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Sanchius and Tuna ride again...
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sanchius Premium Member
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 7:49 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

I'm really enjoying my Mobile Office this week.

This morning I parked at the end of the Boulder Glider Port, working with the curtains drawn for a couple hours.
Catching up on my morning emails and doing a light literature review for a fun new USDA project.

Sprawled out in the back, relaxing on acres of soft blankets & pillows.
Blissfully quiet, with none of the usual phone calls or walk-in interruptions at my office.
But just a minute from work in case I really need to get back quick for something.

My old friend through the years, Pat Metheny, with Anne Marie Jopek on the stereo, quietly doing what they do best.
See also Tam, Gdzie Nie Siga Wzrok and Are you going with me?
Since she's singing in Polish, I make up whatever words I want to the lyrics.

A jug of rich-people water and some chocolate-chip cookies in the cooler whenever I need a break.

Truly a wonderful way to spend a fall morning.

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Last edited by sanchius on Wed Oct 11, 2017 8:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 7:59 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

^^^ And this is how it should be. Well done.
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Current: 1990 Westy Camper - Bostig RG4, 2wd, manual trans w/Peloquin, NAHT high-top, 280 ah LFP battery, 160 watts solar, Flash Silver, seam rust, bondo, etc., etc.

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:50 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Rich people water, lol

What a great marketing ploy....
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 6:37 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Def! The water at the gas station is way more expensive than the gas at the gas station! And for a few cents more, you can even get the one with the additive to clean your injector pump Wink
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

The day started off easy, grabbing the two bushels of green chilies at Hienies that will see us through the winter...
The spicy smokey smell of green chilies roasting in the big propane fired tumblers is, for me, the defining smell of fall in the west.

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Tuna and I spent most of the day stripping more parts off the wreck, pulling the transmission, windows and a bunch of other parts

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Then we cleaned up and met for Denver Vanagons and Microbrews, checking out each others vans

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and enjoying to beautiful views and products at New Terrain microbrewery

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Before driving home through the setting sun, stopping for a quick beauty shot,

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And cruizing home through the open countryside with Tuna's ears flapping in the wind...

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 1:00 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Sunny dog and tunes in the same day!

Woof!
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:55 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

(double posting)
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Last edited by sanchius on Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:25 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

When I renewed the rear wheel bearings two weeks ago in my garage, I used a hammer & drift to remove & insert the bearings the old fashioned way.

The first one I did, the passenger side, went fine, but second, the driver's side proved problematic.
I had to really hammer the old bearing out and the new one back in; the axle shaft didn't seat right and it never pulled together.
It was loose, noisy and was only a matter of time before something bad happened.

I had a free afternoon today so I went down to the shop with a new set of bearings and a spare wheel hub.
The big press made short work of the old bearings and, after the hub had a scrub in the parts washer, the new bearings were reset with ease.
I pulled an axle shaft from the wreck and the test fit was perfect.

Back home, it took me about 90 minutes to swap in the new hub for the old and all is good now.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2017 8:14 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

It was another weekend of hard wrenching...

After all the hard work changing the rear bearings and CVs over the past couple weeks, I was looking forward to an easy 10minute job Saturday morning dropping in a new high-temp thermostat.

The first three rusty bolts on the plastic t-stat housing came off grudgingly. The last bolt was bad; way in back and hard to access. But at least it was the inboard rear bolt, the outboard bolt would have been even worse. The PO had clearly been in there before; there was a non-stock nut on the bottom of the bolt, holding everything together. Not a good sign. I removed the nut expecting the bolt to then nicely spin out. But no, the bolt would turn, but stayed put, even with a prybar providing some strong upward encouragement.

I cut the head off the bolt so I could remove the upper thermostat housing and see what was going on. It was ugly. The steel bolt was corroded to the bronze thread insert and both were spinning freely together in the lower plastic housing. This was getting really bad; they wasn’t coming out without some drastic measures.

And the risk level for the job was rapidly increasing. I didn’t have a straight shot from above or below to drill out the bolt. If I damaged the plastic t-stat housing extracting the bolt&insert, replacing the housing would involve removing two big hex bolts. My experience is that these are often corrosion welded to the aluminum head. If those broke or stripped, I’d either be drilling the hex bolts out and retapping threads in a tightly confined space or I'd be pulling the engine to do it on the bench. This had the potential to go really wrong.

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After spending 45 minutes exhausting hand tool solutions, I broke out the big gun. I snaked my air cutoff tool into the tight space, fitted with a extra small fiber wheel and the guard removed, cut a small notch in the outside radius of the lower plastic housing, then carefully ground away most of the bronze insert through the notch until the insert and bolt could be removed. I felt like a dentist.

I replaced the bolt&insert with a new nut and bolt, using lots of anti-seize and a wide washer to spread the pressure out across the lower housing. Fortunately, the housing is quite stout and I could get away with doing this. I’ll replace the housing next time I have the engine out. My simple 10 minute job had turned into two hours of hard surgery.

Sunday was a hard day as well, the morning spent waking my Audi cabrios from a year long sleep to prepare them to sell and the afternoon spent draining and removing the conformal syncro gas tank from the wreck. I was shocked when I drained more than 10 gallons of gasoline out of the tank. I had taken that big side hit with a nearly full gas tank. I am so lucky that the tank and the connections weren’t compromised in the wreck.

The tank is really in there tight and is requiring lots of careful levering to extract.

I ran out of time before I could get it all the way out.

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At least the drive home was beautiful and relaxing.

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 6:30 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

More wrenching...

The 87C thermostat I installed in last week worked great and warmed the system right up.
But the higher temps resulted in higher system pressures and this week the radiator showed a pinhole leak that worsened with time.

I wasn't really surprised, this bus had sat for years and was in bad shape when I picked it.
Almost every system (except the engine and transmission KoW) is needing some attention.

I had gotten a great deal on a lightweight aluminum radiator years ago and it's been waiting in storage for a time just like this.
So, Saturday I drained the coolant with the shopvac, extracted the heavy rusty steel radiator, installed the replacement radiator, and refilled the system.
I bled the system using a bicycle pump to pressurize the system via an bike valve clamped to a short hose clamped to the expansion tank cap outlet.
It worked great. A couple pumps and coolant was flowing out the radiator bleeder.

The job was about 2 hours start to finish.

The pic also show the new Hella horns added when I resurrected and relayed the horn system a few weeks ago.
The surprisingly inexpensive GoWesty replacement horn contact ring was key.

I'm looking forward to the time when I'm doing more driving than wrenching with this bus.
But I have the gas tank reseal, gas line and HVAC upgrades still to do.

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:42 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

You can probably patch that steel one with JBW if the pinhole is accessible.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 8:14 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Abscate wrote:
You can probably patch that steel one with JBW if the pinhole is accessible.


I'd do that if I was on the road as a temp repair, but if there is a pinhole somewhere there is likely a few more ready to spring up soon (whack a mole) so replacing the radiator at his own leisure makes a lot of sense to me. BTDT.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:07 pm    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Both are good options.

Back home after spending the afternoon pulling a bunch of final parts off the wreck, then meeting Denver Vanagon folks and checking out their nice rides at Denver Vanagons and Microbrews,
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we were treated to a nice sunset.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:23 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

I believe it has been over one week without a Tuna Photo.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 7:40 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Abscate wrote:
I believe it has been over one week without a Tuna Photo.

OK, no prob, since I don't have any recent Tuna pics in the queue, here's one from the way-back machine: Luna back in June of 2013, 2.5 months old, sporting her first red harness, her namesake moonface and trying really hard to grow into her ears.

The response to walking this real-life animated beanie-baby puppy down the sidewalk in the summer mountain tourist town, Breckenridge, was overwhelming. We couldn't take 10 steps without huge selfie crowds gathering.

Frankly, it was a lot of fun bringing this kind of simple joy to all those folks who were up there just looking for something authentic to be happy about.

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PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:08 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Laughing Laughing Laughing

There is a Husk who walks my cul-de-sac every morning that I have gotten to know well. Couple of days ago I was driving through town center and the daughter was walking him - he suddenly got animated and started barking at me from the sidewalk - so I stopped and got furrated.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 11:03 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Thank you for taking the time to post all this. Great read. I liked your true to vanagon/older car ownership stories where the 10 min project turns into 2 hours of knuckle busting. How a simple thermostat change almost turned into engine removal. All so true. I have owned 2 aircooled vans and 1 vanagon. Looking to get back into a van and seeing this brings back all the memories of ups and downs but mostly ups with the van. Keep posting.

Glad you are ok after that big hit. I was t-boned by a red light runner 16 years ago and I'll never forget that feeling when you start to wake up seconds after the accident and try to assess if you are ok and how you ended up turned around facing the other direction in another lane.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 7:40 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Thanks,CEK! Fortunately I never lost consciousness. From the WTF moment as I realized she was coming though the other stopped cars at speed, which flashed to "This is gonna hurt" as her incoming bumper filled the side window, to the massive side punch and loud crunching impact, to bracing back into the headrest and holding the wheel tight during the noisy, bouncing, dusty, bull ride skidding sideways and backwards into the ditch, to the "Wow, I survived and nothing's broken" as everything stilled and I crawled out of the wreck, it's all very vivid and clear.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon to run the engine from the wreck up a stranded Syncronaut up in the mountains.
Stopping outside of Pinecliff to check the map, we met the California Zephyr heading down into Denver.

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 6:53 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

I think I found the easiest suspension job on a Vanagon: replacing the rear shocks.

I've always been very unhappy with this van's ride quality, harsh, rattly, jarring and loud that left us worn out after extended drives.
So I've been working through the suspension/driveline, starting with the rear first.

I reviewed the wide spectrum of shock absorber discussions here and decided that Monroes were the closest to my cost/performance target.
Rockauto was offering a 45% rebate on their Monroe OESpectrum shocks, so I pulled the trigger on both front and back shocks (#37348 & 37349).

Since yesterday was going to be one of the last 70-degree days of the year, I replaced the worn out rear shocks.
It was remarkably easy, two bolts in and out, using a 2nd jack to relieve the shock tension.
Wow, what a transformation!

The ride is now much smoother and quieter; this may be the best/easiest upgrade yet.

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Since I was in there, I installed WestyVentures' high-torque starter that I recovered from the wreck.
I had previously documented this conversion in another thread.
As before, it changed my lazy starter to a instantaneous click-varoom.

Later in the afternoon, we went up to the Rocky Mt Westy/Opt Overland bonfire & cookout and met lots of fun folks.
Thanks to Mike at RMWesty for hosting this great event!

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 8:31 am    Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... Reply with quote

Thanks for the new posts. This is a good thread. Very good.

We’re those Bilstein shocks that you replaced? The yellow looks similar but I can’t see the blue colors as used by Bilstein.
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Current: 1990 Westy Camper - Bostig RG4, 2wd, manual trans w/Peloquin, NAHT high-top, 280 ah LFP battery, 160 watts solar, Flash Silver, seam rust, bondo, etc., etc.

Past: 1985 Westy Camper - 1.9 wbx, 2wd, manual trans, Merian Brown, (sold after 17 years to Northwesty who converted it to a Syncro).
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