GoBigEmma Pan-American Roadtrip log

[Eighty horses]

You guys are doing great, nice job persevering and figuring stuff out!
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1977 Westy "Kazul"

[Eskimotom]

Makes me want to pull and replace my bearings while my bus is in the safety of my garage. Say hi to my mom while you are in Anchorage.

If you have the time, make a side trip down to Homer and leave a dollar on the ceiling of The Salty Dog. I highly recommend the glacier flight over Seldovia.

My mom is from Bethel. But like the old timers say, you can't get there by bus, unless you put it on a boat. Safe travels and pay attention to the moose crossing signs.

Eskimo Tom

[Abscate]

Tom...I'm thinking this is one of those items you hold as a spare at home base
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.ssS!

[GoBigEmma]

Hey guys,

in all the brake and wheel bearing issues over the last week, the whole trip thing got a little lost here on the thread. Let's recap. We took the Alaska Highway up to Skagway, approximately a month ago now. Skagway is a nice (if a little touristy) tiny town by the sea. The funny thing about it: It is in the US, but is surrounded only by the ocean, and Canada. The only road that leads here takes you to Canada, and the only other option to get away is to take a ferry, which is what we did. But not before we met Andre, Vanagon owner and fellow vanlifer. It's always awesome to meet other like-minded people

Finally, Alaska!

Meeting Andre and his vanagon

The ferry we took to Juneau, capital of AK, and the only US state capital that cannot be reached by road. Right next to the town is Mendehall glacier, where we hiked to and found some amazing ice caves (more pictures are on our Facebook page!). These things are just really really stunning and crazy, water and rock dropping all around you, but the beauty of it! Pretty awesome.

Ice caves. Absolutely amazing. Our FB has more pics!

Then the road took us via ferry to Haines all the way to Anchorage, where we mostly tackled our wheel bearings, but also took trips to Whittier (very weird town, used to be a secret Military base in WW2, only reachable by a one-way railroad tunnel. You drive through it, just one lane, tracks on the floor for the trains, everything is wet. Weird, but cool. The town itself is tiny, most people live in one big apartment building, there is a large train yard and the harbor, and that's it. But they have a nice glacier you can walk to, that is pretty cool, also enormous amounts of berries with which we filled our tummies. Yummie!

Whittier bay panorama

Just another Alaska panorama. It kinda looks like this everywhere here

Once the wheel bearing were done, we took south to the Kenai and went to Homer, where we are now. It kinda rains all the time (that seems to be a thing in southern Alaska), but they have a good brewery, that makes up for it. That's it for now, we'll report back in a few days!

A moose just here in town in Homer

Peaceful scenery in Homer

Sven
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1975 Bus "Big Emma", 1.8 FI, Hydraulic lifters
Interrupting our Pan-American Roadtrip for post-flood repairs: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=657738
Follow the trip on our blog: http://www.gobigemma.com

[Happyfolk]

Congrats! Awesome pics!
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'79 Westfalia Deluxe Campmobile, 2.0L CA FI, Mexico Beige

[williamM]

[williamM]

Super job- how bad were the mosquitoes???
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some days I get up and just sit and think. Some days I just sit.

opinion untempered by fact is ignorance.

Don't step in any!

[GoBigEmma]

Moskitos haven't been all that bad so far, but we are now in Fairbanks and on the way up to the Arctic, we've heard it gets really bad there...
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1975 Bus "Big Emma", 1.8 FI, Hydraulic lifters
Interrupting our Pan-American Roadtrip for post-flood repairs: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=657738
Follow the trip on our blog: http://www.gobigemma.com

[RONIN10]

[williamM]

[GoBigEmma]

[Abscate]

Get a flat repair kit with plugs and glue or even an inner tube

Easier to store than a tire.

Good luck E,S, and BE!
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.ssS!

[GoBigEmma]

[RONIN10]

[GoBigEmma]

Hey Sambaverse,

we're back in civilization! What an adventure it was. Sometimes easier than expected, sometimes much harder. The bus gave us some trouble, enough to have us decide to not go all the way up to Prudhoe, but make Wiseman, approx. 80 miles north of the arctic circle our turnaround point. Still, it's absolutely wonderful up there and we had a great time.

I'm gonna post some pics here first, then the next post will have all the mechanical stuff and I will bombard you with questions.

About 85 miles out of Fairbanks, here's the start of the Dalton. Of course we'd have to stop for some pics The dirt on the ground is basically what most of the highway looks like. Some parts are paved (see below), but the majority is definitely gravel and dirt..

It's quite some distance to cover.. and don't forget to turn your headlights on!

About 100 miles into the Dalton, we crossed the Artic circle. Alaska loves their big wooden signs, and so do we!

Probably the most stunning thing about the Dalton is the incredible emptiness of the land. Except for the road and the Alaska Pipeline, there is just nothing here, but nature. Awesome.

Wiseman, our northernmost point on the trip. A tiny village (population something like 20) in the middle of nowhere.

So, how to people get around in Wiseman? They just have planes in their backyards.

But around Wiseman and Coldfoot (only town with a gas station between Mile 0 and Prudhoe Bay), the road is actually pretty sweet and sometimes even looks like this.

It is beautiful up there, and especially if you can make it further up north to the tundra it is supposed to be even better. Can only recommend this trip, even in a bus

Okay, this is the sweet part, next post will have the troubles and questions

Sven
_________________
1975 Bus "Big Emma", 1.8 FI, Hydraulic lifters
Interrupting our Pan-American Roadtrip for post-flood repairs: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=657738
Follow the trip on our blog: http://www.gobigemma.com

[GoBigEmma]

Okay, here we go with the trouble part. It's a bit long and has a lot of different stuff in it. Sorry for that, we're happy about any answers we can get.

Trouble #1:
On day 2, about 20 miles in we heard a "clonk" somewhere close to the right rear wheel. We stopped, looked at everything, but we couldn't find anything. 5 miles further, another "clonk" in the same spot, followed by a much stronger one we could even feel. We pulled over, jacked up the wheel and could hear the sound irregularly while spinning the wheel. Decided to disconnect the driveshaft and found out the CV joint on the tranny side had trouble turning. Luckily we had a spare, replaced it and the clonk was gone.
I'm somewhat confused if it really was the joint, because the one we took out didn't have any heavy grooves or anything, and what people describe when a joint goes didn't seems like our clonking. Mh..

Trouble #2:
Our left rear brake was getting hot again, so we decided to adjust it. Spinning it revealed a clattering noise. Remember the nuts that our e-brake lever was attached with from a few page back? Yeah, they came off and bounced around in the drum. We gotta get whatever it is that is supposed to be there, but for now we lock-tited (is that a word?) them back on. The drum has some bad grooves carved by the bouncing nut, we'll have someone here look at it and maybe machine it. But wait, it gets better.

Trouble #3:
Wheel back on, out for a test drive! Up a hill, turn around, starting down, clonk-clonk-clonk! We thought, f*ck, it wasn't the joint, it's back. Then a really loud clonk and scratching and stopping. What happened? A wheel fell off. Yap, I know. How did that happen? Well, in the whole excitement about getting out on the road, I forgot the part where you tighten the lug nuts really well after letting the car off the jack. Yeah.. here's the part where you laugh really hard at my stupidity, I for sure did.
Anyway, we luckily found all our lug nuts, we jacked the car again, put the spare wheel on and that was it.
Now that we are back, it's time to assess the damage. We were going really slow when we lost the wheel, so it was only about 10 feet of "driving" on backing plate and drum. Still, the low end of the plate has pieces missing and the drum has some serious scratches on the outside. The wheel needs balancing (lost the wheel weight) and the rim has a big groove.
So, here are my questions:
- The backing plate lost the lip that curves around the drum on the end that touched the road. I'm sure it's not great, but I assume that's OK to drive for a while, it's just there to keep dust out of the brake assembly. Is that correct?
- The drum took a beating, it ran on the asphalt for a few revolutions. But it seems like a sturdy piece of metal and it spins without touching anything. I would say it should be fine if we're getting it machined (which we're doing anyways because of the grooves caused by the kamikaze nut from the e-brake lever). Do you agree?
- We'll have the rim checked and balanced. Hope that it's fine, we'll see what the tire place says.
- The threads on the wheel hub bolts (what the wheel goes on, is that what it's called?) also took a beating. The nuts still go on, but it's kinda hard to get them on. Can you replace the bolts without the hub, or can they be re-threaded?
- Is there any other part we are not thinking about that is likely to have been damaged?

The backing plate that rode the asphalt for a bit.

Trouble #4:
The list is a little longer. We also noticed that our front tires are wearing very unevenly. While the outside looks fine, the tread on the inside of both tires is pretty worn. I guess our wheels are not aligned very well. I haven't read about it yet, but that seems like something we should (get?) corrected pretty soon. Also, those tires don't look all that save to me. My car history doesn't go very far back, so I have no experience here, how long can you drive tires without having them blow up?
I've seen cars in the States with almost no tread on their tires, but then again I also see blown tires all along the highways...
We want to get new tires anyways, so this might be a good time, the only questions is if we get them here in Fairbanks or if we wait til later and further south.

Trouble #5:
And finally: We've been noticing wet spot on our tranny, both on the front and the rear seal. It seems like another task for the lower 48 is changing those seals, but for at least one of them the engine has to come out, so I'd like to do that in the course of a larger make-over later in Cali. We're keeping an eye on the oil level, so we hope it can wait until the south. Do you agree/disagree?

Pew, that's it for now I think. We will spend some more days in Fairbanks, does anyone know about a trustworthy VW shop or someone knowledgeable around here that could have a look at stuff?
Thanks for reading through this monster-post, and thanks for your help as always!

Sven
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1975 Bus "Big Emma", 1.8 FI, Hydraulic lifters
Interrupting our Pan-American Roadtrip for post-flood repairs: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=657738
Follow the trip on our blog: http://www.gobigemma.com

[busdaddy]

You really should replace the studs, nuts and the drum, the studs can be done with the hub installed, a good used drum would be my first choice. You'll also want to have a really good look at the rim, if the lug nut holes are worn or ovaled it's toast. You may also have to file the centering boss on the hub to get the drum off of it, loose wheels sometimes form a lip that makes the drum a challenge to get off.

The tires are wearing but don't look scary yet, whan that raised area down in the trad grooves (1/4 of the way down your pic) is level with the tread it's time. You might want to have an alignment shop check and set the toe in while both of you are in the fully loaded bus, if it was set empty it could explain the wear you see now (It'll reduce the squirellyness on some roads too).

How much of a spot does the trans make after being parked X hrs.?
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Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

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[Abscate]

Sven

Tires are fine, these won't blow on you. If the ball joints are ok then you have too much toe in. I've actually aligned busses with curtain rods to get the toe in to about 3mm. If I recall right you can't get a curtain rod on the front most part of the wheel but you can on the back.

Go under with two pieces of lumber, wheels straight, level ground

The back of the wheels should be 3mm wider than the front. Make a mark on the two pieces of lumber at each spot and see how close they are.

Find someone with a thread chaser and straighten those threads and the lugs will be fine. Lube and torque, then check for 10, 20,30,60,120 intervals until you know they are holding

Maintain the 120 minute check interval until you know they are solid

Your backing plate and drum will be fine as is, because you were driving prudently and stopped immediately.

You have the kind of situational awareness that allows you to not replace everything with OG parts every time the detailer uses non-approved cleaning sponges.
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.ssS!

[3 Amigos Racing]

Very cool.. Thank you for sharing every detail .

[GoBigEmma]

Hey guys,

thanks for your answers, it's helping us a lot!