Two of Us Riding Nowhere

There was time this weekend to tidy up the garage just enough to get ol' Gertie out of the elements. 

Birthday

getting Gertie out of storage a couple months ago

Gertrude Butterblume is 46 years old today. Maybe for her birthday we'll get her a battery.

Birthday

It's Ludwig's 43rd birthday.
How many 1974 VW Campmobiles are doing duty after 43 years, I wonder. If 2% of them are still around (which seems about right), Ludwig is one of 4,500.
On the other hand, how many of these will be around in 2060, I wonder. Probably not 4,500 of them.

Labor Day Weekend at Grasshopper Creek

miles (2)34,739-(2)35,103

Hail, Gertrude Butterblume

Stinkerton is as amazed as I was. We prepared ourselves to use Grandpa's truck (800 ft/lbs of torque!!? Can that even be right?) to pull Gertie to her new home after her year-plus in storage (not to mention her few years of non-driving before that).
She had other ideas however, only using the truck for a jump as she fired straight to life and drove home happily--eagerly--and without incident.
I was nearly moved to tears as I reflected on how, when she's running well like she was today, she is hands down the best driving car I or we have ever owned.

Shine a Light

Stinkerton and I installed Ludwig's new taillight housings a long time ago. During Colin's last visit there were more pressing issues to take care of than the fact that the taillights still didn't work.
Recently I took off the lenses and realized why.

No bulbs.

So, yeah.

Nabbed

Driving 02McDonald's 1961 Double Door to a car show in Gretna back in 2004, Melissa and I got nabbed for not having any plates.

Piebald

This is our community-gardening friend's Vanagon. I don't think it has a name.

Vanagonagain

Man, there sure are a lot of Vanagons in the wild these days. True, we live at the closest Interstate exit to Yellowstone, but it still surprises me to see non-local Vanagons nearly every day. Admittedly, the one below is Gallatin County--local.

Bay Windows must've been more or less skipped over, for whatever reason, in favor of Vanagons by everyone who wanted a Splitty (because kewl) but couldn't afford one anymore. It is easier to chicken out and shove a Subaru engine (because style over substance) into a Vanagon than it is a Bay Window, so maybe that's it. Or maybe there're more less-rusty Vanagons than Bays left to buy, or there're just more Vanagons left, period.

Anyway, I like this one's color.

Hail, Ludwig

Colin came by for the ninth time a couple Saturdays ago. Ludwig was stuck at the Library so we went down to install what he needed to get up to the garage, then we drove him to the garage. (An extremely helpful local ACVWer and I had installed the engine and transaxle some weeks previous. Thanks Richie!)

Colin drove Ludwig, actually. I drove Colin's bus, NaranjaWesty, above. It's always weird driving a tight-like-factory VW bus, as all of Colin's which I've driven (3 of 4) have been.
The little girl contingent, wearing their dolls, inspected Ludwig's placement in the new-to-us two-stall garage.

They approved, Colin approved, everyone approved. We got down to business. First, tightening up the steering.

This is Colin showing me how to use a ball joint separator.

This is me using a ball joint separator. It's easy. The old (OG in fact) steering drag link came off, a new one went on. Replacing original parts with what passes for new parts these days tears me up a little, but this is the world we live in.

Meanwhile, Colin was attending to a glitch with the Left carburetor. During the build-up at the Library he'd noticed a slight wobble in its choke plate, caused by a loose little screw. Dangling directly above a powerful vacuum leading to a combustion chamber is no place for a little screw. We convinced it to stay in place using a drop of Loctite, but alas a drop proved too much and scared other carburetor parts--parts we want to move--in their places as well. Colin spent some time working on it and through some combination of cannibalization, reaming, nail polish remover, bending, and sheer will, got everything copacetic again.

My favorite boots have probably finally arrived at their last day.

We were sure that Ludwig's new GoWe$ty gear reduction $tarter would be the cure to an occasional but highly annoying no-start issue--up until now the cure has been to climb under to either jump it or thwack the old starter with a hammer. The new $tarter also helpfully eliminates the need for Ludwig's ancient Ford hot-start relay (readers of Muir will know what this is) and the stupid little bushing in the transaxle bell housing (you'll have to take my word on this one).
It didn't work. A new battery did. Lesson learned: seven years is plenty long for a battery that sits through Montana Winters.

We wrapped things up with some minor tuning, happy with what we'd accomplished, regretful there were still plenty of things we'd like to get to (stomping the sliding door straight being near the top of that list).

See Colin's version of events at this link.

Thanks, Melissa, for taking all the pictures and everything else.

Fuzzy Picture from a Phonecamera

Seen in Livingston. 47 is the code for Meagher ("marr") County, county seat White Sulphur Springs. Either I'm having a memory lapse or that thing has the wrong license plate light housing/hood latch combo.

How to Glue the Nosecone to the Transaxle

How Works the Front Part of a VW Bus Transaxle, Abridged

To recap: one day late last Summer Ludwig wouldn't come out of first gear. The video below, much moreso than the picture at the relevant post, clearly shows both the proximate and ultimate causes for such.

Thanks to Jeremy for the video

After discussing the situation with a local machinist, he installed thread inserts in both of the bracket's mounting holes (it's obvious from the video that the upper one was shot, but the lower one was about to give way as well). Those little tangs you see down in the holes, those tangs are part of the insert and are normally removed after you insert the insert--by knocking them off with a screwdriver. We'd rather not knock two little chunks of steel into Ludwig's gear carrier with a screwdriver, so the tangs will stay where they are. At Amskeptic's advice, the bolts were quadruple-checked against contacting them.

There're the new bolts, mightily (knock on wood) holding that bracket to the body of the transaxle.

Up is right. The abovementioned bracket holds that shaft in place. The gear selector fork rides up and down the shaft (keep your dirty remarks to yourself). The fork itself is linked by an unshown mechanism to the shifter in the cockpit; the driver shifting up there makes the fork move back here. The tabs on the fork push in or pull out those shafts marked 1/2, R, and 3/4, putting the transaxle in gear. 
This transaxle is in neutral, but if the fork pushes in the 1/2 shaft from this position, it'll be in 1st gear. If the fork pulls the 1/2 shaft out, 2nd.

Still in neutral but in position to select 3rd (in) or 4th (out).

Finally, ready to select reverse (out, I think).

Brief pondering helps one realize that for proper operation, the fork's movement must be restricted to movement up and down the shaft, and twisting about the shaft (that's what she said (sorry)). If the shaft isn't held in place by its bracket--owing to the bracket's mounting bolts being stripped out and free to move (see: the video above)--then the driver's moving the shifter up front moves the fork in all kinds of wacky directions, none with the force to put the transaxle in to, or out of, any gear other than the one it was in when the failure occurred.

The next step is to clean the surfaces and glue the nosecone on.