'66 Deluxe

[CraigOnTheBoat]

That is Great !!

[framingsilly]

Your bus is looking great Bruce ! Top notch work .

[Dual Port]

Wow, it's been a month since I did an update, but it's not like it's been on the back burner.

First of all a big thanks to Bill for getting the headliner installed, it looks great (like I expected anything less).



The rear area near the hatch torsion bars looks great.

And, of course, the seat upholstery looks great, too. I installed the shifter, bushing, stick, etc, and it works fine the first time!



Bill also started fitting the interior panels and found some imperfections that WW will have to correct. No big deal, just glad I'm not on a schedule for the interior.

Also Lurch cut two new windshields
and installed all of the stationary glass at Bill's shop since it's convenient for him. All of the glass looks perfect! I hope my popouts look half as good.

I was working on popouts while the bus was at Bills. I blasted some frames and painted them and was ready to assemble them when the bus came back. I was also straightening the rear bumper and painting a lot of small parts which will be installed. No pics of all that, though.


I was messing around with the engine on the run stand and replaced the fuel pump, the first was defective. The second one I epoxied the pivot pin in place so the bastard won't come out like it did on my Ghia.



One of the first things I did when the bus came back was to level the tranny. When I test fit the engine a while back I noticed it was about 2* out of level. It's no big deal, I loosened all of the tranny mounts and used a prybar to move the slack around. No grinding required. It seems like this is a common problem as I remember doing it several times before on other VW's. A crooked engine bugs me and might cause grief with your shifter.



I changed the axle boots, and to do this the axles need to be level. On a Type 1 this is no problem, but in a Bus with no engine you can't get the torsion bars compressed because there's not enough weight. I fabbed up a tool to go between the shock mounts and compress the bars to level. Eat your Wheaties!




I put the park cables in too, and there's a tip- pull the cable tight and temporarily install a clamp holding it applied. That goober in the corner is from Wolfsburg, not me.


This allows you to run the cables to the lever without fighting the return springs.

I wonder how long this thing will be shaking sandblast sand out of the crevices? This came loose on the ride to Bill's and back.


The park cables from WW fit perfectly as did nearly every part I've bought from them.
A sure sign of assembly progress- a stack of empty parts bins. Yahoo!
Now for the dual MC- here's the wrong MC, for a manual brake '71-78 bus. :

There's lots of reservoirs that all look the same at a glance, what you need is a Rabbit or Porsche reservoir (I think Volvo might be the same) What you need is outlets that are 3.325" apart center to center and .320" in diameter below the flared end. Another mistake I made- the 71-78 Bus master needs to be the power brake version and not the manual brake version. The manual brake MC has different spigot spacing for the reservoir that nothing fits. I bought my MC from Napa for $42 and the reservoir from a guy on Samba for $25 shipped.
Here's part of the reason you need a spacer- the reservoir hits the crossmember.
Spacers are hard to find and expensive ($40) by themselves so I made one from 1/2" steel plate. First, make a template from cardboard.

Here it is test fit without the boot, plenty of clearance.

There's something interesting about the pushrod- I have two, and one is 8x1.25, and the other is 8x1.0! 8x1.0 is a bastard size and hard to find bolts in. I used some hard diesel bolts I had laying around for all of the MC and pedal mounts, I think they're all 10.9 hardness. I made a new pushrod for the hell of it since the old one was pitted badly.

The brake line kit from WW fit perfect with the exception of this little bastard in the LR of the bus. Luckily I had a line on hand that is a couple of inches shorter.


I hung all of the hoses and lines, grommets, brackets, etc, and used a hand vacuum pump to bleed them. Amazingly, I had a hard pedal within 20 minutes!



A tip I use is to run the adjusters very snug while bleeding so there's little wheel cylinder piston movement when you're checking the pedal. I locked the wheels with the adjusters before bleeding, and oddly enough after bleeding the hydraulic pressure (after pumping the pedal to see what I had) seated the shoes and the wheels were no longer locked and spun with only a bit of drag. I'm sure I need to "pump and bleed" a couple of times to get the bubbles from out of the corners, but for a first bleed I'm very happy with how the pedal feels. WTF is it with the bleeder screws UNDER the lines, anyway? I've never seen that on any other car or truck I've ever worked on, the bleeders on other vehicles are always above the lines.

I put new tie rod boots on most of the tie rods and worked some new grease into them. Don't lose the castle nuts, they're 10x1.0 which is a bastard size. I misplaced one for a while and searched high and low on the internet before finding it (exactly where it was supposed to be).



Here we are, MC installed with front boot, lines plumbed, bled, shocks on, most cables run, etc.


I straightenend out those stupid axle mounting washers that I installed wrong a few months ago and torqued them to 72ftlbs.

Yes, I need to take lacquer thinner and a rag and clean all of the overspray and dust from the axle tube.

I reshot the engine bay Tuesday to cover up overspray from the final paint job. The engine bay was originally shot last summer.

I left tonight after running the harness in prep for stuffing the engine. The brakes are done, shocks on, axle boots, and I bet the engine is in and running next week. Can you say Test Drive!

[heyed67]

Awesome bruce looks like you will be cruising in no time..

[wwebner]

I wish I would have known,you could have used these.

[Dual Port]

Wow, those look like some serious medieval torture devices........

[toolbox]

I wish I would have known,you could have used these.

IM003163.JPG

I have seen them built with stock jacks too.

Tool listing - http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/inf ... acture.php

[Six Volt]

Great work Bruce. On page 14, I feel your pain. http://www.leakoil.net/forum/viewtopic. ... &start=130

[toolbox]

EIS now has the 67 only master ($38.99) and reservoir ($23.50) in stock. The 67 only push rod is a bit different, but less than 15 minutes on a lathe and you can mod an earlier one.

[Ken]

Great work. Where else could you see a complete, step by step, high quality, well documented restoration like this. Very inspiring.