Getting the syncro back on the road

[ajdenette]

Parking Saturday night at the High School So I figured I would use a less than perfect spot


Another shot of my parking job


My old car that is now my brothers car broke down so my father had to go swap out cars so he was running very late so he grabed half a spot as well and was barely there in time to go on stage:

[fusername]

yall are having more fun than is allowed. And on your own property at that!

[ajdenette]

Had to do some work at my In-laws house this weekend which required picking up lumber which fits nicely in the back of the Vanagon. My Mother-in-law suggest the local drive in for lunch so I stopped and put the bed back into a bench popped the table and ate some lunch so glad to enjoy the fruits of my labor for a change.



Today I dealt with installing a spare sliding door latch and finally it stays shot and is not popping open took it on a local "road" (more of a collection of large potholes and cold-patch) and a lap around the field and the door stayed fully latched the whole time when it would pop to the half latched position. This did require drilling a hole in the inner steel of the door to deal with a welded nut that had broken free and I pilfered some panel clips from the panels I took out to get the sliding door panel attached better ad looking finished inside now.

[ajdenette]

one step forward 2 steps back apparently my brother was driving the Vanagon today when the breaks sprung a leak in the rear T area time for some new lines hope to get some help Fuser.

[fusername]

dun duh du dah! no problemo! I dispise brake fluid w/ all my heart, so I did my whole bus, even tho 80% of the lines were clearly brand new. in fact, the system had not yet been bled i disocovered, and everything in the front half of the car was new, long line and fronts. all scrapped now!

[fusername]

so any groundbreaking news yet?

[ajdenette]

Well we started by removing the bad break lines working our way back to the rear T turned out I had to go forward a little more in order to get the bad lines out of the T we also broke both bleeder valves luckily I had gotten brand new wheel cylinders as I had a feeling that would happen so off came the drums but they did not go gently into that good night and we ended up pulling the hubs as well.


The bearings felt a bit loose on the passengers side even after re torquing the big nut but the drivers side felt OK I am working on getting some better ones with trailing arms to refresh and swap out in the future. Fuser Helped me get most of the lines made and I had the drums and hard lines on the trailing arm done before I finished for the night. At this point the cold my wife gave me caught up and I spent all of Sunday on the cough blowing my nose.


So today I finished installing all of the hard lines cleaning up the transmission mounts and bolting that back into place as well as the shift rod and put the front on jack stands for a thorough bleeding but alas I do it the old school way and had no one else to help me I cleaned up at the end of the day I did take a break to replace the clock spring in my Subaru and talked to a friend about the rear control arms.


hopefully this week my brother and my father can bleed the brakes because next weekend we start the project of refreshing my mothers forester with the growling transmission and 233,000 on the motor a used transmission and new rings are in order.

[ajdenette]

Well after replacing the bushings and the sway-bar links, the rest of the bushings have reported their tired and giving up. The driver side axle is also grumbling it had been clicking but since the radius rod bushings are causing the lower control arm to move to much and now it is growling in reverse. I ordered a front bushing set, some bolts, and lug nuts for the CLK wheels from T3 Technique http://www.t3technique.com, a new Axle from the local Advance Auto Parts, and upper ball joints from Van Cafe.

[fusername]

I have a power bleeder I should have lent you, didn't think of it at the time. If you ever want to borrow it lemme know, it doesn't actually fit a bus, and I don't remember if it fits my dune buggy or not.

[ajdenette]

Well I have had a clunking in the front end and that has turned into a grinding in reverse I thought it was bushings and a bad CV joint so I ordered a bunch of new bushings I also ordered the lug nuts for the CLK wheels and upper ball joints. got me some nice Powerflex bushings from T3 Technique should tighten it up and improve driving.



last night I got a chance to start tearing things apart







The upper ball joints were very stuck in the upper controll arms I tried cutting the bolts off one side after the Allen heads stripped out but got smarter and used some bolt removers on the other side with good luck still took a lot of grinding to get the ball joints out of the control arms. started cutting out the lower controll arm bolts as they are frozen solid and got one shock bolt that was improperly replaced by a mechanic at some point, still need to get one shok bolt out. when I was cleaning up I only found three caliper bolts after talking to my father it was missing one and probably the source of the issue. well still lots of work to do but some progress.

[ajdenette]

Finally got some progress on the Vanagon finally got the control arms out and cleaned up one side, freed up the upright after finding the lower ball joint boot ripped time to replace everything ordered bearings and lower ball joints need to get the old ones pressed out and the new ones pressed in.




Ended up having to pull the springs and shocks to get everything free

[ajdenette]

one of the other weekends I could have worked on the Vanagon I did a few other things worked Friday and then ended up helping Fuser move the Westy Clip from the Pickel.



Couldn't get out of 4th gear on the Massachusetts Turnpike as the drag from the roof was just too much this is with my foot on the floor bearly holding speed thankfully it was late and there wasn't a lot of traffic didnt make it home to bed until 3 AM.


woke up early as I do for work normally my father had picked up a Subaru that had lost a timing belt at speed an interference engine that might have had the valves kiss the pistons so I took a few minutes to pull the heads to have a look see turned out to be pretty bad:











after loading up some Vanagon parts decided to look into the strange noise the trailer was making to find a toasted wheel bearing time to change it before I headed to the Litchfield Bug in in CT



turned out the other one wasnt far behind and let go on the way to the show meaning after selling all day and being without much sleep I had to replace it in the field at the end of the show so I could go home

[ajdenette]

One of the other weekends I could have worked on the Vanagon I did a few other things worked Friday and then ended up helping Fuser move the Westy Clip from the Pickel.



Couldn't get out of 4th gear on the Massachusetts Turnpike as the drag from the roof was just too much this is with my foot on the floor bearly holding speed thankfully it was late and there wasn't a lot of traffic didnt make it home to bed until 3 AM.



woke up early as I do for work normally my father had picked up a Subaru that had lost a timing belt at speed an interference engine that might have had the valves kiss the pistons so I took a few minutes to pull the heads to have a look see turned out to be pretty bad:









Guess the block, head and rod are toast the crank should be salvageable I do have a block with a set of pistons just need a set of rods and should be able to build an engine.

After loading up some Vanagon parts decided to look into the strange noise the trailer was making to find a toasted wheel bearing time to change it before I headed to the Litchfield Bug in in CT



turned out the other one wasn’t far behind and let go on the way to the show meaning after selling all day and being without much sleep I had to replace it in the field at the end of the show so I could go home

[ajdenette]

Wow it has been a while since I updated this and a long time since I have driven the Syncro finally get the front of my Vanagon put back together need to get an alignment then it will be derivable. Hopefully will be able to use it for my move this coming weekend.

Started on saturday with a bare front end:


Got the controll arms dressed and installed yesterday:


Finished putting things together and getting a rough alignment and torquing everything together ready to head off to the alignment shop after putting the wheels back on:

[ajdenette]

well The van has been low on power and seemed to be running really badly so I decided it was time ti check the timing. I decided to use the Tencent method and made my 2" mark when checking where to do that I grabbed the bad pulley I had pulled off and compared it to the one on this engine and another 2.1 to realize it had previously had the wrong pulley on it and may have contributed to how far out of time it was. after putting a mark 2" to the right of TDC I got the engine to temp and had my father hold the engine at 3000 RPM and used the light to find it quite far to the right pulled the timing back to spec and heard the engine speed up and smooth out after that I took it on a Drive and what a difference.