Female Mechanic(s) Now on Duty

The same day as E's driving lessons, Colin (background left) put both girls to work greasing Gertie's front end. They are actually doing the actual work, not just playing at make-believe.
Yes yes yes, the car is supported by jack stands and not just that jack. We're not crazy. Plus its wheels are still on.

 

Seatbelt Upgrade, part 2

Remember way back when, the post about changing Ludwig's rear belts from two-point to three-point, in light of the older kid's getting bigger? Last weekend I finally got around to doing the same to the other side.

I was much more hesitant about doing this side because, inconveniently, Westfalia decided that the wardrobe couldn't be an inch shorter to accommodate a three-point belt on that side, and covered up the mounting hole. (What did they do about Westies bound for Sweden, I wonder.)
tl;dr--you have to cut a notch in the wardrobe to mount the seat belt.

Step one, take out the wardrobe. Four screws outside...

...three screws inside. Then wrangle the cabinet out of the way.

There's the exposed bolt hole, and the back side of all your stickers.

Step two, bolt in the upper seat belt mount, the first time anything was bolted in there in the bus's whole life probably!

Use these fiber spacers (meant for oil pan drain plugs) on both sides of the belt mount, because you can't find thin nylon ones like the originals.

Unscrew the front of the armrest and lift it out of the way. Remove the lower seatbelt mount. 

New (to Ludwig) belt coming down.

Boom! Looks good.

This corner had been kind of wiggly. I totally overfixed it with these four brackets.

You can see my pencil marks where the notch is to be cut out. You'll want yours to be bigger because I underestimated the space I'd need when I drew these. Also, pry up the inner birch panel for jigsaw access.

Well, I'm no carpenter so there's my ugly cut. I apologized to Ludwig during the process. He didn't mind, as he understands that function is king.
The entirely unmolested, near-perfect original cabinet--which is a 74/75-only part (I'm pretty sure)--was worth maybe $200, $250 as it was. So rejoice, owners of the one hundred-fifty or so* entirely unmolested, near-perfect original 74/75-only Westfalia wardrobe cabinets still in existence: yours just got more valuable! You're welcome.

Glue the faux-veneer back on, where it peeled away during the sawing.

Installation is the reverse of removal, as they say. Enlist your favorite child's seat installer and test subject to determine the efficacy of your handiwork.

Success! Reward yourself.

*wild-ass guess, probably high

Seatbelt Upgrade

The story goes that Sweden required three-point seatbelts in all cars starting in 1965 or something. Volkswagen's solution, since they didn't want every country to have three-point seatbelts, was to give every bus the threaded holes for the belt's third point, but then only give the better belts themselves to the Swedes. 

In any case, it makes it easier when, 45 years later, you want to install a three-point belt for your too-big-for-a-carseat-too-small-for-a-lapbelt-only 10 year-old.

Lesson Learned

New rule: compare the new to the old before removing the old.

You have to rotate one of them in your head to visualize it, but the brake line ports on the old master cylinder (L) are on the left, while on the new master cylinder (R) they're on the right.

Thanks to Richie for bleeding the brakes with me.

Eleven

Pictures and words (except me in blue in [brackets]) by Colin/Amskeptic, your must-have mobile resource for continued air-cooled Volkswagen running. Thanks, Colin! Thanks lilpig88!

The start of any appointment with whc03grady (if it is not snowing) is always promising [The start of? Is that a dig?]. Look at that pretty Squareback, Gertie, and that famously well-traveled Ludwig the Westy:

We dove into a quick disassembly of the left carburetor's choke assembly so we could tighten the housing/crossbar bracket:

I busted the spade terminal clean off the choke as I removed the throttle link. Vent windows, spade terminals, my trail of wreckage grows. Why, I think it was at this very garage that I glued the choke plate to death to the profound disgust of my two year-old supervisor:

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Mitch thankfully cleaned up after me and we soldered the spade back onto the choke housing:

Not photographed, due to the high levels of stress experienced, was the investigation of a pretty severe transaxle leak. The entire front of Ludwig's transaxle presented a multi-focal systemic generalized hemorrhagic gastropathy, and we needed to perform a quick differential diagnosis (ha ha get it, differential?) to narrow down the source. 

Plan A replace seal in situ. Should be easy enough, said so on theSamba.
Plan B remove engine and transaxle and nose cone. This is a time eater. 

I went for a replacement of the nose cone shift rod seal in situ. 
I found out that my special Transaxle Care Package is actually in Atlanta sitting in the back of Chloe. You know, what good does it do there? No replacement brass bushing if I ovalize or crack or gouge the bushing here in MONTANA. . .  
Scarfed the back-up seal for NaranjaWesty from under the passenger seat and dove under Ludwig with visegrips and two baby allen wrenches. 
a) No. Brass refused to budge, and it wanted to go oval under the visegrips - abort. Stared in disbelief. 
b) No. Allen wrenches punctured the original seal and bent to spaghetti under the slightest pull. Stared in disbelief.
( "hello, yes, are you the spouse? We performed the surgery, but if you thought the hemorrhage was bad before, wait until you see it now! Don't forget to pay the bill, our collection agents are really good.'Kay, bye." )

Eventually, and with great great relief, I got the seal out with two of Mitch's hook tools. Mitch, meanwhile had taken apart all the required hoses and clamps and lines and push rod clevis on the booster/master cylinder. We put a moment or sixty into checking Gertie the Squareback's D-Jet engine which would not start. After a little breaker point adjustment and static timing to compensate for the failed DVDA can, we got Gertie to run with an enema of gasoline trickled down into the auxiliary air regulator hole. This told us that the ignition system and basic engine air pump was fine, but we are not getting fuel.

Provided a nice blue ATE box of a new ATE master cylinder to present to Mitch as we determined that his old master cylinder was leaking slowly and had destroyed his brake booster control valve with advanced rusty braky fluidy slime. But when I opened the new master cylinder box, I only then remembered that the new master cylinder was already installed in Naranja, and that old crusty mess in the box was Naranja's original "rebuildable master cylinder". Stern rebuke to my parts inventory clerk. We decided to put in Mitch's old master cylinder on the new booster, and it was a sorry looking rusty undertaking, but we did good. HE did good. I was very not helpful with his reinstallation of the booster/master cylinder because I was all over Gertie's refusal to fuel herself. We did a simple bleed at the fittings and the pedal was good. He has a week or so to enjoy true power brakes before replacing the master cylinder with a real new ATE replacement. It'll be FINE, Mitch:

Gertie told us that she had a locked fuel pump. Removed it. Disassembled it. Made it spin. It spun itself under electricity. Re-assembled it:

Installed it. It spun. No fuel pressure. Removed it. Said hello to lilpig88:

After another failed re-rebuild of the original Gertie pump with hoses and buckets and wires where the electricity was to be found behind NaranjaWesty's bumper, we embarked upon an insane Bunch Of Boys mad experimentation. It was mad:

We used lilpig88's spare Type 4 pump and my spare filter AND the original pump (to be used as a return manifold) and we wired up the pump and we stuck what we thought was the correct R (return) hose into a gas can. 

Yeah, we thought it was pretty funny . . . 
"Get a fan to help evaporate this explosive vapor":

But, Gertie ran. Gertie ran and ran, got warmed up and ran. Gertie needs a fuel pump. It'll be FINE, Mitch:

Ludwig's test drive was all that I hoped. Nice power brakes. Decent enough engine with the failed DVDA advance compensated for. Didn't see any hemorrhage from the transaxle, but I will let Mitch chime in on that one. 

The Livingston Crew pulls it together for a final second:

But just for a second:

Epilogue: Bolt, Belt

The mismatched nut came off the bolt with no problems.

E and I put on a new, metric nut (she held the bolt with a vise-grips at the other end).

We also replaced the compromised belt with this one from CarQuest, which is 1mm too thick, according to its specs.

The last day's poor running, turned out to be a misaligned crossbar between the carburetors. It probably got dislodged at the backfire. I was too busy checking hoses that it escaped my notice.

Luna

A couple weeks ago a local VWer (Richie) alerted me to a family having trouble with their '70 Westy down toward the Park.

The description seemed like a fuel issue to me but upon arrival it was clearly the clutch, which is what everyone else already thought. Luna arrived at our garage on the hook.

J and Richie and I tore into it pretty much immediately. Some funniness involving the 1970 bus transaxle and the 1973 Beetle engine meant we had to drop the transaxle and engine as a unit. Fortunately pre-1971 bus engines are the easiest to remove among all air-cooled Volkswagens. That rear apron comes off, and you basically just pull the engine out.

It was the clutch. The ring on the pressure plate had come loose and played havoc. The pressure plate was plenty blued as well, and the clutch disk was just barely within tolerance. J ordered all new parts and new engine mounts (one was sheared in half) and, while waiting for them to arrive, tended to a few other things I gave him as homework.
A valve adjustment and some minor tweaking later (note: fuel hoses have to attach to the fuel pump in the correct direction), and off they went. Last I knew they were in Minnesota.
Happy trails, B, E, and J!

Ten

Ludwig has been running pretty well lately KNOCK ON WOOD so for Colin's stop this year we decided to tackle long-lingering body integrity issues.

We disassembled the guts of the doors.

Then installed all new rubber--scrapers, felts, seals. All new. Colin worked on the driver's side while I mimicked his work on the passenger side. Not shown: kicking out the sliding door and tightening its works so it opens and closes more easily.


Doors finished, we had a choice. Replace the ball joint seals or tackle the windshield lip's rust. We went for the windshield, and good thing we did. Above, we cleaned the lip with POR-15 and applied some bondo.

Then we sanded, more bondo, primered, more bondo, sanded, primered, sanded, painted, and...

...slapped the windshield back in, with a new seal. Melissa and I worked the outside, Colin and Esmé worked the inside. I have to say, Esmé was a big help and I don't mean that in the oh-aren't-you-a-big-widdle-helper way. I mean, she was in the thick of it, and even gave the cord the final tug to fully seat the windshield and seal. 

Thank you Colin. And thank you to Melissa who, on top of being a full-time mom, taught many, many knitting classes so we could set aside enough money for a two-day appointment. I'm glad we were able to use the money she earned on some fixes that affect so directly her ability to use Ludwig.

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.