project generally. If you've read the whole blog, you'll have heard me mention on more than one occasion, "You can go to hell in your own way." I think that making your own mistakes is everyone's privilege. Still, when a large number of people have tackled the same problem and everyone discovers by trial and error that there are some basic principles which solve the same problem, it seems a shame to waste the collective wisdom.

In times past, that type of wisdom got written down in a central location that people could learn from, or became a oral tradition in the form of a cliche', such as "Chrome won't get you home..."

With the advent of the Internet, a million blogs, forums and etc., we have no central source for these observations, even if they don't necessarily rise to the level of wisdom. This means that we draw increasingly on un-compared data: Maria says it works, Max said it's crap, and there's no way to tell who's right or even what contexts their observations come from. Maria and Max may be trying to solve a similar problem in two different contexts, which is why they get different results. Maria's solution works and Max's doesn't...because Max is at sea-level and Maria is in Mexico City at 7300 ft above sea level. Those points of context are missed and so we just have another 'he said, she said' disagreement about observed phenomenon with the context missing.

So that's most of why I write: not just to tell you what I did while I worked this project. but to condense all of the research that I did to get to my answer so that you know my context.

Now if you want to write about your project too, let me forewarn you of some fears you'll have to conquer to document your project and show it to the world.

1. That you're not qualified to write this material.

You have chosen this subject, or it has chosen you. It is intimately tied up with your passions and your philosophy about how the world should work. That makes you as qualified as as any human needs to be to share their passion.

2. That you have nothing new to contribute to the world. 

If I thought that I had to say it better than anyone else, I'd never have started. Of course, you have something unique to say: You tell the story of the triangulation of you and your project and your context. That makes your story unique in the world.

3. That whatever form you're writing in feels too difficult.

Fear is the expected response in the face of something challenging and complex. If it were easy, you wouldn't become a better communicator by working through the process of recording and describing it all.

4. That you don't have enough time to write this stuff down; just doing it is hard enough!

If you are serious about this project, you will find a way to re-order your priorities and then cut out the unimportant things to make time to write it down. If you're not serious about the project (just the doing of it!) then you're not ready to do it, let alone write about it. Writing about it will let you find mistakes in your project that you can correct before you flip the switch; the benefit is both for you and for others. Writing down the details as you go also automatically generates a parts list for replacement, as well as a cost list

5. That you don't even know where the project is headed, even in the middle of it.

Keep taking notes and condensing them into descriptions and observations. Read back what you wrote and learn from it. ("Whoa, made a big assumption there! Better double check that!) You'll get better and faster at identifying and correcting mistakes, so fast that you'll correct them during planning or implementation, not after you've already built it.

6. That you're not a good enough writer to accomplish your goal.

None of us is good enough to finish a project when we start. I certainly wasn't qualified to do much of the restoration work I did on my 1972 Super Beetle when I started. By the time we finish, though, we have become competent by the practice of doing it. Not just the task...but the ability to describe it it others.

7. That no one will read you work.

Someone WILL read your work. Just get on with the story you are telling: the challenges, the setbacks, the triumphs, the lessons learned. Then trust that your creation will be found by people who need it the most and they will be grateful that you took the time.

8. That when this project is done, you will have exhausted all of your words and ideas.

Phooey. You might be temporarily exhausted by the end of the project and convinced that if you never write another word on the subject it will be too soon. Never fear! The more you write about your passions, the more it keeps your muse coming back. If you have the creative impulse to make something new or recover something old, you have the creative impulse to tell others about it. You might switch from VWs to restoring vintage lawn mowers (it could happen!) Having talked through the subject in a public forum, you'll be that much more practiced, more confident, and more capable talking about your new passion in a new forum. 

Bonus: People will appreciate you.

There will always be inevitable haters.You're writing on earth, not for the angels or for a crowd of completely rational, unemotional Vulcans. Mostly the haters will drop their turd-load on your work and then fly off, convinced they've 'shown you.' They rarely come around for another pass. Mostly the people who follow your work will do so (IF YOU DON'T GET ANYTHING ELSE, GET THIS!) because you're the only one out there doing it. Consider: How many times have you seen someone show 'before' and 'after' and leave out the three years in-between that actually tell you the story of how it all happened? You ask for advice, or details, or how-to...and get back either nothing, or the brush-off. 

When you describe the process you went through, especially when it was a learning process, SHARE! The sum total of knowledge in a community is made greater when people share. If you clutch your new skills and facts to your chest and either refuse to share out of some sense of pride (I figured it out...you figure it out!) or because you don't think anyone will listen to you for the eight reasons above, you are denying yourself recognition by your peers, and you are making your whole community poorer, too.

So share, and let's all get smarter together!

The Storm, and what came after

Those of you faithful enough to follow this blog have surely wondered if I'd ever post again, having gone silent for a year. Don't wonder any more: the worst of my crises have passed (my father passed, too, which was one of the crises.) I want this project rolling down the road, or at least the engine running in the driveway while I put the rest of the chassis back together.

By sheer providence, I was offered a way out of the job that has been slowly grinding me into paste for the last 13 years. I kissed off that hell-hole and my commute is now 24 feet from my bedroom to my office where I work from home for more money than when I commuted 24 miles through downtown stop-and-go to be beaten like a rented mule, verbally abused, and came home through a gawd-awful commute to merely collapse and do it again tomorrow. My new gig provides me easy sleep, a happy outlook, interesting work, and 14 hours a week LESS in commuting time and severe wear on my daily driver.
Frankly, I don't know what to do with myself, there's all of this extra time on my hands. I've got a 'honey-do' list my wife has taken pity on me and not dropped on my head and that needs work, but being back working on the Bus is on my own list. So I'm back in the saddle.

There are going to be four challenges to meet in the short term that will probably slow things down, one of which I never imagined.

1. It is winter, and my garage is unheated. Not to mention as drafty as a wicker basket. So progress is going to be slow while the weather warms up.

2. Garage: The dumping ground. My garage being mostly full of Bus has meant that my wife has used it as a dumping ground for everything that needs to be out of the house but can't go into cold storage in the shed (because that's full, too. Also on the honey-do list.) So a lot of stuff is going to have to shift, tools be regathered and re-sorted, and my working area put in order so that I can use it as a shop...instead of as dumpster style storage. Now that work has changed, I'll have the opportunity to put things right.

3. Um...I forgot. I work in High Performance Computing. (It pays, but not as much as you'd think.) One of the techniques for surviving this environment is to purge from your memory anything that you are not actively working on, so you can have all of the details of what you are working on fully at the mental tips of your fingers (to mix a metaphor.) That means that I've blown almost all of the ballast of everything that I have done for this project and actually have to re-read my own blog to re-acquaint myself with whatever cleverness or damn-foolishness I was planning. Even then, there will be a lot of lying under the Bus and scratching my head: "What the hell was I trying to do here....?" It is the only way to re-load the project so that it can be worked to completion.

4. The happy surprise, and how it changes things. When I started this, I presumed that I was going to be one of about 50 Type2s running around with Subie engines in the USA. Instead, the interest in Subaru conversions has absolutely shot through the stinking roof, no matter how the old tight-asses on thesamba.com have pooped on it. But it has spread far beyond Buses...Beetles, Ghias, pretty much anything that relied on the SoCal Aircooled scene to keep it supplied with running engine parts. Well, my predictions came true sooner that I ever expected: The low quality supply chain from China for parts has caught up with the Aircoolers and now many Vintage VW lovers are looking elsewhere for powertrains. I never expected to see things embraced so quickly. If anything, that means that I need to make VolksarU move forward faster than ever to head off hack-jobs. Again, I don't expect everyone to do things my way. "You can go to hell in your own way." Or you can follow where others have already broken ground. I intend to be breaking ground, not so much by just the choices that I make, but by COPIOUSLY documenting them for the benefit of everyone, and for the standardization of parts and processes.

So if you were wondering if I fell off the map and the project would never be finished, take heart. My wife demands that I finish it, and I don't mess with her. Her deal is: You start it, you finish it. So I'm very careful what I start.

I've also made a whole batch of friends online in the 24 months that this project languished while I took care of urgent family matters while trying not to die myself. Many groups have started on Facebook when thesamba.com made itself inhospitable. There are companies for conversion that didn't exist when I began. It is a very exciting time to be performing this conversion, but a lot of opportunities to be cheap and stupid and content with "It looks ok, let's go!" only to suffer catastrophe on the road. VolksarU is back in the game. Remember the motto: "Where U are part of the solution!"

A Pause for Station Identification..

Friends & Haters, (I attract a wide range of interested parties)

What the hell happened? Cruising along, making good progress on  the Subaru conversion, and then suddenly the line went dead. What happened?

Everything, all at once.

• The 'C' word: Shortly after my previous post (in July!) both of my parents, within weeks of each other, were each individually diagnosed with stage 4 cancers. Stages aren't a 'clock' for when you kick it: they just describe how advanced the cancer is and if it has jumped between body organs. My father is already a partial invalid who won't acknowledge his limitations, which makes him especially challenging.
  
• Kiddo troubles: I have two, and the elder has Autism. He has deep seated behavioral problems that are far worse than the Autism, and those have stalled his academic and maturing process. After a decade is a very good school system, he has proven so far beyond their abilities that we have had to move him to an institutional setting, though he lives at home. This is both heartbreaking and a great relief, as we aren't playing the game anymore that he is ever going to get or be better. His sister is heavily medicated for ADHD and behavioral, and while she is doing well in the school system, it is only by constant presence and reinforcement that she is progressing.
  
• Work troubles: We've all got them. In my case, I'm standing on the precipice of ageism in an industry where (unless you are a rare talent) 40 is old. I'm rare, but I'm not that rare. Even management admits that the volume of work we're running is extreme, so work is a place of intense stress. I'm also trying to find work closer to home due to the previous three issues.

• The reaper outside the door: We've had more friends, acquaintances and extended family either walk up to the chasm of death and lay their toes over the edge, or been snatched by the reaper, and we've been part of the support for the dying or the survivors.
  
• My own health: Not so good, and made much worse by severe stress, which you can see is the only thing I have in abundance. Possibly growing my very own hiatal hernia. Psych counselling to make sure that I don't collapse under the load already present.

In lieu of the bus, you can see that my dance card is full. Hell, I don't even have time to watch a lick of TV with my wife: I've given up all of my favorite programming because there hasn't been a 'day of rest' in half a year.

This does not mean that I have stopped (I haven't) or quit (bite your tongue!) or given up. (Say that again, and there will be blood.) I just don't have time to blog about every little scratch on the project. Here's the omnibus version:

• After going through electrical hell with what I was assured was a good battery, and having bought a new starter, second guessed all of my wiring..come back to find I have a bum cell that wasn't cause by the Autozone eval machine. $90 of new battery sorts that. The calculatus eliminatus process takes 10 weeks though, since I'm wading through everything else (see above) at the same time. The engine turns over.
• New Alternator belt 273k5 or 5pk0690.
• A new Blau fuel filler cap.

If it doesn't sound like much, you're right. It has been a heartbreak to watch others who started years after me out running around in their conversion having fun. When you try to make and document a conversion anyone can do, it is a much higher bar than just scratching your own itch. So I'm trying to give myself some grace there.

So that's where I'm at. What will 2016 bring? I've no idea. Never say, "Things can only get better." Bull. They can always get worse, too.

Instead I choose to say: Let's go see what's over that hill...

The Hose Knows

Working on a hybrid of 20 year old Japanese Subaru technology and 40 year old German Volkswagen technology in a metric hostile country can be maddening. Most of the time, you can get the parts that you need from a dealership...for the Subaru anyway, if you know exactly what part number you need. For doing an adaptation, you're going to need a specification list to know what sizes and types of hose you're going to need to buy.

Ordering by part number will improve your chances of it fitting a stock installation, but there won't be any information about the physical properties: Length, Inside Diameter, Outside Diameter, and material specifications (fuel, oil, EVAP vapors, coolant, etc.) If the part happens to be a hose and is No Longer Available (NLA), getting accurate measurements from one which has been in service for 20 years or more is often fruitless: Rubber shrinks as the volatiles in it leech out, so you can't be fully sure of the size of the hose you need. This is where you can really run the price of a conversion through the roof: having to buy one of everything, in every size, because you don't know what you need.

So even if you hit the jackpot and a molded hose is still available, that won't help you if your adaptation has rearranged the orientation of components the hose was meant to connect to. Then you must revert to using generic hose and determining its Inside Diameter by measuring the Outside Diameter of the fittings with a caliper. Once you've got a Metric measurement, convert to U.S. Customary (aka "Standard"), because for generic hose types, fractional inches are all your going to be able to find here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Pig-Headed.

Units of Measurement in the USA don't have a proper acronym. No, not SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) or even a simple 'Imperial.' The UK (from which 'USA Standard' is derived') standardized their weights & measures in 1824, and metrication begun in 1965 is still ongoing today. The United States is still doggedly and self-importantly stumping along on a system from the Middle Ages: A mongrelization of German tribal units and Roman units enforced on the English population by William the Conqueror after the Norman Conquest in 1066. 

My Country Tis' of... Nevermind.

This is what "traditional" hose for a vintage VW looks like after a year
of pumping 10% Ethanol. This is a wonderful way  to burn your Bus.

I'm going to toggle to fuel hose quality for a minute here, discussing both available sizes and fuel permeability (how much the hose 'sweats' fuel volatiles right through its skin which leads to degrading hose.)

If you're trying to use modern hose material available in the USA for your vintage VW, you'll probably run into the old school nuts who insist VW expects you to use the 'right' hose: In a Fuel Injected Bus you should be running the 7mm hose, since even the fuel hose is 'engineered' to stretch just the right amount to make a good seal around a slightly (.09mm!) larger fitting.

Let me just say this once: No vendor makes modern Fuel Injection safe, ethanol compatible fuel hose in 7mm. You can find them in the right size from overseas sources, but those hoses are not Fuel Injection pressure rated and allow gasoline in them to vent right through the hose walls about 33x more than modern hose.

How ironic that the more militant a vintage enthusiast is about the look and exacting size of a hose, the more likely they are to burn down their own Bus from using poor materials. (Passions run high on the subject of fuel hose.)

The sizing issue is partial hogwash. Yes, if you aren't careful, you can do something stupid and ruin your car. Put hose that is oversized for the fitting (because you are too careless to convert Metric to USA Standard) and the most monstrous hose clamp in the world won't keep it from leaking. Now add a third variable (Subaru fittings) and finding the right hoses for your adaptation can get complicated fast. I do pity the folks who need to use a 5.5mm hose: There is literally nothing on the market for them.

VW & Subaru prefer different standard metric sizes (VW: 3mm, 5mm, 5.5mm 7mm, 11mm // Subaru: Anything BUT the VW metric sizes.) What might be made to fit on the VW side still fits sloppy on the Subaru side. Or vice-versa. Regardless, you still have to go shopping in Fractional USA Standard measurements.

Depending on what you're putting through a hose, you can sometimes outwit this Machiavellian conundrum. I did one today: The brake booster. The Subaru side is 10.12mm at the fitting on the intake manifold. The VW side is 12.33mm on the fitting at the body that runs to the front of the vehicle and the vacuum booster. The fittings are on opposite sides of the vehicle.

Nota Bene: Hose, no matter what is transferred through it, should be chosen by specification for the job. Find out what you need and buy it. Don't use a 1/2" ID chunk of garden hose on your car because 'its what I had lying around the garage.' This line of thinking leads to disaster.

Yup. Maddening. Here's how I outwitted it:

The closest that I could get on the VW size to that 12.33mm is to convert to USA Standard, and then choose the next smaller size. In the case of the vacuum hose, forums like thesamba.com have been singularly unhelpful. No one seems to have an actual source for the power brake vacuum hose, or truly know what the material requirements are. I have had it recommended to me to re-use the 40 year old hose "because we know that works." Which is great...if you're doing a 40 point Concours Restoration. A brittle, 40 year old plastic hose of unknown material is not a smart bet for holding vacuum for another 10 years, let alone another 40. The old school mentality which used to decry form over function is now doing so in the name of 'we know it works.' This is a sign of dotage: All it really means is 'twenty years ago, we knew they still worked.'

So here's what I've learned: The properties of a hose designed for both vacuum and pressure are very similar: They tend to have thicker bodies, multiple layers, and spiral braiding. They also don't take well to tight radius turns due to their thick bodies. A thinner hose kinks; the thicker hose will just refuse to play.

So having measured your fittings, let's walk the math:

VW side fitting: 12.33mm x .03937 (converts to inches) = 0.4854321

Ugh. Decimal inches, the worst of both worlds.

Thank God for conversion tables. They include regularly spaced fractional equivalents, the only way most of the knuckle-draggers know how to sell things here in the U.S. of Pig-Headed. If I work my way down a chart, the first stop down below 0.4854321 which has a usable fractional equivalent is .46875, or according to my table: 15/32".

Mercy me! Gates just happens to make a 15/32" power brake vacuum hose. P/N GAT 27233

That does the VW side. Now I have to do the Subaru side of 10.12mm at the fitting.

Subaru fitting: 10.12mm x .03937 (converts to inches) = 0.3984244

Hmm. First stop down on the table yields the unlikely size of 25/64 (.39063"). Nobody sells anything in that size. But one very tiny stop down the table from that at .375" is dear old 3/8". In USA Standard, they sell everything from coffee to condoms in that size. But not power brake hose from Gates.

Still, finding heavily reinforced hose is not hard in a 3/8" size. You can get away with it in this case because the only thing the hose needs to contain is A-I-R. No concerns about material suitability for fuel, coolant, hydraulic fluid, etc. Yippy!

Nevertheless, you'll have to dig for it since your local franchise parts shops are unlikely to have what you need and because they want a make/model/year of your car, they have no way to look it up by specification, instead of by application. Requesting "Seven feet of 5/16" SAE30R14r2 fuel hose" is only going to earn you a dumb look. NAPA is often the only chain where you can order a part by its specifications, and it is still safer to walk in with a manufacturer name and part number than the raw specs. Local or online Speed Shops may be other places to buy by specification, even if you aren't interesting in building a racer: They're the only ones who still speak the language.

I'm just moving air: a brass adapter for the power brake
vacuum hoses isn't any problem at all.

In my case, I'm using PVC jacketed 3/8" ID reinforced rubber air hose, aka the stuff that's designed to take about 300PSI of pressure from your industrial air compressor. So I've got both the Subaru end licked, and the VW end. There's just one problem: The different size hoses still have to join up in the middle.

My solution was to use a brass fitting adapter: Male/Female threads in between with 3/8" male barb on one end and 1/2" male barb on the other. Screw those pair together with teflon tape and a dab of blue lock-tite, and you have an adapter for about 8 bucks. All told, I fabricated this unobtainium variable size hose built to take heavy vacuum and not fold up for about $24. I had about $80 of my TIME researching source material for it, which is frustrating. But my time is already spent and I've shared my results, so at least you shouldn't have to waste your time, too.

The adapter in place: 15/32" to the right of the adapter, 3/8" to the left back
to the intake manifold. NOTE: The 15/32" section is NOT bent: That is a
molded curve in that piece of hose. B/W picture because the PVC jacket on the 
air hose is exactly the color GREEN of a garden hose, and I don't want 
someone making a foolish assumption.

So what do I do about those little size mis-matches? The ones that the well meaning old school says will make my VW BURN if I try this with fuel hose? They object to a hose which isn't exactly undersized from the VW fitting than VW says it should be. Their assertion that stretching the wrong size rubber fuel hose will just split the rubber: leak, ignite, burn. This remains true now...if what you're using is just Continental Brand cloth weave covered rubber hose, just like grand-dad used on his VW.

Today we're using different types of hoses which have a fluoro-elastomer liner on the inside diameter. The rubber can stretch these kinds of hose over a slightly larger fitting without fear of them splitting and bleeding out all over the place: The layer that takes the brunt of the stretch is the extruded liner of the hose. Because of the separate layers, you're unlikely to split the way a single layer extruded rubber hose might. The PVC layer on the outside aren't in contact with the contents: they're just there for mechanical reinforcing. The interior liner takes all of the abuse from the E10 gas or whatever unsavory thing you pump down it. Even hoses which aren't transporting fuel are moving to this multi-layer design with an separate inside liner for the hose.

My stunt for making slightly undersized hoses go on the slightly too large fittings is simple: a deep travel cup of boiling water, and foaming anti-bacteria hand soap. No kidding.

This Performance Electric P37 fuel pump from Sweetwater, Texas is
a better stand-in for the stock Bosch pump: It permits the removal of
the pre-filter and allows me to run a stock Subaru filter in the engine
compartment. Both fitting accept 5/16" hose which fits the
Subaru engine fittings (8mm) nicely. Use VW #: 111-941-539 boots 
to cover the spade ends for the power.

Pop the end of the hose that you intend to attach to a fitting into the boiling water and let it set for about 10-15 minutes. The warm up time is to give the normally non-stretchy materials permissions to 'get loose.' You'll want to wear gloves for this, because that hose will be HOT when you pull it out.

When you're ready to pull out the hose, first use the hand soap to lube up the fitting. Then pull the hose out of the hot water and give it shake to remove excess water from the inside. Then add your hose clamp. Now push the hose over the fitting. Between the heat giving the materials a new-found willingness to stretch, and the lubricated fitting, your hose will likely go on with a firm, steady pressure. Now tighten down the hose clamp while the hose is still warm. Finally, if you need to make bends in the warm end of the hose to clear occlusions or to lay the hose into guides, do so now.

As the hose cools, if everything is kept under compression (like a bend or something) the hose will shrink down to its former size and stiffness, except now it will have conformed itself to the fitting and the turns you have forced into it. Remove it from its guides, it will want to go straight again. Left alone however, you'll probably never have to touch this fitting again. Even the water in the soap dries out, leaving a sticky residue that tends to seal the connection even better. It will make it quite difficult to get the hose off the fitting in the future, but unless you're replacing engines or components frequently, this is an acceptable trade-off for the daily driver.

This is not the guaranteed outcome of using non-metric hose on your Bus.

What are the products I've used for my adaptation? I've linked the specification list as a separate page which will grow as I finish the project. While it might be more expensive to use a product that is designed for more than the minimum specification to do the job, sometimes you can only find the size of hose in Fractional USA Standard that you need in a higher rated hose. You might use a fuel hose that is a better size match for an air hose which is not available in that size.

So look over the spec list! There are only two times a hose can be 'wrong' for a conversion: When it won't fit right (seal) and when it isn't made of the right stuff to do its job for 20 years. Make the effort for it to do both. Imagine the horror when you complete your conversion project....only to burn it down or wreck the engine because you used 'the wrong hose.' Look at the specs.

A Rainbow of Wiring

"A pox on both your houses!" 

- Mercutio, Romeo & Juliet ActIII, scene1

I cannot say how much I hate wiring. Well, actually, I can...but not unless I censor it heavily for this blog.

I'm not scared of it, mind you. Dad first set me up wielding a soldering gun and made me practice making good solder joints for electronic applications when I was seven. I've been doing my own stuff for a long time and I don't think there's a car I've owned in 30 years that I didn't wire up like Hi-Fi freak's basement when it came time to put tunes in.

Automotive electrical doesn't scare me either: 2 months after I had driven my 1977 VW Scirocco coast to coast for college, I tried to start up one chilly morning and got nothing. So I started my father's classic diagnostics: "Fuel, Fire, Air." Those diags led me to pay-dirt in 2 minutes flat, which was good because I didn't even own a multi-meter at the time: Turned the key to run, and heard...nothing. I should have heard the fuel pump by the left rear wheel come on. I'd only owned the car for 5 months, but I'd read the repair manual cover-to-cover as a sleep aid. I hot-wired ("jumpered") the pump power on, confirming that the busted part was the pump relay and drove the car into town to lose a week's income for a new relay.

So I ain't 'fraid a no wires.

From 1949 VW used a pictorial style of wiring diagram and it gave you a sense of not only what the wiring path was, but also where the components were within the chassis. as well as a literal line drawing of the starter and even where to connect what wire. DIY bliss.

While busy, the diagram is readable. The components are accurately drawn, and there are no nutty surprises.

In 1973 VW changed to a schematic diagram style which showed only a common ground and symbols for the components. The diagrams went from readable to migraine inducing. I'm not the only one. I've offered them to many of my friends who are Electrical Engineers and they've stared at them and to a man, all have said, "Well, it might be accurate but this is almost impossible to read. I wouldn't want to work on a system that required using this as a guide." Uh, oh.

A part of my soul just died.

Because of the schematic style, the wipers, starter, heat blower fan, and fuel pump are all represented by the same symbol. (There's a cookie for anyone who can think of what all of these things have in common electrically.) There was a separate key published for what component each symbol represented (in case you didn't have an EE degree) and a reference to what "current track" to ground it was on. You had to click your eyes back and forth between the schematic and the key of over 100 different components to puzzle it out. There was also no sense of proportion: A switch might be located between a component and the ground and the whole line be only an inch long, but the true distance in the vehicle is a wire running all the way from the dashboard to the engine at the rear.

A raging nightmare...unreadable.

By the way, the aforementioned are, electrically speaking, motors. So they all look just the same, diagramatically:

In 1979, VW realized their mistake and began adding pictorial style components back in to the schematic diagram, even captioning some of them within the diagram. A 1979 diagram is close to my 1977, so I often consult the 1972 (pictorial), the 1977 (schematic), and the 1979 (hybrid) all to make sure that the wire I'm staring at in the half-light really is Blue/Red, and not Blue/Black that has faded with heat and time and really is supposed to be attached to the alternator idiot light.

In short, the diagram is barely readable, the color coding often insufficient to communicate meaning, and the whole harness supports a primitive EFI system (Bosch L-Jet) where the ECU is only smart enough to squirt fuel relative to air intake. Every other part of the EFI sub-system is uncoordinated from the ECU. As a systems designer, this whole thing makes my gut go cold: So many ways for it to go wrong, both catastrophically and subtly.

Now replace the engine, EFI system and uncoordinated components with a Subaru and its much smarter brain. Have a kindly Subaru wiring harness expert make trims to remove all of the unnecessary items and send the Subaru harness back to you with the admonishment: "Three wires: 12v battery, Key ON, Fuel Pump. If you can't figure out where to attach three wires to your vehicle chassis harness, I can't help you." He's right. How hard could it be?

Harder than it looks. Subaru harnesses are notorious for subtle differences from month to month, let alone from year to year and model to model. Maybe Subaru has some serious quality control issues in their wiring assembly division, because sometimes the signalling wire from the whatsit to whizgig is Blue with a White stripe...or Red with a Yellow stripe, or ....Brown. Consult the factory service manual for the model, year, trim, and market  (Impreza MY1997, Outback Sport, LHD USA) and that diagram says the wire in question should be Chartreuse with an Indigo stripe. Oh, hell.

Usually such headaches hurt less with a Subaru because everything terminates at a fitting, and every fitting is shaped so that it can only connect to a specific component. The electrons don't care what color the insulation is, so why should you? You're guaranteed that you can't plug in to the wrong place.

Until you cut the harness. Then that certitude is lost. Now try to graft it to a chassis harness designed to support an uncoordinated Solid State EFI system only slightly more complicated than a transistor radio to a reasonably modern ECU which pretty much requires 'three wires' to make it go.

The good news is that some things don't change. Both systems use the positive stud at the starter motor as the primary junction for the chassis harness, the ECU, the battery, and the alternator output. Both systems use the chassis as a common ground. Both systems use 12 volt power. The bad news is that those are where all of the similarities between the two systems ends.

My harness man is right: If you can't figure out where to hook up three wires, maybe you're in over your head. I know what the big three need to DO, I know what the electrical path is for them to do it, and I know what the switching path is (at the front of the vehicle on the other side of where you turn the key.) What I'm having trouble unravelling is VW's baffling diagram, and which parts of the factory EFI interface I can ignore, and which ones I must route around, and which ones I have to live with.

Sidebar: When it comes to systems (technological, religious, ethical, philosophical, etc.,) all of them have fundamentals that are the starting point for everything else. This reductivism is helpful, because they restrain adherents who inevitably wish to complicate it. An example would be Jesus' directive to love God first, and then love others as much as you love yourself. Others include The Five Pillars of Islam. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Ken Thompson's 3 Rules of UNIX Philosophy. All systems with a limited set of starting rules. The fact that they're systems conceived for completely different purposes is irrelevant.

The T2B VW Bus electrical system has three fundamentals:

Suitable for framing, while doing VW wiring.

• Terminals #30 are ALWAYS powered, even if the key is OFF.
• Terminals #15 are only powered when the key is in the 'run' position.
• Terminals #50 are only powered when the key in the 'start' position.

Notice these are "Terminals" or connection points, not the wire in-between. It comes to the same thing as long as the wire doesn't join or branch. This should make everything much simpler. By convention (certainly not a guarantee, but good enough to guide you if you Trust But Verify) each of these is color coded:

Red is always #30 (12v, unswitched.) If you see a pure red wire, it is tapped back to the battery and is live all of the time. Other color wires may also be #30 (Red/White) so this is not a 1:1 relationship. #30 is often but not always R/R, R/R is ALWAY #30. (R/W is the trunk line power to the fuse panel and therefore, everything under the control of the driver. As soon as it joins the panel...back to RED.)

Black is always #15.  Unlike #30, #15 is always a conditional source: they key must be in 'run' to make #15 live. #15 then distributes power to other sub-connections. Find any component that only works when the key is in 'run.' Stare at the wiring diagram. Stare harder: even if you have to jump through a few conditional switches, you WILL find your way back to #15. An easy example is the back-up lighting.

#50 is always Red/Black. Thankfully, there is very little of it. It's pretty much a single wire with two ends and no branches: One at the ignition switch where it receives power from #30, and one at the starter solenoid. When you turn the key to 'start' the switch closes between #30 (R/R) and #50 (R/Bk) and the power hits the starter solenoid which pulls the starter gear into place. The starter takes care of it's own heavy Amp power switching itself. When the engine catches and you let go of the key (which falls back to 'run') #50 is disconnected and the solenoid retracts the starter gear. Now in 'run' (#15) everything that is #15 dependent is available.

Soon I'll give you a better idea of what the actual 1:1 connections are between the T2B Bus, and an OBD2 Subaru ECU. It turns out, the major challenge is knowing what to IGNORE.