And that transmission in the bus video below DID work!
Other than the mundane stuff, like a new clutch on an MK4 Jetta that no one wants to hear about, it was a pretty successful weekend with progress made. The engine is on the floor now, but we just never got around to firing it this weekend. More to come on that, and a super special awesome new TLR toy to unveil!
One car of note was the ’82 Van. Folks, if your sunroof is not opening easily or correctly, don’t just crank on it until it gives. You know what happens? The gear strips out, or in this case, completely broke a tooth off. Luckily we hoard VW parts and happened to have an extra gear for it! But that doesn’t fix the messy, gooey awfulness of so many years of cable neglect. Even worse, the at-least-a-decade-old silicone. OH the silicone! This is another lesson on sunroofs, if its leaking somewhere, chances are that the drains are plugged. You must snake those out (I used a speedo cable). Did the previous owner do that? Nope, I am not that lucky. What they DID do was apply copious amounts of clear silicone in the channels and bridging the entire sunroof to roof-line. At least an entire tube’s worth, if not more. No amount of scraping, razoring, or heat-gunning removes it completely so I resigned myself to the grinder with the sanding disc and the orbital sander. At that point, I just sanded the whole unit to metal to take care of the worst of it. The worst of it being, of course, silicone actually does the opposite and TRAPPED moisture along the bead, so the poor sunroof was plagued by random areas of flaky rust along the edges. Lesson for today: don’t use silicone, people.
Rail and cable maintenance as well as cleaning MORE silicone from the Van itself to come later. 😛
Next came the ’67 Bug that needed a look-over and pre-sale fixes. Originally we planned for minor things we had been told about – diagnosing and fixing the weird sound in the tunnel when the clutch pedal was pressed, a head torque/valve adjustment, and possibly a carb adjustment. After driving it and then putting it on the lift, it turns out the ball joints had been installed upside down, the nuts on the shocks weren’t tightened (none of this was by the current owner), the carbs are way out of adjustment, the timing is off, the pedals are in terrible need of grease, the shift coupler and bushings were broken and/or missing, the brakes have the ORIGINAL lines on them and they are ballooning to cause a weird pedal/braking, and the clutch tube was broken in the middle and end of the tunnel. Arts and crafts were extended by many hours!
And SURPRISE! Another racecar! Actually it was a surprise. Originally our friend Tony Bond was coming to take the 5/1600 we had used the link-pin suspension and parts from for the Thing project and drop off a 2332cc engine to be rebuilt. When he arrived, he asked if we could get old veteran 1007 running again! Since it’s here already…yes?
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