Page 1: Who we are and what we drive

Page 2: Fun with dirt                                                                                                 

Page 3: Tech. and custom projects                                                                         

Page 4: More tech. and custom projects

Page 5: VW events/campouts

Page 6: Random cool/strange photos
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(PAGE-3) Tech. and custom projects)
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PROJECT: SOUND DEADENING INSTALL

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OOPS!!!!!!!!!!!! Mother !@#$%^ (Severe anger) Guess I found my next project

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OK here we are 6 months later. Its now a cozy 80 deg. out and I'm ready to exorcise the rust monster. Surprisingly enough the rust hasn't grown all that much. Although I did find another spot up higher.

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Doesn't look all that bad now that its all cleaned up....yea right.

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Here are the products I used to prep and paint the problem area.

Heres a shot with the first coat down. One coat to go. They call for a 3-4 hour waiting time between coats. This job is time consuming to say the least. If your going to do this correctly, clear an entire day...make that a day and a half. Here's the procedure. Cleaning and preping the rust 1 hour+/-, drying 1/2 hour+/-, First coat of paint 3-4 hours+/-, second coat 3-4 hours+/-, putty application 2-3 hours+/-. That's a minimum of 9-1/2 hours.

                                                                                       All gone

PROJECT: "WOOD" PANAL FLOORING

My wife surprised the crap out of me the other day by suggesting I revamp the old stained linoleum flooring with something a little nicer. In normal circumstances she couldn't care less about the bus or what I do with it. The sheer excitement of it all compelled me to jump at the opportunity. Spend money on the van AND please the wife? What a concept LOL.

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PROJECT: WHEEL AND TIRE UPGRADE

Here they are! My Christmas presents all four of um.

Befor.............................................................................................After

There actually wasn't a huge height (Diameter) difference between the old and new rims and tires. This is because the old tires had a very tall profile, and the new ones are kind of lower. The high profile of the old tires made them sloppy as hell on the road. That and the fact that they were designed to run on passenger cars...Oops, my bad. That's where being cheep will get ya. The BIG difference was in the depth of the rims and tires. The old rims were only 5x14. The new ones are 7x16. Comparing the tires by eye, I'd say the new ones are about 2.5" wider. Bad ass

The rear wheels fit nicely inside the wheel wells and look like they could be stock. The front ones on the other hand stick out a little. No big deal but if I could do it all again, I would have ordered 6" wides for the front just so they tuck in a little cleaner.

I did have concerns of rubbing in corners and on large dips and stuff. There's just about a half inch of clearance between the upper control arm and the inside face off the front tires. Pretty close but clearance doesn't seem to be a problem so far.

This upgrade has made a huge difference in the overall appearance!

Thanks GoWesty

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PROJECT: FRONT END RATTLE FIX
Interesting discovery. Spec. KYB front shocks don't really fit. In fact the particular KYB shock called out for the Vanagon is actually designed to fit a wide range of other cars and trucks. Not a very specific part.

That said, I've had this annoying metallic banging sound coming from my front end for some time now. I finally had a chance to really hunt it down. Turns out the mounting nuts on these shocks cannot be tightened enough to properly secure the shock in the upper mount. This is because the crappy mount bushings that come with the KYBs aren't as thick as the stock VW bushings and from what I can gather the threads on the KYB's mounting post stop too short to get a snug hold on the shock. So whenever you hit a bump and compress the shock, its post and crappy bushing push up through the mount creating slack, and then slam back down on to the mount when the coil spring returns the suspension to its fully extended position. As this problem progresses and the bushing deteriorates the sound goes from a thud to a metallic clapping/banging sound.

Here is my temporary solution. Two monster size washers from Home Depot. Yup that's it. 5 months of banging around and this is all I had to do. That is until I get the correct parts.

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UPDATE
My extra washer solution worked for a while but eventually as the bushings once again broke down, the shock began to loosen and bang around.

Time to do it up right.
After a month long search steering clear of the VW dealer's ridiculous charges I finally located the proper VW spec. mounting bushings and washers at VanCafe. I had to request them by email. There not listed on their web site.

I even ditched those P.O.S. KYBs. I've got spec. Boge/Sachs shocks now, which are much softer and less jarring to the front end. The Boge/Sachs shocks don't come with bushings, but at least they're honest about not having the proper part and don't try to pawn inadequate bushings off on the consumer. So if you get these you'll need to save your old bushings or buy new like I did.
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gratuitous action shot LOL

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PROJECT: EXHAUST REPLACEMENT

Before: I picked it up on Ebay for $35.00 complete

After: Sand blasted and ready for high-temp POR-15

Bad news It turns out that a previous owner stripped out the threads on 4 of the 6 threaded bolt holes. The work never ends. I guess I can't complain though. I bought the entire exhaust system for $35.00. The cross pipe alone goes for over $250.00 new.
That's if you can find it. Most don't even stock it.

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Here it is. Coated in POR-15 and ready for reassembly

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Problem solved. We tapped the flange holes out to 10mm x 1.5

Yea, yea, yea, That was my dining room table. And YES I did clean up after I was done.

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More bad news The heater boxes are a mess. Their so far gone that I wont be able to save them.
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Flanges are rusted strait through.

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A previous owner tried to seal them at one point. Looks like that didn't work out.

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Any one care for a smoke? These after market valve covers are leaking oil down into the holes in the heater boxes. The oil is then cooking inside the boxes and shooting smoke up into the van through the heat vents. NOT good.

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I guess at some point in time these valve cover bolts had some sort of high temp O-rings on them to stop the oil from passing through to the outside of the cover. The stock valve cover gaskets don’t fit right either. They like to creep inside the head over time. I was way out in Pittsburg on a road trip once and a peace of one of these gaskets actually broke off, found its way down the push rod tube, and collapsed my lifter.

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I just ordered a new set of boxes from Cip1. Yea this is what they're supposed to look like.

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Here they are! I'm the proud new father of two beautiful 19lb. twins.

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Behold. The complete exhaust system from heater box to tailpipe ready for installation. Brings a tear to my eye.

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Time for installation. As you can see mother nature tried her best to screw things up for us. And of course Lola was about 6" to tall to fit into my buddies nice dry garage.

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Plan B
We drove her over to the Greyhound bus service garage. This thing was half the size of an airplane hanger. Needless to say She fit through the door.

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One last look at the old rotted out exhaust.

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Believe it or not once we got the engine shrouds off, the old exhaust port nuts were in really good shape. I was especially worried about these. But all 8 of them came off with no problems at all. I Guess the VW Gods were on my side. Look how clean they were.

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Here's a tip. Just to be safe we decided to remove the old exhaust in one peace and not go medieval on it with the sawsall. That way we could reinstall it if (worse case scenario) the new system didn't match up. All we had to do was back off the 8 exhaust port stud nuts, loosen the clamps on the heater tubes and wiggle it back and forth a little and the entire thing let go. We used jack stands to catch it. But they really weren't necessary. The hole thing weighed about 60lbs or so.

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Although it was pretty strait forward, installing the new system is what took the most time. We decided to install the heater boxes first (loosely), and then join the crossover pipe studs through the heater box flanges. Because the stud holes in the crossover pipe had to be re-tapped earlier and were a little crooked we had to do some jimmying to get everything to line up. Notice my buddies attempt to look like he's not frustrated as hell. Once everything lined up (after a half hour or so of grunting and cursing) We then were able to snug everything down.

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Another tip: If you have to tap & re-stud your crossover pipe like I did (look at the photos above) make sure you get studs that are the same length as the originals. Mine were about 3/8" longer than the original and it made it harder to get the nuts on them, ESPECIALLY the top stud. The heater box pipes gets in the way. We had to take off the left upper engine shroud to get to it. And don't tap out the crossover pipe holes any bigger that 10mm the nut for a 10mm stud just barley fits in there.

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Well, there ya have it. Greasy finger prints and all. She's ready for a test run.

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After an hour and a half test drive back to NYC from Jersey I was more than pleased. This was well worth the time and money.
No more crackly back fires, no more exhaust fumes in the van, and best of all I've got BLAZING HOT heat.

41 deg. outside...88 deg. inside!

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Guess I won't be needing this anymore.

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Update Only three weeks later
The POR-15 has begun to chip off. I followed the aplication instructions to a "T". I will contact the distributor about this. NOT GOOD!
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Update One year later
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PROJECT: VALVE COVER REPLACEMENT
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Ok back to these leaky Valve covers. After doing some digging I found out that after market valve covers such as the ones I have often require special gaskets that are specifically designed to fit them correctly. That's why the oil has been passing right through my stock gaskets and dripping down on to my heater boxes. As you can see from the photo, the stock gaskets just wont stay put. This is what I discovered when I removed the drivers side cover. This had also happened in the passed. A piece of the gasket broke off inside and it caused me a collapsed lifter way out in PA.
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As I mentioned earlier, the missing O-rings at the bolt locations aren't helping the situation either.
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The stock covers were designed with a small tab welded on to the gasket channel to keep the gasket in line with the lip of the cover and the head.
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Luckily I VW comrad of mine was nice enough to trade me my covers for a spair stock set of covers he had laying around.
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Well, here they are nice and tight. The stock covers don't look as cool as the after market ones but when it comes to these type of things form follows function if ya know what I mean.
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PROJECT: BRAKE CALIPER REPLACEMENT
Time to ditch these old break dust makers. The pistons in these calipers aren't opening all the way as they should when I let off the breaks. As a result the break pads are continuously rubbing against the discs. This causes excessive heat build up and lots of break dust all over my brand new rims.

To my knowledge, there were two different types of calipers used this Vans by VW, Girling & ATE (also known as Tavis). My current worn out calipers are Girlings.

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The new calipers are ATE and have a different mounting location for the brake line fitting.

When I test fitted the new calipers on the van and turned the wheels hard to the right the rigid metal brake line (in the new location) was pressed up against the control arm. Not good. Now I will have to replace the brake line with a flexible one so it doesn't kink.
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Everything else seems to be a match.

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At last I have brakes. Back to the Girling calipers. I sold the ATEs on Ebay.

PROJECT: CLUTCH MASTER AND SLAVE CLY REPLACEMENT

Well, they say once one goes the other follows soon after. Unfortunately I didn't listen to them. The story goes like this.

I lost pressure in my clutch one day on a short road trip. Fortunately I managed to limp the van home before all pressure was lost. After some investigation, It turned out to be a blown clutch slave cylinder. So I ordered a new one along with a clutch master cylinder knowing that the master cyl would also go soon. I installed the slave, the pressure came back, and the van was shifting perfectly. So I did what any lazy procrastinating guy would do. I dropped the shiny new master cyl in a zip lock bag and put it in my spare parts cabinet.

Well, here we are more that a year later and the seals on my old master cyl. have finally let go. I had begun to think it would hold for ever. So in 35deg. weather with snow on the forecast I set out with tool in hand to replace it with the spare new one I bought more than a year prior.

The job went pretty smooth actually. Up until it was time to bleed the system. On a Vanagon you bleed the clutch hydraulic system through a bleeder screw located on the top of the slave cylinder. That is unless you snap the freakin thing off trying to loosen it. Yup, I made it all the way to the end of the job seemingly with no real complications. All I had to do was bleed the system and I was done. Turns out a year worth of road salt and other crud froze the bleeder screw solid to the slave cy. I barely even torqued on it and pop right off. So now I will be installing another new slave to match my new master. ARG! Wish I had listened to the hype and just installed both parts at the same time. The last time I did it was probably about 70deg. out.

So here's what a bad master clutch cylinder does. My carpet was saturated with break fluid. And yes break fluid DOES dissolve paint.