(7-12-07)
I've almost got the galley completely reassembled - I sourced a new sink drain / stopper at Lowes for $7.69, it's called a bar sink strainer and it fits great, though I had to bend the rim of mine down slightly so it would sit flush in the basin. I also picked up some new pvc hose for the water supply, a new outlet and cover for the A/C, and another cover for the circuit breaker (biege rather than brown) I've messed with the rusty spot behind the galley a little and picked up some fiberglass cloth and resin to "repair" it after I've treated it with the por15 I picked up a while ago. I've been researching and planning how I'm going to rebuild the engine, still not quite made up my mind on how that is going to go yet. I did clean up the distributor a couple of days ago, and I crunched the numbers and found I'm going to need $400 just to repair the fuel system, not including getting the injectors serviced. Currently the goal is to get it serviceable for less than $2000... but I've nearly decided I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy some new heads which is going to be spendy. Hoping to be able to take it out camping with my parents when they drive down next spring.
(5-5-07)
So... I put some air in the tires and re-seated the bead on the LR tire only to find it to be flat by the end of the day... I'll try to find another junk 14" tire to put on there so it'll not have flat tires on it. (I already have 2 of my old jetta tires up front) I took apart the galley and found mouse carcass #4 just infront of the sink behind the metal facia. Nice. I cleaned up the metal facia with some compund and wax, and also discovered that the stainless sink items can be cleaned up pretty nice using blue magic metal polish... I did up the stove cover / drying tray and it came out prety nice... maybe do the rest tomarrow.
(5-4-07)
Not much has been going on... spent last weekend cleaning in the garage so I can move around and maybe putter with the interior bits some more. Hopefully I'll make a little progress this spring. New ETA is spring '08, maybe.
(11-29-06)
I took a box of engine parts into work and I've started to clean up some of the engine bits. So far all I've had time to do is bead-blast the center intake section and prime it, and I've found the throttle body under all the gook that was on it. This past weekend I cleaned out the engine compartment and I washed the water tank inside and out with soft scrub with bleach, seems to have done a good job, I also removed the fiberglass mat that was under the end of the water tank and cleaned it out there. I found out there is a local POR-15 dealer in the next town over so I'll pick some up on saturday and hopefully get the rust somewhat addressed this coming weekend.
(11-19-06)
Well... the van has been moved from it's place infront of the garage to the side of the house, which was to make room for halloween type stuff plus it is nice to have direct access to that side of the garage.I've removed the galley and middle cabinet from the van to get at the rust below the hook-ups. I thought it was mostly surface rust but turned pretty holy when I poked at it. depressing... probably just grind it down and treat it. I'm in no position to be replacing body panels... trying for "serviceable" not perfect. Better to do something than nothing anyway. If/when it gets on the road again I have thought of getting it repainted from the windows - down (the brown) and I could have the bodyshop repair it I suppose, along with replacing the left rear dog-leg. (lower quarter, I think the terminology is correct) I can see where the hook-up boxes have been leaking water into the van, and the water hookup is cracked where the 90-degree fitting threads in, which is probably the main cause of the rust below.
the "floor" of the galley is pretty rotted, I'll replace it and maybe recover it with some of the replacement vinyl stuff gowesty sells. I found another mouse carcas (#3) under the water tank. lovely. I'm also thinking about replacing the linoleum on floor boards with some that looks like wood-flooring. the front board needs to be replaced anyway.
(6-19-06)
I've cleaned out the water-tank cabinets and the electrical/plumbing section of the cabinet as well as the closet... I also cleaned out the sink side of the cabinet, it was pretty scummy... and I started to remove the fridge to service it.
(6-6-06)
I installed the second smaller threshold by the battery compartment over the weekend and covered it with the anti-skid tape, I also cleaned the rear bench box and lubricated the hinges and latch... I got the rear bench and rear seat back in the van... I think one of the screws for the back-rest went in cross threaded and I pretty much rounded out the head of it, but it is in there all the way and tight... it's bugging me though. like the tell-tale heart. Oh well... Its been so long since Ihad the rear seat in there its like a whole new van with it reinstalled. I had pulled the bench to clean out around the sized of it and under it, it was pretty funky - there are two pieces of fiber board between the floor of the bench and the floor of the vehicle to make up the difference between the two, they had soaked up some coolant and old juice or whatever was spilled down in there and were pretty nasty, I wound up using some 5/8" plywood... I put down some strips of carpet padding between the ribs on the floor, and stapled some squares of 1/8" foam (headliner cloth) to the top of the boards to keep them from rattling... I think the next project for inside is to pull the fridge and go through it. I tried to install the new shifter bushings but found out that the van shifter is larger in diameter than a rabbit shifter so the $11 rabbit kit won't work and I'll have to get the $50 van kit instead, bummer.
(5-27-06)
I finished up the aluminum threshold I was working on for the isleway, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. It might need some more screws, we'll see if it gets loose later in life. (I used 4 screws) I have all the carpet reinstalled and I reinstalled the front seats with new seat sliders which tighten the seats up a little more than I would like but its better than rocking to and fro. I have all the cylinders cleaned up. #2 has some rust pitting but it isn't in the area the compression ring travels and I'm sure thousands of tractors and cars rain just fine for a long time with cylinders in worse shape. At the junkyard today I picked up two MKII window cranks but lost one of the spacers, and the screws for the mkII are too long, and the original screws are too short so I need to sort something out... I painted the seat-belt brackets (they were all rusty) with some of the paint I touched up the floor with and topped off the bolts with some caps I got at the junkyard. I forgot about the 2 bolts for the belt buckles on the inside if the isle so those are still naked... but overall the cab is looking much nicer. I still have to install the shifter pivot bushing repair kit so the shift boot hasn't been reinstalled.
(5-19-06)
I have one half of the engine case cleaned up to (almost) my satisfaction, which will have to be good enough... I glued on the small piece of carpet at the back of the isle between the seats, installed the steering column trim and I took out the rear heater... it was a bit of a pain to get out because the screws were rusted in place. One of them broke off.. I'll have to try and remove it's little stump with some help from kroil - it should come out without too much fuss. The heater box is pretty nasty.. a mouse was living in there for a while as well as some dirt dobbers, and the heater core appears to have been leaking a bit as well. (see pic)
(5-14-06)
So, I made a lot of progress this week... I've removed and pressure washed all of the carpet. I think I got about 1-2 gallons of silt out of the carpet, I guess it has visited some muddy events sometime in its life. I removed the first floor board in the center of the van and I have re-stapled the plastic trim to the front of it after removing all the caked-in mud that had separated it from the wood. I have lined the front of the van with some pipe insulation tape. I can't afford dynomat, I wanted peel and seal but none of the hardware stores have any of it, neither large chain stores or small mom and pop stores. So... it probably doesn't quiet the panels down too much but it should help keep some heat out of the cabin from the radiator and such. I wanted to do something before I put the carpet back in. I've JB welded the retaining clip back on to the steering column trim so that will go back on shortly which will be nice... (nekked steering colums are ugly, eh?) I have all 4 pistons and rods cleaned up and pretty much ready for installation. I've begun to reinstall the carpet, I'm having to glue the section back on that was behind the passenger seat, it was torn away from the rest of the seat pillar carpet and I think I found it under the bench seat. I priced out new carpet, and for $200+ the old carpet is actually in really nice shape, and now that it is clean I'll be happy with it. (for the most part... gotta keep reminding myself - this is for camping, not for show!) Oh, I've also cleaned and lubricated the front seat swivel plates. They work pretty smootly now. And, I installed my very first new part for the van... new rear hatch struts.. bye bye 2x4... Oh, and the weber hasn't shown up yet... sent a note to the ebay member who listed it the other day, hope to get some news on it. Keep an eye on the gallery.
(5-2-06)
Allright.. its been a while, but I was busy finishing up the cabriolet so the van is back in the works again. So far I've been cleaning on the engine and I have 3 pistons/rods ready to go.. it takes about 1 hour to clean up each of them. I've been checking out options for the camshaft and I think I'll be using a cb peformance hydraulic type 1 cam with new stock lifters... this past weekend I removed all the seating surfaces within the van and I have reassembled the driver's seat, cleaned the upholstery on the passenger seat and also cleaned the rear seat bottom and back. There was a ton of mud within the foam pads of the seats and it took several bath-tub washings for the seat covers I could remove.. the rear seat covers are stapled/glued on and I really didn't want to mess with that so I went to town on them with my little green machine and 4 tanks of cleaner, 5 tanks of water and 3 hours later it seemed clean enough. This evening I removed the seat swivels, the first section of the flooring and all of the carpet except the stuff that warps around the seat pedestils. I found one large mouse skeleton un the very inaccessable area under the passenger seat and several bones from another in the area behind the driver's seat where the aux battery goes. I'm willing to bet many years ago this van had a major dead-animal odor ussue, but its long since gone now. There was also a noteable ammount of silt in some areas around the carpeting... I doubt this van was ever flooded but I wonder if it made it to woodstock '95 or some other very muddy events. The silt seems to be limited to the seating surfaces and carpet areas... (and the engine bay I guess) I've sourced a weber progressive carburetor setup for a type 4 engine that I am going to use on the van via ebay, should have that in hand in a couple of days. (not that I'm in any hurry...) Oh, and we've also named the van... Sarah Lee. I was calling it a "loaf of bread" and "bread and butter" due to the color scheme, and my wife suggested Sarah Lee. At first I dismissed the name because I immediatly thought of the commercial bakery that goes by the same name, but after thinking it over a bit Sarah is a nice name for the van and it fits the whole loaf of bread theme. (with butter on top)
3-20-06
I decided I'm not going to get the van on the road for this summer. I only had the resources to get the van or the cabriolet situated and since the van needs about $2k worth of stuff and the cabriolet needed about $800 we decided to focus on it instead. The engine is completely disassembled. I might remember how to put it back together...
1-26-06
Allright.. I have the bottom end all disassembled and most of the way cleaned up. I have 3 more cylinders to hone and clean the exteriour of, and half of the engine case left to clean.. the other half needs a little more cleaning I guess. It needs all new bearings, lifters, a camshaft and piston rings.. everything else looks okay. :)
1-11-06
So.. I decided to tear into the bottom end. I decided I can live with having to replace the repaired heads at some point, but I'd rather not find myself installing new heads on a "old" bottom end. I have both the heads cleaned up, but havn't gotten any farther on them... I have two pistons, cylinders, and connecting rods removed. I was having some problems removing the wrist pins,they were rather stuck. By heating the piston w/ a hot air gun and applying some penetrating oil I was able to free up one of the wrist pins, but even then they didn't want to come out.. as I was exploring my options I found (to my delight) that the connecting rod caps house the bolts, rather then the rods which allows access to the nuts while the piston and rod is still installed. You can remove the nuts using a flex-joint socket and manuvering it carefully around the piston. The bearings on the two removed connecting rods looked good, with minimal signs of wear.
1-2-06
Happy new year! I thought it best to start the new year off right.. and with the 60+ temps outside I knew what needed to be done... about a month ago I got the van engine all ready to pull out and its finally in the trunk of my Jetta... I had some help pushing the van back over the concrete pad infront of the garage, jacked it up and with 2 pieces of 2x4 under each rear tire there was enough space to slide it out from under the van. I also cleaned out the instrument cluster and replaced the bulbs with new ones since the speedo bulb was out, and I checked to make sure the odometer drive gear was intact and working properly. I also found out that the front corner/turn lights are a total loss.. water was in them and had rotted away the bulb sockets. I'll have to add some to the list. I'm also missing the light bulb for the flourescent light over the sink area. Looks like I am planning to delete the fuel injection and run a progressive 2bbl carburetor instead, along with an 009 distributor, but I'm not totally sure yet. This will save me some $ in the fuel pump area, and will take some failure prone/problematic items out of the picture.
10-1-05
So I drained about 4 gallons of "gas" out of the van today and dropped the fuel tank... accidentially ripped the grommets on the top connections, that or they were already half gone.I drained the tank out the rest of the way, it still had about 2 gallons in it... looked like 2 gallons of coffee. Thoroughly washed off the exterior, it looks pretty new... no rust anywhere on the outside. pulled out the fuel gauge sending unit and looked inside with a flashlight...it looks like something died in there and turned into scale, varnish and goop. definitely the most scary looking gas tank I've ever seen. It almost looks like a cave in there with little stelagtites and stalagmites all over the place. Oh well. Better to find out now.
9-29-05
I brought the fuel pump into work and soaked it in some carburetor cleaner and was able to free it up, and I allowed it to run some gas and cleaner though it for about an hour and produced what looked like several cups of black coffee
9-28-05
I tried to fire up the van but I found that the fuel pump wasn't working... gas smelled horribly old, as I expected. I pulled off the fuel pump and tried to bump it into submission but it didn't work...
9-27-05
I cleaned up the brown section of the tailgate with some zymol cleaner wax.. using a speed buffer and some polish should bring the paint back nicely. It'll be ticky keeping the wax out of the body seams tho. I haven't tried anything on the biege sections.
9-25-05
I cleaned up the inside and outside of most of the cabinets with some bleach type cleaner... cleaned out under the bench seat, removed the mattresses and set them aside in the garage... removed the battery, removed the bench seat and seat rails, cleaned out where the seat rails go and put the bench seat back in... cleaned out the fridge while the bench seat was out and scrubbed the floor as well. Everything was pretty clean, but a mouse or two had been running around and I was more or less trying to kill germs and such. I washed the exterior and engine a bit. cleaned out the lower sliding door track and lubed the upper and lower rollers.
9-25-05
Unloaded the van from the trailer...