Washer Hose Replacement

Test

I spent an hour or so removing the top of dash from the bus tonight.  I needed to replace the hoses that feed the windshield washers.  They were old and cracked and were leaking water all over the fuse block!  I could not figure out how I was going to do this without removing the dash, so I just gave up and started removing parts.  There were 8 screws along the windshield that were covered with plastic caps, There were 6 nuts along the rear edge of the top of dash panel, There were two additional nuts holding the grab handle in place.  To get to these screws, I had to take out the glove box, loosen the instrument cluster and lay it against the steering wheel, I then had to remove the sheet metal heater tube covers on both sides.  this let me remove the heat/demist ducts that feed the outer top vents.  This let me get to the two nuts on the outboard edge of the top of dash panel.  It's hard to see these, you just have to feel for them.  I then removed the wiper arms, wiper assy mounting nuts, and the single wiper assy mounting bolt under the dash.  This let me pull the wiper assy rearward so I could get to the hose that feeds the drivers side at the spray nozzle.  This all sounds much worse than it really is.  Not knowing what I was doing, it took about an hour to get everything out.  It will be quite easy to replace the hoses now.  I picked the new hoses up today at Auto Zone for about $15.  that should be enough to do the whole job.  With the top of dash removed, I can sand an repaint the escutcheons and the top of dash also.  They really needed it. 
It may be possible to do this job without removing the top of dash, but I bet it would be a real pain in the butt.

I didn't realize, when I bought the bus, how the windshield washer system worked in a bus.  There is a tank behind the dash panel that you fill with washer fluid.  So far so good.  The deal is that it works best if you fill it just a bit past half full.  The reason for that is that you need to leave room for the air!  Thats right, you need to pump up this little bottle with a tire pump or an air compressor to about 35 lbs ish.   I think is says no more that 43psi or something.  This puts the whole system under pressure and when you push ther wash button, which turns out to be nothing more than a valve, the fluid squirts out onto the glass.   Works great as long as there are no leaks.  My new repair job was still pressurized this morning!  I will keep checking over the next few days to see how long it stays pressurized!

First real ride in the bus!

I took the bus for a ride or two this weekend.  I even ran a few errands.  It was lot of fun.  Peoples reactions to an old bus are very interesting.  Smiles, waves, even a bunch of teen age kids in a Jetta honking, and flipping me peace signs!  Very cool.
It started out a bit rough.  I went to leave home and it quit in the driveway!  wouldn't start again.  Acted like it was out of gas.  Very strange.  I removed the air cleaner, held a mirror over the carburetor and moved the throttle to see if the accelerator pump was working; nothing.  I removed the carb and found the float bowl to be empty?  Strange, I checked the fuel / float inlet valve and it was stuck closed.  I cleaned and blew and cleaned and it was still sticking.  I replaced it with a new one from an old rebuild kit I had laying around and it didn't stick any more.  I reassembled everything and it fired right up.  I ended up driving it about 20 miles.  Lovin every minute of it.  A nice day, windows down, bussin around town.
Lets see, what next.  I think I should pull the engine and start checking the torques and thoroughness of that last rebuild.  I can't stop thinking about that loose head nut laying in the valve cover.  This will give me a chance to clean and paint the engine compartment while the weather is still decent as well.

Fuel line replacement is done!

I finished the fuel line replacement last night.  It went quite well.  After I removed the old line, I pulled out the pickup tube that enters the bottom of the tank.  This tube was supposed to have a strainer screen on it.  Mine does not.  I am sure it has gone missing somewhere along the forty year journey.  I guess I am not to concerned about that.  As long as I keep a good fuel filter in line and change it often, I think it will be fine.  In fact it may even be better.  I can change the fuel filter from under the hood without having to jack up the car and drain out all the fuel!  Before I reinstalled the pick up tube, I poured about a liter of fuel through the filler neck to "clean out" the tank a bit.  A small amount of "crap" was washed out with it.  That has to be a good thing.

Batery Box Area Preservation

Having read a lot about the battery box area rusting out in these busses, I wanted to try to keep this spot as protected as possible.  One of the main reasons the battery box rusts out is that when you wash the bus, or drive it in the rain, water enters the vents on the top of the rear panels.  This water makes it’s way down to the engine compartment and lands on top of the battery where it picks up any acid residue laying around and washes acidic water into the battery tray.  My solution was to put the battery in a marine battery box.  The next problem was to work out a nifty way to strap down the box.  I used a pair of seat belt adjusters I had laying around and I mounted them to the bus sheet metal by drilling a couple of holes.  I then used a tie down strap to hold the whole contraption in place.  I will need to add a filler block that goes between the battery box top and the battery, so the strap will hold the battery tight.  A loose battery is a battery that is headed for the recycler soon!

Woof! Another fuel line.

I had replaced the fuel lines from the hard metal line back to the fuel pump and then to the carb, however, I found another rubber line that comes from the fuel tank to the start of the metal line. It looks pretty old. I don't think it's original, but it's not new either. Like I mentioned earlier, no chances with fuel lines. I drained 10 gallons out of the fuel tank to get ready to replace this line. The tank is empty now. It took 20 minutes to drain all that gas out into a couple of gas cans. There is a screen/filter on the end of the fuel pickup. Draining the tank will now give me a chance to check this as well. Probably a good idea.

More wireing

I spent some time removing the additional wiring that had been added over the years and making sure the wires were bundled and routed so nothing would rub or rattle. I made a nice little mount for a remote high/low beam relay and it looks very professional now. The relay is hot all the time; I don’t think that’s right. I bet it’s hooked up to the wrong pole on the fuse block. I will have to check that. The dash lights are now working, it turns out that the dimmer coils in the headlight switches were pretty fragile and mine had long ago been destroyed. All that means is that I will only have dash lights in the full on position. No big deal for now. That now moves to the “wish” list instead of the “needs to fix” list!

A bit of body work

When I got the bus, the bumper at the rear drivers side looked as if it had bumped into something and it was pushed into the body. It had broken the tail light. I hooked up a chain to the top and bottom of the bumper and hooked it around the pull hook on my truck. I chocked the wheels and backed up a few times until I liked the look. I ended up using the truck to apply some pressure to the bumper while I pounded down a couple of the high spots at the edges of the bumper. I removed the pressure and retightened the mounting bolts. I crawled under the back corner and spent an hour or so tapping, pounding, bumping and otherwise finessing the corner of the body into shape. Have a look at the pics. I am pretty happy with the result. I think that this will not need very much filler to make it look good.

Brakes are done

The brake parts showed up and a couple of days of crawling around under the bus found me with a brand new set of brakes that now stop excellent. It is a really good feeling to know it is going to stop when you need it to. After the brake job, I expected the brake lights to start working. Still nothing. I ended up replacing the tail light assemblies with all new parts. Still nothing. With the engine compartment completely re-wired, I headed up front to figure out what was amiss. Turns out there was a blown fuse. I replaced the fuse and it blew right away. What is going on? I removed the fuse block and sure enough, there was forty years of creative wiring behind there. Well, someone had hooked up the rear window defroster to the brake fuse. No big deal, but the wire from the defroster was disconnected from the switch. It turn out that the defroster switch has gone bad and the hot lead is shorted to ground. I disconnected this lead and replaced the fuse and like magic; brake lights.

Fiddly Bitts

All along I have been doing things like oiling hinges, pivot points, door latches, cleaning chrome parts, repairing little things I find like wires pulled off door ground switches, etc. Tedious, but progress goes fast with these little jobs and you can see tangible results quickly.

A quick tune up

While waiting for the new parts, I decided to do a quick once over on the engine. I decided to replace the plugs and plug wires. I was cleaning up the distributor and I discovered the original distributor had a vacuum leak in the advance, so off I went to the bus part store to replace this with a nice centripetal advance model. I disassembled the carb and cleaned it very thoroughly. I replaced the fuel lines and the plastic fuel filter with a nice metal one. I understand engine fires on buses are not uncommon and I didn’t want to take any chances in that department.
Once the tune up was completed, it ran better, but still missed on one cylinder. I decided the valves probably needed to be adjusted. Well, I did find one valve that was too tight, but that wasn’t the problem. I found that one of the head nuts had worked itself off its stud and was lying in the bottom of the valve cover next to its washer! I re-installed the nut and snugged it up a bit and I decided to check the other three nuts I could easily get to. I found them to be way too loose. I snugged them as well and re-assembled the engine. Now I am very suspicious of the engine and I will need to pull it out at some point and check all the Assy. to be sure nothing is left off, or loose. The engine is running great now. I won’t drive it far, but it sure runs great. Lots of power, quiet and smooth. I wish my dune buggy ran that well.

Brakes are pretty bad

The first thing to do was to pull the wheels and brake drums and figure out why the brakes were so soft. I decided to buy new shoes, flex lines to each wheel, new wheel cylinders (all six of them), a new master cylinder, a new fill line and some new brake light switches. I also bought new hub caps, and most of the seals will be replaced. New rear tail lights and front turn signal lenses.

The Bus Project Begins!

Well, as the story goes, there are two wonderful days in the life of every restoration project. The day you tow it home, and the day of the first ride once it is completed (my version anyway!) 7-August- 2009 was the bring-it-home day for my bus. I don’t really know what possessed me to buy a bus. I guess I have always wanted one in some form or another. My first car was a 1968 Beetle. I had it for over 100,000 miles and ten years or so. You learn a lot about a car in that amount of time. What I learned most of all is that I really enjoy working on these crazy quirky vehicles.

As I was headed to go look at the bus, lots of things were running through my head. “Lots of work, Looks like fun, lots of time, really cool, lots of work” etc. By the time I arrived about an hour later, I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to buy it unless it was really nice. I was not in the mood for a big rust rework project.

Well, it didn’t take too much looking to figure out the bus was structurally sound. There was a bit of surface rust, but there were no holes rusted through. The normal rust spots were sound, the battery box was original and in pretty good shape. The rocker under the slider, the floors under your feet, and even the metal around the front windshield were all very solid. Almost everything was there, it has new tires (still has the blue on the whitewalls!) and the battery is only one year old and holds a charge great. This owner had done a wonderful job of keeping this bus dry. It had obviously been sitting in a barn or garage. The bus has a California RV tag on it from 1970 and it’s a Westphalia conversion with no pop up top. I guess they affectionately call these “Tin top Westies”.
Well after a couple of hours of discussing plans and pricing, the owner was to call me back the next day with his decision. I picked it up the following evening for $1500 and a promise to keep the PO in the loop as I progress through the project.

Clean Up Time

Over the next couple of days, my wife and I cleaned things out the best we could for a first pass, the dogs seem to love playing in the bus and even though it still doesn’t smell very good inside, it sure looks a lot better. I took a bunch of pictures of the inside and outside prior to getting into much of the work so I had a good set of before pics.  You can look at them at my Photobucket page.