Long time coming

I have waited a long time for some parts. I've sweated and strained the grey mush in my skull to come up with a coolant layout that would work for my Bus and importantly, work for others as well. 

While scratching my own itch, I've been down two failed paths. The first (VolksarU-0.1) was placing scirocco style radiators in-bay only to discover that 'prior-art' examples were more the product of P.T. Barnum than Earnest the Engineer. The second failed path (-0.2) was a feasibility study on emulating the Fellows Speed Shop design, only to discover that FSS hang their coolant tubing even lower than their radiator! That one was abandoned without spending anything more than my time. (Which without money is all I have had much of this winter.) So much for the dead ends that VolksarU ran down so you don't have to.

The third shot (VolksarU-0.3) looks the most promising, and like most good work, it comes from a mashup of the best works of others, and lessons learned from all of those dead ends.

• The engine compartment coolant piping from the engine outlet / inlet to the heater wye hole in the rear transverse frame member is designed and fabricated by Rocky Mountain Westy.
• The low profile scoop and underbelly radiator concept from Fellows Speed Shop, redesigned with my own break-away scoop and the Champion Cooling EC281 radiator standing in for their custom radiator (at 1/8 the cost and made of the same materials.)
• My coolant piping design to bridge the gap between the connection to the engine bay via the heater wye hole to the radiator itself. The design's chief features are:


• Durable: Built from 304 Stainless Steel, the same material used in the replacement coolant tubing provided by companies like GoWesty, and Rocky Mountain Westy as replacement coolant tubing for the plastic factory tubing in the Vanagon. The Bus may rust down to a pile of brown goo, but this coolant tubing will still be there.
• Compact: Mashing Gates Greenstripe flex hose in the confines of the central box space of the frame is simply a no-go: They're not rigid enough, and they're so fat they won't fit down that narrow space between the radiator and the inside of the frame rail. You can't run them outside the frame rail without putting them at risk of road debris, and looking like an extra from Mad Max. Hose will want to follow its own internal desire to turn itself back into a straight line and puts stress on its end couplers because of it. In short, a hose with an ID of 1-1/2" (the size of the output and input of the EJ22 engine) will have an OD of about 2". Which is too pudgy to fit down that narrow corridor inside the frame rail. So you've got to go thin and rigid, both to fit in the space and to retain unlikely shapes without stressing the couplers, which can cause leaks.Ergo, tubing. Not hose.
• Thermally Conductive: As mentioned in a previous post, hose is an insulator. (It may not seem like it if you've ever grabbed a hot coolant hose, but compared to touching a metal radiator tank at running temperature...hose is an insulator.) Since our cooling ability is already compromised by the orientation of the radiator, best to be throwing off as much heat as possible as fast as possible before, during and after your coolant passes through the radiator. Also, any portion of coolant tubing in the engine compartment is also being cooled by the air scooped into the engine compartment from intakes at the rear corners of the Bus.
• Protected: All of the coolant tubing and radiator is above the frame of the vehicle. You would have to tear the scoop off and run aground first and the chances for your radiator and coolant tubing's survival are better than 50/50, even if you lost the scoop. Keeping all of the coolant tubing above the level of the frame leaves them especially well protected. Short of an in-bay solution, this combination should produce the best of all worlds without bankruptcy as a side-effect of success.

With my six pieces of mandrel bent SS from Columbia River Mandrel Bends in Saint Helens, Oregon, I'm ready to have the radiator modified to move the inlet / outlet, then have the tubing TIG stitched into three assemblies. 

Assembly #1 allows it to jog from the original heater wye hole into the left hand frame rail and forward to the front (previously top) of the radiator where a hose coupler attaches it to a U-bend (Assembly #2) and into the radiator via a hose coupler at the front left.

On the output side of the radiator, we exit at the right rear through a hose coupler and into Assembly #3 which is two 90° elbows cut and stitched into a jog that takes us back to the heater wye hole. 

That's the circuit for the most vulnerable part of the cooling system.

The final piece of fab is the scoop which will be fabricated of steel panels, two angle brackets and a reinforcing strap, any shop should be able to knock this out in under an hour. Between the TIG work for the tubing assemblies and the MIG work for the scoop the price should stay reasonable.

Remember the VolksarU policy on bespoke fabricated parts: Avoid when possible, but if necessary, work from plans. I'm hoping to lure someone with a CNC mandrel bender into fabricating all of the tubing assemblies from single lengths of tubing instead of doing TIG work to put them together.

A Ten Dollar Helmet

In the early 1970's when motorcycles were losing some of their outlaw image, Bell Helmets ran an ad that has become synonymous with risk analysis: "If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet. If your head is worth more, buy a Bell." The helmets were expensive: About $640 in today's dollars, or 15% of the cost of a brand new 1970 Honda CB750, the first mass production 'superbike.' While the "Easy Rider" bad-boys were wearing defiant German Stahlhelm half-helmets, the Bell owners often lived to tell about a terrible crash and the Stahlhelm crowd...not so much.

Coincidental to this story, when I was young and dumb (and not too long ago) I was in a terrible rush to do some maintenance on my 1971 Super Beetle. I really, really wanted to 'git-r-done' and in my haste I finished on time, drove off and almost killed my dumb self.

Half of the problem was cheapness. The other half was laziness. The third half (!) was the internal stampede which causes teenagers to optimistically engineer according to appearance instead of heft. "I looks like it will hold. Let's go," has been the sad opening lines to many tragedies and near misses. The details of my personal idiocy are too mortifying to repeat: Suffice it to say, the fact that I didn't fetch up injured, dismembered, dead (or all three) was a miracle of Providence.

In my experience, some people outgrow this adolescent recklessness, and others make it a way of life.
The Vintage VW clan is infamous for its brand of tin-can patches and 'paint the dirt' solutions. Maybe it's the brand's reputation as an inexpensive novelty. Maybe it is because it attracts cheap dreamers. Unfortunately, there's a difference between frugality (don't waste your money on the bling; just wash it and wax it and keep it in good running repair) and cheapness. (Wherein every possible corner is cut to avoid paying for a correct product, yet still be able to to say 'it runs.')

Those of us who have been left holding the bag of someone else's half-assed work scream in frustration when these kinds of corner cuts bite us. The high ampere cable, spliced together with wire nuts and electrical tape that bear the weight of the hanging cable. The steering tie-rod ends with zip-ties standing in for cotter pins. Even fuel hose doing double duty as brake reservoir hose. They're all symptoms of what a former supervisor (and still close friend) refers to as the "It's Miller Time!" mentality: If it holds together until I'm out of sight, I'm home free.

While I've experienced all sorts of mechanics and tradesmen who produce rip-offs like this, doing this consciously to your own ride, or your own house is not just self defeating, it could qualify you for your own Darwin Award. Worse, you might wind up grieving and in the State Pen. for manslaughter when your daughter makes a left turn in that car you used the zip tie on...which suddenly heads uncontrolled into oncoming traffic when the steering tie-rod lets go...

What brought these terrible ideas to mind lately was listening to some very good people discussing (proudly!) some very bad engineering for vehicle conversion. Instead of selecting the right part for the job, they discuss the work in terms of "what I've got lyin' around." This isn't the same as the hoarder who has the entire McMaster-Carr back catalog in his shop. This is what my father (a mechanical engineer, welding inspector and specialist in nuclear safety systems) refers to as "kick into place at assembly, file sharp edges, and paint to match." It is placing a dubiously high value on having saved a nickel every time you have to replace that $20 part...because you have to replace it so often.

Living in the shadow of dear old dad caused me to develop this mantra for my Bus conversion:

"No part shall go on my ride that is of lesser quality than would be expected in modern automobile manufacturing."

This doesn't mean that a part needs to be made using the same methods: manual plug welding stands in fine for arc-spot welding. An anticipated 20 year life span is reasonable for any modern manufactured part. If a fastener is going to take a beating, use stainless instead of zinc coated fasteners. If you can't get stainless, prefer zinc plated over plain galvanized. Always uprate by one tier over what is require to merely 'make it work.'

There are times when a part must be fabricated to equal or better than factory standards. Obviously, most of us aren't skilled or tooled up to that. There are lots of fabricators out there who are, and if you plan to play in this hobby, it costs money to have their help.

I'll admit my own cut-corner temptations: I had originally thought to use pre-cut pieces of tubing and couplers for my coolant loop. I've had a 'Gates log' (36" length of straight hose) recommended to me to snake my way down to the radiator from my engine with lengths of hose unsupported and sagging like grandma's panty-hose. I was reminded by one of the other thermodynamic engineer wing-nuts I hang out with that 'Hose is a wonderful insulator. Are you trying to insulate the hot coolant to the radiator?' He suggested 16g Stainless Steel tube because, in addition to having a smaller OD and easier to route, it will be radiating heat for its entire length. You must take this into account when you're routing all of the other components, but you'll be throwing off heat efficiently all the way to the radiator and back.

The second half of this example is equally telling: All those pre-cut hoses and elbows and tubes...every time you transition, you have a potential site for a leak. You can't (and shouldn't) plumb the whole thing end to end with metal tubing even if you could, because you're going to have to take pieces out for maintenance so there must be some couplers in the loop. Just minimize them and you minimize the opportunities for leaks. For every part you put in, ask, "How many parts am I going to have to remove to replace this if it conks out?"

When Boeing (a former employer of mine) built the 777, it was the first plane that had been wholly designed (every panel and rivet) in a computer first, not only to make sure it would go together correctly, but also so that it could be engineered in advance for ease of assembly by humans (reach, component weight, arm turning radius) and also so it could be maintained without having to gut a whole section of the plane to get to a $100 part that had gone bad. That's why it is the most popular wide-body airliner in the world: It is easy to maintain and repair, which leads to more time in the sky, making money for its owner.

Therefore, the three cardinal rules for sane adaptation:


1. Use the right materials for the job: Nothing less than what you'll expect on a new car. If you have a part already, that doesn't mean its the right one for THIS job. Match the right part to the project, not the other way around.

2. Fabrication is part of the deal. Either ruin a few nice classics and become an expert yourself, or pay someone else to exercise their specialty on your behalf. DIY what you can, but know your limits. You'll be on the road that much sooner.

3. Pre-visualize assembly. Your clever idea will bite you if a $10 part requires a 200 mile tow and two days in a modern garage because you can't R&R it without removing the engine AND transmission.

Have you been a "Miller Time!" man? It's never to late to change your ways and start thinking like a mortal in a 50 year old VW, instead of approaching cruel reality with a "Ten Dollar Head."

Rubicon

    ru·bi·con

noun
A river in northern Italy

metaphor
The point of no return. Refers to Julius Caesar's march on Rome in 49 BC: It was considered treason to bring an army closer to Rome than the banks of the Rubicon River. If his campaign was successful, he would rule; if it failed he would be executed for insurrection. 

idiom "Crossing the Rubicon"

---

I have committed the unpardonable act of removing a component that can only be taken out in pieces. The rear main heater wye that routes hot air from the air-cooled engine heat exchangers, combines them into a single 4.75" tube that travels forward to a multi-way splitter and eventually produces a whisp of heat at the dash, or at vents on the floor. The whole affair never was very well insulated which is why the heat exchanger, producing an incredible 400°F, was under-appreciated: it never got a chance to do its job because of leaks, busted fittings, and incredibly poor airflow.

That wye pipe that joined the two exchangers on their way forward is a real stinker. It is welded into place before the decking is welded over top of it. Cutting it out with a Sawz-All (reciprocating saw) or an angle grinder is extremely nervous work since the tight quarters can cause you to cut something that you possibly don't want to.

Like the accelerator cable tube. The clutch cable tube. Nothing important. (Yikes!)

Obviously, this begs the question "Why did you take the heater wye out?" From those in the Bus biz (especially the über-purists) that phrase is essentially screamed because it means that for all intents and purposes, there no way back to an air-cooled engine. It is as one-way as losing your virginity.


The longer I've stared at the Fellows Speed Shop design, the less happy I've been with how low swingin' those coolant pipes are. One good shot and you're bleeding out coolant all over the road. The primary criticism of an underbelly radiator has been the proximity of the radiator to road debris. I had managed to get the radiator up and out of harm's way through a combination of skull sweat and smartly sourcing my components. Now I wanted to get the coolant tubing up above the level of the frame rails as well so all of the compromises for the conversion were removed.


The Fellows Speed Show design requires you to either drill through the side of the right hand frame rail like it was a bulkhead to return coolant to the engine, as well as drilling through the rear main transverse crossmember for the inlet side of the radiator from the engine. While both of these structural insults can be reinforced again...why are we drilling through rear and side of the frame again? To move coolant. The coolant travels through tubing 1.5" Outside Diameter (OD). That's not large....would it fit if ...? Remember what I said about that heater wye? The place where it already passes through the rear main crossmember is 4.5" wide and 3.75" tall. Remove the wye, and there's your way into the 'box' at the center of the frame where your radiator lives. Nothing hangs lower than the frame rail, and the whole run of coolant tubing (alternating with hose) is now very safe.


But if you're consuming the whole width between the frame rails with your radiator...how are you going to route coolant from the radiator outlet back to the engine? Won't you have to go outside of the frame rail and transverse crossmember box?


I spent serious time during the last two weeks freezing my tail-feathers off in that chilly garage staring up and visualizing how the hell I was going to run that coolant return without chopping holes in the frame.


First I noted that you could go OVER the frame rails. There is 1.6" of clearance between the top of the longitudinal frame rails and the decking. That's about an extra 3.5mm. That's close, but doable if I could route the coolant from the radiator tank up and over the frame rail. I ran into one of the major challenges everyone doing these kinds of conversions does: The reason the Bus is so big on the inside is that they really mashed everything together outside. The unfloor area I needed to navigate was as crowded as the bottom of a ladies purse.

Even assuming I could get over the rail, I would then have to run to the rear, and then jump BACK INSIDE the rail to catch the return fitting at the wye. That's too much jumping around, too many corners, too many fittings, and too many chances to spring a leak. No. I blew a week working that idea and concluded the only way it was better was that it didn't put a hole in my frame rail. Otherwise, just as bad.

But this failure did lead me in the right direction: I started thinking vertically and that turned out to be just the thing: I wondered about going over the top of the radiator. Nope: Fans there.

Maybe I could sneak around the edge of the fan? 1.5" isn't much. Nope. I'll be so occluded up there that I won't have a straight shot 1.5" in diameter to the rear.

Then it hit me like a pile of bricks: The radiator (with tanks at the front and back) is about 24.5" wide at the body. It has brackets TIG welded on which takes the total width to 28". The brackets hold the radiator to the bottom of the 'C' shaped frame rails. The bottom edges of the frame rails are 26" apart. The radiator shown below sits above the level of the frame rail and the long, serpentine coolant tubing snake *inside* the frame rail.(Not shown especially well by this overlay. Imagine the front to rear span above that frame rail.)

Ridiculous how I've had to composite together multiple pieces to show the layout accurately. The background is from a 1970 low-light Bus, but the principle is the same. The patch in at the rear generally shows the coolant tubing from the engine and how it all mates up at the rear crossbar. This is it: no drilling big holes through frame rails, or saggy coolant tubing running unprotected to the rear. Everything tucked up. Even the scoop (not shown) protrudes only 2-1/2 inches below the frame rails, higher than the lowest parts of the front suspension. 

So what's the distance, when the radiator is centered in the space, between the outside of the radiator body and the inside surface of the left frame rail? I tested it with the best object I had for the job:a piece of 1.5" diameter steel tube. Holy smokes. It fits, and with about that same 3.5mm 'expansion' space as was to be had by going over the frame rail.

There was some occlusion of the steel emergency brake cable conduit on the left hand side. So...close. I got my jack and carefully applying pressure with a rounded piece of wood in the cup of the jack, put a trivial new bend in that tube without kinking it. I checked the occlusion at the rear. Damme. This will work.

All we need now is a single piece of mandrel bent tubing to chase from the outlet at the front right, make a tight turn to the rear, into the space between radiator and frame rail, then emerge at the back and make another 90° turn to be facing right. The space is so tight that there's no way to do it with straight-pipes and elbows and hose fittings. It has to be done with one piece of 1.5"OD pipe.

And where am I going to get that for less than a king's ransom?

I found a fabricator. What you see shown above is the initial cut. Unfortunately, my draftsman (and consulting mechanical engineer with a lifetime of experience in high criticality cooing systems) is bugging out for the warmer climates of Florida for a month. I'm not going to lay around and wait for him to get back, but I'm going to have to put this on the back burner until he comes back and work other aspects of the design.

Happy New...Not Yet!

On the last day, with only a few hours left of 2014, I get to announce some good news:

The engine is fully installed, all bits and pieces aligned and the Rocky Mountain Westy carrier bar fully installed as well. The engine is now entirely self supporting and all of the lifts, jacks, cherry-pickers, etc. have returned to their regular storage spaces, e.g. not in the garage where space is limited and they are badly underfoot.

The fully installed transmission, adapter, engine and engine carrier assembly. Sorry for the Soviet era picture: my camera was slightly on the fritz.

You can see how the whole affair bolts together, and I've included this second picture of how the main carrier bar not only bolts to the body of the bus, but also how it connects to trailing outriggers which extend to the rear of the engine compartment to bolt through the frame hole intended for the original carrier bar:

As per usual, I worked diligently to do everything the hard way. I previously mentioned replacing the the throw-out bearing before mating the engine and adapter to the transmission. I replaced the TO bearing with whistle-while-you-work unconcern, then spent an atrocious amount of time getting the engine mated up to the trans. Don't let anyone kid you: an EJ engine does not appreciate being supported from the bottom, and even if you have a cherry-picker style engine hoist, the center of mass of the EJ engine makes hanging it a challenge.

You'll just have to do what I did: Try, try again-- and don't ever give up.

Having got it all the way together, I bolted up the carrier bar and hung the engine from it. Some jiggling and the use of some 3mm aluminum shims from Rocky Mountain Westy to correct engines that were not aligning with the body and I looked all set.

Read over my Bentley manual that night which I had left open to the section on replacing the TO bearing just before I did the work. I reviewed it again....and discovered I'd really humped myself.

There is a sleeve that the TO bearing rides on: inside the sleeve is the transmission input shaft. This sleeve is bolted onto the transmission. There should be a light coating of new lubricant on the outside surface of the sleeve for the Inside Diameter of the TO bearing to ride on.

That sleeve was dry as a bone. Clean! But dry.

There's nothing that improves your speed of performing a procedure than practice. To my credit, it only took me 4 hours to take the whole thing apart completely (engine, carrier, transmission adapter) lightly lube the outside of that throw-out bearing sleeve and put the whole mess back together again. Along the way, I discovered that the transmission hanger bolts (at the top of the bell-housing) were installed incorrectly as well. I fixed that, too.

So the engine is in, complete.

Next up will be installation of the throttle valve reverser.

Once the TVR is in, that will put the throttle valve assembly within reach so I'll be grafting the stock throttle cable end together with the cable end that came out of the donor 97 Impreza. I've seen an installation trick I've wanted to try...

Ok...now. HAPPY NEW YEAR! (Because I intend to run this engine in 2015!)

The Cool Fool

I've been saving up posts to this blog for the holidays. (Actually, I've been run off my feet at home, at work, with parents and in-laws and at church. I've just slowed to sub-lightspeed approaching the holiday, so this has been the first chance since Thanksgiving to write this all down.)

Having taken Thanksgiving delivery of the Champion Cooling EC281 Radiator (Originally for a 1965 Chevrolet Bel-Air) as the radiator of choice for the Bus, I decided to get it out there immediately and confirm that all of my measuring and fretting and waiting hadn't been in vain. (5 weeks is a long time to wait for something that is supposed to be a stock item. I'm lookin' at you, JEGS.) Having assured myself that the the product was in good condition when it arrived, the first thing I did was to armor it.

I put on the armor because I had this unfortunate encounter with the Scirocco radiators that my Father-in-law had bought me for Christmas last year, and which I spent much of this year preparing to install: When parts are within reach of children who do not understand their importance and fragility, bad thing happen. In this case, it was my son who used his thumbnail to 'draw' on all of the cooling vanes of the radiator. When I discovered it, you could hear the scream from the next continent.

Not kicking my son over the horizon was a herculean effort. He survived, and I learned that if I wanted something safe, keeping it out of the house was the first step, and if it was especially delicate (as radiator fins are) I'd better have a buffer over it to keep me from dropping it on my head and denting it. (The radiator, not my head. The radiator's worth more.)

Thanksgiving weekend, I found that the 1/2 inch styrofoam sheeting that the radiator was packed was perfectly suited to the job of armor, so I cut pieces to protect the fins and taped them in place. Then I went out and, biting my nails down to the knuckles, (this had BETTER fit!) slid under the bus and raised the radiator into the gap between the frame rails.

WAS...BEAUTIFUL. I grabbed a pair of clamps to hold it in place so I could marvel at it and take pictures. It fit like a stinking glove, almost as if I knew what I was doing.

Note the styrofoam face to the bottom. The top is likewise protected. The wide flanges with pre-drilled holes conveniently located puts the unit within easy reach of a drill to drill up through the frame rail and permanently suspend the radiator.

So the radiator is in place and only awaits a call to a TIG weldor to perform the input/output pipe modifications needed. There will also need to be some clearancing work done above the radiator to ensure puller fan clearance. I might not get to use dual 12" fans (which would provide me with 226² inches of active area air movement, but a single 16 inch will likely do enough at 201² inches of active area.

Heck, the whole rectangular area is only 404.25 inch. A single 16 inch fan is only an 11% reduction in active cooling over a pair of 12 inch units. I think we should be able to handle that, right? Other than the 11% improvement in cooling, it feels like the only win for the dual fans is redundancy, and you'd have to wire your fan controller circuits to make them truly redundant: Two of something on the same switch doesn't automagically make them redundant. It has to be redundant end-to-end.

With the radiator sized and sorted, our next adventure will be final coupling of the engine to the transmission, and the addition of the Rocky Mountain Westy Carrier Bar.

Ready, Ready, Ready, Aim, Aim....Aim....Fire.

I hate doing things twice. It offends my sense of parsimony as my money and opportunities are limited. 'Go back and do it again the right way' is also an embarrassment. It implies that I didn't think things through well the first time.

So obviously, VolksarU has been very embarrassing, especially when I found out that I had taken people's word for things that I should have checked on first. Some of this goes back to the parsimony: Why should I spend my time doing something first when others have already preceded me and my contributions to the craft can be refinements, rather than wholesale invention?

After having run aground in September with the Sirocco radiators, I was forced into this kind of retrenchment. I already have more into the project than the vehicle is worth. Yeah. So what. If you want to get rich, pick a different hobby. Instead of crying too long in my suds, I took the information that DW in Connecticut captured with his successful underbelly design and started considering my own state of affairs: The very best solution is available is just conveniently on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean: Fellows Speed Shop in Birmingham, England, UK.

So I got in touch and dropped a simple query: How much? For air intake, chassis strengtheners, custom radiator and scoop, mounts, and (gulp) shipping. The number I got back caused my mouth to go dry: $1400 give or take, depending on the exchange rate and the banking fees to convert USD to GBP. This might not sound like much, but consider: If everything arrives in one piece (and that's no guarantee) and I hook everything up, dump in 4 gallons of coolant, fire up the engine and the radiator springs a leak, then what? Ask for another one? RMA the first one back in exchange for another that may or may not work? Is Fellows going to eat the shipping both ways across the Atlantic? Let's not be silly.

That is a very high risk / high reward opportunity to buy your way to success. I was frustrated enough to ring them for a price, but not nervy enough to put all of my eggs in that basket. So back to DIY land: What radiator will fit the space between the midship cross member and the major rear cross member, and also fit between the longitudinal frame rails to be held up out of harms way in the same manner that the fellows design is? At the same time, the core surface should as large as possible within the space, given less than ideal orientation relative to the direction of travel. Maximum radiant surface.

So I measured every which way and then went shopping.

Modern factory radiators were out. Too much plastic and epoxy and other things that don't take well to being nicked or sprayed by gravel. This radiator, even protected from major damage by the frame rails, is going to have to be tough.

Vintage style brass and copper radiators are out because they're heavy and have too many serious compromises, U.S. Radiator notes that "The thermal conductivity or heat transfer rate of copper is 92% versus aluminum which is only 49%.  However, the copper fins are bonded to the coolant tubes using lead solder which is very inefficient [not to mention toxic] and slows the heat transfer rate to just slightly better than that of aluminum." So in short, your average brass/copper radiator will weigh much more than aluminum, fail to transfer heat any better, and is assembled of toxic components. Um..no.

So this left me in the realm of high performance aluminum radiators. Prices can take off for the sky here, or have historically. That's one of the reasons I was happy and surprised to find Champion Cooling of Lake Elsinore, California. They build all-aluminum radiators for the high performance market and do so at a reasonable price. They've got a fantastic reputation for customer service, and the country is dotted with their dealers, including domestic online dealers. Their radiators are assembled by TIG welding and furnace brazing which gives them a leg up over the competition.

Because I need minimum vertical thickness to fit above the frame rails, I can't use a radiator that has a very thick core. I've only got an absolute ceiling height of 6.125" to stack the radiator and the fans, so only a two row, 1.75" thickness core. Also take into account that the core is halfway between the front and rear (or in this laid down orientation, top and bottom) faces of the tanks, that leave marginal space for dual 12" fans which are 12.75" thick at the central hub motor. Total it all up...and that's less than an inch of vertical clearance left for wiggle room and air output.

So that alone confined me to two row radiators. I found myself with an embarrassment of riches, as Champion Cooling makes hundreds of specialty radiator models in two, three, and four row designs. Just narrowing myself to two row radiators, I had to sort through the specifications of 270 radiators and applications to find the unit with the maximum core area that would also fit in the space. This past weekend, I narrowed it down to eight, and by evening, I had it down to one.

The heir-apparent is the DPI 281 model, which was a workhorse designed for Chevrolet applications from the 1950s through the 1960s, and was found in models as diverse as the Corvette, Chevelle, Impala and Bel Air. This is a design that is going to be available for a long, long time. All of the right attributes were there to be the winner: designed for heat dissipation for about 400HP, or three times the output of my Subaru EJ22 (123HP.) The design has wide brackets TIG welded to the radiator frame, top and bottom tanks (that when laid down, will become 'front and rear tanks.') There is one major hangup, though.

The one attribute that is critical is the the coolant inlet/outlet. In a traditional installation, the inlet/outlet is on the back face of the radiator, toward the engine. By contrast, this radiator will be laying down and vertical space is at a premium. No matter what, I've got to have a radiator where the inlet/outlet fittings are mounted inline (not perpendicular) with the radiator core. So even though I've found my radiator (and purchased it, today) it will still require modification to go into the space.

Yes, it's going to get the fittings removed and relocated to the 'front and rear.' No, I won't be the one doing it. TIG welding isn't the point-n-shoot that MIG welding has become. TIG is fussy, specialty work. I've already got a quote from a TIG weldor for about the same price as the radiator itself to fuss with the inlet/outlet pair and move them according to my requirements. At the neighborhood of $350 for radiator and customization, it is a much more cost effective to modify an existing radiator than having Northern or Griffen or Wizard perform a custom build for me. About 3 times less expensive.

The characteristic that charmed me to this product are the wide flanges (28") and the comfortable fit of 3/4" on each side of the core body, which will ride above the level of the frame rails, well protected by the flanges. Instead of requiring me to add support pins to the ends of the tanks for a suspension mount like Fellows does, the brackets can bolt to the bottom of the frame rails and be very secure. This design also gives me another warm fuzzy that the Fellows design did not: The Fellows custom radiator has the scoop bolted to the radiator body itself. I'm sure that's wonderfully secure, but what happens when you cream a hard-headed raccoon at 70mph? Probably tear the scoop right off, and mangle the radiator badly enough that it bleeds out all over the road. Then what happens? Have Fellows ship a new one? Please. (I'll grant that this isn't likely to happen, and there haven't been any reports from the UK of that happening, but still...)

My notion is that the scoop should be firmly secure to the frame...with shear bolts. A shear pin or bolt is a safety device designed to snap off in the case of a mechanical overload, preventing other, more expensive parts from being damaged. As a mechanical sacrificial part, it is analogous to an electric fuse. If I clock Rocky Raccoon in the brain-pan, I'll lose the scoop, the bolts shearing away. But because the scoop can break-away, you lose it and preserve the radiator, a much more valuable component. You can limp out of Death Valley running your fans full blast without your scoop. You can't without your radiator. In the best case scenario, you pull over, walk back 100 yards, brush the busted bits of raccoon off the scoop and remount it when you hit the next town with new shear bolts.

Using the wide flanges on the DPI 281 radiator, the flanges can connect to the frame rails with 8.8 hardness galvanised steel bolts. But *also* using those wide flanges allows me to mount the scoop to it with the shear bolts. Everybody wins, and a 12 gauge steel scoop will be able to take a good shot without folding up like origami if it happens to hit something soft.

Assembling the Stack

After the Hamster Dance to get two lousy dowel pins, I was more than ready to get on with the bolt-up of the adapter plate, flywheel and clutch components as the next step to moving the engine into place before the weather drops to freezing. I don't often get to spend sustained time on this project; I just maunder along, chipping away at it like sculptor chiseling on a monument. There's a lot of mountain left, but there is wisdom in just looking at the piece of stone in front of you and just working that bit, rather than trying to constantly hold every step in your mind while you work: That way lies madness...or failure.

So I happily unpacked the components from Outfront Motorsports / Rocky Mountain Westy and got to it.

First: The addition of those silly dowel pins. They were a pinch fit, so I put them in the freezer overnight, then the next day heated the case bosses with a torch. Then I used a lightweight 6oz tack hammer to tap in the dowel pins. Fortunately, the depth isn't critical when working with the adapter plate. I still did it properly so that both tips were flush when I was finished. No one will ever see it. But I'll know its there, and that it was done right.

Now I was finally set to add all of the goodies in the kit. The first job was to remove the bottom studs that came from the factory. They're being replaced with bolts from the kit because it isn't the engine that bolts to the transmission, it is the adapter plate, which has its own set of properly sized studs relative to the size of a VW 091 transmission.

Not much to get ahold of to remove the old studs. Thankfully, they didn't protest when being removed.

With the old out, I rehung the adapter plate on the dowel pins, which blessedly fit perfectly. 

I added the bolts to secure the adapter to the engine, and then added the studs for the transmission side. Threads for each were liberally juiced up with red loctite, a thread sealer that cures in the absence of oxygen, meaning when you juice up the threads, the adhesive cures from the inside (no air) to outside. The red color coded loctite is industrial strength: If I want those bolts or studs back out, I'm going to need to heat the adhesive around the metal to 560°F before it will let go. So better do it right the first time.

Now that I had the adapter mounted permanently, it was time to add the flywheel.

The flywheel slid over the crankshaft hub. The perimeter bolts were turned into place by a few threads just to keep track of them. The same for the three small roll-pins that act as dowel pins for aligning the clutch plate: If they won't be in the way, put fasteners in early so that you don't lose track of them. At this point the flywheel is just set in place, not secured.

Starting to look snazzy! Note that the types of steel that the flywheel is made up are different: the teeth around the edge that the starter engages are specially hardened to take the punishment of being bashed into by the starter gear before it gives the flywheel a twist. The weight of the flywheel also smooths out acceleration and deceleration: Too heavy and you spend a lot of power getting it turning, too light, and every microscopic variance at the throttle is immediately translated to the transmission. 

That's fine for a race car, but for a road vehicle, especially a heavy one like the VW Bus, you want the moderating effect of a fairly heavy flywheel.

Now we permanently mount to flywheel to crankshaft. Here's where we break out the monster tools:

Eight bolts gooey with loctite were added and torqued down to 55 foot-pounds each. 

 In the foreground is my Christmas present from a few years ago: a beautiful Brownline Digital Torque wrench with a 2 foot long body and a thick handle so you can really lean on it without worrying that something will break. Despite being built like a tank, it is probably one of the most precision tools that I own.

I don't just magically 'know' what torque is correct: each of the bolts that has been added in the build up of the stack has come with values from the vendor for what torque they should be set to. This is not something you want to guess at. So you tell the wrench what the value should be, then start pulling on the wrench until it chimes. Ta-da. You're exactly on the mark.

With the flywheel in place, it was time to add the clutch disc, one half of the friction portion of the clutch that does most of the wearing when shifting and then add the clutch pressure plate, the other half that the disc rubs up against when engaging and disengaging. The trick is that the disc has to be centered in the middle of the flywheel, but you can't get to it because its covered by the clutch cover. To the rescue: A clutch alignment tool: A plastic shaft with flutes on it to mimic the transmission input shaft that the clutch disc mounts on as it is alternately clamped between the pressure plate  and flywheel (power engaged) or released by the pressure plate (power disengaged, like when you're changing gears.) 

The grotty looking clutch pressure plate being slowly bolted down in a criss-cross pattern of the six bolts that hold it on. The clutch disc is hidden under the cover, but you can see the input shaft alignment tool in the middle that holds the disc centered perfectly as the pressure plate descends over it, eventually holding it in place.

The 'fingers' in the middle of the pressure plate are actually springs that you are pushing against when you put your foot down on the clutch pedal. When you overcome their initial resistance, they flower out and cause the pressure plate surface that had been clamping the disc to retract and take pressure off the disc, causing the turning power of the pressure plate to be disengaged from the clutch disc which is attached to the transmission by the input shaft that our alignment tool is mimicking for now.

So why did I re-use the clutch disc and cover plate from the Bus? 1) Because there's nothing wrong with them. Treated well, a clutch will last 100,000 miles or more, and this clutch had less than 5k miles on it when the vehicle was put into storage 14 years ago. 2) A new disc and cover plate is about $160. Why would I spend that just to have something new and pretty that is a 'wear component,' that is, it is designed to be used up during its lifespan? A tire is a wear component, replaced every 40k miles or so. The wheel that the tire is wrapped around is not a wear component: unless damaged, it does not need to be replaced. I'll be back in to replace this clutch pressure plate and disc eventually...in about 20 years if everything goes right.

The final reveal: adapter plate to engine (3 bolts), flywheel to crankshaft (8 bolts), clutch disc added and held aligned to the center of flywheel by the alignment tool, shown withdrawn. The smooth tip of the tool goes all the way into a recess in the center axis of the crankshaft (which you can see all the way down at the middle of the picture.) The fluted neck of the tool holds the clutch disc perfectly centered. Finally the pressure plate (6 bolts and aligned by 3 pins) is bolted down to the flywheel. The stack is now complete, and ready to be mated to the transmission.

This was a good afternoon to go slowly and document as I went. With the engine side essentially finished, the next step is to maneuver the engine into the compartment and with it oriented correctly in 3 degrees of rotation (roll, pitch & yaw) slide the input shaft from the transmission down into that cavity without kinking anything. For that part, I'm going to need help, because I can't single-handedly keep 250 pounds of engine supported and oriented all while its being mated together. That's when it will be time for 'a little help from my friends.'