I changed the oil today. It was quite the experience – and I don’t think I fixed the leaking drain plate – but oh well, this marks the end of the first tune-up.
I started yesterday by double checking all of the valves again. They were making just a little bit more noise than I thought normal (Here is an interesting page that has engine sound recordings from John Muir himself), so I decided to tighten them to .004″ instead of .006″. After doing so, the engine sounds great, and I noticed it remained much cooler! It did die once while idling (I’m thinking I need to clean the carburetor), but handled steady high RPMs, and sudden acceleration with no hesitation.
I then moved on to the generator. My battery still isn’t charging, and so I wanted to make sure the generator was actually working. I suspected it was because the engine still ran when the battery was disconnected, but I tried to check it anyways. I say “tried” because I couldn’t figure out how to work my electronic multi-meter. I googled all the different settings but nothing seemed to work! Stupid multi-meter. Instead I ‘polarized’ the generator by grounding the DF wire and connecting the D+ wire to the positive battery terminal. The thing spun around quickly and sparked so I know it works. I’m going to get a new voltage regulator and see if that solves anything.
Finally, I got to the oil change. The drain plate has been leaking since I parked the bus in the garage, and I noticed today that the oil level was dropping. I got everything started by running the engine for about 5 – 10 minutes – let it sit for a while, use the 21mm wrench to unscrew the drain plug, unscrew the last bit by hand – OUCH, WTF! – hot oil covers my gloved hand and I drop the drain plug in the oil pan. Oops! I didn’t actually burn myself but came pretty close. Stupid oil.
I waited for the oil to drain, cleaned the parts, put my new gaskets and washers on, and re-attached. Small problem – two of the screws came loose from the oil sump and are probably not able to be reseated – I’m blaming the previous owner again – he didn’t use any washers, probably noticed the thing leaking, and torqued the nuts way to hard. Basically this is basic VW air cooled oil change 101 stuff, but I’ll stop before I start ranting again. I got everything put back together, but the drain-plate wasn’t sitting exactly flush with the oil sump, and I think it still leaks. I’ll know for sure tomorrow – looks like I need to be buying more gaskets!
Today I essentially completed the tune-up activities (except for compression test which I’ll do when I get a new battery). The engine is running much better than when I started, and I’m pretty stoked about that – hopefully more progress to report soon!
