Black Fastback Build Thread

[fastbackdavid]

I may have mentioned this in a previous pm but I was reminded by your latest pic. Some years ago I read about a 914 road racer who claimed 10-15 degrees cooler running temps just by cleaning the casting flash off the fins and opening all the holes to their max.

[Clatter]

Thanks for the props, Jason.
It's been a really long, really slow process,
That should hopefully start getting interesting in a bit.
Not sure if they have wrinkle vein ceramic.. Will ask; that might look good and hide well.
I do know that trying powder coat on a mag shroud makes itself into wrinkle vein automatically even if it starts out smooth. BTDT.

David,
Glad to see you still watching.
With the factory type 4 heads, they are way better fin-detail-wise than the AMC heads for sure.
We won't even touch on some of these type 1 heads.. Egad!.
I'll be detailing them out with the jewelry files and all after we get the valve spring cuts made.
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

Spent a half day finishing up welds on heaters..
A bunch of grinding to make them pretty.
Ran out of Rolocs in the finer grits,
So some waiting.
Will have to get them smooth smooth, as the ceramic doesn’t seem to cover much.

Also started the slog through boxes and piles to try and find a full set of tins.
Gonna be a lot of little fiddly work to get them right for this weird app.
Thinking regular paint/body vs. Metal-2-Metal and powder...
The temptation to go wrinkle vein to save work sanding tin is pretty huge..

Was going to go and take the heaters in for coating,
But decided to a bunch of mock-up.
Good thing;
Some of this stuff doesn’t fit at ALL!
Luckily, this was seen coming in advance,
And we’ll git ‘er all sussed..
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

Back in the saddle again!

Had a whole day for a change..

So here's another really long rambly post;
Because installing a type 4 into a type 3 'factory style' is so involved,
I'll show the details.

If you look again at the pic above, the 'front sleds' for lack of a better term, are wrong.
Those are from a 72-74 (what we'll now call early) bus.
72-74 is an early bus, after all, right?
All of the late ones are 75-79 of course..

It was time to hunt and dig;
Play a game I call Look and Find.

Found the 411/412 front sleds! WhooHoo! Off to a good start..

Lesseee here..

A whole set of early tins and heaters available on the 'cheap Junk' early bus motor..

A complete set of late bus tins, all powder-coated up for if/when I ever build a late bus again..

And here in the attic, a set of Vanagon tins, and, er, a whole bunch of other tin, too..

Why to I hoard all of this crap??
Well, here we go; to have options fitting a type 4 into a type 3 of course!


Here we have the top and front/top tins from a 2.0 914..
The 914 tins work well at the front for a couple of reasons:
First of all, the 'front' tin has this recess, moving the tin more forward.
This gets the tin tight up to the 'firewall' at the front of the compartment.
Bus tins leave a gap about 1"; this step (recess?) fills the gap like magic.

914 tin makes a sharp 90' angle at the bottom front, just like the type 3 tin was originally.

The 914 tin is a lot bigger than it needs to be, to fit the type 3 compartment,
As shown by this gold line scribed when the motor was installed.

So, there you go.. This was the rear tin when mounted in a 914.
Remember the 914 is mid-engine, but lucky for us type 3 conversion people,
It makes things fit just like factory.


It does, however, cause issues when fitting other parts.
In this case, I'm using 411/412 heaters and under tin 'sleds', but 914 top/front, so it causes all manner of issues.

I'll post up now before this all gets lost..
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

Here's where the struggle starts with this mismatch of parts;
The 'chimneys' at the front of the heater boxes.

Here is an early bus chimney and associated early bus front tin,
Sitting on 914 top tin, and trying to line up with a 411/412 heater box.

You can see it's all no Bueno.
The bus front tin sits way back compared to the 914,
Plus, the 411/412 heaters line up all wrong.
Same with the driver's side;
The bolts that hold the top tins to the sleds are a fixed position on all type 4s,
Thus illustrating how the bus chimneys aren't even close to working with the 411/412 heaters.

Yep, test-fitting on a set of early heater boxes up in the attic,
The early bus heaters are way different than the 411/412.

This sucks.
The 411/412 apparently use their own funky chimneys, and now I'm on a quest for some.
Otherwise, it's going to be a LOT of fab work to get these early bus chimneys to fit.
Whatever it takes, man..


Anyways,
After going thru the chimney gyrations,
It was time to make some actual progress.
The early heads are 100% for sure going to be used now,
So it was time to relocate the plug holes in the 2.0 914 tin.
(This, of course, being the exact opposite of the re-lo normally done to 914 tins )
Let the downgrade begin!
Lay late bus tin on top of 914 to scribe holes in silver pen..

Cut cut!

Zapzap!
Also fill misc other holes..

Downgrade completed!


Here's trying to suss out the alternator area..
Going to try and use the whole 'around alternator' tin, to try and keep it clean(er)?

It has that whole 'splash pan' thing on the back, but.. Hmm..

Mocking it all up, lucky me, the early bus alt bracket just works!

914 has a different alternator adjusting slot,
And it might be easier to use, or it might not..
Thinking it 'should' be easy enough to adjust the belt from the rear, like a bus, instead of in from the top.
So the 914 slot got removed..

Unfortunately, that means I'll have to add the bus alternator area to the 914 top tin.
Like this..

Thinking it would be clean to remove the 'flappy bits' from around the rear of the compartment,
Doing the "1/2 sealed, 1/2 not" like the type 3 originally had.
Wanted to be cleaning things up back there a bit,
As it doesn't need the booster blower tubes and whatnot,
Decided to just fab up this area from scratch.

Test fitting it, i kinda didn't take the shape into account right,
So it was a good place to stop and think for a bit. I was getting tired.

Couple more things to do..

Going to take the flap off the end of the alternator tin,
And relocate it inboard where the edge overlaps with the top tin.

Also probably going to trim this flap off all along the edge here (silver line).

Again, everything back from the middle of the compartment will get the flaps trimmed off.

Going to open up the top tin around the oil pressure sender;
Nice to have the hole just right for the dual sender vs. using a tube or fittings or some such..

So there you have it.
Only the chimneys and the carb linkage are still unknowns.

But there's a way either around or through those out there somewhere..

Hope all of this rambly nonsense and weird pics of unknown tin lumps helps someone one day.
Unless you are actually doing this, I'm sure it makes no sense at all whatsoever.

If ever mother VW actually put a type 4 into type 3 (like they shoulda ) this is how they woulda done it. IMHO.
_________________
Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Bobnotch]

Looking at your pics Steve makes me think we used bus upper and rear tin on my son's car, and a 914 front tin. I think we only added a couple of mounting screw holes, and trimmed a little off the left side tin. Otherwise it all went in just fine. I'd like to see some better pics of the very lower tin, as I'm pretty sure those are missing (bus or 411/412 style). Rob's going to use bus HE's but currently has 411/412 HE's on his engine. His bus HE's need some fab work before they can go on.
We haven't really started working with the HE outlet plumbing yet, as we were working on other stuff, and had put the car on the back burner, as he's busy and I'm busy, and I had no shop space for him to tie up. He was lucky he got to tie up a bay for as long as he did with his Honda. But we we thinking about mixing some late bug (78-79) plumbing bits with the bus plumbing to get us where we can get heat into the car. Thoughts?
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Bob 65 Notch S with Sunroof
71 Notch ...aka Krunchy; build pics here;
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=249390 -been busy working
64 T-34 Ghia...aka Wolfie, under construction... http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=412120

[Clatter]

Bob,
If I lived in a colder climate, a set of 72-74 bus heaters would be an obvious choice.
They make way more heat.
Plus,
All of the bus chimney and control box stuff would just go right into place.

Easy peasy.

It’s the funny ‘angle of departure’, where the air comes out of the front of the heater box,
That makes the 411/412 boxes so hard to set up.

Thanks to Ray G sending me a parts diagram,
I can see that those 411/412 heaters go to a longitudinally-mounted gas heater up under by the trans.
The heaters are ‘aimed’ towards the center of the car because of this,
Instead of running forward like the bus or type 1/3 etc.

I’m trying to find a curved piece of tube to head them up into a set of bus control boxes.

Wish I woulda mocked this all up before I coated the inside of those boxes and welded them all up.


Woulda been easy enough to cut/weld the outlet pipes to ‘steer’ them the right direction, and make them match up to a set of bus chimneys.

Live and learn..
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

Bob,

Here's some pics of the bottom.
Heat exchangers, and front and rear 'sled tins' are all 411/412.
The crusty pieces are the front sleds..

Top tins and front 'firewall' tin are 914.

_________________
Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

Man, I'm feeling about dumb as a stump for not mocking these things up...


Why, oh why, did I just ASSume!?!?!

The front outlet tubes of the 411/412 heater boxes are SO 'pigeon toed'(!)

It woulda been easy enough to cut a pie-shaped section out and straighten..

Even on this side with the odd lump;
Why not just straighten and remove that lump.
What is that dumb lump for anyways!

It woulda been easy enough to cut them, then bolt them into their chimneys,
Holding them perfectly in place for patching!

Here, same thing upside down, shows that maybe a cut, at the line, then filler pieces put in to 'stretch' the tube a bit,
Would line it right up.

Just maybe, with some fab work,
I can detach the chimney tubes from their brackets,
And flip them side-to-side (put left on right and visa versa), to get the bends to match?
Maybe?

First thing I'm gonna do before i do anything is go and measure the actual car these are all going into.
Gonna measure center-to-center distance between,
And also how far forward from the motor/trans flange this all goes...

Because it would be even stupider than stupider than stupid to make a bunch of stuff up that won't even fit the car...

They say stupid _should_ be painful.
And I'll say from experience that yes, it is true.
Stupid is indeed very painful.

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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Rome]

Thanks for all the nitty-gritty details on the tin adaptations, Clatter.

[Bobnotch]

[Brent]

[Bobnotch]

[Xevin]

[Clatter]

[Clatter]

I *think* I got the first piece of tin done!
It's not blasted or bodyworked or painted yet, but..

See that piece inside the hole, there?
It's bent out of the way to clear the dual sender,
And it's also been trimmed to clear the bigger cylinders.
So,
One down..!

Tried to make the hole -just- big enough, that the sender could still come in/out without pulling the top tin.
Sometimes these senders give issues (leak), so nice to have them come in/out easily.
The typical seal won't work here anymore,
But some split hose over the edge of the hole should seal it well enough.
Giving up a bit of cooling air, in exchange for one less hose, and fittings, in the compartment;
We'll call it a win.

Went over to Larry's and visited my car;
Got some measurements of the heater ductwork.

Made a drawing:

Now i -should- be able to make up some chimneys for the heater boxes;
Made to work with bus control boxes and flex ducts...

Looking at them some more,
it's looking like i should be able to just chop up the early bus chimneys,
vs. cutting heater boxes.
A couple of idears are coming as I play with them a bit..

Those heater boxes were already ceramic coated inside,
So i really, really don't want to mess with them if i don't have to.
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Jason37]

What if you got yourself some exhaust bends and made the chimneys? You could even add the rib on the side to make them appear stock. I order bends from Columbia River mandrel bends http://www.mandrelbends.com

[Clatter]

So, it was Friday night after work, and Mom was out with her girlfriends from work...

After ruminating on it all week,
I kinda had some idears about how it should go.

So here it goes..


The left and right chimneys are different lengths,
'counta how the cylinders are staggered, where #3 sticks the farthest forward.
That means the chimney by #1 has to be longer than by #3.
Even though the clocking was wrong, the length was right,
So I had'ta use the left on the left, and right on right.
Clear as mud, right?

This meant chopping it in two places, and re-clocking it to get the bends going the 'correct' directions.

Once it seemed the chimney was right,
i shortened the mount bracket.
The 914 tin sticks way farther forward,
So the mount got bent over way closer to the chimney,
The end cut off,
And a new mount surface made by smashing it flat with a hammer.

Nuts will get welded onto the bracket
And a couple of holes drilled thru the front tin for screws.
Just like bus tin..

The driver's side got a similar treatment,
But it only needed cut and clocked in one place,
Plus the mount bracket shortened.
Might go all anal about details on the bracket and ribs and edges and all,
But for now, it's just about lining things up and mocking.

Here they are with control boxes in place.
It all seems to clear that front tin well enough,
(seeins' as it's so far forward y'never know).

That dang Brent guy might just be right (again ),
As the control boxes put the outlets well above the centerline of the input shaft.

Hopefully, the flex hoses from the control boxes to the body of the car will allow this mis-alignment.

Another concern is that they are so high up as to foul the floor above.
We'll be going by to see the car at the painter's here soon,
(Ian blasted the wheel centers for me! )
and we'll make some more measurements to see for sure.

Until then, we'll just leave things tacked;
Temptation to actually weld this all together is yuge, as the wind is dead calm tonight.
But,
We'll have to know for sure first.


Thanks for checking my wreck, Brent.
You mighta just saved me from myself!
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Jason37]

Nice ironhead.

[Clatter]