TheSamba.com :: View topic - Passenger Window--Fixes and mods

Tue May 21, 2019 6:17 pm

When I purchased the '91 8 years ago, one of the first things that caught my attention was the badly warped panel. Apparently the OP had managed to leave the window open a number of times and the masonite was soaked and warped. Not only warped, but cupped where the swelling of the fibers had pushed it out of plane and created a hump about 8" in diameter and almost an inch high. Pretty terrible. Stripped it and soaked it between two pieces of 3/4" ply clamped and weighted with a piece low pile carpet--super wet--as the cheese in the sandwich. Left it for a week to thoroughly soften the masonite. Then pulled it out, drilled a whole bunch of 1" holes in both pieces of ply and reclamped and weighted and waited for a month. Used the panel out of the dead car in the meantime.

Had tried previously to remove the vinyl and fabric from a warped panel, but discovered that the heat pressed parts of both the vinyl and cloth wind up welded to the masonite and can't be removed without tearing either fabric. Finally, looked forward to the perfectly flat panels and took off the clamps expecting fabulous results. Actually, I couldn't see any difference from the beginning. Back to the drawing board.

Since I'm a boater and ex boat builder, I have lots of epoxy around and figured the solution would be to epoxy the masonite to substrate and have it cure while being flattened. Bought some aluminum fancy mesh/grillwork from the local hardware store and let 'er rip. Mixed the epoxy with colloidal silica to the consistency of hot peanut butter and smeared it all over. Squished the AL into place, waxed paper as a separator and weighted the hell out of it with a piece of the former failed 3/4 ply experiment. The next day--flat and perfect.
Had predrilled the mesh to allow for the plastic clips to be used and put holes in the ply to accommodate them.

Mistakes--other than doing it at all--didn't pull out the wrinkles in the vinyl at the bottom first and so...
The darker vinyl is actually a shadow and it's all the same color. After numerous attempts to reglue the vinyl to the masonite at the edges only to have it eventually release in the 140º interior heat during the summer sun when closed up, I've discovered that Gorilla Tape carefully applied after pushing the vinyl over and around the edge works really well.

About $5 bucks of epoxy and microballons, 10 for the mesh. Shoulda bought new masonite and where the fabric couldn't be removed just carefully ground down the masonite to thin and then slapped the whole shebang on the new flat panel. Oh, well.......

The next job was to get a drink holder on for the passenger. Pulled one out of a dead Carat of my buddies, but found the little button pivots are hard to keep in their holes and so the bottom kept falling out. Finally replaced it with an impossible one to find from GoWesty. Was stunned when it arrived in a plastic bag marked West Marine. WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT!!! I go into West Marine 30 times a year for boat crud and never saw them. Of course I don't visit their pimp-my-ride department either. Paid shipping and ........... Plus, West has far sexier ones and if idda known, I wouldda upgraded. Again, Oh well......

Number the next was the vent wing. Since I don't have AC--it's back there, but the best it can do is bring there interior to ambient. In other words, over come solar gain. So if its 100 outside and I close all the windows--more on that later, it will go to 120 inside. Turn on the AC and it brings it all the way down to....100º. A huge help and stuffy to boot. So, I like to open the vents to about 120º to allow them to act as scoops to force a nice breeze inside. On all my previous T3's this has been a very successful program.

However, some bright engineer at Wolfsburg decided that the '91's should have a pin in the shaft to prevent it from going forward more than about 85º. Thanks a bunch, Heinrich. So, pulled both the power window totally out and removed the vent and ground off the offending pin. Also used this opportunity to tighten the shaft pincher gizmo that keeps the window open against the breeze and also replaced both inner and outer wipers.

However...........

Duncan

Thu May 23, 2019 2:32 am

The however is the friction adjust for the vent windows which suck. I fixed--took completely apart, emery clothed the shaft and cleaned the pinchers and replaced it--the DS. Within a year, I had this problem:

It was completely loose and just flopping around. Wouldn't even stay in the normal position. The really ugly issue is THE ADJUSTMENT BOLT IS ONLY ACCESSIBLE ON THE EXTERIOR SIDE of the gizmo. This means that to re adjust, you have to take the whole thing apart again; all main window glass seals and wipers, remove window and two wiper clips and finally the vent window frame and glass which takes a bit of finagling. So I said to myself, how hard can this be to fix. Wasn't, but takes a whole bunch 'o time.

I took a whole lot of separate shots showing the individual parts and how it happened, but this is close enough. The top pic shows the threaded 1/8"+ piece of steel threaded to accept a 10-24 bolt which has been attached to the stock assembly with a countersunk 8-32 flat head. There isn't a whole lot of room so I had to keep this reasonably thin. !/4" stock would not have worked and so I finally found the right thickness from an angle iron bracket at Ace which is about 10 guage. I drilled out the threaded portion of the stock piece so the bolt would pass through to my added piece. Here we are looking from the point of view from the outside of the car. The piece on the right of the shaft normally flops over and the bolt goes from the outside in to the cad plated part now hidden behind my added threaded part.
And here we see the end of the adjusting bolt from the outside of the car meaning the socket allen bolt is now screwed in from the inside of the door. Note the blue tape on the glass indicating the position of the bolt head.
And here the vent is in place and the hole drilled according to the tape measurements.
I bought two different plugs for the access hole and as you can see, I didn't get the hole location in quite the right spot and had to enlarge the hole resulting in the slightly larger plug. Luckily, it isn't a huge issue and isn't really too noticeable. I have a pic somewhere which I'll post soon showing the final with the plug and door panel in place and you will see this is not an ugly. When I get around to the DS, I will now have a better location and can go with the smaller plug. In any case, the bottom line is I can now adjust the pivot tension from the inside without removing anything except for the small plastic plug. This has turned out to be a really useful fix--at least for me. Most of you will never have this problem or annoyance, l but I'm really happy with the results. I have a 24" child's pool game cue stick which is nicely tapered. I added a rubber tip for friction against the glass. The pool cue lives between the E brake lever and the DS seat pedestal and I use it to move the PS vent to the desired angle while driving. It is also used to knock down the holdup spring for the new glove box lid.

Much more to come on various PS for fixes as well as some other PS related issues.

Duncan

Thu May 23, 2019 6:35 pm

Number the next. Modified the PS seat to mount the backrest 1" farther back allowing more thigh support which I have found for me to be more comfortable on long trips. Also ground the quadrant to get slightly more recline and use the seat turned around on its slides when camping. There were two issues: 1. The armrest fouled the seatbelt retract spool so I lowered it; 2. the armrests fouled the door handle so the door couldn't be closed. I decided to swap out the fixed one for a folding item. Went to the junk yard and picked up what I was told was an Oh Jesus handle. I guess they get grabbed when that is the natural thing to say given impending doom. The top mounted in the OG plastic fastening location, but the bottom needed some help.

I fabbed up this bar to compensate for the change in lower fastening location. The square hole is where the plastic insert went for the OG handle. There wasn't access to tighten nuts on the back and I didn't want anything on the inside which would have interfered with the panel. I tapped the 1/4" bar for 1/4-20/ and then put long bolts in from the back and then tightened them by grabbing the extra with vise grips and then ground them flush. The white thing protruding from the front hole is a Vasalined stud. The tin didn't exactly like the bar so I bedded it with epoxy and the stud was to keep the epoxy out of the threads. That's where the handle mounting bolt goes.
A dry fit before I ground the bolts off and could never make any adjustments.

And here is what it looks like with the panel on. Works great and has the slo-close feature which is kinna sexy. But the main thing is now it is possible to shut the door with the arm rest down when the seat is turned around.
Nit pickers will point out the dangling window switch who's fix came next.

How 'bout that item on the trailer! Appears to be a 15" 2-4-0 saddle tank.

Duncan

Thu May 23, 2019 7:41 pm

I love the hinged dash! So much storage possibilities under there.

My 85 has the aftermarket dash organizer/map table that would make a great access hatch for the dash.

http://www.eurocampers.com/Vanagon-Deluxe-Dash-Console_p_441.html

Not exactly the right one...

Thu May 23, 2019 7:53 pm

yeah that dash(stash) is awesome! im lucky that my vent windows are still tight even at top speed, as its still also my AC, same as in my typeII as well. id be pissed if they went.

Thu May 23, 2019 8:12 pm

DuncanS wrote:

Duncan

Oh goodness, now we can add the eponymous DuncanS port to the Samba Hall of Fame. Well, at least it’s a candidate, it took awhile for the Mullendore port to catch on.

I guess it was just a matter of time.

Nice thread.

Thu May 23, 2019 8:19 pm

Tell us about the hold-up spring. Is this a common configuration for some applications in the boat world or some other place or is it an innovation on your part? I assume that when you give it a bump the spring collapses and the lid closes?

Fri May 24, 2019 3:44 am

https://www.amazon.com/SeaSense-Support-Spring-Stainless-8-Inch/dp/B004XAE4B4

I put it way over on the starboard--right--side because that's where it was the easiest to mount the lower attachment point. And in retrospect it isn't in the way of stuff I want to access in the shallow section over the radio. However, I do need the pool cue stick to knock it down. Yes, the good news is that just a bump and the spring goes out of column and collapses. However the bad news is that just a bump and the spring goes out of column and collapses. When I'm working in that area--wiring, etc. It gets hit and falls on my head. I keep meaning to make a little prop stick, but getting hit on the head frequently doesn't mean that sense is getting knocked into it. For this reason, the spring holder has fallen out of favor in the marine world and gas struts are now the norm. Hatches on boats tend to be heavy and fingers and heads don't like it when an unexpected drop happens. I had a couple left lying around and it was handy when the time came to figure out a prop. Works well for this application.[

Fri May 24, 2019 10:18 am

Gruppe B wrote: I love the hinged dash! So much storage possibilities under there.

My 85 has the aftermarket dash organizer/map table that would make a great access hatch for the dash.

Not exactly the right one...
Inspired by Duncan, last night I started working on exactly the project you describe:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9082841&#9082841

Fri May 24, 2019 1:31 pm

You might want to tell Luna about all the vent and defroster tubing that runs through the area. When I first did this and took out all the reinforced paper hose that connects the air handling unit to the vents, I had grand plans. The thought was to take some ½" foam and fiberglass both sides, then "eat" out the foam with acetone. This would have been a space saving way to reroute the hot air to their grills. I first started by rebuilding the passenger grill to make it into a downward and offset elbow which would then plug into the double floor fiberglass thingy. Here is the work on that.

First plasticine to get the shape and then glass over it. Eventually, I cleaned it up and faired all the tiny imperfections and painted it black. That was as far as it all got. It turns out that with a floor, which blocks off the bottom of the dash volume--currently cardboard covered with carpet--the air has no trouble figuring out how to get out. Comes through the air vents just fine. I kept the offset and angled JPL part in place as it is needed to fill the hole and can still be used to block air for the passenger's lap.

Bottom line is, if you seal off the bottom of the area reasonably well and rip out the hoses, that's close enough.

Sat Jul 06, 2019 3:28 am

It's been awhile since the last post as a bunch of non Vanagon projects rudely inserted themselves and so progress has been slower than desired. The idea was to get a bunch of the thought-about-stuff done on the Vanagon and then move onto AC, but now it's July with full summer temps and boating season has begun, so the AC will have to wait another year while I live with
as my cooling solution for 2019.

One of the things that suddenly required a higher priority was a random glance at the PS door panel from an aesthetic point of view which almost triggered and reverse peristalsis event.
Over the years, stuff happened and I wound up with a case of serious ugly. The factory panel was OK, but the addition of the speaker and then the cupholder pushed it over the top. The wrong color door handle didn't help either. Not counting the map pocket, there are five separate items which are only related aesthetically in that they are welded to the panel.

Since I have a teak dash, I always thought it would be nice to have a thin teak strip running along the metal band below where the urethane crash pad is. This would emphasize the horizontal visual component of the various elements runing across the width of the van. I kept putting it off because it seemed difficult to go around the AC controls, vent and all the rest of the things going on there. But maybe there was a way to combine this project with the door panel as well and clean up the whole PS side. Striped the panel off and removed all the metal band gear. Grabed some spruce 2x stock and glued it up to give me an "L" shaped chunk of wood the thickness of the metal dash band. Cut it in two and put the front piece on the band to see what it looked like, mounting issues and all the related door requirements such as moving the speaker somewhere.
Promising, so then traced around the old panel on a pice of 3/16 birch ply.
Now I have something to attach the side piece to and figure out how to open the door. Here's the first attempt where everything except the speaker functions are included in a single element. Cup holder, window switch, handle to close the door and the original lever to unlatch, along with vent openings to replace the plastic OG item. Speaker will live under the dash pointing down in the corner hidden from view. AC controls will move to area below the radio.
Decided I didn't like the vent slots. Too many and interrupt the "flow" of the wood from right to left so filled in the top and bottom slots.
So the visual mock-up passes my test and the next step is to get the window switches and the door latch release to work.

Sun Jul 07, 2019 1:02 pm

A lot of the door panel warping is sometimes due to not having the oem plastic sheet glued to the door frame protecting the door panel from the rain coming in past the window seals.

Your wood siding looks great though somebody is going to mention wood splinters in an accident though I think from the door panels they would be the least of the medical problems. I've used the same paneling in the rear interior of my Syncro.
The wooden dash might actually soften a forehead cracking into it as opposed to the metal, but I'm not a crash test dummy so how would I really know? (The wood paneling you see in modern luxury cars is usually a thin wood veneer bonded to aluminum).
The cup holder is a great idea!

However, "SewFine" is selling door panels as well as Peter Guenzl for those who do not have the same skills you do or the time to do it. "SewFine's" are more their styling or interior whereas Guenzl is sell more original looking panels.
https://www.vwbusshop.de/epages/GuenzlClassicParts...kleidungen

There are those ABS Plastic door panels which just do not do it for me as far as appearance.

I like your adjustment hole idea for the vent window. That's a time saver for sure! I'm doing the string like you right now!

Sun Jul 07, 2019 4:11 pm

Steve--Thanks for you comments. I have always liked your posts and often tell my friends who are contemplating doing something "someday" about your tag line. Git on 'er now as it ain't gonna happen by itself.

The plastic liner was still in the PS and in very good shape for a 25 year old car. The various PO's didn't seem to do much themselves as there were no mods and quite an extensive record of dealer work. But as we all know, after 25 + years none of that means anything, especially after 140k--the mileage when I bought it.

Wood and accidents. Some have already referred to it, but I'm not planing to hit someone. If I were, I'd drive my wife's Volvo. If we worried about the bad possibilities we would never go fishing/swimming/sailing--drowning, skiing, fatal head trauma from hitting a tree, church/movies/night club/grade school--mass shooting--and the list includes everything worth doing, which high on the list for me is driving--daily--my Vanagon. This is why I'm such a nut job about refining the interior and its features to be what gives me pleasure. As of last count, and there have been a dozen since, I have made 75 mods--repairs don't count unless somehow there is an improvement and swapping out the plastic coolant junction tower for a stainless one doesn't make my list.

Anyhoo. Most of my T3 panels have had fabric accent sections which I really like as vinyl alone seems cheap and cold. Looked at your Guenzi offerings, but too vinyally for me. I have saved sections of the OG seat upholstery cloth from donor cars and my next experiment is to try to add some into the new PS panel I'm completing.

Here's a shot of the back of the wood where the door catch release and switch mount. Since I moved the switch forward, I had to lengthen the leads which turned out to be a nightmare. Here is a post asking for help which I've since solved by having GW tell me which color went where.

Needed to lengthen the leads because--PS we're talking about here and desoldered the leads on a working switch and added the necessary length. Thermal fuse got super hot and nothing worked. Took switch out and reexamined all soldering--leads correct and no shorts across the switch terminals. Took switch apart, but hadn't read the first post here (topic this was posted to explains how to fix a window switch) and so couldn't do it. Unsoldered the leads and put them on another working switch and same results. Took apart and same results. What gives? Ordered a new one complete with leads, but the tri plug just has loose spades without the plug. GoWesty switch has different terminal locations from the OEM one and different colored wires. The dual motor plug wires are correctly color coded, so no prob there. Given all my failures, I hesitate to just try and see what happens and blow yet another switch. The wires in question are the GW ones, red and the red/black. On the OEM tri plug, both of these wires are red/black, but I carefully noted which terminal goes to which. Because of the new config with the GW am at a loss.

The hole in the latch release base is for the screw which holds the plastic finger liner in place. I drilled it out to take a 1/4-20 pan head allen socket cap screw, which goes into the 1/4" bar fastened and epoxied with the tap shown. This really nails the panel to the door which I figured was necessary as the closing handle being part of the wood otherwise has no place to tie into as the original Wolfsburg one did. Didn't want exposed fasteners on the wood. This also stiffened up the panel so much that I only needed screws at the corners. Not a fan of the plastic blind panel clips as the slamming of the door seems to make them prone to failure. after a while. The other flat bar stock for the folding handle is abandoned, but still there dragging down my gas mileage. The reason the switches and door release went so far forward was to allow the PS seat to be turned around and have the door still close and not hit the arm rest.

And here's the back of the wood showing the solution to extending the door catch release. I cut the OG wire off about 5" from the hook end and silver soldered it into a section of brake tubing with a 10-24 stud in the other end. A connector nut with a locking nut is working like half a turnbuckle. The hole in the other end has picture wire going back to the new hook at the cut off end of the original release rod. Good thing I added the half turnbuckles as even with carefully figuring the length, I needed to tighten it up a bit as the first try didn't release the latch. The combo vinyl and leather tabs on the back side are holding with 3M 77 Super spray which is great stuff.
The grey vinyl is almost the identical shade and hue as the original--Jo Anne Fabric. The brown came from a coat bought at the Salvation Army.

This last photo is too dark to show how the colors work. I have a lot of brown--map pockets, P & S, plastic foot air delivery gizmo in front of the gear shift, a brown leather shift and e brake boot. I plan to paint or dye the urethane dash crash padding to match the leather on the panel.

So this almost wraps the PS mods, but blue LED light strip is on the way to go on the bottom of the map pocket and under the crash tube that is normally behind the glove box, but is now a foot rest for my passengers which they love.

Duncan

Sun Jul 07, 2019 7:04 pm

That is looking AWESOME! I was thinking how blue denim might look over the door panel, but I think you got it just right! The wood tone looks great too!

Thanks for your comments too, they are appreciated :)

Mon Jul 08, 2019 4:32 am

I want to give Nick of https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=679052 (19191 Multivan TDI build) credit for the inspiration for the leather and panel redo. At some point in his long and wonderful story of how a Vanagon can enrich our lives, he mentioned he would like to upgrade the door panels and maybe even go with leather to match his eventual Recaro's. That got me to thinking.

And this as well. Multiman mv wrote: I also installed these tpo plastic kick plates from Terrawagen. They add a little finishing to an area that looked a little unfinished. I might still fashion my own with grey abs plastic, or spring for the ones at Gowesty that come in grey.

So of course there is the need to finish the bottom part of the door as well. Considered bringing the new panel all the way down, but for some reason rejected that option. Perhaps stainless so the tossed over soda cans could find their temp trash resting site OK, but would call too much attention to an area that should probably be left to be more or less unnoticeable and not complete with the panel aesthetics. Maybe a nice louvered item with blue courtesy lights behind that could be easily removed to access the window relays--or stash zone. Anyhoo--plenty of unnecessary non problems to solve and invent solutions for. I mentioned there were 5 separate separate elements on the door before I started and the wood only does 4 of them. The speaker--a shot from the top inside the redone glove box and from underneath. I know--a bunch of you will say I've ruined the Bose like quality of the door structure acoustics. But with the window down and trucks going by and an ambient dB of a whole lot, who are we kidding? And these speakers are 10 for 20 bucks from Amazon in most likelihood anyway.

Leave in a few minutes for the great 3 ½ hour drive to get my bat in the water and spend some float time as well as drive time.

Duncan

Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:42 am

Thought I would resurrect this old thread as I came up with a temp/permanantt? failed regulator problem.

About three months ago, the DS regulator failed. Have fixed them before and not too big an issue, but at the time, I wanted a quickie as it was hot and the van is a daily driver. I have a spare regulator, but boating and other things seemed more fun than friggin around with the door.

Then I remembered from my boating days what many pilot house windows used and even a few cars way back when. In the case of boats the glass drops into a copper sleeve to collect the water and prevent rot. A hose then allows the water to run out on deck. Fastened to the bottom of the glass is a leather strap with several holes. To lower the window you release the strap and drop it to what you want and reconnect the strap to a stud. So here is what I did.
Made a bracket that would bolt to the existing window regulator attachment bar and bolted it on.

Here are pics of it up--note the inner wiper didn't like the leather going over it and released the bond with some of the rubber--didn't care as a new wiper goes in and it's not a big deal anyway--so I had to punch a couple of new holes so it would close all the way and not whistle. You can also see the intermediated holes punched at random which actually did not get much use.
And a shot of it down all the way. Put a 3" square strip of foam cushion material in the bottom so if the strap jumped off the stud, then there wouldn't be an "Oh, #@&*!!!! It never did in the three months I used it. We've all used sticks under the glass from time to time, but the problem there is you can't move the window while driving. Be careful with the strap--do it mostly by feel-- but it you have any left handed dexterity, it's no biggie.

Finally time to do it right. I may have mentioned that I have relayed the windows as the loads are too much for the puny switch contacts and the slow PS up always bugged me. With the relays, up and down are the same. What triggered doing this now is one of the OG wires controlling the PS window from the DS failed and so I have to run a new one through the rubber door boot where I assumed the failure occurred. These wires have four three pin connectors going from one side to the other. Necessary for assembly on the other side of the pond, but not needed now. So I'm eliminating the two in the cab and running a single piece from door to door. Just keeping the ones at the switch so the panel and switches can be removed. Put in relays and you won't have to replace the switches, but you will need to work on the regulators, so keep those connectors.

Stay well and go camping--anywhere--just use the car and have fun.

Duncan

Fri Sep 18, 2020 10:12 am

DuncanS wrote:

as i was watching the passenger window move ever so slowly up, i was thinking about ways to improve it and came to the conclusion that a beefier wire to motor routed via relays might be the answer. i was going to install the relays behind the glove box as there is a large "dead space" there.

i got as far as mentally drawing the connections for one polarity, but needed to actually draw it to get reversed polarity. i was a few beers by then and gave up on the idea...

how noticeable is the relay noise?

Fri Sep 18, 2020 12:34 pm

There is an audible click it you try to move the window when it is already at the max in that position. When they actually go up and down, the motor and glass movement noise obscures the click.

If you want, I can post the wiring diagram.

Duncan

Fri Sep 18, 2020 2:09 pm

DuncanS wrote: There is an audible click it you try to move the window when it is already at the max in that position. When they actually go up and down, the motor and glass movement noise obscures the click.

If you want, I can post the wiring diagram.

Duncan

i sat down with a cup of tea and sorted the wiring, thank you. i think i'll hide the relays in the door up under the wing window. should be a fun a project for the spring.

Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:41 pm

Does you circuit use a diode?