Major surgery on an '82 VW.

Aug 11 02:17 UTC 2002

Thought I'd comment on the major automotive surgery I've been working on
with a friend of mine.  (Well, okay, my friend is doing most of the work,
since he knows this engine better than me...)

I recently bought a 1982 VW Vanagon Westfalia Diesel camper.  I love the
Westies...I used to have a 1975 model, but got rid of it eventually because
it was rusting out, and the engine needed more work than I had time to give
it.  Anyway, this one ran great on the test drive, but it later became
obvious there was a compression leak into the water jacket.  (I know. 
Shoulda run it with the cap off and looked for bubbles before buying it.) On
this van that's particularly bad because the radiator is higher than the
engine and filler cap, so the gases tend to collect in it and force the
water out. Bought a new head gasket and a few other assorted pieces,
including a new valve cover gasket.  (The PO had run it for hundreds of
miles with a bad one, and there was oil *everywhere*.) All went well, except
for the usual stuck bolt hassles, until we got the head off.  There were
nasty cracks between the exhaust valves and the precombustion chambers on
two cylinders, no doubt the source of my compression leak.  Sigh...

I got a good enough price on this van that I don't feel too bad about the
expense of a remanufactured head.  And the head is the main weak point on
these engines -- once it's replaced, I can probably expect a good 100,000
miles of trouble-free running.  Still, I'm a bit frustrated.  Right now my
new purchase is in pieces in the parking lot behind my apartment building,
and that's never a good feeling.

Good points:

Gas milage, at least from the amount I've driven it so far, seems to be
excellent.  It's hard to be sure since I haven't filled the tank again, but
I'm estimating about 30 mpg if the gauge is accurate.  Not bad for a 2700
pound brick.

It's not as sluggish as I expected.  The diesel vans have a reputation for
being slow, and in fact the 1.6L, inline-4 diesel is only rated at 52
horsepower.  Top speed is only about 65 mph (limited by a throttle stop on
the injector pump) but it accellerates about as strongly as my 1975
aircooled gas van did.  I had no trouble holding 60 mph on the flat and took
mild hills at 50 to 55.  The final drive ratio is low and there's all kinds
of torque available in 1st gear.

Real heat!  (You have to have driven an aircooled VW to appreciate that
one.)

Interesting stuff:

Apparently car diesel pumps weren't as common in 1982, because this van has
a huge 2" filler neck to accept the high-volume truck nozzles.  I bet that
fills the 16-gallon tank in a hurry!

response 2 of 38:

Aug 13 22:31 UTC 2002

Sounds to me like it's pretty amazing the thing ran at all.

response 4 of 38:

Aug 14 05:26 UTC 2002

It must have been *just* touching.  Maybe only when hot/cold?  I suppose
the pistons and such in a diesel would be extra strong too.  Still,
pretty spooky.

I think it's pretty common today to put the cap on the expansion bottle.
Stops people from doing stupid things like removing the cap when the
radiator is hot (and causing a steam explosion when water under pressure
suddenly isn't anymore.) I believe it *is* usual to try to put it
"upstream" - maybe they ran out of room to put it farther up?

The stretchy head bolts is I think not uncommon.  It's a weird design,
but it at least guarantees you're using fresh bolts of known strength.
The older approach was to use studs, and reuse, and reuse, and of course
if you got stripped threads, you were screwed.  What I find disturbing
are aluminum cylinder blocks and heads.  Aluminum deforms a lot more
readily than steel (which is harder and more springy) -- which means
that tightening it is a whole lot more complicated, and if you botch the
tightening, you can easily screw up the head or block.

response 6 of 38:

Aug 14 22:20 UTC 2002

Oh!  *That* kind of expansion tank!  Um, yup, that's weird alright.
I've never liked anything that involved plastic and flowing water under
pressure.  I guess it's becoming more & more common.  I suppose that
means the recovery bottle must also have a filler cap.

response 8 of 38:

Aug 24 19:12 UTC 2002

Working on putting some "real" gauges in the van.  (I don't trust the stock
water temperature gauge, since it has absolutely no calibration marks at
all.) The wiring diagram for this vehicle is, uhm, interesting...VW's
position seems to be "Fuses?  Yeah, we've heard of them." There *are* fuses
for some things, but a lot of stuff is simply connected directly to the
battery side of the fuse panel, or to the ignition switch, which doesn't
have any fuse protection either.  The entire instrument cluster is in this
category.   A lot of stuff seems pretty well thought out on this vehicle,
but the wiring harness does not.

response 10 of 38:

Aug 26 13:23 UTC 2002

No fusible link, at least not that shows up in the wiring diagram.  My
friend's experience with his '80 Dasher is that in the event of a
serious short, the entire wiring harness becomes a fusible link.

The van's road-ready now, except that it needs an oil change to get any
trash out of the oil that got in while the head was off.  Simple enough,
if I could get the #@$&* drain plug out.  Whoever used to work on this
thing liked fasteners *really tight*.

response 12 of 38:

Aug 27 13:43 UTC 2002

Yeah, he had an electrical fire after accidentally shorting out a wire
in his electrical harness.  It started a chain reaction where wires
heated, lost their insulation, and shorted together.  Wiped out nearly
the entire under-dash harness.

response 14 of 38:

Sep 5 01:16 UTC 2002

Took the van on the freeway, down to Dundee and back.  It ran quite well,
and the temperature stayed rock-solid.  I have a serious voltage drop
problem between the rear-mounted battery and the front of the van, though. 
With the headlights on I'm losing over a volt.  Probably a combination of
corroded connections and undersized wire.

Unfortunately, my patch on the exhaust pipe between the manifold and muffler
didn't hold up, so I'm going to have to give that another try or give up and
buy new parts.

response 16 of 38:

Sep 5 13:30 UTC 2002

Re #15: The starter wiring is fine, as is the wiring for the glow plugs --
that's all in the engine compartment, with the battery, so there's very
little voltage drop.  The problem seems to be between the engine compartment
and the front of the van.  I suspect a high-resistance ground, since my
temperature gauge's calibration shifts when I turn on things up front that
draw a lot of power.  I may just make a run of 10-gauge wire from front to
back to connect the main ground points together.  This will also be useful
when I get around to installing an amateur radio transceiver in the van.

Gasoline versions of this van put the battery under the passenger seat.  I
guess for the diesel version they were probably concerned about the voltage
drop during starting, since there's 48 amps worth of glow plugs *and* the
current draw of the starter to support.

Older VW's use those funky fuses with the pointy ends that go into holes in
brass spring strips.  Cleaning them all up is a good idea.  That's not my
main problem, though, since the voltage drop affects *all* the circuits when
I turn on anything up front that creates a heavy load.

response 18 of 38:

Sep 5 17:52 UTC 2002

Yup, if I go ahead and do this I figured I'd run two heavy-gauge wires to
the front as long as I was underneath the van anyway.

response 20 of 38:

Sep 6 13:28 UTC 2002

I haven't measured the actual ground drop, yet, but I plan to.  It may very
well be both.  I'm suspicious of the ground side, though, because the
temperature gauge I installed moves upscale when I turn on the headlights,
and back down when I turn them off.  Its sender is ground-referenced.  It's
possible the gauge just has poor voltage stabilization, and the voltage
change itself is what's affecting it, though.  At any rate, on a 20-year-old
vehicle it'd be worth my time to clean and tighten all the major grounds. 
The '75 van I used to own cranked sluggishly until I did that, and
afterwards it cranked like it was on city power.

I still need to figure out how to mount the sender for my oil pressure
gauge.  I have a tee and nipple to connect both it and the idiot light
sender to the stock location on the block, but the sender for the gauge is
heavy and I don't think I want it just hanging there.  I know I'll be taking
this van on rough dirt roads from time to time, and I'm afraid the weight
and vibration will snap off the brass nipple.  I'm thinking of seeing if a
hydraulic hose shop can make me a short hose with an 1/8" NPT male
connection on each end, so I can mount the senders to the firewall.  I've
seen grease gun hoses with connectors like this, but I'm not sure if they'd
stand up to hot engine oil.

response 22 of 38:

Sep 9 14:31 UTC 2002

Yeah, I figure a hydraulic shop would know what to use.

I'll investigate securing it to the engine, but there's very few attachment
points on the cylinder head (which is where the oil pressure sender is) and
I'm not about to start drilling holes in it. ;) My friend has a similar
setup with the gauge sender hanging off a brass tee, and it has snapped off
once or twice, so I'm risking an oil leak no matter what I do.  The sender
is nearly half a pound of brass, much larger than the idiot light sender
that's normally in that location. :P  I really feel like I need it, though,
because the stock oil pressure warning light really only tells me anything
at idle.  The sender is calibrated to turn on the light if the pressure dips
below 7 psi; normal running pressure at highway RPM is more like 25.

Friday I tinkered with the refrigerator a bit, and got it to light on
propane on about the fifth try.  I let it run for an hour and it was
definately getting cold inside.  I still don't fully understand how you can
make stuff cold by burning propane, but as long as it keeps my beer chilled
on trips I won't worry about it. ;)

response 24 of 38:

Sep 9 18:25 UTC 2002

Re #23: Nope.  Aluminum head.