My 1978 Big Sage Green Giant Westy Build! Lots of Pictures!

[THall]

I'll be installing a Blazecut on my bus as well.

Looking at your install I would tend to think that you may want to re position the tubing back toward the shroud a bit, or directly over the CSV to be precise since that seems to be the weak link as far as engine fires with FI systems.

May be totally fine as is but I'm going to err on the side of caution and get it right over the CSV on mine.

Bus looks great!
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'78 Westy - 2.0 FI

[smitty1976bus]

Thanks everyone! Almost there!

THall Wrote:

[smitty1976bus]

Ok, I did some more tinkering around and found out that my engine timing was way wayyyy off. It was at 4 degrees BTC, so I took out the ol' timing gun and set it at the 7.5 degrees. Only problem was that the idle was up at around 1500 rpm.. not ideal. I really couldn't figure out why this was, so I ended up screwing in the idle mixture screw, only about 2 rotations, and threw on a new throttle return spring. Presto! 900 rpm idle. Very nice.

I took the bus out on another voyage, and the engine ran sooo much better, I actually had power, well sort of, haha. But with one solved problem comes another yet to be. I was getting a strange scrapping noise coming from somehwere under the bus, when driving above 25-30 mph, and louder when turning to the right. Very odd... Thought it might be the wheel bearings; but I took a video of all my driving around in the bus. It's a bit long, but you can see how smooth the engine is, and the strange metal on metal scraping noise:


Link


As mentioned, I did the front wheel bearings, and even though it wasn't the problem, it was still a positive to have them done. It wasn't too tough of a job either, all you really need to do is follow this simple diagram:

Nice and simple

The hardest part is removing and installing the bearing races. I read a few ways to do this, and since I don't have any real fancy equipment, I ended up banging the races out with a simple flat head screwdriver and hammer... surgical precision. But it worked:

Time to get all these goodies installed:

Believe it all cost me less than $30. The most expresnsive item of this job was to rent the race driver set; cost $60 from AutoZone, but once I return it, I got my money back; gotta love tool rentals:

With the races pressed in and the seal installed, it was time to put the hub back on the spindle. I made sure that the spindles were nice, clean, and free of defects. They felt smooth, but there was one area of discoloration, right where the outer bearing sits:

Since I had no idea if that discoloration is bad or not, I went ahead and installed the hub:

Well, as we know, the bearings weren't the culprit in the strange grinding noise case. With the front end of the bus all checked out, it must be coming from the rear end.. great... I inspected the rear axle and suspension and concluded that it must be the rear brake drums grinding against the backing plate. I tried to bend it back into shape, so it wouldn't grind any longer. It took probably an hour of bending, plying and yelling before I got the warped backing plate to sit flush and not grind on the drum. But it worked! No more scrapping when driving!!!

With the bus driving nicely, I drove it as a daily driver for about a week, while I figured out what else needs fixing. It does get rather poor MPG's though, but I'm guessing that's due to the TSII not working properly. So that needs fixing, along with my parking brake cable; the passenger rear brake drum needs a new wheel cylinder (doesn't work, only on 3 out of 4 brakes ); and, the direction signals stopped working (think it's the flasher, it's new, but just randomly stopped working). So work is never done...........

.......But..... While the bus is finally in nice working condition, my body isn't. I've blown one of my knees out, and will need to go in for surgery. So I'll be out, on crutches, for about 3-4 months. Yep, just in time for summer, just in time for the bus to be done. So I'm not sure what will happen. My health insurance is pretty bad, and I dont have disability insurance, so I don't think I'll be able to afford the surgery mixed with being out of work for a month or more.... so don't be surprised if you see this bus on the classified ads or eBay.. Even though this will be an absolute last case scenario, it is a possibility. sucks. But this is all happening at the worst possible time. Sorry for the personal tidbit in this post, but just had to share. At least I got to drive the bus for a short while, and hopefully will again in a few months...

-Smitty

[Abscate]

We can't have a successful economy if working people fall out of the system when they get hurt. Warren Buffet pointed this out very eloquently the other week.

Keep in touch and we will get you through it.
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.ssS!

[smitty1976bus]

Thanks man! Well, turns out I can't even get in for surgery for 45-60 days, so I just put the surgery off until August. Which gives me time to save money and enjoy some of summer.... I'll just have to be in pain and hope the pain killers work. I'm in my 20's, but my Doc says I have the knees of an 80 year old, haha.

Ok, back to VW's

I did some interior work and utilized the spare tire of the cabinets. I wanted to put a TV in the bus, so this would be a perfect place for it. I made a slide out unit for it, so it would look nice and clean when put away. Here's the process I took:

Then all finished:

The wood stain isn't a perfect match, but it's kinda close.. sort of. But the unit works great, I even have an HD antenna which picks up local TV stations.

-Smitty

[smitty1976bus]

Last week I drove the bus around town quite a bit, slowly driving it further out every time. I took it to a cruise night, about 10 miles away from home base, one night, and the bus drove beautifly. So then a few days later, last Saturday, I drove it to a car show, which was about 20 miles away. It drove there nicely, but when I went to leave, it wouldn't start easily. I had to work the throttle to start it, and it didn't want to stay idling once it was going.... Great. It seemed like the TSII sensor had finally failed.

The next day I checked the TSII resistance, and it registered at 8500+ Ohms. Clearly defective. So I purchased a new TSII and had it installed. And it was a pain in the butt to put in, I had to sacrafice a deep socket to install it; had to cut a section out in order for the wire to go through:

But it worked, and the new TSII was installed. I tested the ohms, and Bam!, 2500 ohms. Right on the money. But.............. I still have the same problem.... The engine starts up fine, idles at 1600 rpm'sh and slowly steps down on the rpm's until it's warmed up, and settles in at around 900. But then it starts to jump all over the place, and starts to stumble and sometimes even stalls out. And after it's warmed up, and you let it sit for a bit, it's hard to start up. So not sure what the problem is. Hers is what i do know:

-The TSII registers the correct ohms, according to the chart in one of my previous posts.
-The ohm resistance at the TSII is the same when measured from terminal 13 on the ECM connector.
-If the lead to the TSII is disconnected, then put to a ground source, to trick the ECM into thinking the engine is fully warmed up, the problem still continues.
-Timing is set to 7.5 degrees (I did notice the timing light would miss a blink when the engine stumbled.... hmmm...)

So something has obviously failed, and I'm not sure where to begin. The bus wont' idle, but it still drives fine. So what could that mean? Is it a:
-Vacuum Leak?
-Ignition Issue?
-Electrical Short?

There are a lot of threads like this on here, but seems they all come back to the TSII.... is there a TSI? Whats that sensor by the distributor??? So much to check.. I'm tired, better rest up, lots to do tomorrow.

-Smitty

[Abscate]

Ill go with vacuum Leak, I'm in your area again next week, will pm.
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.ssS!

[smitty1976bus]

Right on!

It does seem like a vacuum leak tho, so I checked all the lines, and did a smoke test (me with a cigar) and found out my throttle body was letting out some smoke. So I replaced that gasket with a new one..... Same problem

I noticed that when timing the ignition, the timing gun would sputter and miss some flashes. So I checked all the electrical connections, all seemed to be in good order. Checked the coil by replacing it with my back up; still no change. Then I check the points and found a problem, the gap was out of tolorance. So I fixed that, but not sure how that could have changed.... But once that was fixed the engine ran a ton a better! Well.....until warm

I warmed it up, set the timing, then let it sit for about 30 minutes. I tried to start it up, and it just did not want to...... So I checked out everything again, and started with the TSII, and I have a BIG PROBLEM

OK, I wasn't completly honest when I said I installed the new TSII without any problems, there was a problem. The treads in the head are stripped... I think. I cannot get the TSII to tighten. So, this is causing air to get into the threads and causing the TSII to give a cold reading... The reason my ohm readings were inline with everything was because I took them when the engine wasn't running. When the engine running, the ohms are wayyyy off... And with the ignition in good working order, and when the ECM to TSII wire is grounded, the engine runs great. I AM BONED!!!

Sooooo. Do I have any options? How do I fix this? Is there a manual ohm meter which I can keep in the cabin and I can adjust it as the engine warms up, kind of like a manual choke? Or can I use that liquid gasket stiff to seal up the TSII area, to not let air in?

Sorry, I'm kind of freaking out, I don't see any threads with this problem. And the only real fix I see is ripping the intake off, the tin off, and re-tapping the head, machining an adapter, and putting the TSII in that way.....

[Spike0180]

[smitty1976bus]

Spike0180 wrote:

[smitty1976bus]

Not going to lie, I tried some shortcuts to hack a repair on the TSII threads, but nothing worked The threads in the head are totality trashed. I did come across an amazing thread posted by Tcash 3 years ago, about relocating the TSII location:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7279082

This is my plan now. It is the most efficient way to do this, I'm going to locate the TSII next to cylinder #4 intake. I might even be able to keep the tin on I just purchased a 10mm x 1.0mm tap off Amazon, and will have by the weekend. So hopefully come next week I'll this project finished, and be driving the bus around... hopefully

I cannot thank this website enough, it has saved this build so many times.

[Spike0180]

[smitty1976bus]

The project to relocate the TSII on my bus began last night with pulling the intake and fuel lines off of the left side of the engine:

And will drill and tap a hole where the origninal tin hold down screw goes:

With free access to the new TSII location, I began the scary part... This terrified me, I've probably only tapped 2 holes in my life (urrrr... get your mind out fo the gutter, haha) and I've never drilled into heads, or any part of an engine. Here's the hardware:

I managed to do it successfully (maybe) and began re-assembly. I painted the fuel lines with POR15, since they were off, and since when i first painted the fuel lines, I had no idea what POR15 was.

The biggest pain in the butt on this project was putting those stupid rubber boots back onto the intake plenum:

Everything was all put back and the TSII was installed and tighted up... Thank God I tapped it correctly:

Awesome, it assembled correctly..... but it doesn't operate correctly... The TSII is doing the same thing it did in the old location. It gives a good reading when the engine is off, but when the engine is running, it gives a way high reading.... Am I missing something?? How many Ohms does everyone else TSII register when the engine is at 180-200 degrees??? Where does the TSII measure the heat? ON the sides or the bottom?? This is driving me crazy......

[smitty1976bus]

Ok... ok..... ok... kk.. kk....k...k... I think I figured it out. I think. I couldn't figure out why the TSII kept giving good readings with the engine off, but a way off reading with the engine running; it would read that the engine was much colder.... I ended up filling in the bottom of the newly tapped hole with JB weld, so now no air would cool the TSII. But I still kept getting a false reading..... I was pulling my hair out at this point. How could air be cooling this metal sensor??? It didn't make sense; even if air was blowing on it, it couldn't cool it that significantly.... but the metal part of the sensor is just a housing for the actual sensor inside..hmm.. so there must be air getting inside the metal housing somehow... I didn't see any cracks in the metal, so air must be seeping in through where the wire mates with the threaded metal housing. It didn't seem loose or anything, but I was out of ideas, so I took some super glue and laid a thick stream around the perimeter of the area between the wiring and housing. I let it dry over night and tested it out. Success!! Such a relief!

After it was over I though about what I just went through... the entire time I was getting bad readings, only with the engine running; If the culprit was the wire to metal seal, the original TSII location could have been fine, and the newly tapped hole was not needed...... It's for the best though, the first area was toasted in all reality. Id still like to know if the TSII was faulty from factory, or if I weakened it somehow... Doesn't matter, it's all in the past.


On to the next broken part, haha. This week it's the fuel sending unit. I noticed my fuel gauge didn't work when I had my tank 1/4 the way full. So I took my old sending unit out, tested it, and it only gave a reading when in the 'full' position, or 'just about full' position. So this caused the fuel gauge to fall very quickly (and I thought I was just getting really bad gas mileage, haha).

I ended up buying a new sending unit from BusDepot and installed it. But now my fuel gauge won't go past 1/4 full, even though my tank is 8/10 full.... I took the sending unit out and measured the ohms. Looked good: full gave me 13 ohms and empty 80 ohms. I put the sending unit back in, and measured the ohms, it registered 33sh ohms. Seems right.

Does anyone know if there is way to adjust the fuel gauge, the one in the dash cluster? Or any threads which touch on this?

-Smitty

[Tcash]

[Abscate]

What a great graphic, tcash.

The presenter in me salutes you.
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.ssS!

[smitty1976bus]

That picture is perfect Tcash! Thank you, I was looking all over for something like that.

Tcash Wrote:

[Tcash]

This is one for Telford

My best guess is by grounding the Voltage Stabilizer (vibrator) it is lowering the voltage. Hence the 1/4 tank. Maybe clean the grounds to the cluster?
Note: the Stabilizer is grounded by the cover.

Here is some good info.
Vibrator got ya down?
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0
Vibrator Test; this talks about voltages and adjusting the gauge.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5040384#5040384
Adjustable voltage regulator to replace Fuel gauge vibrator
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7238251#7238251

[smitty1976bus]

Awesome threads Tcash! Thank you.

I may have spoke too soon, my fuel gauge started to peg again, it goes all the way past 1/1 and all the way to the right. So there is some unintentional ground interrupting the circuit somewhere. I'll be doing some reading and testing; hopefully I figure it out!

-Smitty

[Tcash]