akciddento

it lives !

doh !

while looking for other docuyments i found the mot of the devon double slider... i didnt knoe it was still in mot... so tax & insured in the aftern and off round bristol for a jaunt :)

it needs a new throttle cable (won on ebay last week, just waiting for delivery) and some serious slammage but it's going to be so cooooool.... off to thebeach and everything :)

d

van west 2006

leave croyde bay early and say goodbye to the sun drencheed morning and motor across to the haynes motor museum near yeovil for VanWest 2006 !

i found the place without too much hassle and was directed into an overflow carpark/field where i had a sudden realisation.

the jetta is low.
lowered
and stuffed full of camping gear
the field is not level.
the fuel injection pump & accumulator is under the middle of the car....

oops....

ah well...

i park up in the long unmown grass and head off into the show and meet up with thomas, gemma and mark and grab the first blag of the day.
i trade a line lock and relays for the interior panels from a caravelle mark is breaking. he's even included some new body clips for me. star :) !
then off to find mr cowboy baxter at the brickwerks stand.. simon has a 2.1dj case and crank for me (just in case the other case i have won't let go of the knacked head studs) he's also got a new pulley that will go straight onto the 1.9dg motor i dropped into the wedge last weekend...

a quick run round stopping to say hi to various peeps i saw, charlie transporscher at t3tuning, gaz with his new t3gazspares (he bought all of andyvans old stock) jake and a host of other peeps...

then load up the jetta and blast back to bristol before turning round and heading back into deepest devon for birthday tea in totnes....

beachiddento 2006 # 1

friday night and off to the beach...
jim and nicole and capt. botch arrive...

jim has brought me an m8 x 1.25 helicoil kit !
joy !

beach and new tools ! there is a santa claus.. :)

tune up, heat up...

popped round to thomas' in the evening. he'd swapped the head on his golf syncro for a gti heat and fixed some other things but the timing was out so i dragged over the strobe gun to set it up....

... it's almost impossible to see the pulleywheel on a golf if you're used to aircooled or even wbx engines.... as for trying to accurately mark degrees of advance....

ah well. got it all sorted and took the car out for a spank. it's running a bit hot which is concerning but it goes round corners like its on rails. pushing it to the ragged edge on roundabout and you can hear all four tyres scrabbling for grip. awesome, and such a refreshing change after driving my new jetta about which occasionally starts reenacting the script of 'the unbearable lightness of front wheel drive'.

real tools !

i decided that i need to buy a helicoil kit...

i don't like the bodge on the engine and i know it will fail, probably on the way to the mot test or somewhere else important....

i'd never really looked at how a helicoil worked before - it was just one of those things that 'pro' mechanics knew about and did - and i didn't...

after checking out places like www.helicoil.com and looking at the diagrams it's EASY ! should have guessed really...

so this week i'm web shopping for an m8 x 1.25 helicoil kit....

i saw a full helicoil kit that did boltsizes from m6-m12 and it's great..... all those stripped bolot holes i could repair ! what bliss.... people would come from miles around just to have me ream out and re-thread their holes.... ;)

but
that all seemed a bit over the top and expensive (though in the long run it's probably sensible)

one thing i did realise as i got it all running was that try as i might to get away from it i think i'm a bus hooligan for life.... i love this stuff... three days sweating and swearing under a bus when i could be out partying ? i wouldn't change it for the world, i think i just need to keep it in balance....

i can see the new bus starting to take shape. i think i can see where it's going to end up and i think i like it !

it lives !

after three days of intense spannering on the new wedgee of doom the random 1.9dg motor is in, pipe up, fueled up and wired up. in the end i ripped off the original ignition system - its pants - and replaced it with the MSD system (its kevos and on some kind of loan .i must talk to him about this soon)

after lots of mucking about testing and checking i bothered to download the wiring diagram for the msd and realised that i'd wired part of it wrong. doh ! so re wire, reset the distributor and test the key -
of course....
it fires first time !

how happy am i !

so all is rosy, i spent the rest of monday afternoon doing a kind of pre-mot check. the plan was to get it mot'd duting the week and take it to beachiddento 2006 next weekend but i think that is not to be....
pretty much everything seems ok, the chopped springs on the front might be a problem but they're upsidedown so should be ok, the horn didn't work, then it did, then it didn't.... all the lights work ok except reverseing light, i don't think i need this to work (do i ?) i think it just needs a different plug to suit the gearbox on it....
the big problem is the pulley wheel, when it was taken off wherever it came from it was well and truly knacked... its bent and rippled and likely to throw the belt of screw everything up with vibration... also....

i must admit ot the biggest bestest cockup yet...
on of the exhaust studs was snapped and i thought i'd half heartedly try and drill it out and tap it...
so i drilled it out but the realised that i didn't have any of the tools i wanted so left it.
later in the day when i was filling the coolant system with the £5 per litre antifreeze i realised that it was pouring out onto the ground - from the exhaust stud hole. i'd drilled right through to the water jacket on the head. doh.
so fill the hole with silicone and hammer a bolt in...

(not very happy with this bodge if truth be told)

ah well.. the bus is looking much happier, got the new seats fromn thomas bolted in the back, scraped up some of the oil and gunk from the carpet and even washed it.... all looking good !