Children of the sun

[TDCTDI]

[TDCTDI]

Intent on trying to get some way of keeping track of fuel level, I started with soaking a seized instrument cluster that I had laying around from the Crusty Pig.


Obviously, I didn’t want to soak the whole cluster, but I also wasn’t interested in dismantling the whole thing, so I lopped the top off a oil bottle & filled it with ATF.

And balanced the cluster on it to let the drive mechanism soak overnight.

Once freed up, I lubed the rest of the drive gears & axles and began to dismantle the cluster while still in the vehicle in hopes of just swapping out the speedometer head.

Once inside, things were a lot worse than anticipated.

This cluster obviously sat out in the elements for some time.

The fuel gauge cluster took the brunt of it.

In the midst of doing the swap, the bottom fell out of the skies, so I failed to get more pics, but I swapped the fuel gauge pod, reassembled it all, & drove it home.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

Carrying on with my quest to stem the flow of water into the cabin, I opted to replace the slider door seal.


Using my handy homemade tool, I chiseled the old seal out & cleaned out the groove.

And began tucking the new Wolfsburg West seal into place.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

Today I tackled the passenger side ball joints. While disassembling everything, I checked the tie rod ends, and, well….


Link

Sorry, totally screwed up & took video the wrong direction.


Looks like I need to score some of those too.


Anyway, after separating the upper ball joint from the spindle…


Link



Here we are with new ball joints pressed in.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

Today I repeated yesterday's endeavors & the driver side was pretty much the same.


Link



Press old ball joint out…

Press new one in…

Rinse & repeat…

Install spindle.

Thread speedometer cable through & install clip.

And admire someone’s choice of tow hook placement…

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

Woohoo!

Gone are the creaks, squeaks, groans, clunks, & knocks (from the bus anyway.).


And today, my new tie rods arrived, so, I just had to tackle that.

Out with the old…

And in with the new.

I used the old castle nuts to lock the ball joints into their respective holes…

And then backed them off & ran the nylock nuts back on

Unfortunately, I forgot to order two right side tie rods, so I still have a fixed length driver side one. Since the original ones were so bent, I needed to re-center the steering wheel.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[KTPhil]

Re-center the steering WHEEL, or re-center the steering BOX?
_________________
Current Fleet:
- '71 Fastback
- '69 Westfalia
Retired:
- '67 Beetle
- '65 Beetle (x2)
- '65 Bus
- '71 Squareback

[TDCTDI]

[panic_fan]

[TDCTDI]

[TDCTDI]

After all of the front end work, I made an appointment with a local Firestone to get their lifetime alignment.


Of course, this caused all sorts of issues.

Their Hunter digital alignment machine had no software to support a 1969 Bus. So I told them to look it up as a 1978, they had specs for this.

Next, the machine required a VIN, but it didn’t recognize one that only consisted of 9 digits.


After that got sorted, no one knew how to drive it…. Dammit, do I have to do everything?!?


Short answer, yes.


No one knew how to adjust the camber angle, so I got to do that too.

Once that was done, their tech couldn’t figure out how to align it with only one adjustable tie rod, so I grabbed the driver side tire & pointed it to the center of the required field, & told him to adjust the passenger side to spec.

With the alignment completed, the whole process began again when trying to enter the vehicle into their system to bill it out.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

With new ball joints pressed in, I was coerced into trying to tidy up the front suspension & knock off all of the caked on crust.

Of course, one thing leads to another, & down the rabbit hole I went. Using a torch to soften the old paint, I began buffing it off with a wire brush.

Someone obviously had the upper trailing arm off at some point & had a difficult time getting it back in.

Sorry, I zoned out & forgot to take pics of the shock tower & trailing arms in bare metal.



And finally gave it a quick coat of fresh black paint.

That doesn’t look out of place at all.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

After installing the factory oil bath air cleaner & stock style muffler, the beast was much quieter. Unfortunately, with the drone of the engine significantly reduced, the tires are now the main source of noise.

With the intake & exhaust being significantly more restrictive, I noticed that the power band had just tipped out of being happy with the larger tires & the engine was unable to maintain speed on hills when cruising at 45/50.

Sooo…. I neutered the bus.

It’s sooo much quieter now.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[Kwoggy]

Nooooo! Say it isn’t so! The inspiration to waste my hard-earned money on oversized tires for my two-wheel drive Bus, gone. My twinsie Bus no more….
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1970 Bus

[TDCTDI]

[obieoberstar]

I used this tool from HF to remove years of crud from the beam on my beetle.

Does a great job on the dried on heavy rust crud. Great tool for the tool box and not that expensive.

https://www.harborfreight.com/compact-air-needle-scaler-58646.html

[TDCTDI]

[TDCTDI]

Since the oppressive heat seems to have broken, & the mornings starting to be cool, I decided to begin the process of getting the heating system working again.


During my trip across country, I determined that this bus had been picked up by a forklift at some point in its life. While I had sorta straightened the clutch tube, the passenger side heater cable tube was crushed beyond just a simple tweaking.

So I commenced to lopping out the worst of it.

With that out of the way, I straightened the ends out.

And then addressed the crossmember.

And scabbed a piece of 3/8” fuel line in place.

While under there, I unwrapped the tape hiding what was left of the heat tube.

After gingerly grinding away at the weld, I locked onto the remains of the tube with my slide hammer.

And coaxed it out of the crossmember.

Since I had not yet installed this heat tube in my ‘64, I checked to see how it fit.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

With a few minutes to spare, I extracted the remains of the rear portion of the heater tube.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[TDCTDI]

In the interest of preserving the original crossmembers, and since there were now a couple decent access holes, I blew out decades of accumulated dust & dirt out of the crossmembers.


Link




After that, I gave the inside of the box sections several good squirts of Ospho.

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.