Chassis Rebuild

[Tcash]

To add to Saturdays events.

After Clatters wife drug him out of the shop by his ear. I told him it was time to go, he wouldn't listen!

Me and Damon went after the washers on the spare parts housings that where missing on his Bus.
1. We Wire wheeled all the rust we could from the threads and mating surface of the Axle hub nut.
2. Heated the nut with Map gas. And gave it the good old plumbers trick of hitting it with two hammers to break the rust ring.

3. Installed the Buddy Bar. Love you Buddy

4. Heated the Hub nut back up and melted candle wax into the threads and the mating surface.
5. While Damon pressed his foot up against the 46mm slug wrench (wacker tool) to locate it and keep it from slipping off, (with no steel toed boots I might add) trusting guy. I manned the 1/2 breaker bar and sledge hammer. It took a good 5-6 tries. But when the nut did break free it was easily removed. A few turns with a socket and it came right of with my fingers.
Sorry only the one pic. Me and Damon where in the zone!
Note: on ships in salt water, they melt wax on the fasteners, after they are installed to seal the threads and keep the salt air from rusting the fasteners

Removing rusted bolts with Candle wax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qqMXXGgFQg&t=414s


Damon wrote down all the necessary torque specifications for ease of assembly. He noted, Bentley did not put them all in one place. Some where found in the Installation instructions and Most where found in the Torque specification chart, that can be found generally at the end of the chapter.

I dove into the Repair and Parts manuals and laid out all the parts into sub-assemblies.
I find this, best practice for two reasons it saves you time on assembly and no parts are omitted.
It saves you from having to get out from under the vehicle constantly to find parts, tools and torque settings .
No parts are left out of the assembly, requiring disassembly to install them. Not that, I have ever done that!
Online Bay Window Parts Manuals

Between all this activity, Damon got under the Bus.
Installed the Rear brake lines.
Installed the missing washers on the four bolts, Wheel bearing housings to Spring plate and torqued to specification.
Jacked up Spring plates to Mid travel and torqued the Radius arm bushing bolts to 58 Ft/lbs. This bushing is designed to flex not move in its carrier. I do not know why VW did not make mention of this. Porsche instructs to lower the vehicle on its wheels and then torque the radius arm bolts.

GD
Tcash

[Tcash]

[Clatter]

Like I was saying before.. Stuff was ready to go together.

About 9AM on Sunday, 7/1,
I drug myself out there and started staring and scratching..


Started in on the rear of the bus by stabbing the CVs, and moved on to the rear sway.
Damon showed up and we continued to rear brakes.

Getting the rear shoes on is really hard if you don't use your brain and look at the Bentley.
Damon did both, and it's effortless, me, not so much..


After the rear brakes were on, Damon had to bail and work.
I was tightening up the adjuster stars, and noticed this:

There's this pin on the back of the backing plate that is -supposed- to locate into the bearing housing.
For some dumb reason or another, ours didn't want to seat home.

All the way back apart..

To sand down the little pin a bit smaller, and polish the paint out of it's hole..

Shocks go on, shoes adjusted, and there you go..

Was going to stab the rear wheels, just for good measure,
But,
Because the shocks don't limit down-travel anymore,
The tires wouldn't go on! Not enough room to the ground!

Not a big deal, I'll leave them off for a while anyways to make bleeding the brakes easier.
With the ride height being lifted back there a bit, it will be especially important to have full shock extension.


Moving up front..
We had previously forgotten to put the little brake-hose retainer brackets under the upper ball-joint nuts,
As well as the washers underneath the lower ball-joint nuts,
So,
There was some re-work involved there.


Aftermarket oversized front sway was a huge PITA.
It took a variety of different vise-grips, a BFH, many many swear words, and a disregard for personal safety to get it on.

In the end, I guess i won;
Some scars, but in.

Master and hoses/lines went in spectacularly easily afterward.
Factory stuff just falls together compared to aftermarket.

So,
We are waiting on the front Girling caliper rebuild parts from Germany,
And the front shocks to emerge from BackOrderLand.
Have to install the clutch and brake pedal assemblies, and hook up the e-brake.

We'll run the gauge wire harness, and touch up the undercoating and bleed the brakes,
And then,
Maybe,
Done?


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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Clatter]

About adjusting front wheel bearings...

The Bentley has some cocakamaime thing about .001" slack or some such,
And I was dumb enough to do that in a past life.

The bearings would have just a little clunkclunk, just barely feel-able and just enough to show .001" on a dial indicator..

Over very little time, that would 'pound out', and the .001 would become .003 then .005..


I would tighten and measure and stress and buy new bearings and lament,
before an old-timer set me straight.

He said "smash them down tight, then back off one tooth".
Now, we don't have castle nuts on the fornt, so we don't have 'teeth' like he was talking about,
but,
The drill is the same.

I spin the hub, and feel how it feels when it's loose and free,
Then tighten down the nut hard. Pretty hard, not super apeshit smashed,
But hard enough to make the turning resistance of the hub go up a lot,
And the nut tight.
then, back off 1/6 of a turn,
make sure the hub spins like it did when loose,
And munch down the locknut.

Say whatever you want,
but,
The bearings don't come loose anymore.
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[cmonSTART]

Looks like great work so far - already more solid than most of the stuff on the road!
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'78 Bus 2.0FI
de K1IGS

[Clatter]

Backing up to the week of July 4th..

Had some free time here and there, like you will over the holiday,
And with the Girling caliper kits still not on-prem,
I gave a shot at these old rotten ATE calipers from the parts bus.

These had several things wrong with them.
They had been left in the damp woods for a very long time,
And a dumbass had been in there.
He/She had lost the little retainer plates with the tabs that go under the pads,
And tightened down the bleeder screws WAY too much.

Because they were so welded together by rust,
My usual dis-assembly method using compressed air didn't work,
Requiring that I use the grease-gun method.

It worked, and well, but what a waste of grease!

The other side, with the hose fitting, drills through,
So you can use a punch in a press to push the other side out.

Removal of one of the two broken-off bleeders was attempted.

FAIL!

The threads of the old adjuster had just fused themselves into the caliper body.
It was all such a rusted-solid mess that the threads never showed up as the hole got drilled to max size.
Plus,
I drilled it a bit too deep, uncovering the second passage.
So tossing these. At least I tried.


Luckily,
Rebuild kits showed up from Germany.

Looks like nice complete kits.

The first annoyance is the dust boots.
They aren't a full accordion-like bellows as the factory,
Just a sort of 'ring'.
If our OG dust boots were weren't totally wasted,
It mighta been good to re-use the old.

The Girlings were in good enough shape to used compressed air to get them apart.

My sandblasting setup sucks.
Eventually, it got the caliper halves clean enough for mask/paint.

We started in by painting the inner areas of the caliper,
As well as where the half bolt heads will cover.

Here's something that might just really suck;
See the rust pits?

We shined these up with some 600 and stabbed them in.
Gotta try at this point, right?

The halves were assembled and torqued, then doused with paint.
This was some rattle-can 'caliper paint' FWIW..

This took all day.

Notice that I didn't use the anti-chatter clip from the rebuild kit.
It was a total unusable POS that I smashed flat with a hammer in a fit of rage.

We didn't get to the bleeding yet,
Hoping that they don't have weep-age from the rust pits,
And that the dust boots don't lift from their seats when the pads start extending.

Take home message:
JUST BUY NEW CALIPERS!
They sell them new FFS!

Lesson learned.
Thus finishes my last-ever rebuild of bus brake calipers
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[wcfvw69]

I love this thread. Nice job trying to get more life out of those parts. Does the rust pitted area ride over the sealing surface? I can't tell by your pictures?

If so, we all know what the outcome will be.
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Contact me at [email protected]
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Decades of VW and VW parts restoration experience.
The Samba member since 2004.

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[Tcash]

Looking good.
Tcash

[Hoody]

Great write up Clatter! You did the best you could on a very limited budget saving Damon as much money as you could. However it probably elevated your blood pressure at times. I hope he appreciates all that you did for him. He should invest some of the cash you saved him in a set of DD cht,OP, and OT guages. He’s lucky to have a friend like you!

[TomWesty]

[Clatter]

Hey, thanks for the props, guys. Feels good.
Glad you like our little adventure here.

It seemed really timely for to put this thread together here,
As there are so many of these buses out there that need this exact treatment.

I'll follow up with an accounting of time and parts costs,
As well as follow-up as to how the thing is doing.
Might also rant a bit too.. No, really!


Anyways, here was our final assembly day!

I didn't really get a lot of pics, and have much to write up.
Mostly because I'm kind of over it by now..

We had a laundry list of small things like:
Lock-tite the front swaybar mount bolts.
Stab shift linkage, clutch linkage, e-brake cables.
Bleed brakes. re-do the coupler we put together wrong, etc.
Bunch of little meticulous this's and that's to finish.

Like getting out the hammer/dolly set and bodyworking the splash pan (bash pan )..

It was one of those things that woulda been great to get coated or painted,
But,
At this point, the thing really needs to go back together and go home.
Lots of things were like that today. It was time to be done.

After cruising around a bit underneath, checking to make sure nothing got missed,
All of the greasy mess from dirty hands got wiped off with some Simple Green, just to give things a head start for dirt not sticking to everything under there.
Had to get just a few more pics.

Wheels on!

Backing out of my backyard work area is kind of tricky.
Bus looks pretty rugged from this angle, no?

Two 'clicks' up (up two coarse splines, down two fine) looks just about perfect.
Was worried it was going to be too much..

Loaded up the kids and took it to the requisite victory dinner at Gilda's on the Santa Cruz wharf.

So far it looks like things are right.
Damon said one rear brake got hot because I adjusted it too tight.
(thought it would wear in more than it did.. )
Shift linkage and clutch adjustments are settling in.

No brake fluid leakage anywhere so far.. Remember those pitted front pistons?

Looks like the bus is pretty happy so far.
We'll see if Damon gets it into the alignment shop for a check before it eats those front tires..

We were (I was) going to run a gauge harness while we were under there, But Damon didn't like my split loom idea and wants to try something with hard conduit.

Anyways, there you go..
Between me and Tim and Damon about 15 full days in total.

That old song by the New Riders was right after all..
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[Spike0180]

That's one good looking bus, and now very mechanically sound. I hope you plan to drive and enjoy it for years to come.
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Brutis Patches Izabich: 1970 VW Transporter - 1776cc DP
Current State: Projects never truly end...
Location: Grosse Pointe, Michigan
Other cars: 2003 F150, 2003 Jetta GLI vr6-6sp

Sambastic: adj; the quality of being nit picky, elitist, expecting everyone to do things the way they believe is best with no regard to situation, "sambastic"

[MorkC68]

Awesome build thread, some really informative information too.

Thanks for sharing!
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Major; 1977 Westfalia Campmobile
- Subaru EJ20
- Koni Classic adjustable dampers & Empi Heavy Duty Anti Roll Bar
- 180W Solar System

My blog: https://twolatebays.wordpress.com/

[Clatter]

Just saw the Blue Submarine going down the road today.

Our Boy Damon here has still been using this as a daily work hack for his painting business.

Rock On Brother!
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[twinfin]

Yep Nomads Blue Sub Lives!

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"It's knowledge to learn from your mistakes. But it's wisdom to learn from others!"
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“He that goeth to bedde wyth Dogges, aryseth with fleas.”

"The Blue Submarine"
1977 Campmobile, Type 4 2.0 liter Federal, Non-Catalyst, Fuel Injected with Valvetrain from the type4store, 411 Heat Exchanger Preheaters, S&S Header, Supertrapp Silencer. ...and a lot of help from Clatter and TCash and friends!