Saving the '84

[skills@eurocarsplus]

it's with a moderately heavy heart I admit to now owning a vanagon

so, it's a 84 Aswan Brown (barf) automatic (barf again) and the only reason I considered it was twofold, 1) I knew where this has been hiding and 2) I bought it for less than what parts vanagons are going for, which is good because this pig hit the parts shelf lotto, it literally needs one of everything.

ta-da

loading it up

the good:

it's NEVER been messed with. no b/s previous owner garbage, no real b/s repairs (some were done, see below) and the body is 99.9 perfect, save for some bumps and a really odd (poorly done) blend on the sliding door (still can't figure out why paint work was done)

the bad:

it's never been messed with, as in really maintained (which I suppose is kind of a blessing in it's own way) it's pumpkin shit brown and it's automatic. I know, the automatic guys love them....i'm *trying* to fall in love with the idea....

I went into this knowing it's going to need one-ah....one ah everything that you can imagine. so far, pumpkin shit has yet to let me down in that department. I also went into it know that the engine and trans are probably junk.

story goes it got parked due to a fuel leak. the (80 year old) owner pulled the tank, and it's been sitting ever since. he claims to have given it a sniff of carb clean from time to time just to hear it fire. I tend to believe him, hell of a nice guy and I really enjoy his stories...this guy is simply amazing...the life he led is truly incredible.

anyway, I dove in head first. problem is, there was no water in the pool and some do-gooder decided to resuscitate me instead of just let me slide away...

some interior shots

my initial plan was to shove the tank back in and make it run. that plan got shot to hell. everything, and I mean everything in the fuel system needs every hose, clamp and rubber bit.

she is crunchy

well, shit. that blows the make it run plan out the window....

the owner told me he fabricobbled the cooling system together, and this was the only b/s repair I have found so far

ok...time to hit the brakes that don't work. made a phone call to a good friend who filled me up with the vanagon owners starter kit

in that starter kit was a NOS set of coolant pipes. you can barely see the parts tags

yea, I know...they make stainless pipes. we'll save that for later if this proves to be something that will stay in the fleet. my wife wants this, so we'll see if she falls in love with it before I pop 500 bux on SS pipes.

anyway, the pipes although brand new had a ton of shelf wear on them, so I stripped them to bare steel and walked over to my paint supply and pulled some of Azko-Nobel's finest, most expensive epoxy off the shelf and went to town

all stripped

epoxied

painted and cleared

now if I sound like i'm 1/2 on board with this...I am. but i'm not going to lower my standards and hack it all together either. in for a penny, in for a ton and a half, right?

enter the case of the "may as wells, while you're there's and since you're here's"

with the fuel tank still out, I decided to look at the brake lines. well, ain't that some shit...they are questionable. the rubber lines are a given, but I was hoping the hard lines were ok....most were, but i'm not going to find out the hard way. the only 2 that I felt 100% ok with are the ones from the master to the tee and brake valve

out comes the roll of NiCop the flaring tool and the tube nuts

of course, I ran out of NiCop and to add insult to injury every...and I mean EVERY brake line retainer just shattered, so off to VW to get a few bags of new retainers.

well, lets start on the rear brakes...

hold me back

after sand blasting the backing plates, I found this.....w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l

out comes the welder

the flash rust is due to cooling it off after I had it at smelting temperature to remove the lower brake shoe holders. they will get re blasted and epoxied tomorrow.

ok, so what to do next... I mean, there's just so much to do. lets fix the heater fan that doesn't work

and of course, everything got new foam seals while I was there....

speaking of "while you're there" lets try and prevent some hot foot syndrome

I actually extended it more, but forgot to take a pic.

EDIT: found it...

while I was there.... all the fuses got replaced and the fuse box cleaned. I am simply amazed that VW would put the wiper and blower on the same circuit.

yea, wiper assy got pulled, cleaned, lubed, re-greased and put back in

pulled the radiator out....

shroud was nasty so....while i'm throwing sand and epoxy

it's all painted now, just got to take more photos.

the shifter console was crumbling, so I took care of that

the bottom brace I made is DIESEL. you can't get it to flex at all now. should work well seeing finding parts for these is about impossible....which leads me to my vanagon observation:

theses were expensive new. the people who owned them were typically people of means and when they took a shit, they were traded in. when they hit 2nd/3rd owner status they just became another shitty van and were junked.

finding parts for these SUCK. people didn't seem to gravitate to these as they did bugs/ busses and pick them clean when they were scrapped.

finding just run of the mill stuff....like calipers for example is a chore. you really need to plan your breakdowns with these and have a full parts department at hand....

seeing how much crap is NLA....like radiator hoses etc for the 1.9 I see a swap in it's future. chances are this will make the cut, and stay in the fleet but holy tap dancing Jesus Christ I have spent more time trying to find parts than actually spinning a wrench it seems....

more to come....
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[jlrftype7]

They do sell new backing plates....

As far as parts, there are lots of upgrades, stock parts too. Stocks go in and out of supply, so that’s nothing new.

First Xevin, now you.... enjoy your new ride
_________________
'68 Westy- my first VW and vehicle/Bus- long gone.- sold it to a traveling Swiss couple....
'67 Type 3 Fastback, my 2nd car- gone
'69 Semi-Auto Stick Shift Beetle-gone
2017 MINI Coopers, our current DDs
‘84 Tin Top - Hilga....Auto

[erste]

nice work

[Zeitgeist 13]

There goes the neighborhood...

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[dobryan]

Welcome to the dark side....


we've been waiting for you....



_________________
Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[Wildthings]

Make that stupid blocking plate for the heater core go away if you want good heat, all it does is make the one set of flapper doors in the heater box slam shut when you turn on the fan, not sure what having them slam is suppose to accomplish except for making noise. The heated air temperature and volume will both go up with the plate removed. Read up on the Mullendore Port while you are dealing with the heater box.

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[4Gears4Tires]

I couldn't tell a difference between the 1.9 and the 2.1 for the sum total of an hour I had my 2.1 running before I overheated it and put the 1.9 back in. If measured, what's the difference in 0-60 time? 17 seconds for the 2.1 and 18 seconds for the 1.9? Meh. They're all ghastly slow.

An automatic Vanagon is the way to go. Nice pick up and progress, can't wait to see where it is in a few months.
_________________
'87 Syncro
Ferric Oxyhydroxide Superleggera Edition

[kamzcab86]

With what you did with Fokker's mess, this will be a piece of (pumpkin) cake.

Poor, neglected van... it's now in good hands! Looking forward to seeing the progress.
_________________
~Kamz
1986 Cabriolet: www.Cabby-Info.com
1990 Vanagon Westfalia: Old Blue's Blog
2016 Golf GTI S
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - 孔子

[danfromsyr]

the problem with an automatic and Skills.. is the final drive, while peppy for off the line and hill climbing.. well not really that peppy @ ~90hp.
but he'll scrim and scram over the highway RPMs.. @ speed..
although #1 there are thousands out there doing just fine @ ~4ooo rpm cruising @ ~70mph.
#2 there are upgrade R&Ps available for those who desire a slower motor rpm @ speed. though there are pluses and minuses when playing with (limited) gearing of the 3speed AT

but the vanagon world is your oyster. you can do as you like w/o the purists jumping on their soapboxes and telling you how you should enjoy and preserve your own money time and their precious image of your tin box on wheels.
want to slap a subaru in there sure we're with ya
want to put a bass akwards 1.8T no problem join the small exclusive club or reverse spinners..

like big brakes.. sure who doesn't..

the most important thing is how to fahrvergnugen your own way in your own ride..
well there's one Zealous fanboi who'll poop on your subaru ideals.. I just ignore him.. unless someone quotes his posts..

Ohh and something constructive..
Put some 1/4in hardware wire cloth mesh between that heater core and the front chassis inlets there.. keep the mice out of the vanagon mouse condo.
nothing worse than heated mouse pee.

[4Gears4Tires]

Or get the cabin air control mod that comes with the pest screen and then also be able to control the air coming in. https://intrepidoverland.com/shop/cabin-air-control/

I really can't believe VW didn't have this standard. It's such an improvement.
_________________
'87 Syncro
Ferric Oxyhydroxide Superleggera Edition

[jlrftype7]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

I know you guys have been waiting with bated breath for an update...

well....

as I am waiting on parts to s-l-o-w-l-y dribble in I figured I would pull what I could apart and clean the funk out.

I really need to pull the whole interior, but these are jobs that I can knock out (ahem) "quick" and get back together in a few hours.

I yanked the rear seat and took the heater box with it

i'll some someone a dollar if they sniff this

rear heater box was full of funk

so, I ripped it apart to clean it

much better now

the motor got cleaned up and gone thru as well

the rear light above the stove didn't work. after pulling the dome light in the cab and getting rained on by chocolate sprinkles I said fukkit and tore out all of the mouse pissy insulation

found my problem

well, you know how it goes....while you're there...

I put in 1 layer of reflectix and replaced the fiberglass with new fresh stuff. really don't want to get into the great insulation debate. I've done this on my campers in the past with great results.

once that was all back together I finally got enough stuff to make it run. I reached out to a friend that had some crap kicking around and replaced a couple injectors. like I said, anything "tin" just got destroyed by rust

so once the fuel system was as safe as possible, I lit it off. one thing that got me was this...

the gas tank had been out of who knows how long. it was clean, so I resealed it and put it in. I put 5 gallons of fresh fuel in it. after some futzing around, I had NO flow to the tank outlet (feed to the pump) but it did puke out of the return side with a solid flow

after 2 more gallons of fuel, I had plenty of flow to the pump. the tank has tubes that attach to the swirl pot in the tank. they looked fine. so my question is.... why the hell did it take 7 gallons to get flow to the pump? this has to be a sign that the tank is shot on those pick up tubes I am guessing. any insight would be great.

so, now that it runs, lets service the trans

wonderful

despite my best efforts, that pan was SHOT. in the end after 15+ emails, several texts and 1/2 dozen phone calls I grabbed my ankles while a junk yard in CA sent it in hard an deep and way overpaid for a good used trans pan.

I am still waiting for some brake parts, but we took it for a ride up to the hangar using the parking brake. the turd actually made it

so here it sat idling for what seemed like forever. temp gauge got a hair above the LED and the fan kicked on low. well, i'll be damned...

so at this point, i am waiting for a few more bits to get the brakes partially dialed in. what i am going to do it toss the old rotors/drums back on until it's ready for the road. no sense it putting the new stuff on while it just sits.

the decision has been made to just rip off the band-aid and swap it. i have gone as far as i want to with the 1.9....which honestly runs pretty dam good...I was expecting a whole bunch of collapsed lifters but no joke....this thing lit off and went right into an idle as if I just pulled the window sticker off of it.

the reality is I am just not willing to fight with a engine that is grossly underpowered and festooned with NLA/expensive/obscure parts. I got it running so I didn't have to push the thing all over the place and basically prove it runs.

I figure the effort will be rewarded when I attempt to sell off the engine/harness and can take a video of it actually running...kind of value added. I totally let my inner swamp yankee out and did a reasonably "make it work" deal on what was left of the exhaust. there wasn't much to work with but it's quiet enough to do what it needs to do.

will keep on picking at it. in the meantime i'm going to fire up my pen and make a list for my favorite Subaru dealer. the automagic will go to my buddy Matt Steedle for his magic touch and I think instead of running a different R+P I am just going to get some 17's and play with the ratio that way....at least that's what Matt suggested. he has a 270 horse honda strapped to his auto box, so i'm sure we can come up with a plan.
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[leecat]

Love it all so much. You should come fix my van. I can only pay in barn cats, but I have MANY barn cats to choose from. We'll find one that makes you happy. Adorable van, despite (as you say) the colour and the auto. Watching with interest!

[Wildthings]

FWIW I am very happy with a 2.2 Subaru coupled to a stock automatic and stock diameter tires in my '91. There were several different torque converters that VW used, you want one of the later ones, I think they would have either an "H" or a "Z" stamped into one of the mounting bosses. The "D" and some of the others will give noticeably poorer performance.

The 2.2 is no super power house, but it does accelerate from a stop much more quickly than a 2.1L WBXer does. Easy to chirp the tires while pulling out into the roadway.

[Xevin]

Just send all that NLA goodness to me. You have my address then it will all come back to you when you subie swap Xatie’s 85 I can’t wait to see this build
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Keep on Busin'

[Zeitgeist 13]

Another one bites the dust...

[skills@eurocarsplus]