Favguys Brazilian Last Edition blog.

[favguy]

I Better get this heater lark finished off...

The pipes came back from the powder coaters and I finally got around to re-installing them and finishing off the heating install.

Here they are back in place along with the new, smaller, heater return pipe.

Rearmost section across the rear.

Final build up of the new front hose arrangement.

Bypass valve wired and microswitch for pump control finally set up

As mentioned earlier, the valve is directly behind the radiator in the path of the airflow, so if left uncovered it was going to get wet and filthy in the event of use in wet weather. This would lead to the control cable mechanism getting compromised and we have the microswitch wiring there as well, so it needs to be waterproofed. After a little head scratching and measuring, the solution came to light. A suitably sized component box 100mm x 60mm x 25mm. Discard the lid, drill holes for the cable entry and a mount extending from the cable clamp and it looks like it was made especially for the job.

Made up and added a suitable neoprene foam seal from what I had in stock and here's the finished result.

And that's it, re-install the radiator, fill & bleed, and the heating system is finished.

Well almost...

[favguy]

I say almost because there was another small upgrade I wanted to make to the cooling system. A temperature readout, lacking from the dash as standard.

There's lots of availability of 2" gauges to be had and this would have been the simplest option to add, especially as there's already a signal from the original coolant sensor available by tapping into one of the wires in the loom that plugs into the instrument cluster. There's nowhere left in the dash for it to go though, I don't want to top mount, mount below as visibility is poor, or drill holes in anything as I'm now very happy with the dash exactly as it is, so what to do?

Well, there is a blank space in the dash to the left of the speedo doing nothing, but it means finding something very small to fit in there.

Here's the space.

Problem is, there's nothing off the automotive accessory shelf small enough to do the job, so I had to look elsewhere to find something that would fit.

The answer was an industrial panel gauge, that for a rare change, wasn't made in China, but the good old USA!

https://www.mouser.co.uk/datasheet/2/281/1/dmr20_1_tmp-2941216.pdf

As it comes, it's still too large to fit, it needed to be stripped down to it's naked form to fit into the space in the cluster. It also takes a reading from a thermistor probe and can't be made to work from the existing temperature sensor signal. The probe it comes with is also useless as is and needs to be integrated somehow into the coolant stream, so nice and simple, eh?!

The gauge is very well made, but in a way that doesn't allow for normal dis-assembly, so it took a lot of very careful work with a multi tool to get it out of it's housing. Once out, there still isn't anywhere for it to sit in the cluster, so we had to do a little more careful work with the multitool to make a space for it.

Removed ready to start surgery.

After taking apart and trimming the white housing, trial mounted in the binnacle.

The display still doesn't match the rest of the dash like this though, so we need to make it "disappear" when it's not turned on. The trick for this I learned a long time ago is to apply a piece of limo black window tinting film over the LED digit face. This makes it disappear entirely when not turned on, more closely matching the existing digital readout at the bottom of the speedo dial.

I should have taken more pictures of the process, but to finish off the left hand face was cut away over the new display. Soldered wire tails to the rear and fed them through the back of the enclosure and re-assembled everything. The end result is suitably subtle I think.

Now we just have the issue of what to do with the sensor probe.

The answer to that one was to drill out an aluminium stop and set it into that using high temperature epoxy. This in turn went in to plug off the original take off hose that bypassed the thermostat during warm up. (This now being done at the front of the bus to feed the heater as shown above)

The end result.

Ran a twin cable front to rear along with the existing loom, connected everything up and here we are.

Whew, heating system is now finished, yay!!

[favguy]

One more small upgrade (or alteration?) proving my OCD must be getting worse!

Whilst re-assembling the dash (again!) for what I thought would be the last time, It occured to me that something wasn't quite right...

Originally my bus, being a last edition, had a different style of speedometer face to the regular Kombi. Sadly, this has long gone, as to be road legal in the UK, we must have MPH showing on the speedometer face and the original was only in KM's. There's only one style available here to change it to, and that's the one currently fitted. It's nice enough and the tachometer I fitted matches it well. Between them though is the original fuel gauge face, still in the last edition style and it now doesn't match up, at all, with anything else.

So... I sourced the cheapest used VW Fox instrument cluster I could find to rob it of it's fuel gauge overlay, as it's the same size as fitted to the late Kombi.

And after a little swapping around... That's better, before and after.

Now I can once again sleep at night

Back soon when I do something actually useful.

PS, if anyone in the UK wants a 2006 Fox cluster for parts, the one I bought (less fuel gauge overlay) is free to a good home for the cost of postage and packing. Just drop me a PM.

[obieoberstar]

clever solution! Major improvement.

Now you can take the next few months off and get out and enjoy your bus. You've earned it.

No more tinkering...

[favguy]

[favguy]

I've just completed one final little upgrade to my bus. That's all the planned upgrades done now at last! Next I'm moving on to some small areas of paintwork that need rectifying and then it needs comprehensive anti corrosion treatment in all the cavities and the underbody to ensure it lasts long term.

Just before I tell you about the latest upgrade though, I thought we'd have a look at the history of the T2 in Brazil, which will lead on to why I needed to do this last upgrade.

Unlike the Mexican bus, that was built simultaneously to the German T2 from the early '70's and was fundamentally the same, the Brazilian bus evolved into a hybrid (T1.5) bus in '76, having a T2B front end and roof, with the rest of the bus, B-pillar back, keeping the (pre '64!) split screen body with a pair of late bay lights grafted in.

Only in 1997, a full 18 years after the end of German production, did Brazil finally get an actual T2 bus, by then in "c" format with the higher roof panel.

The first Brazilian T2's came as a panel van and luxury bus, in Carat trim from 1997 to 1998 this was a beaut, a well appointed 7 seater, with a similar interior to the Vanagon Caravelle.

By 1999 though, The Brazilian market got access to the T4 and this then became the default VW luxury minibus, with the T2 getting relegated to a low cost 9 seat people mover.

Everything that could be was stripped out, headlining, rear headrests, basic rubber matting in place of carpets, no radio, basic card door panels, front cab light with no courtesy switches on the doors. Pretty spartan all round.

In 2006 it got updated with the water cooled drivetrain, but only because it had to, it was impossible for the aircooled engine to achieve the new, lower emission requirements. The features remained spartan though, right to the end in December 2013.

Which is where my bus comes in. The Last Edition added curtains, basic floor over carpets, nicer door cards, a nice 2 tone paint job, different colour seating, (but still basic) and a radio, nicer, but still spartan.

And it still didn't have any interior lighting beyond a light at the front of the cab with no door contact switching, which segways us nicely to my last upgrade...

[favguy]

So, we started off just having the one light at the front of the cabin.

The good news though, is that this is actually already a 2 way switch, with a spare terminal for the door contact earth connection.

Oddly, we also have the necessary holes present to easily add a courtesy switch to the sliding door, but not the cabin doors.

So upgrading the sliding door was easy, just add an original VW switch and buffer. As for the front doors, adding a VW switch would mean cutting out quite a large square hole in the pillars, whereas aftermarket switches would mean a much smaller, round hole, more straight forward and less intrusive, as it just means straight drilling rather than having to file out to the larger square holes for the VW switches, so I opted for this. Even I can live with the slight mis-match between front and rear switches

Holes drilled and edges painted, ready for fitting.

All door switches in place and finished.

So, on to adding extra lights for the rear. As the sunroof takes up all of the roof centre, I needed to find somewhere else to mount light fittings and after giving it some thought, decided on one each side mounted to the top of the centre pillars. So the chosen fittings would have to be surface mount, fit the available mounting space, and look right.

Decided on a couple of these neat old school looking dome lights by Cobo, an Italian auto lighting and switchgear manufacturer.

They look like a smaller version of the old split screen bus dome lights, but they only have a toggle to give either permanently on or door on options and we need an off option too.

So after a little modification to add a switch to the 12v positive , we now have on, sliding door on, and off.

Time to fit them.

So do they pass the "could have come out the factory like it" test?, yeah, I think they probably do.

So we can finally move on to the final part of the refurb, getting the paintwork as close to perfect as possible and then proper rustproofing for longevity. It makes me shudder to see all the hideous rot buses suffer from after a few decades, most of which can be almost entirely eliminated with proper cavity treatment throughout whilst they're still rust free. It's a shame VW never got around to doing it in the factory, but then they were only expected to have a service life of 12 or so years back in the day, not have us silly buggers keeping them going in excess of most human lifespans!

Might be a while before I get around to reporting back on that, so tata for now.

[PaulD68]

[favguy]

[PaulD68]

[favguy]

[favguy]

Thought this little write up I've done for another forum might be of interest to a few of you whilst I get around to doing something interesting enough to report back on to my own bus, some of this I already covered earlier in this thread, but this is a little more comprehensive.

https://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/bay-windo...ie.101197/