Went to a car show in LaSalle with a few VW guys today. We had a ton of fun – beautiful day, cool cars, nice people!
I decided not to drive the bus to the show given how far it was and the possibility of afternoon rain (which definitely materialized!) A group of guys from the Harsh Winters VW Club drove down to LaSalle, Illinois for a car show; we all had a really good time!
My friend’s perfectly restored 23 window Samba won Best Import – sweet!
Took the bus to a friend’s house today. He’s got a big garage and a sweet car lift so I was able to check out the underside of this thing.
Overall, I would say it’s some good and some bad. The underside of this bus is definitely crusty – the cargo floor will need a full replacement, the front valance and A pillars will need replaced. One cross beam looks pretty bad, but the big frame pieces are solid.
The front beam and steering components will need to be replaced eventually – I’m looking into getting a new front suspension built, and upgraded w/ disk brakes.
The rear set-up is in a little better condition. The bus has been lowered w/ a Beetle transmission and straight axle kit. I’m thinking that I want to replace this at some point with the stock bus reduction gear boxes and “freeway flyer” tranny from Rancho.
After checking out the underside of this beast, we took the bus to another guy’s house – John is retired and has worked on VW’s/ Hot Rods for a long time – he checked out my engine/ carb work and got everything running really well. I had it running ok, but he got it running real sweet!
I’m posting a little video of driving the bus around the neighborhood. Just more proof that this crazy bus is up and running!
I think we can all agree that Noelle did an excellent job w/ the camera – I look/ sound like a dork, the tire iron is clanging around in the background, but oh well, I’m a dork driving a VW bus – heck yeah!
Now I can move on to taking videos of the bus in cool places like the gas station and other fun parking lots in Chicagoland suburbia – sweet.
Had a real roller coaster of a bus day today. Started with a call to AAA in the middle of the night – then ended with a nice drive through the neighborhood!
So last night we decide to go to the store… at like 10pm… in the bus… Bus drove great on the way there, but on the way back a clunking noise started and quickly got worse. I barely got it pulled off the road and into a parking lot – whew – I’m thinking at this point that something catastrophic has occurred in one of the wheels or the transmission. As soon as we slowly clunk to a stop… it starts raining, like pouring – this is just perfect! Time for AAA to the rescue – call them, wait an hour for the tow truck, the dude takes one look at the bus and starts laughing. I’m like “Um, whats so funny” he’s like “Um, check your front wheel” Sure enough, the lug bolts are all loose – the stupid wheel is just loose, and I feel like an idiot! So yeah I had to deal with the tow guy making fun of me and Noelle making fun of me – but the bus is ok, and I’m going to be checking the lug bolts everyday from now on!
Fast forward to Saturday – beautiful day, drove the bus all over – went to lunch, took a drive in the neighborhood, fun times all around. After the debacle’s with the loose wheel and loose axle nut, I’ve started checking and double checking everything – did a valve job this morning, but everything was in order, gaps were right at .006. The bus is running well, and I’m really getting the hang of driving it!
Did a little repair work on the rubber vacuum stops – they are falling apart, so I patched them up w. electrical tape (well first I bought a replacement set from NAPA, but of course those didn’t actually fit).
I also took the front VW emblem to my local Ace hardware to get the metal posts threaded. They have the tools to tap holes and thread posts, and don’t charge anything for it – the emblem is now much more secure, and it won’t be bouncing down the road like the hubcaps did!
Noelle got some sweet action shots – check out that intense concentration!
I think I fixed the bus! And the best thing – it was free!
I spent some time this week researching the swooshing/ clicking/ clattering noise I was hearing from the passenger rear wheel. I had determined that it wasn’t tire related – the drum was hard to turn by hand though, and once I backed off the brake adjusters, the drum seemed loose. It also had a lot of brown brake dust everywhere. The possible diagnosis’ were everything from a loose axle nut, to a problem with the brake internals, to a bad wheel bearing or CV joint. The common denominator in all of these is that I needed a torque wrench and 36mm socket to remove/ tighten the axle nut. Unfortunately, those torque bad boys are like $100 or more – having just spent some coin on getting the bus to this point, I was very hesitant to go buy a big tool that I might use once.
Thankfully, this is where my local Autozone comes in – turns out you can rent tools like this torque wrench and the axle socket that I needed. You pay the value of the tool… but if you bring it back in working condition within 90 days you get your money back – like all of your money even the sales tax back – free is always a sweet deal! I looked at their brochure and you can rent all kinds of stuff like steering wheel and brake drum pullers, wrenches, compression kits, etc. I’ll be sure to utilize this service going forward.
Back to the bus, it was pretty simple – I pulled out the little pin in the axle castle nut, spritzed the nut with pb blaster, fit the torque wrench on, twisted it up to the required 250lbs and slowly added pressure to the nut. It was definitely not torqued to 250, and it moved easily to the right until the wrench hit the 250 mark and clicked over. Put the pin back in and started the bus up for a nice trip around the parking lot. No noise, no problems, brakes work – Success!
In the end, I don’t think the shop took this drum off, so I definitely can’t and don’t blame Darby – he did a good job with the shifter and the mirrors – bus is running well, and I’m excited to start driving this thing around!