82 WestyRabbit Restoration

[Johnoo]

Many thanks for the quick update. I'm very interested to see and understand more about raising the fridge more than the Rocky Mountain West install kit (when you have time).

[82westyrabbit]

The diesel heater works great. The fridge has to get pushed all the way to the top. About a 1/4 or a 1/2 inch higher than the Rocky Mountain kit installs it. I have meant to post some pictures of the complete project but haven’t gotten that far. This is my busy season. I have a bunch of stuff to post when I slow down a bit. John

[Johnoo]

Wondering how the Chinese diesel heater (CDH) under the TF49 worked out for you? Any significant modifications required to make them both fit?

[82westyrabbit]

I am working on this winter's van project. I am getting started quite late because I was working on a friend's dune buggy project.

Item one: Installing a Truck TF49 Fridge.

Item Two: Installing a Chinese Diesel Heater under the fridge.

Item Three: Removing the swivel seat base on the driver's side

Item Four: Installing a second battery

Item Five: Installing a powered subwoofer under the driver's seat

Item Six: Installing a 100 watt solar panel in the luggage rack.

As my van started life as a diesel, the main battery is in the engine compartment which required running a full size battery cable from the starter to the auxillery battery with a big fuse at each end of the wire. The seat swivel has already been removed. It was a hard choice to cut that swivel out, but i figured if I hadn't used it since 1988, I wasn't all of a sudden going to start using it. It made it a lot easier to install a big marine battery under the driver's seat. All of the components are already installed leaving me with wiring and trim to complete. John

[82westyrabbit]

I was finely able to get the van off the lift for the summer
The new brakes work great and make me feel cool 😎

The roof vent I installed started to leak after a few years so I pulled it out and reinstalled it with some modifications

I fiberglassed in some wood to make a ridged mounting on the front and back mounting surface.

I installed a wood doubler on the bottom.

I painted around the vent. Clearly I am going to have to paint the rest of the roof but that will wait until next winter. Now it should be ready for some trips this summer. John

[dobryan]

👍👍👍
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Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2010 Subaru EJ25 (Vanaru) and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[Abscate]

Still subscribed - I wonder of that Mechanical ADvantage place is still there in NW CT?

THanks for keeping the pictures almost totally free of T4 Wankers.
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🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🍊 🍊 🍊

[rogertj]

Good progress this is a good feeling to never stop progressing with our vans. Whatever it takes! Keep going! Good job!
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Roger
Had a Carbureted ABA after engoing the heck out of it now going for ABA 2.0 Jetta EFI ill put a garrett in to the tin can later or maybe go electric?
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0

[82westyrabbit]

Kdj. I was looking at your pictures. It looks like you did a great job. I thought about doing that but it was more than I was up for at the moment. I don’t have a milling machine so I would have had to do the work in a friend’s shop. I took the path of least resistance in this time. The Small car’s kit looks great and just bolts on. John

[Kdj]

That makes total sense now. I just finnished my DIY and had to machine the back sides to allow a flat surface to mount G60 calipers. While a lot of work, I'm hapy with the results. Much better feel and stopping power.

[82westyrabbit]

The way the calipers mount to the spindle is one of the reasons I went with the small car’s brakes. Like Dan said they mount to the machined surface like the factory brakes. All of the other kit mount to the unmachined surface on the the brake disc side of the spindle. If you have questions Dan at Small car’s is vary helpful. John

[vanagondan]

[Kdj]

Do you have a picture of how the caliper brackets mount to the early spindles? I just can't get my head around how they do it

[82westyrabbit]

The first of my projects before it goes back on the road for the year is done

The roof vent is apart. I am making wooden doublers that will get fiberglassed in
To stiffen up the roof so it won’t leak. Then on to new fuel lines. John

[82westyrabbit]

It’s hard to believe that it’s seven years since I started this and five years since I started driving it again. Now it’s time for another round of maintenance. Changing the fuel lines again of course (I did the timing belt and a tune up last year). I don’t like the way I installed the sun roof so that’s getting redone. It’s getting the Wilwood big brake kit from small car and sub woofer under the driver set and some front end work. It will probably get an auxiliary battery installed as well. John

[Vanagon Nut]

That black convertible bug is super nice. Reminds me of my first car. '58 black bug.

Neil.
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1981 Westy DIY 15º ABA
(VW Gas I4)

1988 Westy DIY 50º ABA

VE7TBN

[82westyrabbit]

It's been a hard summer for camping trips. Too much rain and too much work. It just poured the weekend I was going to camp at Sentimental Journey in Lock Haven, PA (where the Piper J-3 Cubs were built). I ended up having to work the weekend of West River Westies a few weeks later. I have talked to several people who said that they had a great time that weekend in Townsend, VT. My first camping trip of the year was minus the Van. I Flew to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the EAA airshow.

Not my airplane, but I spent the winter helping the owner fix it up and get it airworthy.

The only van on my whole trip to Oshkosh was parked at an airport in Fremont, Ohio.

I was told that the owner had flown up to Oshkosh, but I wasn't able to connect with him.

Then my Van went camping without me. It went to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, now in Goshen, CT

Once again I had to work so my family went without me. (I went and helped set up camp the first afternoon, and then I came home.) We drove past an interesting Volkswagon repair shop in Northwest Connecticut on the way there. The lot was just packed full of 80's and 90's VWs. A bunch of Vanagon campers in various states of repair, some Eurovans along with some other interesting stuff.

I went to a local Cruise Night that had a VW theme.

Some interesting mid 60's convertables, a split window camper van; and bunch of American cars showed up.

[82westyrabbit]

Finished up most of my winter projects on the van. I finished up the cruise control. In the end I put the GoWesty speed sensor on the CV joint. That's an easy enough project. The hard part is I was unwilling to do anything other than zip tie the wire going forward to the main wiring harness. This required me to lower the fuel tank so that I could access the wiring harness where it goes over the top of the tank. If I had been willing to route the wire in some other way, this would have been a quick project. Like most projects, I can always figure out a way to make it take a lot longer than it should.

I just could not live with my rear seat any longer.

I purchased new covering from SoFine. The new foam and the fabric for the seat cover seem to be made of very high quality materials. My plywood was in excellent shape, so I just recovered the wood I already had.

This was an easy afternoon project.

I'm pleased with the results. The people at SoFine were very easy to work with.

The last thing I was going to do before putting it on the road for the summer was to check all of the tune up parts. (It's hard to believe I've put 30,000 miles on this project since I finished it.) Unfortunately the distributor cap was cracked - not a surprise as it had developed a skip in the rain. So now I am waiting for new tune up parts before I can start using it for the summer. When I installed the TIICO engine I printed up an owner's manual with all of the service information for all of the different parts on the TIICO. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced the binder that had all of the part numbers for everything in the TIICO kit which makes getting tune up parts difficult. The TICCO engine is a mutt - It is all standard Volkswagon parts, but you just need to know which ones go where. John

[82westyrabbit]

The van’s Christmas present

Four new shock absorbers and cruise control from Go Westy. The shocks are replacing some KYB gas adjust shocks I installed about 100,000 miles ago. I was happy enough with the KYBs but theses Bilsteins seem to be what people here were recommending.

I won’t get to drive the van until the salt goes away in the spring. They have to be better than the worn out KYBs.

I started on installing the Go Westy cruise control.

As I suspected I ran into problems because my speedometer is too old to accept the speed sensor. I haven’t figured out what I want to do about this yet. I really don’t want to replace the speedometer. Where most people want to document low mileage, for me it’s more about flexing my mechanical perseverance by bragging about how many miles it has on it.

These are the brake and clutch shut off switches installed. Maybe I will get the main servo installed next weekend.

I have a subwoofer to install under the driver’s seat and stuff to install an auxiliary battery, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to cut out the driver’s side swivel seat base to make space.
John

[82westyrabbit]

I’m about a month late on this, but drove the van to the Vintage Weekend at Watkin’s Glen Speedway.

A typical teenager on a road trip.

On the way out driving through the middle of New York State

My son said he wanted to sit in a Bugatti. I don’t think this is what he thinks of when he thinks of a Bugatti.

My son waiting to take the van on the VW’s 4 laps around the race track.

My son about to do a hill takeoff with the van He’s ok with the clutch in my Toyota pick up truck and in my Miata, but not so much on the van. I wasn’t going to let him roll it back into someone else’s van. Look close to see the wheel chock on the left rear wheel.

All the vans lined up and waiting for their laps on the track.
Overall it was a fun weekend.