Electical Diagram

So I found this link of all the VW Bus wiring diagrams. I sent it over to ADI to have it enlarged in color to about 18"x18" and laminated for thirteen bucks. This should help with figuring out the electrical on the Type II. Another friend offered to give me a hand on Thursday. Evidently he was a mechanic on cars far nicer than VW's and gladly offered to help. I have friends out there to help, I guess I just need to ask them. 

And weather wise, it's in the thirties here, so I am not too keen on spending time in the garage. Next week is drizzle and forties. Much more conducive to work and keeping me under cover.

And the woodworker said that he on cool with using a bamboo flooring. Little progress was made this week. Ugh.

Motor

 Yeah, I'm a slacker and got virtually nothing done this weekend. But on a good note, a friend who I did some work for reminded me that he needed to get the vee-dub running for the trade. I'd forgotten about this, so it is good news. He is a good guy and very mechanically capable. And I found out that the old-growth fir I wanted to use for the floor probably won't cut it. Maybe bamboo flooring?

And here's a picture of a spare motor I picked up on a partial trade. I was told it has around 18,000 on it since a rebuild. And the original Solex carbs, I believe. Hopefully I won't need the spare for awhile.

Starter IV - Complete

Tonight I spent about an hour under the bus putting the starter back in. Quite simple. Unfortunately, the problem was not solved. Looks like the next stop is the ignition switch and testing the wires underneath. running from the starter to the ignition. Time to again reference the Idiot's Guide, ad well as the Type II site. I've never been too knowledgeable on electrical work, but this is a great way to learn. 

Not much more to write tonight. Tomorrow is another day. Oh, and the picture above shows the driver's seat. I picked both original seats up on a trade. Someday I will get them upholstered, although they are in pretty good shape and not really a priority right now.

Starter III

So here's another picture of the interior and my effort at sewing, which worked out surprisingly well - I even successfully sewed a zipper pn the back cushion. Note the original paneling, although some is water damaged.

Today I got a step closer to getting the starter on. This simple one-sentence instructions in the guide say something like "replace the bushing on the starter shaft." This turned into an afternoon foray to Hardware Sales, Harbor Freight, and finally NAPA. No one offered help, but the internet talked about tapping it out, dremeling it out, and what finally worked for me was working free with all sorts of things like a screwdriver, awl, ice pick, file, or a funky bit for an electric screwdriver that had curved edges. I gladly tapped the replacement in with 1"x1" piece of wood and a hammer. Again, I keep having images of trying to change the starter in my T3 Fastback on the streets of Philadelphia in November of 1985 lying on my back in the wet leaves and am very grateful to have a good garage to work on her. Tomorrow the starter will go back on. 

So one step closer to success. Step by step I will get this thing running, day by day.

Starter II

Today I took the starter over to Whatcom Electric and they tested it. Basically, the brushes were shot and it needed a rebuild. So I picked one up for $78, total. A very comparable price versus what's on the internet, and I could bike over on lunch to pick it up and look at thousands of batteries for boats, cars, trucks, motorcycles and for everything else internal combustion.

So this evening found me underneath the Weekender tonight trying to get the old bushing out. Harder than it seemed. Tomorrow I need to buy or borrow a bushing puller to  try to remove and replace the bushing for the starter. And I need a sealing compound too. I haven't turned a wrench in many years on a vee-dub, so much of this is coming back to me.

Here's a picture taken last night. You can see the duck cloth seat covers that I sewed. One the floor goes in (I am having a friend put some custom wood flooring in) the cushions and z-bed can be replaced. It seems there is a lot to do, but writing here helps me keep focused, believe it or not.

Starter

(Looking up at the starter, 1972 Type 2)

Tonight I climbed under Mossy (that is what I called from the day when it found comfort in my garage that I started scraping the moss that had grown on its north side where is sat exposed to the Bellingham weather for years) and took the starter out listening to a Donovan cassette. I don't know if the starter is necessarily not working, but I wanted to learn how to take if of myself in the comfort of my garage versus some logging road over on the peninsula. Now I am still amazed how simple it is to work on a VW when you have the right tools and comfy garage. Tomorrow I will take it to the Bosch starter shop a half block away. It had a label on it that said remanufactured.  

But basically here's how it went for my 1972 Weekender in less than thirty minutes:
- Remove the negative battery strap.
- Climb underneath with a 13mm socket, a 15mm wrench, a 15cm piece of wire, and your light.
- Pull of the wires from the solenoid. Two red ones that are push on tabs.
- Loosen and remove the bolt (I think #30) with four wires coming from them. I put a piece of wire through them to keep them together in the same order. A 13mm socket does the job. There is a washer and a nut.
- Remove the 15mm nut that is for bottom mounting.
- Roll out on the dolly, pet the dog.
- Get a 17mm wrench and remove the northeast engine mount nut. The bolt is half-moon shaped on the head on the forward side of the transaxle so you need to keep pulling it forward once you loosened it. I found an open-ended wrench useful for this. Put all the nuts and washer. in the baggie.*  
- Crawl back underneath and hopefully your starter will easily come out like mine did with no bruised knuckles.

But there was one bolt that looked like it had something attached to it, but it had broken off (maybe?). I check online, or the manuals. I will ask at the starter shop too.Or better yet (sudden thought) check the electrical schematic in the Bentley manual.

* - Now I don't have the blower fan or the air cleaners on my new Webers yet, so i had a bit more room to move up there on the engine topside than normal. Oh, and Othello is a dog I am fostering and tries to help when he can. He is a Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Cur. He is good to have around. His favorite food is CD cases.

Progress

Okay, so tonight I put the headlamps back into the Volkswagen. This took some efforts, as I probably removed them a year ago and my notes were a little lacking. I need to take better notes. The adjusting screw to align the headlamps are at twelve o'clock and nine (passenger) or three (driver) o'clock if you're looking at the nose of the bus. Pretty logical, but I was uncertain if they were mounted symmetrically or not. (They're not.) I picked up the Bentley manual from Amazon ($40.18) and this explained it in a pretty methodical fashion.

I will keep a tab on the total amount spent and add invoices as I find them. I also found one in the garage for the Hella rear light assembly that I purchased from M&T Manufacturing. Good, prompt service and I will order from them again.  Total cost for two was $101.66. (I will keep a running tally of the costs as soon as I dig up the invoices.)

But I do have power to the headlights, the rear driver quarter marker light and license plate light. The generator idiot light came on, as well as the interior light. I heard the fuel pump working too. Still a long way to go, but I left the garage on a positive note.

The picture is from where I spent some of my weekend. There are a few surface rust areas s you can see (click to enlarge), but remarkably good for a forty-year-old vehicle, And the odometer does read 66,000+ miles. I wonder if it was never turned over? My garage is where it sat for the past few years, and its last registration expired in 2006. The prior owners said that their neighbors enjoyed watching the moss grow on it. Little steps. More tomorrow.

Still No Juice...

This weekend proved to gain some ground. Turns out there is power getting to the solenoid to the tune of +/-12.5 volts. This is a good sign of a healthy battery (I replaed it a few months ago). My Google searches always seem to be me back to the Sean Bartnik tech papers (type2.com), so my next thought is there may be something funky going on between the wires to the battery to the ignition switch. This is my next pursuit.

This weekend’s cash outlays were roughly $23 for a new four-way lug wrench (19mm for the Type 2’s lug nuts) and some 16amp fuses (the red ones). I might add that two of the fuses were blown and this quickly added a glimmer hope to my day, but after replacing them, there was still no response from the idiot lights or other lights.

About me: I’ve owned quite a few air-cooled Volkswagens in my day, including a ’67 Type II, a ’70 Type III, and a ’74 Type I Sun Beetle. Since then, I’ve migrated to a series of air-cooled, including a few diesel Rabbits, a Jetta A1, a Fox, and a Golf A3. Those are all in the past, but I currently own a pretty cherry ’75 BMW R60/6 motorbike that only gets ridden a few times a year.

But back to the vee-dubs: The ‘67’s motor blew out on the way to a Miami show back in 1988 and I had to abandon it in Savannah, Georgia. I have carried a tinge of guilt and remorse with me over the decades and felt that I needed to appease the VW gods by some day resuscitating an ailing Type II from the ashes. So one may look at this as a spiritual endeavor or a palpable search for meaning as I approach middle age. It’s also so much nicer and easier to work with the proper tools in a dry garage versus lying on my back trying to remove a starter from my T3 on the wet winter streets of Philadelphia when the only tools the college budget allowed were some vice grips, sundry screw drivers and an adjustable wrench.

The picture is of the nose of the Volkswagen. I replaced the vent screen and did some painting. Again, I am using Hammerite rust sealant on any rust spots on the body. Not the prettiest, and I will address the cosmetics on the paint once I get it running. My goal for that is in a year or two, since painting the body will mean replacing all the window seal. More later...

The Floors

The odometer said around sixty thousand, and that may not be too far off. I was amazed at how there was virtually no rust on the vehicle anywhere, except the front floor on both sides. Other than that, mostly surface rust throughout.

I sanded and drill-wire-brushed the floor in the main cabin a few years back. Again, just surface rust on the floor and it came off easily. There was a bb-sized hole where rust had eaten through (you can see on the picture below), so I applied some Hammerite Rust Cap and that should solve the problem on the top side.

I have a friend that is going to put some custom tongue and groove fir flooring in. The question is how to fasten it and what type of sub-flooring to put in to prevent rattles and protect the metal. I took the wood from an old barn in Birchwood that they were tearing down. I asked the woodworker if we could shoot for a March 1st finish date, and he said it looked doable. He is a craftsman and I am paying a dear price for it, but I expect it will be worth it. At any rate, here is a picture I just shot of in on Saturday night about to rain in Bellingham.

More soon on my attempts to get some juice flowing through her. The battery measured 12.6 volts and when I tested the other end of the cable to the solenoid, there was no reading - like .3 volts. Could it be this cable is corroded through? A friend staying with me (who gifted me his Idiot's Guide) is very smart and has torn apart his share of air-cooled vee-dubs in L.A., shall be my counsel tomorrow over breakfast. It is interesting that you can read a hundred manuals, but crawling underneath for ten minutes (okay, more like an hour) is so much more valuable.

The First Post

A few years, I bought a 1972 VW Type 2 Weekender. A Weekender is basically a van with a Z-bed (fold out) and some storage space and a table and ice box. There is no hanging locker, pop-top, or other accouterments found in the full blown camper, but this is all I sought. I wanted the jalousie windows, I wanted a walk through (versus a bench seat), and I also wanted it as stock as possible.

I saw one sitting in front of a house and I gradually got to know the owners. It had been sitting there for years and I offered to take it off their hands. When I asked how much they wanted for it, they said I could have it for free as long as they could take the transaxle.

So I offered the a hundred bucks, towed it home (for another fifty for the trailer rental) and pushed it into my garage where it sat for a few years with some gradual work being done to it. This web log will keep me hopefully forging ahead to finally get the vee-dub on the road this summer. As some of the pictures will tell, it will require some effort and I will describe the mechanical and aesthetic upgrades as I do them.

Right now it does not run. It does not start, and the idiot lights do not even come on when I turn the key. A loose connection? It's on jack stands and tomorrow I will climb underneath and check the connections to the solenoid. Start there.

The picture above is when I purchased it back in September of 2009.