Category: VW

This is my new 4-1/2″ angle grinder! I bought this thing from Harbor Freight to help remove the welded front bumper brackets, and strip the old paint & rust from various parts of the bus.  Bottom line is that this tool is a beast – its not that big, but it spins at 10K RPM – I’m definitely not messing around!  I tried grinding down, and then cutting into the bracket weld. Unfortunately, with all of the sparks flying and the loud screeching of the grinding wheel, I wasn’t willing to keep it up for very long – so far, the apartment mgmt has been very lenient with my tinkering, and I don’t want to mess that up.

I also spent some time banging away at the stuck front hinge bolts.  I need to remove these before I can attach my replacement side mirrors.  I bought a new type of penetrating oil, but still didn’t manage to move the bolts.  I guess I’ll keep working on that!

Finally, I braved the cold and wet weather to test drive the bus some more.  It performed beautifully!  I backed the thing out of the garage, shifted smoothly into first and then second gear, drove around the parking lot.  I came to the dreaded stop sign where I’ve had so much trouble before – the engine either dies as I brake, or it coughs and dies as I shift in first to get going again – but this time, the engine dropped to a solid idle as I came to a stop, and did not hesitate as I got going again.  Success! 

I parked the bus out front to clean out the garage a bit – came back later, fired it right up, and pulled it into the garage.  As far as I can tell the bus is working well, and ready for the road!  Now we just need to survive the additional 5 – 10 inches of snow forecasted for tonight, and then Monday’s “coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago”.  Hopefully the weather clears up in the next week or so, and I can actually drive this crazy bus down the street!

It’s 5 degrees out – we just survived a 3 day snowfest – and yeah, I went out and started up the bus.   It struggled with the first turn of the key, the starter slowly chugged to life – the engine fired up, but then died.  I pumped the pedal a couple more times, turned the key, it roars to life!  I kept my foot on the pedal for a few seconds to keep the engine going, and then backed off the gas.  The engine idles smooth, sounds great.  No, I didn’t drive it around in the snow, but still – if the stupid thing starts when its this cold, I have to think it is good to go.

I snapped the pic above as a car drove by to illuminate the awesome event, and I made another video of my beautiful engine running, even in the cold, but I didn’t want to post it because then people might come across my youtube channel and think I have some weird VW engine fetish… which I don’t! … I think

I also spent some time crawling around underneath the bus, confirming that some genius of a previous owner had decided to add a real hack-job of a weld to the front bumper brackets.  They are now solidly attached to the bus, and I can’t actually fit a wrench behind them to put the bumper on.  I’ll be figuring out the least destructive way of removing these shortly.

Its supposed to be -15 below next week – lets see if any more body panels try to fall off!

I’ve finally got a decent chunk of time to work on the bus.  The weather should be a little warmer over the next couple of days, and today I set about getting the fuel lines all replaced.

I managed to get the guy at NAPA to be at least somewhat helpful (although he was reluctant to make any real effort) – I bought a 20” piece of 1/4” brake line tubing to replace the old rusty metal fuel line.  Given the state and shape of the old metal tube, I do not think it was original at all.

I cut the connector ends off of the brake line tube, and filed down the sharp edges.

I used a wire as a template, and the handle of my hammer to help bend the tubing – I think this is close to the original design, and it routes the fuel around the hot engine which will prevent overheating and vapor-lock.  I also replaced the soft rubber line under the bus, and secured it to the tank nozzle.  Finally, I rigged up a wire to suspend the line off of the engine tin – I’ve noticed that this gets pretty hot.

Overall, I’m happy with the way it turned out – and it all only cost like $10!  The engine won’t quite stay running yet, but I’m hoping to make some significant progress tomorrow – more to come!

I think it hit like -5 degrees below zero this week – so cold that it cracked the crappy bondo job on the right rear panel!  I knew the exterior had been repaired at some point, but obviously, that spot got more attention than the rest.  I’m thinking it got cold, the metal contracted more than the Bondo… and eventually… crack!  Not good!  I’m not freaking out too much because I figured I would need some additional bodywork done when I get a full paint job – but it kind of sucks having a big cracking running down the bus!  If it’s this cold in Chicagoland mid-December, I shudder to think what it will be like in January and February!  Maybe my next post will be from a nice beach rental in Florida…. maybe!

After running back in to tell Noelle all about the new expensive crack in the side of the bus, I got busy propping up one side so I had better access to the underside of the fuel tank.  My plan was to pull the underside hose and connector off, and see if it is all gunked up.  I got the old hose off no problem – it is definitely time to replace – the rubber felt almost rotten.  I then spent the next couple hours trying to figure out how to drain the gas out – I thought it would just rush out of the now exposed connector, but it was dry.  I tried blowing compressed air up into the tank, tried using a hand pump to siphon it out, nothing worked, I couldn’t get any gas out of the tank!

Thats when I realized  – yet again – I’m just being an idiot – of course I can’t get any gas out – the stupid bus is tipped up on one side, and all the gas is sitting on one end of the tank!  Seriously – I can be so dumb sometimes – yet here I am, trying to fix this cribbily old bus! As soon as I lower the bus, gas comes pouring out of the nozzle – I hook up an extra piece of hose and drain the tank.  My plan now is to remove the nozzle, clean it and any gunk that I can from the tank.  I’m also going to pull the old rubber hose and metal gas lines – replace the rubber, and clean out the metal.  But honestly – its frickin’ cold, and I can’t feel my toes – so I’m going inside!