1982 T3 AHU

[erste]

Hello,
This will be a long first post.

It's the story of how I came to buy my first vanagon.

I test drove one about three years ago and even though it wasn't very remarkable and needed a lot of attention, it was so much fun to drive. At the time I was looking for a diesel and there was a clean one for sale in good mechanical shape for $4000 but I passed. Then I just kind of settled into my old habits and kept playing with mk2s.

At the beginning of this year my girlfriend was looking for a van, so I suggested she look at vanagons. She ended up buying a '85 and I got the itch again, real hard this time.

Since I live in the city without a garage, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have two cars. Street cleaning is a mess and I ride my bike to work most of the time anyway. I can't imagine selling my '85 golf vr6 that I've had for the last 10+ years, so I hatched a plan.

The plan was to drive the golf to my brother’s property, from San Francisco to Fort Worth on Friday / Saturday and make it there by 7:30 AM at the latest on Sunday to fly to Virginia with my brother, buy the van, then drive it home Sunday / Monday / Tuesday and get him back in time for his wedding on Friday / Saturday.

My girlfriend would fly out for the wedding and we'd drive back to California on Sunday / Monday / Tuesday. (She's amazing)

What could go wrong?

This is the last photo of my golf in San Francisco:
There is a long thread on vwvortex if anyone is interested in reading more about this car ( http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5075562-bluebonnet-1985-golf-vr6 )

It took about 27-28 hours, which is about average if you're driving by yourself. I slept for 3 hours - total drive time was 24:48, 1755 miles, 24 mpg, 71 mph average speed. No issues on the drive, that car just cruises effortlessly on the freeway.

Oh, I saw this cool high top near in Amarillo:

Got a few hours of sleep before the flight to Virginia with my brother.

Aaaaaannnnnddddd Mark picked us up at Dulles in the Vanagon!

That was a good moment.

Mark Talbot is a great mechanic and did all of the hard work getting this van back on the road and eventually TDI swapped. Look him up if you need any work done in the Berryville Virginia area. Talking to him on the phone about the vanagon is what convinced me that this plan wasn't actually a terrible idea. He knows his shit and does solid work.

He put the van up on his lift and walked me through everything. Coming from a hack mk2 vr6, I know how swaps can be. What car is this from? What car is that from? etc etc. Having him take the time to answer so many questions really helped me understand how the van was built and where to look if something goes wrong.

Donor car was a '98 Jetta TDI that was side swapped. About 135k on the engine in the van when I bought it.

We said goodbye to Mark and started driving south west.

Now at this point, I'm elated, despite the fact that it's dripping a bit of oil (Mark thinks it might be the crank seal), and despite the fact that the brake pedal is slow to return and the parking brake linkage is all rusty... So we're taking it easy and keeping an eye on the oil level.

We have tools, AAA, a code reader, the internet, and Mark on speed dial as our phone-a-friend should anything go wrong.

I drove a bit and then my brother drove.

Around 4am I was pissed off because he cruised right on past the rest stop for some reason, so we parked in an empty lot somewhere near the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. The next morning we woke up and went to the world's largest knife store, which was actually really cool. He bought a knife and a sweet license plate for the road trip.

Ate breakfast, then drove some more.

No issues with the van aside from it spotting oil every stop. We're both feeling pretty good about the progress and decide to take it easy and find a nice spot to camp for the night.

We drove for a long time down some rural roads, came to the site after dark, and woke up to the Tennessee river. Wish we had more time there...

Kept driving on toward Memphis

Somewhere in Arkansas the van lost a bit of power and wouldn't get up over 60mph. It ran fine otherwise. So we pulled over, scratched our heads, cleared the fault codes, searched the internet, got a bit stressed out because the codes could be "faulty wastegate" or "faulty turbocharger" etc etc

Got on down the road, same issue, pulled off at the next exit. Called Mark. No answer. FINALLY saw a boost pipe had worked its way out of the hose. Mark called back and confirmed that it had happened before and offered some solutions for the future. In the meantime we put it back together and kept going.

We made it home not too late so we stopped and ate some food. We both wanted to keep going, but my brother was getting married and all of that.

I slept in the van and woke up the next morning with big plans.

1300+ miles down. More to come.

[Zeitgeist 13]

Nice story. I like the van and the engine swap. It looks like he used really high quality and quite expensive FAST engine cradles, and an adapter to use the gauge cluster from a Mk4 vehicle. What size tires are you running? That ride height looks great.
_________________
Casey--

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

[Gnarlodious]

Nice colors! Except for the black spots on the rear.
_________________
Vanagon ’83 diesel AAZ w/Giles injection, 5spd 4.57R&P+TBD and a '78 diesel Rabbit

[Zeitgeist 13]

That rear hatch looks like mine did when the rear main seal was leaking
_________________
Casey--

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

[?Waldo?]

You should bead all boost tube connections.

[Gizmoman]

Nice post and good luck with the diesel.
The backside of my white van has a similar appearance. Hard to tell of its the 50 degree valve cover or some seeping ports somewhere.

Anyway, still a good read
_________________
82 Vanagon Westy - AAZ 1.9 TD, HE200 Holset, WAIC, 27.75 dia tires, Electric power steering, 5-speed AAP w/.078 5th
Oversize spare carrier - stock location (no longer for sale).

[erste]

[erste]

[?Waldo?]

...

[?Waldo?]

I've tried welding a few beads and it never seems to work out all that well for me. Instead, I made these:

They work well for beading small coolant connections or large boost tubes.

[erste]

Here's the story of this vanagon as it was told to me, and a picture after they picked it up:

It's a 1982 1.6 diesel 7-seater with approximately 110,000 miles before it came off the road in 1988. It's been sitting under a pine tree ever since. Pine trees emit terpenes, which is why you can park a car or vanagon under a pine tree and it won't rust (source needed). Terpenes are also what make the Blue Ridge Mountains appear blue (confirmed)

A family or two of mice occupied the van while it was sitting under that pine tree. (This is nearly confirmed by the snakeskin that I found yesterday behind the rear hatch panel)

Mark called the previous owner of the van to ask why it had come off the road in the first place, but the PO couldn't remember.

One day on the way to a mountain bike race it overheated or something and left them stranded. The head was warped, which is probably why it came off the road in the first place.

The newest owner of the van said "fuck all that" (I'm paraphrasing) and "I'm not driving this piece of shit until it has a new engine."

So began the tale of the TDI Vanagon that Mark's 9 or 11 year old daughter affectionately named "The Peanut".

Mark completed the TDI swap with a 260k+ mile engine from his daily driver, but that engine eventually wore out so he swapped a lower mileage engine from the wrecked donor in the first post.

The body is in good shape. There's some rust on the "drip rails?" where a rack was mounted. The hatch has been repainted at some point, but otherwise the body is all original. It was undercoated at the dealership, and that's peeling away. I'm honestly blown away at how solid the body is, especially if it was parked in a grass field in Virginia. The rusted areas aren't really a huge issue. The bottom corner of the slider door is probably the worst, and there's some rust under the rear bumper. Yesterday I found some rot behind the hatch seal, but it's all manageable.

Mechanically it's great. Very thorough build. Lots of stuff has been done that I'd have a hard time doing myself.

The interior is a bit incomplete, but it will be easy to fix. It's got some good pieces already like a westy front table, swivel passenger seat, carat z bench and front seats with adjustable arm rests (woo wooo)

Here's a quick rundown of the swap:
- 1.9L AHU TDI 135k miles
- Foreign Auto Supply Hydraulic engine cradles
- RocketChip Stage II chip
- EGR Delete
- New manifold, timing belt, water pump, Injection pump head re-seal
- Rebuilt DK transmission 4.57 R&P with Weddle .76 4th Gear
- '98 Jetta TDI 228mm flywheel and pressure plate
- '82 Diesel 200mm Clutch Disc
- DBW Accelerator pedal 1997 Jetta TDI
- New brakes, master and slave cylinders, wheel bearings, ball joints, radiator, ss coolant pipes, tie rod ends, end links, cv joints, etc
- New front blower and rear heater with new heater core and valve
- Dennis Haynes 2" rear hitch
- gowesty Aux. battery kit (which is awesome)
- 215/75/15 Tires with full size spare
- Thule Roof Rack

[erste]

Some pics of the engine. I thought about taking it to a shop to look into the oil leak, but since I only had 2 days before the wedding, I decided to leave it alone and focus on other stuff while I had space to work.

I'd like to relocate the air filter, or at least get it off the MAF. I don't know about the TDI, but on the 8v and VR6 you really want to give the air a chance to smooth out before hitting that sensor. Since it's intercooled, I'm not sure how much power is lost by sucking up a bunch of hot engine air, but getting cool air to the filter will happen somehow eventually.

When I removed the front bumper I found a bunch of dead bugs and nests and webs. Cleaned it up and painted it black.

Big dog sniffing things out before I gut the interior behind the front seats.

Being a diesel, I knew noise was going to be an issue so I bought a bunch of dynamat and put it on every panel. This would have been a lot easier if they hadn't glued closed cell foam to the panels. I removed the house insulation for fear of it trapping moisture and will look for an alternative later.

There was some surface rust in the bottom of the middle panel across from the sliding door, so I sanded it away and sprayed some rust inhibitor. There were also a few pinholes at the seams in the body that I filled with jbweld.

I bought a few rolls of Reflectix and used hvac tape to 'float' them in the panels. It will be easy to go back in there and add something like 3M Thinsulate insulation, and I still have some mass loaded vinyl (for sound dampening) that I plan to use in the panels too.

I thought the rear bumper install was going to be easy...
The van didn't have a rear bumper. Not that it really needs one with the hitch setup, and it looks cool without it, but I ordered a black double thick bumper from cip1 or wherever anyway. Really quick shipping from canada to texas, it came in a box without any other packaging so it was a little bit scuffed up from the cardboard, which is annoying, but not a huge issue.

This took way longer than expected. My brother didn't have an angle grinder, and rather than rent one, I just paid twice as much for a cheap dewalt and a cutoff wheel. Even after the bumper slits were cut to fit over the Dennis Haynes hitch, all of the mounting holes had to be drilled out.

That's basically all I was able to do between seeing friends and family in the two days I was there. I did buy a big black rubber mat from home depot to lay down in the middle section and will post pictures of that later.

Next step in the plan is to pick my girlfriend up from the airport and drive down to Clifton, Texas for the rehearsal and wedding stuff.

[?Waldo?]

That's a terrible location for your air cleaner. Really, really bad. You're just sucking in hot engine air.

[erste]

[?Waldo?]

I welded the bead onto my beading tool and used a grinder to finish shaping it and to cut the groove on the other side. I also made clearance for the one jaw to fit into small tubing. I've been using it for ~decade for creating beads on many pieces of tubing. The vice grip action lets you progressively increase the bead depth.

If you make such a tool I would recommend using large handle vice grips for more leverage. It can be tedious if you have a lot of connections to bead, but easy to do while watching a movie or the like.

[Zeitgeist 13]

Even if you route that air cleaner to the other side of the battery would be better than nestled next to a big ol heat generator.
_________________
Casey--

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

[bamagon]

Great story! What's the name of that campground on the Tennessee river?
_________________
'91 Vanagon Carat
'79 Scirocco

[erste]

[erste]

On Friday around 12:45 my girlfriend flew into DFW. I was on time to pick her up, but went to the wrong airport. In the process I had to take the roof rack off the van so I could drive into a parking garage.

It's a quick trip down the freeway to Love field in Dallas and from there we headed south to Clifton, which is just over 100 miles away.

The van made it without issue and we parked next to the '50 chevrolet that will be in the wedding. It's been in the family since new and only has 24,000 miles on it.... 3 on the tree and it just soaked up the country backroads down there.

There was a wedding on Saturday and we all had a great time. Sunday there was a brunch and the only restaurant in town was running low on food and our $8 omelette was actually half a portion because they were almost out of eggs....

Our plan was to take the southern route on the way back because my girlfriend found a yard in Phoenix with a bunch of vanagons.

The southern route is beautiful, but there are a lot of kind of fucked up checkpoints with hundreds of cameras since it's so close to the border. Anyway, before getting to those two spots, we had to get to El Paso, which turned out to be a full days drive.

I made the mistake of following google maps (which changed the route without me noticing) and we drove down 84W for a while. It was nice seeing the windmills and cotton fields though and we would have missed this had we not taken that wrong turn.

An hour outside of El Paso is where the drive went from being fun to mildly stressful. The roads out there are 75-80, so I was running about 70 to keep from getting run over by the big trucks. We cruised like that for most of the day.

When we stopped for fuel, I looked under the van to check the oil leak, and was shocked to see ANOTHER oil leak, this one coming from the bell housing. Shit. The oil wasn't jet black, it was brownish and thick, so I knew it was from the trans. It made a decent sized puddle in a short time, and I was worried. We weren't even close to california yet....

***Somewhere on this forum I came across some bits of wisdom. The vanagon is like a tortoise. It is slow, but it carries its house on its back. And when your vanagon breaks down, at least you just set up camp***

It was 8:41pm and there was an Autozone 1 minute away. They close at 9pm. Perfect. They were incredibly helpful, aside from the computer recommending the wrong fluid for the trans, and they had 1 17mm hex tool to remove the fill plug left on the shelf.

Even more perfect, there was a walmart halfway to the gas station. We parked near two RVs and drank beer while looking out the sliding door across a big muddy field but with a wonderful clear sky and lots of stars. Aside from the idiots setting off car alarms during the night, and the big pickup trucks who floor it through the parking lot every chance they get - it was really a pretty good place to sleep.

Waking up to this wasn't too bad either:

Drove 500 feet to the auto parts store, exchange the ATF for gear oil and topped off the transmission in their parking lot. It took only 1/2 quart before it spilled out the fill hole.

And we were back on our way to El Paso / California.
Taking it easy at 60 mph.

Then we drove all day and into the night and early early morning. We stopped here to buy some blankets and my girl got some moccasins.

All the way across New Mexico and into Arizona.

We stopped in at a taqueria in Tucson and the tension was high. It's a loooong long drive across those states at 60 mph. This vanagon will go 360 miles easily on a tank, so it's a ways between fuel stops. There was some rain, but we missed most of it coming into Phoenix. At Phoenix we switched driving and my girlfriend went in the back to lay down. I got us about 2 hours outside of LA. Unfortunately the rest stop I'd planned to stay at was closed so we parked half an hour away in a big truck stop parking lot. Again, the idiots and their car alarms in the middle of the night... This stop was really loud with the freeway so close and the ground rumbled, but it wasn't too bad.

My girlfriend woke up in a good mood, and we're only about 8 hours from home. At 60mph though, it's more like 10...

We took some nice roads to bypass Los Angeles. Before leaving in the morning I checked the transmission and it was absolutely full, despite spotting a bit every time we stopped. I put in some blue devil stop leak on our way to LA. Here's a view of Palmdale, CA. Pretty nice view.

The drive on Tuesday wasn't too bad, because it's mostly familiar. I've driven to LA and back a few times, but it's really boring on I5. When I'm tired, she takes over, and when she's tired, I take over. Our best tank was on the last stretch, at 32 mpg. Still leaking oil and trans fluid... A trail all the way to back to Virginia.

I'm looking forward to building out some simple cabinets to help keep thing organized while still being able to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood and closing the hatch. It will look nothing like this mess:

It was a nice drive home into the bay area.

Dropped her off at home and she made it to her 7:30 pm class, which was our flexible deadline. I woke up wanting to drive the vanagon to work and it matches the paint on this building in my neighborhood quite well.

Right back where we started.

3400 miles, without any major issues. Some tense moments, but nothing catastrophic. :beer: Still more to come.

[erste]

There are maybe two filling stations with diesel on my way to work. This is a new problem, and one evening I got stressed out trying to fill up, then just went home. There's a station that pumps bio diesel, 90 or 100, but it's a bit over priced.

Two weeks ago I drove down to Van Cafe in Santa Cruz with my girlfriend to pick up some parts. Peter was kind enough to meet us Saturday at 9am.

We got there a bit early and took some pictures in the back lot. I like red vanagons. This is probably the first one I've seen.

There was a syncro that looked like a tree fell on it.

Peter showed up in a yellow syncro panel van which was obviously bad ass.

The westy in the parking lot had some nice upholstery on the back bench.

and this ghia was looking cool

I spent too much money on a bunch of rubber and glass, then we went to eat lunch nearby.

We took a walk to a lighthouse and on the way were a few vanagons. First was this sunroof van (siliconed closed).

Then this high top which is the same color as my girlfriend's van.

I SAW TETRAPODS! (Big concrete sea wall jack like things) For the first time. This was a cool surprise. Also a few big sea lions and a harbor seal and of course, brown pelicans, also a light house and some boats.

Then I started installing those parts. First was the van cafe spare tire holder (no pics). The tire just barely fits between the rails. Even then I had to air it down a lot and get a longer bolt for the front latch.

I got the steering linkage rub thing, but there were no instructions (I hate this) and I don't think the spare will fit if it's installed, so fuck it. The tire doesn't hit the shaft anyway and it's not going anywhere being so tight.

Hatch seal is easy, so that was next. Found some rot. This is the worst of it.

Then I moved onto the rear hatch. Popping the panel off was a bitch. I don't think it's ever been removed before. There was a snake skin inside... My girlfriend (the biologist) kept it.

The hatch lock damage is a long story, but basically I backed up into my brother's garage (he'll never know) with the hatch up and bent just the lock cylinder. I banged it out and repainted it. Need a new seal, otherwise not a huge deal because the hatch has been repainted.

I got new bumper caps from van cafe and installed them.

Front seats are grey. Carat door panels are grey, z bed is grey, slider is grey, sewfine carpet kit is grey. I hate grey interiors in volkswagens. The swap to brown / tan begins.

Sliding driver's side rear window from van cafe dropped off for tint.

Window install with the help of my friend.

It only took 3 hours...

Brown interior parts waiting to be installed. Arm rests don't fit with the carat seats though...

Full seals for the passenger side. Let's just say the driver's side will go a lot more quickly. I didn't want to cut the chrome trim so I replaced the vent window seals too. There was some rot.

In between the door seals and dynamat, I worked around the van on the worst rust spots with clear POR15.

Getting rid of the grey interior. Just the seats left.

FS: Pioneer radio for bluetooth
Grey Carat front panels with polk speakers
Grey carat sliding door panel
Grey z-bed
Sewfine Grey front carpet set w/ floor mats

WTB: brown speaker covers
light brown carpet