My New 1979 VW Beetle Convertible

[busdaddy]

Looks like the filler tube has to rotate towards the back some more. Is the filler well mangled where the grommet goes?, kind'a looks that way from here.
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

Слава Україні!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

Soooo......after thinking over my dilemma, today I decided to pull the gas tank that I cleaned out, which was the tank that came installed in the car.....and try the newest gas tank that I bought! I could not line up the filler neck to align with the "original" gas tank, and slip into the gas tank opening.

I checked that the filler neck would slide into the new tank before I put it in the Bug, and it did. So I put the new tank into the Bug and the filler neck slid right into the tank opening! Hallelujah!

So, it is now apparent that the "original" gas tank that came installed in the Bug......is NOT the original gas tank. That tank's filler neck opening is not welded in the position it needs to be so that the filler neck will slide into the tank's opening. When the real original tank was replaced with the tank that came in the Bug, the person that installed it, just made it work! Luckily, that person didn't try to cut the filler neck, or beat it into submission!

[Cusser]

Good !

[Axel Breaker Earl]

For the record.....I, being of sound mind and an old Carpenter, did NOT add that piece of 3/8" plywood to the Bug!!

Apparently it is there to keep the trunk hinge spring from coming loose at the top of the spring. I think the riveted pin that secures the top of the spring to the hinge broke and someone put a panel screw through the top......and it barely exits the other side of the top spring retainer and it was probably coming apart.....so that person figured out that a piece of wood, just the right thickness, would cure everything!

The rust around the body joint for the gas door recess is one of the few rusty areas on the bug......it is actually in pretty good shape. Floor pans are not rusty, even under the battery. There is surface rust, but not heavy rust. From all that I've seen with the Bug, that area where the panel joint caulking has cracked and fell off, is the worst area.

And NO.....this Bug has been to Alaska and back! Seriously! The previous Owner lived there at one time......I think she had owned the Bug since the late 80's. I need to sit down with her over a beer or two and get it's history!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

So I had some time this afternoon to clean the Cold Start Valve so that I can reinstall it tomorrow and hopefully get the Bug running again.......now that I have the fuel tank all sorted out, for the most part! Still waiting on some rubber parts to be delivered, but I think that I will be able to put some gas in the fuel tank and turn her over tomorrow.

I have already run the fuel injectors through my Ultrasonic Cleaner, tested the flow (by vision only, since that is all I was trying to do here) by rigging up my homemade contraption......and have already installed them back into the Bug with new seals, clamps, and Ethanol rated hoses. I did not change the factory rubber hoses that are attached to the fuel injectors......that will come another day on down the road I believe.

Here are a few pics from when I cleaned the injectors......just running them through the Ultrasonic Cleaner (USC) with some degreasing solution in it, took all of the paint off of them, and any small rust deposits. I dropped the Injector brackets with the fuel line fittings on them. Good thing is that it cleans the inside of those fuel fittings also.

Cleaned and painted the factory hose clamps also!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

Here is what my "Cleaning System" looks like......I took these pics today after I cleaned the Cold Start Valve (CSV)......and I used 12v. on it......I guess that is the required voltage for it, since the 5v. supply wouldn't operate the CSV

The power supply is a cheap unit that I picked up online several years ago, mainly to power 12v. devices, but it also has a couple of USB sockets that has a 5v DC output, and that is what I used to power the Fuel Injectors during the cleaning process.

I use a 10"-12" piece of rubber fuel hose with a air hose fitting on it so that I can plug it into my compressor hose, with about 25-30 psi air pressure on it, AFTER I fill the length of fuel hose with Carburetor Cleaner. Once it is connected to the compressed air hose, I will power the injector is short pulses of power to raise and lower the pintle from it's seat inside the injector.

[Axel Breaker Earl]

When cleaning the Cold Start Valve (CSV) today, I initially just sprayed some carb cleaner in both ends of it and then tapped the "input" side against a solid surface with a clean white paper towel over it so I could see if there were any of the old gas deposits that were coming out of it.
Doing this, there wasn't much dirty stuff that came out of it.....so I decided to hook up my homemade cleaning apparatus to it before I set up the Ultrasonic Cleaner (USC)......I figured if it was spraying fine, no need to clean it in the USC and go through adding solution, etc.

With the initial test cleaning, it was not spraying very good at all......I added another dose of carb cleaner and tried to clean it again......and it stopped up completely! So, there must have been some old gas crud inside of it, and the carb cleaner loosened it up and clogged her right up!

Out came the USC then, and I mixed up a 25% "Purple Power" and 75% water in the USC and turned it on to let it start heating the solution up to 50°C.
I dropped the CSV in the solution as it was warming up and ran the machine for 5 minutes. After the solution got to 41° C. I ran the machine for another 10 minutes.....then when it got to 50° C. I ran it for another 5 minutes.

Pulled the CSV out of the solution, rinsed it off with water, dried it with compressed air, and hooked it back up to my homemade Injector Cleaning apparatus, filled the hose with carb cleaner, shot the juice to it........what a beautiful spray pattern it has now!!

Here is some more pics of the USC and the Sam's Club degreaser that I use....

[busdaddy]

Nice work!, and I seem to have the exact same US cleaner, well done.

Please spend the extra 1/2 hour and change those short hoses on the injectors now, it'll never get easier than when they are alrready on te bench and clean.
A system that has one single 46 year old hose in it is a time bomb, do you really want to stand on the side of the road watching all your work burn up while saying "when are the fire trucks going to get here?".
Dig in under those ferrules with a pointy Xacto knife to split the hose, try not to dig into the plastic nipple on the injector too much, it makes sealing difficult. Once you disrupt the hose you can manhandle it off by clamping it in a vise and grabbing the injector for some serious twisting and pulling.

The pushlok ferrules do work if you have the correct sized replacement hose, new ABA style clamps make any size hose leak free and nobody will judge you for choosing the safer option.
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

Слава Україні!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

Thanks for the reply Busdaddy! I will do this soon, as I have the new R9 hose already. I didn't want to mess with them yet because I just want to get everything working first.......I won't be driving it around much at all in the near future, but I would like to know that all is working now, and then I will start to upgrade and replace items one at a time.

I have already installed the injectors for now, and hopefully she will start and run again tomorrow. I still have to get all of the air out of the brakes lines yet, as the pedal is still going to the floor. I did do some more reading on the brakes and how the brake master cylinder is designed in these, and I have a feeling it is all in the master cylinder.

On the Ultrasonic Cleaner, I might buy another smaller one like my current larger one, just so I don't have to use so much solution when cleaning smaller parts like I mainly do with the USC. I bought the larger one to be able to put engine parts in.......and it works great for that......even cleaned a in-line 4 cyl. head in it before! Gotta do one end at a time though!

[jhicken]

Consider using the fuel injected hose clamps on all fuel lines. HTey are better clamps.

_________________
Der Kleiner Kampfwagens

[Axel Breaker Earl]

I have removed all of the old worm drive hose clamps that the previous people had on this Beetle and now it only has the FI clamps. Thanks.

[busdaddy]

Well done!

What size clamps did you use, another member is doing the same job right now and would like to know: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=800349
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

Слава Україні!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

These (13mm - 15mm) from Amazon for the latest ones......they may be slightly larger than you need for the 1/4" fuel hose, great for the 5/16" hose. I used them mainly on the 1/4" hose and when they are tight, they are about an 1/8" or so from fully tightened (bottomed out).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMFBVKD4?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

I initially bought 8 or so from Airhead Parts, but used them up quick! Item number:

N90619501

So I tried to look online for a bulk order of them, instead of paying "by the clamp" prices.

I reused the original injector hose clamps, on the injectors again, as they were......you can see a pic of them where I cleaned them in the Ultrasonic Cleaner and then repainted them silver.......the original pain came off in the cleaning process.

I have one more rubber fuel hose to replace under the Bug, and all rubber hoses will be new J30R9 fuel hoses with FI clamps.

[Axel Breaker Earl]

So, today I added some new non-ethanol fuel in the new fuel tank that I installed yesterday, double checked everything for tightness and made sure I was ready to fire the old girl back up again......but I wasn't getting any fuel to the engine.

I crawled under the Bug and felt the fuel pump while my buddy cranked the engine.....the pump was clicking, but not spinning, it felt like. So I pinched off the rubber hose from the fuel tank and removed the pump to check it out.

Now the Bug WAS running a month or two ago, before I decided to clean the tank out, and then eventually replace that tank with a new tank. I didn't really think about the fuel pump possibly getting clogged up by the nasty stuff in the old fuel tank.......but it was!!

I decided to see if I could force some carb cleaner through the pump by attaching a piece of 1/2" fuel hose to the suction side of the pump, and then "pushing the cleaner through" the pump with low pressure compressed air.

While that did indeed force the carb cleaner through the pump, the pump still didn't want to spin when connected to 12v. SO.....into the Ultrasonic Cleaner (USC) went the whole fuel pump!! I figured if I didn't ruin it, maybe it would clean the crud out of it, and get it to spin.

NOW.....let me say how happy I was that the pump had issues! If that pump would have spun when it was mounted on the Bug, and pushed the new fuel....with the crap that was in the pump (since this was all AFTER the fuel filter now!) into the cleaned injectors and cold start valve.....I would not have been happy! So, I am grateful that it decided NOT to run today.

I ran the USC for 7 minutes or so, about 5 times, as I could see that there was still crap slowly coming out of each end of it when the USC was running. I then removed the fuel pump, submerged it in clean water and energized it. Holy Moly! You should have seen the ugly orange crud that spewed from the pump when it fired up!!

I rinsed it in clean water two more times, and tomorrow I will mount the pump back under the Bug and run a hose off of it to a bucket to run some fuel through it before hooking the pressure side back up to the Bug fuel line.

Wish me luck!!

[Axel Breaker Earl]

This is the only picture I took today, darn it! Whenever I have someone helping me do mechanic work, I don't seem to take any pictures! I work kind of slow when I'm by myself, so a lot of time for pictures!

Funny thing today.....I knew that when I submerged the fuel pump in the Ultrasonic Cleaner that I needed to get the cleaning solution INTO the body of the pump, otherwise the USC would not be very effective. It uses the fluid to send the "pressure waves" that pound against the part as it runs......at least that's how I understand it, anyway.

So I connected a length of clear 3/8" diameter hose to the pressure side of the pump and SUCKED the cleaning solution into the pump body! It worked like a champ! Took a few minutes as I had to suction it for multiple short times......I didn't want to suck up that cleaning solution into my mouth!

The things we have to do to get old cars running again!!

[busdaddy]

Great work, and good catch
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

Слава Україні!

[Cusser]

Axel Breaker texted me this morning and said his VW was now running.

Contrary to what some may think: my TracFone Flip Phone gets texts.
My new one (maybe 2.5 years old, $20) is on the right, my first two went extinct due to analog or not enough Gs.

_________________
1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[Axel Breaker Earl]

LOL! Did you get the short video on your flip phone also?

[Axel Breaker Earl]

[Cusser]