Iglaaq, the 2002 MV Weekender

[paddygarcia]

Since I've been spending more time reading here in support of this project I thought I'd introduce our van.

Iglaaq is a 2002 Weekender, bought by my sister Eileen in 2012. By that time she knew she had a complicated case of thyroid cancer and decided it was a good time to live a bit of her long-time camper dream:

Eileen worked as an anthropologist for the National Park Service in Anchorage, AK, and spent a lot of time working, living, and being friends with Native Alaskans. Thus the van ended up being named Iglaaq - an Inupiat word for traveler or visitor. Iglaaq lived in the lower 48 - often in Las Vegas - and Eileen camped all over the West in this van and got the full value of what had been kind of a premium purchase in 2012.

Her last road trip was in 2016, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN to our folks' house in New Jersey. Before Eileen died there in September 2017 we talked about all sorts of things, including making sure the rest of us enjoyed Iglaaq.

So here we are today. At 143k miles Iglaaq is having its turn on the lift for a bunch of deferred maintenance: brakes, shocks, engine mounts, and a trans service. I'm adding a hitch for use with bike and other racks, and found that the rear bumper bar has turned to flakes so that'll get changed out, too. The pax door latch rod needs to be replaced again, and the slider needs tuning.

More to come in 2020, once Certain Items arrive

[Abscate]

Dont forget to put her picture in front, and in the rear, so she can travel with you and see where you are going, and where you have been.


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.ssS!

[Zeitgeist 13]

Looks like a really nice van, and it's great to see the legacy will continue.
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[paddygarcia]

It's definitely got good karma, and we're always accompanied

Got the rear bumper out, good thing we've got a replacement part coming as there's not much left to work with here...

[paddygarcia]

Well this should solve the problem.

[Zeitgeist 13]

What's the rest of the undercarriage look like? That's a whole lot of rot on that bumper support. EVs don't rust out here, so I'm shocked to see that kind of disintegration.
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[Wyotdi]

Nice lookin' brethren in there too. Do I spy a 964?

[Zeitgeist 13]

Yeah, more pics of that guy
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[paddygarcia]

Casey - the van is really clean other than rust in weirdly specific places. Heatshields, as might be expected, but only some. The trans pan is really rusty and should be replaced, but I have other plans for the trans that should fix that problem. Some rust on bare suspension bits. And the disappearing bumper.

The bumper is an assembly of folded sheet metal and looks to have been maybe e-coated but not painted. The sad little dash of cosmoline on the outside did bupkis. Those folds have lots of drain points but must hold water. Well, until they rust through.

Other than that, it's very solid, and not hiding rust under the undercoating, either. Weird, but I'll take that vs the opposite.

Stablemates are both daily drivers - my wife's 01 Boxster S and my 96 993. Last winter's project was to refresh the 993:

[paddygarcia]

Got the bumper replaced and hung the hitch, decided to pass on the trans service right now since I need a state inspection. Went for a test drive last weekend and found on my return that the passenger side hard line was leaky after being R&Rd for new calipers and hoses. No reasonable amount of tightening fixed the problem, so I ordered up some Cunifer line and set to making a replacement.

It's been long time since I made hard lines and mistakes were made.

However the final result was good. The Cunifer copper-nickel line was great to work - as strong as regular steel, rust-free like stainless, but bends pretty easily and cleanly.

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[wannabecamper]

[Abscate]

I put a driveshaft bearing in upside down on an E83 last week

Ego damage substantial
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.ssS!

[snowsyncro]

[paddygarcia]

[paddygarcia]

Quite the wait due to Covid, but thanks to Rob M for my precious...

[paddygarcia]

Well, that's taken a while but we're back to van things. The Volvo in the background was supposed to be a quick covid project with my dad, but turned out to need an engine rebuild in addition to floors. That was kinda fun, as my first big car project was a Volvo B20 rebuild. And also an auto to manual swap, so it's full circle time.

With the nose opened up we can start to figure things out. I want to replace the cooling hoses while I'm in here. Also the water distributing crack pipe. There's been small oil leak for years back up by the pipe, which I think is a valve cover gasket but more will be clear with stuff removed.

[Saturn]

[paddygarcia]

Good day, fellow Pegamoosian! Nice Amazon, nice work. Sysiphean is a good way to describe things. I've gotten better at minimizing my Shipwright's Disease tendencies ("while you're in there"), but when the newest car in the family is a 2005 something's always breaking. At least one of them is a Toyota so we can usually get around.

Speaking of Shipwright's Disease, today was spent cataloging and trying to source timing chain and hoses. Good golly are hoses for this thing expensive. But the MO for this whole job is to make as reliable an adventuremobile as reasonably possible and nobody likes losing a hard-to-find rad hose some Friday night in East Underwear South Dakota. The manual trans hoses seem to still be available in Europe and look like a clean way to delete the trans cooler since I'll be replacing hoses anyway.

[paddygarcia]

Not looking too bad for 145k miles. My sister was fanatical about maintenance, and I guess the PO was as careful as he said he was.

[paddygarcia]

Moving along! Pulled the trigger on a bunch of parts, including AC compressor to rad hoses, thermostat housing & crackpipe, timing chain replacement bits, and CV joints. Ouch, but much better now than on the road.

My trans swap kit came from Rob/vwjunkie, and now that I'm cleaning and inventorying I found that a few parts were missing. It's been sitting in my garage for a couple of years, but Rob was great about sourcing the last bits, which should be on the way soon. Rob included new outer CV joints and used inners, as agreed. The inners on the MT axles had some pitting damage. New ones are hard to find right now (at non-stupid $), though. I could use the ones off the AT axles, but then realized they look a lot like the ones I repacked on my 911. Some catalog searching says very similar: 108mm, 28 spline axles. Eurovan are 31.5mm thick, 993 32mm, so they'd barely move the axle out. At $75 each for good GKN/Loebros (GKN 302303) I took a chance. The Porsche unit doesn't have space for the inside gasket, so will need a little schmear of Curil-T. Also, the inner race of the Porsche unit is about 4mm shorter than the Eurovan part. So we'll see but I'm pretty sure it's a safe bet.