wiring harness

[sioux888]

Hi again!

quick question guys. My generator has three wires, one of them is keep in place using a screw that goes straight into a bored hole in the body of the generator itself, when I put the engine back together I didn't put this hole on a way that this hole can be reached, it seems that is a ground wire, how important that wire is? may I put it in other place? maybe to the metal belt that holds the generator?

[honestcharlie56]

Man, I hear ya on the pains of rewiring a bus. I have a 74 as well that I'm piecing back together. How hard is it to turn the generator, can't be that hard right?

[sioux888]

Hey buddy! Yeah, it took me a couple of days of reading diagrams and figuring out things to rewire the bus completely from scratch, drinking beer and listening to good music while working on the bus helped a lot to keep me calm and relaxed while I dealt with that electric wire spider web. As you can read on previous posts I got a lot of help from some guys here. I got lost few times but they helped me out big time.

I've been reading many posts trying to find out the answer for my last doubt about the generator and the main thing seems to be not that wire that is not connected to the generator body but that the wrong position of the generator will lead to a bad cooling effect from the air flow coming from the fan shroud. Turning the generator looks a bit tedious, but completely feasible.

[busdaddy]

Yep, bad cooling and great difficulty changing brushes, the body has to be oriented so the ground screw is up and the scoop or lip on the inner plate against the fan is facing down. And yes the ground wire to the regulator body is very important.

Sorry, but it has to come out, if you can get the fan nut off in place and leave the fan in the shroud the generator and plate can be lifted over the manifold, hopefully you put hex headed fasteners in the lower two plate to shroud holes.
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[sioux888]

hex headed fasteners in the lower plate to shroud holes???? ehm.....
No busdaddy, didn't know about that trick, I guess it makes it a lot easier to get to them with the tool? now; since you brought up, let me ask your opinion about this.
Do I really need to pull the engine off the bus? I don't really think is necessary, I've seen other people replacing a generator in a bug where the gaps between the engine compartment and the engine itself is way smaller than the one in the bus but..... I read a post where they mentioned to torque the 36mm generator /fan nut to 30ft lbs, if this is strictly necessary, sounds to me that would be better to pull the engine off the bus to use the torque ratchet tool, I don't think I can fit it between the fan shroud and the bus body

[sioux888]

Hey! sorry man, I think I got confused, I thought you were talking about allen head bolts, the fasteners are all hexagonal heads.

[busdaddy]

Then you should be OK, it gets challenging when someone puts the slot headed tin screws on the lower two (allen drive would be similar), the manifold is in the way for access so you have to get a wrench on from the sides of the bolts.

The torque on the fan nut can be ballparked fairly close, since access is tight it's hard to overdo it, practice on a wheel nut or something first to get a feel for what 30' lbs feels like.
You'll likely have to remove the carb to make getting at everything easier.
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[Wildthings]

I agree with Busdaddy on this, the specified torque on the fan nut is kind of a minimum value and otherwise not super critical. It is an awkward place to apply much force so the chances of severely overtightening the nut are slim. Find the longest ratchet or breaker bar you can easily use in front of the fan and apply force judiciously.

[SGKent]

there are clearances on the fan in the shroud to make it work well. If those change then you cooling will suffer greatly. I am all for saving time - it takes 2 hours or less to RR an upright engine. It took me almost a whole day to RR the generator in an engine once trying to save time. It would have been so much easier to just pull the engine out, replace the generator and check the gaps between the fan and shroud, check for cracks, etc..
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[sioux888]

Many thanks to all of you guys again.

I did a whole restoration of the engine myself, I turned it on outside the bus and worked perfectly, I am mentioning this cause I checked for cracks and gaps as SGkent mentioned on his post and they where OK. I didn't pay attention to the detail of the generator's position back then though and I realized something was not correct till I had to put the wires back on. I was hoping for a simple removal of the carburetor, the 36mm fan nut (being careful on putting the shim and washer when reassembling the unit back again) and generator base plate to shroud fasteners to get it into the right position rotating it over the admission tubes, but now reading to what SGKent recommends I might go for a pulling the engine out mission.

[busdaddy]

It's not hard to set up the fan to plate gaps on the bench, just make sure all the shims go back in the same places and stay in place while you wrangle it into position, a little smear of grease or something sticky will make sure they don't fall off the hub. And remember to stick the fan back into the shroud before getting the generator all bolted in
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[SGKent]

It took Colin and I maybe 15 minutes to pull his upright engine out, and maybe 15 -20 minutes to put it back in. The rest of the time was actually fixing things like his generator. I don't understand why everyone fights pulling a T1 upright engine out to work on it, but then again I don't understand lots of things.
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[busdaddy]

While I agree it's super easy and fast to pull a type 1 engine there are times and locations where it's somewhat inconvenient, it sounds like Sioux has already got all of his tin dialed in so there shouldn't be any PO surprises that need looking at while it's out. Flip a coin, each job takes about the same time, doing it in the bus is likely a little faster if your back and knees are up to crouching down a while (or jack the ass end of the bus up high and do the job sitting in a rolling office chair).
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[Abscate]

You’ll find regional differences in approach because if you only work in a dry climate , those 30 second operations like “disconnect the heater box flaps” in CA can take 60 minutes in the crapper NE

I’ve never dropped a engine to get a generator out in Bug or Bus. Much nicer staying up top in 5F weather too.
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[sioux888]

I feel that everybody has a fair point, and as Abscate mentioned on the last post, it will depend on different factors to take the decision about what the plan will be. My plan for the moment is to try to dismantle the generator without taking out the engine. If I see that I am stuck and is taking me a lot of effort I have to be honest and say abort the mission, lets move to the other way, then I'll jack up the bus and I'll drop the engine.

I know this will be an abrupt change of the topic but, when I wired my bus from scratch I managed to make work every single element in it (turning lights, ceiling lamps, license plate light etc) except for a couple of things, the horn, which I will try to figure out myself by reading as much info as I can before asking more questions; wildthings and sjbartnik helped a lot and I know what is missing is something simple since I have horn when I touch one of the cables to ground, just need to figure out how to place them correctly and the other thing that is missing is the high beam headlights. My headlights work, but when I action the lever nothing happen, the original high beam relay for the 1974 baywindow has 4 pins, the one I got from bus depot has 5; I was wondering if this would be the result of having a 5 pin relay instead of the 4 pin relay that correspond to that bus or if its the switch itself; when I action the lever, I don't hear a click on the relay, there's any way to check the switch? if the switch is the one that is causing trouble, there's any way to repair them? I red even that a bad ground on the headlight socket can be the cause of the problem, but since I don't hear a click on the relay when I operate that lever made me think that possibly the problem was either the switch or the relay, any thoughts on this?

[SGKent]

what is the part number on the old relay, and what is the part number on the new relay?
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“Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” - George Carlin

[sioux888]

The bus came without relays when I started to restore it, all the electrical harness and wiring was an absolute disaster.

The part number on the one I got is C24-111-941-583 which by the way I bought from CIP1 not from bus depot.

According to the wiring diagram the relay should have 4 pins (56, 56a, 56b and S) the one I bought has all those pins plus one with the number 30

[SGKent]

[sioux888]

Hey, that was helpful man! thanks a lot.

I know I am drifting over the topics but I was thinking last night that one of the things I missed in the restoration was to give some maintenance to the gear rod shifter that goes underneath the bus, the one that connects the shifter mechanism in the cabin to the gear box. now I am thinking that would be worth to drop the engine to take it off and change the plastic bushings inside of it. of course this will require to drop the gear box as well, looking at the moment on the steps to do it.

[Wildthings]