71 Westy -- bought new in London by my father, rolls again!

[1970fun]

Beetle exhaust works perfect for me!

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=438125&highlight=beetle+exhaust

[advCo]

Just took the better half of my day to read through this thread, and I'm glad that I did. This is the kind of story that has always drawn me to the Bus.

I dragged my first Westy home this past Saturday and hope to create even a fraction of the memories that you've had in your Bus.

Thanks for posting. What a great thread.

Cheers!
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"He pulled the mirrors off his Cadillac ‘cause he doesn’t like it looking like he looks back"
'68/'70 Ghia Coupe Project
'70 Westy Project - Champagne I Wannabe
A bunch of vintage Japanese motorcycles
"Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity." -A. Bennett

[Xevin]

For f#€k sake, enough exhaust talk. It’s “Exhausting”
Nobody reading this thread for tech talk. It’s all about food, fun, and history.
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Keep on Busin'

[advCo]

[Xevin]

[Abscate]

We were just talxing ekhaust to xeep some xlowns away.
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.ssS!

[AlmostHeavenWV_VW]

[notchboy]

Well I for sure am glad to see these posts coming. Im still acclimating to my new San Diego gig.

I did not know that San Diego has some best micros in the country
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[Abscate]

[notchboy]

[Abscate]

[sunnydog]

Okay folks, I promised I would eventually post up a few more old photos and finally here's one, and it's low quality but probably still good enough -- I think you can still mostly see what's going on. This is circa 1992 or '93 so we are 23-25 or so. This photo is after the bus had been discovered in a garage and we had brought it back to life, but was owned by my friend who in previous posts I called "T", who lived out of the bus for a semester at the Evergreen State College in Olympia WA, was a bartender/Ski bum in Park City and then was a bartender/hippie in Big Sur. That's T in the middle in the cutoff overalls (another reason why I'm pretty sure it was the early 90's... when was the last time he wore overalls? I'll ask.) On the left is "E" and on the right is "P" also friends from waaaaay back.

We had gathered at a campground on the south side of Mount St. Helens for an annual event we called "Lucky Campers" and the price of admission was a case of Lucky Beer, the little stubby bottles with the rebus puzzles under the cap. The plan was to drink your case in the hours from 5 PM Friday to Noon Sunday, while eating only food cooked over the fire. This led to all sorts of loud and inappropriate behavior. We were exactly the kind of campground guests you did NOT want to camp next to if you wanted a peaceful time in the forest.

The campground host is in the middle on the bike. She had just finished telling T that if he "parks the bus there, he gets the parking spot at no cost because it's associated with the campsite", however, "if he pops the top, then he has to pay at the RV rate," which pissed him off to no end. We are all jovially trying to help him negotiate the transaction: "Why would he have to pay the RV rate if the length of the bus doesn't change and he's not taking up any more parking space than it would if the top was down?" "What if he only pops the top when he's sleeping, and the puts it back down first thing in the morning and nobody sees it up?" I stepped back to take this picture during these negotiations. I was also trying to distract her from taking a closer look at the bus because it was supposed to be an alcohol-free campground, and she already caught E with a bottle. She said "If you've got a little, that's fine, I just don't want to see it or hear about it." Meanwhile, I think we had 8 cases of beer stacked in the bus. Great times! Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than smart.

I left work and came home early this afternoon because it was a glorious clear fall day and the rains are coming next week and I can count on one hand the number of transcendent fall days left this year that are gonna be perfect for bus driving.

I got the bus out and strategically oriented on the back 40 for a fall color shot with the Oregon Ash trees turning brilliant yellow:

Then Rosemary the nervous Doberman came over and settled right in front, like she was a long-legged model... The two four-legged beasts side by side, one fast, one slow, you guess which is which.

I rolled out from home and drove some slow country backroads,

Over the past few months I'd spotted a bus tucked into a barn behind someone's house about 3 miles away from mine. As I drove past, I saw a fellow walking out to the end of the driveway to pick up the garbage can. I beeped and turned around real quick to introduce myself. He's got a '68 with a 1600 that he is restoring. We chatted for 20 minutes and exchanged numbers so I can invite him to the local air-coolers first Thursday meetup. No pictures, though. I was trying not to be a creeper...

Then down the road for a quick hike on the trails by the Columbia River. Can I park here? Yes I can. Do I have to pay the RV rate? Only if I pop the top?

Then post-hike, another side of the road strategically-oriented parking job to get a scenic landscape shot with the bus in it...

Then finally watching sunset from the patio of the pub, with the sunset coloring up the clouds and the side windows of the bus. An amazing acoustic guitar player singer/songwriter in the pub sang a song called "Satisfied Man" (not the Molly Hatchet song) about enjoying what you have, enjoying the moment and being content with life. It sounded good. It felt good. I know the rainy days are coming soon, but this simple afternoon of wheeling around is gonna stay with me a while. It's still true...Sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart!

Keep them Baywindows rollin'
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'71 Westy w/ a 1776 singleport, 34P3 & 205Q. Points.

[THall]

Great post.....love this thread.
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'78 Westy - 2.0 FI

[sunnydog]

Happy Solstice to everyone! Wait, that was several days back... Mid-October was last time I posted, so my intermittent posting schedule continues. Sometime after my last post I flew off to visit daughter #1 in Brooklyn, where we crash-coursed the city: walked across the Brooklyn bridge, sprinted throughout the natural history museum, crossed Central Park, took the subway, saw a Broadway show, ate New York Pizza.

Then the next day I flew further to Lubec, Maine which is as far east as you can get in the USA. I've got family out there... sorta. I've been exploring family history and found the the oldest of old family homesteads, so I was able to see my 3rd great-grandparent's headstone and walk (trespass ) around on the original 1776 land claim of my 5th great grandfather, which he took after fleeing royalist Nova Scotia for the revolutionary colonies. I share his name! It was very cool, but also sort of weird to so many headstones etched with the family name "sunnydog"... But I digress.

November 12, Mrs. sunnydog and I rolled the bus out for a Pacific Northwest twilight drive down to the river to watch the sunset. It was cold and crisp but beautiful.

I got there and the bus had been a little hard to shift, so I told her I was going to jump out and adjust the clutch -- I noted the clutch point happened when the pedal was depressed about 2 inches instead of 1 inch. I grabbed a set of vice grips and hopped out. She grabbed the phone and took some photos. Classic VW pose below

we were back inside in a flash.

But when I drove home it was still shifting sketchy. So the next weekend I examined the clutch cable, verified the adjustment, checked the pedal linkage and the arm on the side of the transmission and it was all fine. While I had the front wheels up in the air, I realized had never greased the wheel bearings after bringing the bus out of barn slumber. Why have I never done that? Here they are: sticky and nasty.

There's no after photo, but they are much happier, trust me.

After I got that all back together, I took it for a test drive but it had gotten around to Christmas and so I put the lights on and rolled it out in the near dark on a day when I had a bonfire going in the yard.

Drove down to the river again because you should always try to make time to see either a sunrise or a sunset everyday and I am not a morning person, which limits my selection.

Stopped for a quick pic in front of some other lights in town.

But it was happening again! At first I thought I needed to adjust the shifter, because I was having problems getting into 1 and 2 and R, but after pondering it for a while, I realized I could shift into those gears fine when the motor was off. The problem appeared after it had been running for an hour or so. Maybe it is heat-related?

Food Intermission:
Christmas Eve dinner was delicious lamb shanks and basmati rice for 5.
Christmas Day was a 12 pound whole steelhead and a 5 pound rib roast for 14 people. A couple bottles of Mourvedre to accompany.
Other great recent home meals include pupusas salvadoreñas, fried plantains and queso frito... (because who doesn't like fried cheese!)
We have also been making brie, grannysmith apple and cranberry tarts.
Mmmmmm Me likey the holidays.

Back to your seats!
I used the Samba search function: I learned from DougB that in January 2018 he experienced hard shifting after driving for a long time. Skills responded:"if it seems ok cold, you probably have a pilot bearing that shit the sheets". Soon after, in Feb, DougB followed up, saying: "Well, if you said “pilot bearing” you were right!!! Instead of a bearing I found mashed up bits of cage and maybe 2 needles, along with a lot of metal shavings of what used to be the rest of the bearing. Felt ring gone, too."
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8694928#8694928

Asiab3 reminded me to check the "Shifter Bingo!" page he put up in early Dec of 2018:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8947589#8947589
A bad pilot bearing description reads thus: "Bad pilot bearing: The pilot bearing allows the clutch to spin independently from the engine. A bad bearing usually acts fine when the engine is cold and mimics a sticking clutch disc once the engine warms up. Sometimes they make noise. Always they require engine removal to repair. "

So my nearterm New Year's fortune for 2019 is that there is a another motor pull in my near future! I have a new pilot bearing. There is the possibility of salvaging the old, as Amskeptic once said: "Many times, you can thoroughly grease the pilot bearing and restore smooth operation, but you have to be able to rotate the needles in the housing smoothly and easily." I also have a 2 used gland nuts with good pilot bearings in them. I like to have options! And while I am in there... maybe a clutch kit?

Happy New Year to all of you on the Samba who post up your breakdowns and mishaps, and those of you with successes and accomplishments. Tonight I lift a glass of "Shortest Day" winter ale to all of you!

Because, you know, beer.
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'71 Westy w/ a 1776 singleport, 34P3 & 205Q. Points.

[Stuartzickefoose]

so when am i coming over to watch this unfold?

ill be back in a week or so....
_________________
Stuart Zickefoose

2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDi 6 speed manual

206-841-7324
[email protected]

[tristessa]

If the engine's out, check/adjust endplay, check/adjust the main seal, inspect/replace the clutch and throwout bearing. Also take a long hard look at the bowden tube, clutch cable, clutch cable clevis, and the arm the cable attaches to.

[sunnydog]

Hey! WHO is the guy that manages to not drive or work on his bus for 3 months? And WHO is the guy that doesn't check in, or post anything, but instead just sends random insulting text messages to Samba friends?
That's me! Sunnydog!

But I'm back! I finally have a free weekend so I backed the bus into the garage and left the nose hanging out. On the left is the hind end of the old Toyota 4Runner, now at 518k and turning 20 this year -- that's enough to go to the moon and back plus 40k left over. But I digress.

Recall I was having increasing trouble shifting on the 1-2 side. The trouble would increase with drive time and after 45 minutes it would even try to slightly creep forward at a stoplight with the clutch in. Engine off -- no trouble going into gear at all. Clutch adjustments made no difference and Asiab3's shifter bingo pointed me to a bad pilot bearing.

Soooo, three months later I finally got the motor out using my patented 2 milk crate method.

Sure enough the pilot bearing was all gummed up, and the end of the input shaft was a little discolored and showed some wear. I gave it some love and polish with a little 400 grit and it shined right up, but there are still some pits. Take a look:

Question for the rabble: Should I be concerned?

1. Run it. A slug of new grease and a bearing that rolls will be fine for bus that sees 1500 miles a year.
2. Polish it a little more! Nothing wrong with polishing your shaft.
3. Oh Jordy Verill, you lunkhead!

Throwout bearing is fine, input shaft thrust and play is fine, clutch is thick, flywheel and pressure plate surfaces are weirdly roached -- the flywheel even had a few surface rust spots, which is apparently what happens when you live in a temperate rain forest with 90% humidity in the winter and don't drive your bus for THREE WHOLE MONTHS.

Anyhow,
I'm leaning towards #1, but opinions gratefully received.
sunnydog
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'71 Westy w/ a 1776 singleport, 34P3 & 205Q. Points.

[Abscate]

A little bit more polish and run that sucker to the moon and back.

Most importantly you are in tune with your donkey so you will pick up any distress it is in.

My Cray supercomputer just returned that the 1/e lifecycle of your trans pinion is 77,314159 miles +- 0.11235813 miles, freshly handed to Me by my assistant Gigo of whom my wife does not approve
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.ssS!

[Tbob]

I would replace it. IIRC, it is not that hard, and the shaft should be available, probably easily where you live. It is pretty galled up, and seems to me to be not a place I would want to revisit soon if I didn't have to.
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1969 Deluxe, owned since 1973
1973 Westfalia, owned since 1983
1980 Westfalia, watercooled conversion
1985 Westfalia, stock!
1986 Westfakia, Audi I-4 conversion
A couple of trucks and a couple of Jeeps

[Tbob]

I would replace it. IIRC, it is not that hard, and the shaft should be available, probably easily where you live. It is pretty galled up, and seems to me to be not a place I would want to revisit soon if I didn't have to.
_________________
1969 Deluxe, owned since 1973
1973 Westfalia, owned since 1983
1980 Westfalia, watercooled conversion
1985 Westfalia, stock!
1986 Westfakia, Audi I-4 conversion
A couple of trucks and a couple of Jeeps