Oh no! Another Vanagon TDI swap

[dieseltdi]

Got busy today and did several exterior things: installed new Land Rover mirrors, both front grills and the front mud flaps. The one on the driver's side was on the van but the bottom was ripped off so I bought one of Go Westy's repair kits. May do the passenger side also just so that they will match. I also test fit the rear mud flaps that I bought here on the samba. I was amazed to find that the mounting holes for the braces are already drilled in the van. All I have to do is figure out where to drill the holes for the locating pins. I won't be installing them for a while because I need to do some body work on the passenger side rear where the mud flap mounts. Monday, I hope to finish the installation of my oversize spare kit and get the Tiguan wheel tucked under the van. Small steps but I am slowly making progress since my bout with Covid. Got my first vaccine shot last week, should get the last one in about a week or so. Also regaining my strength, I am back to riding 8 miles on my bike heading toward 10 miles per day. Feeling great especially now that I can work on the van.

[dieseltdi]

More work today on the rear bumper and trailer hitch. When I bought the van it came with a class I hitch which mounts inside of the bumper between the bumper mounts. Since all of my towing accessories use a 2" mount, I bought a 2" adaptor and had it welded to the bottom of the ball mount and relocated the chain mount to the bottom of the new 2" piece. It now sticks out a bit from the van and will certainly be the source for some knee/shin damage at some point but it works and that is what counts. I have ordered new bumper ends and bumper impact strips to finish the bumper assembly.

[panel]

Your single wheel trailer looks awesome !
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My '65-Subaru EJ20 Turbo conversion

[dieseltdi]

Thanks, it is painted to match my 57 bug. I still need to make the hitch parts for the bug. Got kind of sidelined with the Vanagon TDI swap. Here are a couple of pictures.

[erste]

This is late, but sorry to hear about your MIL and also about covid but it’s really good to hear you’re doing better.
And nice progress! I can’t wait for the shake down drive. You’re going to love it.

[dieseltdi]

Been awhile since my last post. Mostly because I was doing boring stuff like body work which is very similar to watching paint dry and it has been a very wet May here in North Texas making it very difficult to work on the Van. It is parked under an awning but it is open on all sides so if it is raining not much can get done. However, today I got busy and installed the rear mudflaps, the rear bumper pad and the bumper end pieces. I have a few things to do to the rear hatch and then I will install my tire carrier. So more stuff to come.

[dieseltdi]

Rains held off for two days so I got busy on the rear of the Vanagon. I finished some painting, installed the restored Emblems and added the TDI emblem. Then to finish off, I installed the VanCafe/Rocky Mountain Westy spare tire carrier. Now to move back inside to finish up a few things to make it road worthy. I will still look pretty ugly but the rest can wait for later. Only thing I want to get done fast is to finish painting the sliding door so it isn't half white and half blue.

[?Waldo?]

Looks good!

[dieseltdi]

Well just as things seemed to be moving along quickly, I ran into a problem. I reinstalled the front carpet and rebuilt the shifter mechanism. I decided to go through the process to make sure the shift rod was properly adjusted and found out that the shift rod bushings are gone, not worn out, gone! Anyway Vanagain to the rescue as they had a kit to replace all the bushings and guides. I am even going with adding the later style guide where the center and rear rods connect as the holes for mounting the thing are there. Anyway that leaves me WOP (waiting on parts) once again. I will spend the next couple of days getting my 57 Oval ready for a car show on Sunday. More as things progress.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1643725.jpg

[dieseltdi]

Well just as things seemed to be moving along quickly, I ran into a problem. I reinstalled the front carpet and rebuilt the shifter mechanism. I decided to got through the process to make sure the shift rod was properly adjusted and found out that the shift rod bushings are gone, not worn out, gone! Anyway Vanagain to the rescue as they had a kit to replace all the bushings and guides. I am even going with adding the later style guide where the center and rear rods connect as the holes for mounting the thing are there. Anyway that leaves me WOP (waiting on parts) once again. I will spend the next couple of days getting my 57 Oval ready for a car show on Sunday. More as things progress.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1643725.jpg

[dieseltdi]

Well I braved the extreme heat and humidity today to replace the guide bushes on the vanagon shift rod. I used a process I found here on the Samba that didn't require dropping the fuel tank to insert the shift bushing. It involves using a poll that the bush sits on the end and is then pushed into the bush hanger. You can see from the pictures what I started out with. It had a threaded part that fit up into the bushing. This didn't allow the bushing to flex to go into the hanger. After many tries, several glasses of iced tea and one Dr. Pepper Free, I finally decided to make some alterations. First I cut off the threaded part of the pole and inserted a bolt and large washer to back up the bushing, I also made 4 cuts in the bushing itself to allow for some flex as it squeezed into the bushing holder. These modifications allowed the bushing to immediately pop into the holder. I then rebuilt the connection between the front and middle shifter rod pieces and got everything assembled. That was before lunch. After lunch it took nearly two hours to get the shifter properly adjusted so that I had all four forward gears and reverse where it belongs. Very tedious and painful as it must be done laying on your back under the van. As any one who has done this will tell you, it doesn't exactly go like the Bentley says but all works now. Pictures are of the bush kit and the tools I used. I used the snake light to make sure that everything was clear and ready for the bushing. Ultimately, I didn't need it for the actual bushing insertion.

[dieseltdi]

Well, beginning to get to the end of the Vanagon TDI conversion project. Starting cleaning up the interior and loading up some of the supplies necessary for the first camping trip. I still need to draw a vacuum on the AC and make sure it works but otherwise the project is essentially complete. Just a few pics of the cleaned up interior and storage supplies. BTW, the picture of the dishes...I purchased a folding storage box that fit just perfectly under the bed seat to hold them. All I had to add was a cleat on the inside of the front panel for the box to rest on. There is enough room underneath for towels and other things.

[vwwestyman]

Looking good!
_________________
Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

1978 Champagne Edition Westy, repowered to '97 Jetta TDI
1973 Wild Westerner
My Thing

[valvecovergasket]

looking great! the mudflaps, the swingaway, the blue, excellent
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MegaSquirt resource - SpitfireEFI.com

gone, but not forgotten: '83 tdi westy - swap thread

[dieseltdi]

Thanks for the complements. The paint job is a 50 footer. I am doing it in sections with rattle cans. Looks OK and will suffice for the time being.

[mrossabbott]

I just picked up an '82 Vanagon this last weekend with the same swap in mind. Thank you for detailing your process, looks like I have plenty to look forward to!

[dieseltdi]

Well as final steps are taking place to get the van on the road, I rolled it out from behind its fence to wash it and install an awning. Top was really groaddy and took 3 washings to get all the crude off. The awning is one of the NAPA ones that caught everyones attention in another posting mounting with two Gowesty mounts slightly altered to fit the mounting rail on the awning (I painted the brackets black to match the awning cover). For $99 bucks plus another $87 or so for the brackets, not a bad addition to the camper.

[dieseltdi]

Well I just installed one of the Dometic remote controlled ceiling fans on my TDI conversion. Since my westy never had a vent cut in, I wasn't at all concerned about the cutting of the roof. I was, however, concerned with the thinness of the roof and its strength. So I opted for a hybrid approach at the installation. First, I sanded away all the nice deck paint that I had used on the top to reveal the original fiberglass top in the drain grooves around the old vent areal. I then installed some PVC strips (glued with gorilla glue construction adhesive) to give some strength and rigidity.

Next I used some fiberglass based body filler to roughly fill in the grooves. After this set up, I sanded it down and applied a filler coat of regular body filler and sanded this down.

I then repainted the surface, marked my hole position on the now flat surface and cut my vent hole!

I then installed an 18x24 inch sheet of plastic which has also been cut to fit the hole. This was installed using butyl tape and two pieces of heavy duty double sided tape. The butyl tape was installed along the edges where the holes for bolts were and around the cutout. This was installed with bolts, washers, rubber washers and then acorn nuts on the interior. (more on the interior in another post.)

Finally I put butyl tape around the rim of the vent and screwed it down through the plastic plate and into the roof top.

I haven't finished the install yet on the inside so I will post pictures of that later. I also intend to follow the RV procedure of using sealant on each screw head and along the sides of the fan and the plastic plate to insure a good fit. I hooked up a 12 volt source today and tried it out. At the 100% setting it will be moving a lot of air!! Now to finish the interior installation.

[dieseltdi]

Got the trim piece installed in the interior of the Vanagon today. I haven't wired it up yet and probably won't get around to it until late next week. The wife and I are taking the weekend to take the RV to the lake for a few days to relax. Then I can move it out from under its awning so I can pop the top and figure out the routing of the wiring. Don't worry about the extra holes that you see in the roof. They are only in the roof not in the overlying plastic plate. So the sun shines through but no rain can come through. I just got the thing insured with Hagerty. I moved my 57 bug from Grundy to Hagerty, raised the value of the Bug to $25000 and valued the Vanagon at $20000 for agreed value. So as soon as I can get it inspected and licensed I can start driving it on the road to do some shake downs.

[dieseltdi]

Did a couple more things to the van including starting the wiring of the roof vent fan. Big thing was to get my AC set up done. I had worked on this earlier but winter came along and it wasn't as much of a priority. A guy local to me and well known in the local VW scene made the brackets. These are really nice, though not cheap ($200) but they are well built and versatile. They are precision laser cut, precision bent and powder coated to last for ever. As you can see from the pictures, it hangs from the drip rail and has pads at the bottom that rest against the body. A fully adjustable upper and lower bar (note all the adjustment holes) allows for a wide variety of AC sizes (BTU size, width and hight) and manufacturers. Mine is a 8000 BTU unit and with the top down and with a small fan pushing the air towards the back, it keep the interior of the van in the high 70's during the heat of the day (100 degrees max). When I went to turn it off at around 730 tonight, the inside temp was 68 degrees (about 93 outside). That will allow some good comfortable sleeping. I had already made a wooden base for my AC to sit on since I intended all along to use the passenger or the Driver's side windows for the unit but the construction of the brackets means that it could be used on ANY of the windows of a van or bus as long as the AC can fit through the opening. I still need to cut a piece of foam insulation that will fit within the window frame and seal around the unit for better restriction of outside air. If anyone is interested, I have his contact information that I can pass along.

left side support

Right side support

interior view