Build Thread: Steely a 1982 Vanagon Westfalia

[E1]

I also don't think any wax is enough here. The 'cleaner" part is a simple petroleum additive to remove bugs, grime, and other impurities, not oxidation of any consequence.

Our first van looked okay but was really oxidized, and having no electricity or a machine polisher available I spent the better part of three days hand-rubbing the tired, old finish with polishing compound -- the paste type. It worked, but so did I.

Here, if possible and available, a machine polishing would work wonders, then at least two wax jobs. As a custom painter from way back, I've tried them all and NuFinish is some fine stuff. I've only used the liquid type to date, but after using Mother's paste wax for the past several applications on two vans, I've determined it to be a very-marginal product in durability and next time I'll try the newly-released paste wax from NuFinish.
_________________
‘84 Westy, 2.1L with Digijet, 5.43 R+P, GT Gears
"Adding power makes you faster on the straights.
Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere."
— Colin Chapman

[Steely]

[shagginwagon83]

Some of the best mods are the cheapest. Don't get carried away weighing the van down with heavy bumpers. Replace fuel lines, and other lines as they are relatively cheap (brake lines, vacuum, etc).

Learn to research a repair/job when you do it. A lot of members here post their feedback on a particular repair. "I did it this way, but if I had to do it again I would do it by...". For example, front wheel bearings need to be replaced? When you order your new bearings, don't order the regular one-time use axle nuts, go with the reusable Mercedes style axle nut off ebay.

Van-Cafe is my 'go to' for parts.

"Never half ass two things, whole ass one thing" - Ron Swanson

Some repairs you will not get 100% right the first time. You may have to repeat/revisit a repair - but eventually you'll get it 100% - or close enough to satisfy you
_________________
Brandon
"Jo Ann" - '83.5 Westfalia EJ22e w/Peloquin
Instagram @joannthevan

[SCM]

[E1]

[shagginwagon83]

[Steely]

After driving Steely around as a daily driver for the better part of a month the engine began to stop running entirely. The result of this was simply an intake valve being stuck open(sounds simple now but in reality took about a week to discover). The reason the valve was stuck was due to old gas that was flushed from the old tank and sticking to the intake valve, making it stay hung open. Once getting the valve unstuck the van was back to its normal driving power. We then replaced the gas tank to prevent any further problems. My next project for the van was to replace the fuel lines and gas tank, along with a reseal kit. I kept having to replace fuel filters that were getting clogged up from all of the gunk coming from the tank(due to the fresh gas breaking up the build up from 18 years of sitting) in the tank. Needless to say a new tank was long over due.

Here I am working on the filler neck tube.

Steely sat for so long that he actually became a home for all kinds of squirrels and other creatures that stored their pecans in every nook and cranny of the van. We cleaned out at least two 5 gallon buckets of pecans from the engine bay and continue to find them. They even had stashed the internal front bumper tube full...

After this the muffler needed some major repair. Instead of welding in patches, we just welded in steel pipe.

Still needs to be painted, but defiantly sounds a lot better than before.
Also added a little hula girl because... well because what awesome van doesn't have a hula girl right?

After about three months of driving, another valve got stuck open. This was due to the seat being punched into the aluminum of the head(we later discovered). While the van was still in driving order, we noticed a large loss in power. This meant that Steely was going to need a new cylinder head. While my father and I felt fully capable of completing this job, we let my grandfather offer his support. He lives in Dothan Alabama where he rents several shops out. One of his rentors used to work for Volkswagen and offered his services to get the job done. We trailered Steely up to get the new head put on, expecting that the job would take no loner than a week or two.

Here you can see Steely making an appearance at the football stadium of the University of Auburn, on his way to Dothan.

Unfortunately the older mechanic had several incidents which prevented him from directing his full attention to replacing the head. This meant that our two week time frame was steadily being lengthened to several months. During that time I was at college taking summer classes, so the fact that I wasn't able to be with my compadre wasn't the end of the world.

One weekend my father offered to take me up to Dothan to go see Steely and see if there was anything we could do to help out the mechanic(also because I really wanted to see the engine out of the van). While we weren't able to help the mechanic in person, because he wasn't there, we were able to get a couple of other things done.

This is me inside the engine bay cleaning all the nooks and crannies, trying to remove all the engine grime that had accumulated all those years. I also was able to paint the engine tins and clean up the engine a little bit more. In addition we cleaned up the shop a little bit so that it would make it easier for the mechanic to work(this earned me major brownie points).

The rest are just pictures of the engine pulled from the van

Don't mind all that oil, we just some oil dry and cleaned it all up

While the mechanic was taking a lot longer than expected, it was comforting knowing that someone who was well experienced was looking over every component of the engine and making sure that our vans heart was going to be operating at correctly. He also had these really sweet Rolls-Royce Beetle along with two 80s Porsche 911s.

It had been close to five months since we had taken Steely up to Dothan to be fixed and the day had finally come. Steely was finally ready to hit the road again. It turns out that the mechanic was really a good man who just happend to be in some bad circumstances at the time. But that wasn't the point! I had my van back and was extremely overjoyed to get be reunited. We decided to take a little trip in the van and drove over to Iron city Georgia, home of one of the largest live oaks in America(highly debatable apparently). This is easily one of my favorite Vanagon pictures to date, yes partially due to the van being Steely, but also because its just so visually appealing.

[Stevie Ray Van]

This is an awesome story. You are very fortunate to have such support from family. That means a lot. Anyway, on with the story.... How's it running now??
_________________
87 Westy 2.1 M/T
69 Westy

[danfromsyr]

great van, great story and here's to many great years and stories together.

send this image in to GoWesty for their calendar competition

_________________

[elizer]

wow that is an amazing tree.

[E1]

It's a 1:24 model of the kid's buggy next to broccoli.
_________________
‘84 Westy, 2.1L with Digijet, 5.43 R+P, GT Gears
"Adding power makes you faster on the straights.
Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere."
— Colin Chapman

[joetiger]

That tree photo is Vanagon calendar-worthy.

The Auburn picture, not so much. (GEAUX TIGERS!)

Congrats on the van! That Guinea Blue is one of my favorite Vanagon colors.
_________________
Joe T.

'86 NAHT Vanagon GL Syncro/ supercharged ABA 2.0 "Pigpen"
'04 GTI 1.8T
'04 Golf R32

"get metaphysical with it. if it's simply a means to get to and from places, it will let you down. if it becomes your zen, it can't fail you." -dabaron

"Still, it's good to be afield."--VWagabond

Available Now! Vanagon to Louisiana--A Two-Lane Reckoning Through Past and Present

www.josephtrussell.com

[Steely]

After having a new head put on Steely ran great! His power was back to what we suspect what it was like when new and we were able to drive anywhere we pleased. On another note I also want to add that while Steely was gone all that time I picked a little something else up.

Don't worry everyone, this guy didn't come to replace Steely, actually to help him later (more on that later...)
This is Stanley, my 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon transporter. Stanley is named after his PO mr Stan. I picked up Stanley for several reasons. The first was that I wanted another Vanagon that was water cooled so I can later hopefully convert Steelz to a Subie!... buttttt that'll be a while. For know Stanley is just going to be a fun little side project to play with and maybe something for my parents to use some. The other reason that I was buying Stanley was because the deal included a highly desired set of power mirrors and there harnesses off of another Vanagon he had, an old stock bay window driver side door, a Vanagon air cooled exhaust, a set of newer armrest Vanagon front seats, and some other things you may hear about later.

In serious need of a bath as you can see

and looking al nice a pretty

With a little buff I think Stanley will really shine up quite well. Stanley does have all the matching Vanagon hubs and rims to go with him, but i'm going to try and get of the matching alloys (as seen on passenger rear) for him.

Here you see the two first meet

(if you have one you must have two, right?..)

[jimf909]

Outstanding photo. Well done.

I'm really enjoying your thread, your writing and the surprise additions to the fleet.

Keep up the good work!
_________________
- Jim

[Abscate]

That cleaned up really nice, Steely. Now you know why you don't pick a user name after your car...

Is that a split window driver door too? $$$$$

You have a couple of nice cats in Stanley, save those!

Get them both driving before you strip parts from one to the other so you know what shape the running train is. If you have a rural place you can run it up down road carefully without tags for a mile or two
_________________
.ssS!

[AZ Landshaper]

Has anyone mentioned this is a sickness. Some say hobby but.....

You show signs of falling down the rabbit hole.
_________________
Support Small Business.

-------------------------------------------------------
85 Weekender w/ EJ22
Previously
64, 71, 72, 73, 76, 81, 84, 85 & 87 Campmobiles and Westfalias
and a 67 bug.

[Steely]

Tragedy Strikes
Now that Steely was back in my possession I got to take him to school with me. While everything was fine and dandy with Steely, someone got a little excited one night and decided that Steely looked like he needed a hole put through his grille. I was walking out the next morning to go somewhere or another and this was the first thing I saw. What a sad sight...

The carnage of the previous night

After a little rigging up I was able to put another VW emblem I had zip tied onto the broken grille. (oh yea someone picked up the old emblem as a souvenir at some point, so I didn't even have that to salvage)

While this really stunk at the time, the person who did it, admitted what they had done and gave me the appropriate amount of money to order a new grille and emblem from GoWesty.(100 dollars worth in shipping..GEEZZ)

New Tent Time
On another note it was finally time to put a new tent on Steely. While I was doing this I also installed some Yakima racks. I decided to go with the Acrylic (synthetic canvas) tent. One thing that I found especially odd when doing this install was that steely has a screw in style tent. This is weird because as most of you know, the screw in style wasn't introduced until 1985. Not sure if it was somehow converted, or swapped with another vans top, maybe even a prototype from factory? who knows??

Steely without his hat

A lot of people seem to make a big deal of this job, but I found that it really wasn't that straining when tackled by two people. To minimize the stress we split the job into two days. First day unscrew bottom portion, and remove top. Second day install tent and reinstall top. followed by rescrewing the tent to the body.

I also was able to clean the interior side of the pop top while it was off the van. With new canvas, and cleaning the ceiling, the van smells so much better than before.

[shagginwagon83]

[Steely]

[AZ Landshaper]

This is the type of stuff that happens when your teams wins.....or looses.

If I didnt know better Id think you were attending ZOO Mass Amherst. Drunken debauchery seems to be a right of passage there.


You may want to keep the tintop as your AT-school-van.
You got off easy this week.

I had a bus (72 campmobile, mustard yellow) spray painted after a football game once. Wasnt feeling like a winner after that.
Your rig looks very clean. Id hire security.


Maybe drop off some AA pamphlets with your van-abuse friend.
_________________
Support Small Business.

-------------------------------------------------------
85 Weekender w/ EJ22
Previously
64, 71, 72, 73, 76, 81, 84, 85 & 87 Campmobiles and Westfalias
and a 67 bug.