Category: VW

I drove Noelle in the bus today for the first time.  We backed out, got going down the parking lot, turned to the left, kept going, turned to the left, and again, and then back into the garage.  I know, it was thrilling!

Before this though, a friend from work came by and we drove the bus in circles around the apartment parking lot.  The wheels didn’t make any noise, the steering felt reasonably tight, the brakes work well.  It felt great to finally get moving in the thing.  I even got it into second gear!  However, as soon as the engine warms up, it loses the ability to idle.  So every time I come to a stop it dies, and I’m not coordinated enough yet to press the clutch, shift to neutral, let off the clutch, press the brakes, and lightly press the gas to keep the engine running.  I’m thinking it might now be time to clean the carb.  In the meantime, I’m going to keep practicing my stick driving – lets just say that its a steep learning curve.  Until I can keep the bus running at a stop, I’m not going out on an actual road.

But I did take Noelle out this afternoon.  She was pretty apprehensive, given our earlier experiences with driving this thing, but I convinced her to ride along.  Everything went very smoothly, and it really makes me look forward to when we are out there camping and road tripping it up!

In addition to my skillful turns to the left, I bought some plastic shelves, and spent time time cleaning and organizing the garage.  I took a bunch of pictures, and I’ll be spending the day trying to fix the idle problem tomorrow.  There’s a VW show in Joilet that I would love to attend if possible!

Finally, something got fixed with minimal effort and stress! I spent some time yesterday trying to investigate the clunking noise I heard coming from the front passenger side.  I figured it had to be something with the wheel, wheel bearing, or the front suspension set up.

To start, I jacked up the side, and spun the tire.  It rotated freely and smoothly, no grinding, no resistance.  Hmmm, ok, so I don’t think its the wheel bearings, and its not a loose cable or anything.  I spent some more time underneath just trying to figure out where everything goes. I couldn’t find anything that wrong – tires seem well connected, tie rods, center pin, other bolts that I don’t know the name of yet, everything seemed to generally look ok.  So whatever, now I’m thinking I might need to replace the whole suspension.  While this is something I definitely want to do at some point, I really don’t want to cough up that kind of cash before even driving this thing on the street.  This is an example of what I want to get, upgraded w/ sweet (and safe) disc brakes, but man its pricey!  So instead, I spent the night searching the forums on what might be causing this clunking issue.

Tonight, I tried one of the suggestions online.  I didn’t think this would work, but I lifted the bus back up, and checked the tire lug nuts.  Sure enough, they were all very loose!  I tightened them all down, checked the other wheels, started up the bus, and backed straight out of the garage.  I then pulled straight back into the garage (after shifting too hard and lunging forward like a crazy person).  No noise from the tire – Success!  I’m going to keep working on the parking brake, and will hopefully try test drive #2 again this weekend.  Looking forward to it!

I got the bus out for my first drive today!  As you can see from the video, it starts up fairly well, and it looks pretty awesome. The tires were a little squeally, but the thing runs.  The end of the clip makes you think I kept driving off into the sunset!

What actually happened was a loud clunk clunk clunk was soon heard potentially coming from the front passenger wheel.  I pulled into an empty section of parking lot to turn around, and the bus promptly died every time I let off the clutch to go into reverse.  I’m now stuck halfway in a parking spot, Wifey is miffed, neighbors are gawking, and the stupid bus won’t shift into gear!  Finally, after putting it in neutral and shifting back to reverse, it shuddered backwards and I was able to shift into first and head back to the garage.  I killed the engine again while turning into the garage.  Again the engine stalled every time I let off the clutch (and applied gas – I’m not that dumb).  Finally, after putting it in neutral again and shifting back to first, it engaged and I was able to pull back into the garage and shut off the engine.

Whew – pretty much a total failure for a first drive, but I feel like I learned more about the bus today.  I’m going to jack up the front to see if I can better understand the loud clunking noise.  I’m going to keep messing with the shifter to see if I can figure out why it won’t always engage.  I’m also going to figure-out how to connect the e-brake cables.  Even though my first drive in the bus consisted of driving 100 ft down the parking lot and limping back to the garage, I was happy with how the engine started up and ran.  If I can fix that, I can fix the rest of this thing!

I finally got around to getting some more work done on the bus today.  A little vacation, a little work, a little watching Breaking Bad… today I put all that aside and set about getting the bus drivable!

I began by just starting up the engine to make sure this thing still runs – it doesn’t.  Well it starts up, but won’t idle at all.  I have to keep my foot on the gas, and continually increase the throttle. Not good!  I don’t know why this would happen, it was running fine before, I haven’t changed anything, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m tired of nothing ever working out – those were the thoughts running through my head – but I tried to stay positive!  I decided first and foremost to do another little mini-tune up.  I checked the static timing – it was fine – and I checked the valves again.  They were all pretty loose, so maybe I didn’t adjust them correctly last time.  Ok valves all set, timing is right, battery charger hooked up – engine still can’t idle.  Now I’m pissed – I throw a really great tantrum all by myself in the garage, and eventually start banging various spots around the engine with my wrench. Stupid bus, if it wants to act this way, I’ll just hit it… repeatedly!  Thats when I noticed that this thing on the right side of the carburetor was loose, and the three screws holding it in place had almost fallen out. A little bit of googling learned me that this thing is the automatic choke, and when not adjusted correctly can screw up the fuel-air mixture running into the engine.  I found this site with adjustment instructions, and I was back in business!

With the automatic choke properly adjusted and tightened, the engine sounds better, and idles just fine – Success!  Now I can move on to figuring out why the battery won’t charge.  In my last post, I mentioned that I needed a new voltage regulator – well the shop I ordered it from in California never shipped it. I was frustrated for a bit, but then realized I can get exactly what I need from NAPA – with no shipping – lesson learned, I will always check Autozone and NAPA for parts instead of just assuming that I need some special ordered thing!  I also bought a new battery from NAPA – and made a few trips for wire connectors and carb cleaner – yeah so they saw me a few times today.

I removed the old voltage regulator, replaced the corroded connections, cleaned the battery cable connectors, and thoroughly sprayed the inside of the generator with electrical contact cleaner.  Hooked everything back up including new battery, polarized the regulator by almost shocking myself, and started the engine – indicator light still on!  I’m pissed, throw another decent tantrum, go inside to tell Noelle that we are screwed and the project is a failure, watch another episode of Breaking Bad, then go back out to the garage.  Start up the engine again, but this time I rev it high and loud – the light instantly goes out!  I leave the bus in idle and go back to check the battery with the multi-meter (I know how to use it now – wires were backwards last time…oops) the battery seems to be charging. Success! 

I now have a fully functioning VW bus – turn signals work, brakes and brake lights work, headlights work, tires are in good shape, battery is brand new and charges, and the engine starts right up and runs until I tell it not to.  I’m totally stoked, and maybe – just maybe – I’ll be driving this thing around town soon, better watch out!

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!