Air flaps rubbing on something

[hartung105]

Okay, I'm guessing this is kind of a unique problem because I haven't found any ideas after searching the forum.

'82 Vanagon, stock 2.0L aircooled. I've read up a lot about how the thermostat bellows and the air flaps work. I have a faulty thermostat and recently ordered one from aircooled.net (they seem to be slow right now, waiting to hear if it's on backorder).

While I'm waiting, I noticed when you manipulate the rod to open/close the flaps, they are getting stuck when moving from open to closed and vice versa. If you push it hard enough it will go, but you can hear the flap rubbing on something inside the tin/cooling ducts. I'm always careful to make sure they're not stuck closed before putting the cover back on the engine bay.

I want to get the cooling ducts open/apart to inspect this and fix it. My question is: has anyone tried to remove the upper cooing tin without dropping the engine? It doesn't look like you can unscrew it and simply pull it straight up. It's also possible a PO assembled it wrong when the engine was rebuilt and might be the cause of flaps sticking.

[MarkWard]

It's been a long time, but I think you remove the shroud housing.

[hartung105]

In case anyone has trouble in the future, I will record the steps I took:

-I bought a cheap endoscope off ebay that feeds video to my phone. Inserting the camera thru the spark plug holes I discovered the problem was on the driver side. The 90 degree bend in the rod was pointing in the wrong direction so when you rotate it from open to closed, the end of the rod was swinging to it's lowest point and then up again which made the linkage act weird.
-I was able to remove the left rearmost engine tin after removing the muffler and air duct for the heat exchangers. I was worried about damaging the outer tin gasket but it worked out OK.
-After removing the screws for the left forward tin (the one that covers the location where the flaps are, I was able to lift the tin slightly and bend it out of the way.
- I was able to pull the rod out and re-shape it slightly so the 90 degree bend was pointing in the right direction (so it only pulls up on the linkage when you rotate the rod)
- After putting the rod back in place with a new bushing I was able to use the endoscope to see what I was doing while I re-attached the flap linkage using a hook tool and curved needle nose pliers (I couldn't move the tin enough to get in there with normal tools. It made me feel like a doctor)
- Bent tin back into the correct shape and re-installed all screws and components
- Also installed a new thermostat from Awesome Powdercoat

Not fancy, but it had the potential to be much more extensive. I probably could have also removed the shroud housing like MarkWard suggested but I gave up after finding some rusted screws that I didn't feel like dealing with this year.

Now I just have to drive around and test it out!

[jlrftype7]