Date:         Mon, 4 Jun 2001 09:28:24 -0500
Reply-To:     arbosch@RA.ROCKWELL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Alan Bosch <arbosch@RA.ROCKWELL.COM>
Subject:      Exhausted, but quite...finally!
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Volks,
Took the weekend to replace my exhaust system on Phred.  What a PITA!!!

The muffler has been going bad for some time now.  Last Tuesday, the J-pipe
separated from the Y-pipe -- the result of rusted-through bolts.  Phred
sounded like a Harley on steroids, but wouldn't run worth a darn.

Ordered a muffler from BusDepot last October, and all the fittings and
gaskets for Vanagain this past week.  All arrived in a timely manner
(thanks, Ken!).  Spent Sat. morning running from FLAPS to mega-home-center,
pillar to post, tracking down the correct stainless steel bolts, nuts,
washers, and springs necessary to get the system assembled.  Mostly to no
avail, as no place had ALL the hardware I thought would be needed.  And the
clock was ticking...

I drove Phred up on my ramps around one in the afternoon and walked
underneath.  Horrified, I could not see one good nut or bolt on the entire
system.  Jumped in to the wife's car, off to the local Mega Home Center to
pick up a Dermal tool and sixty cutting wheels.  More time lost...

Starting about 2:30, I proceeded to cut the bolts holding the Y-fitting to
the headers, the J-pipe to the Cat, and the support brackets for the
muffler.  With the muffler and cat down, I was able to unbolt the remaining
portion of the support brackets.  However, separating the j-pipe from the
cat turned in to a real chore as the two were welded together with rust.
At eight o'clock, frustrated, I packed it in for the night.

Sunday morning dawned rainy and dark.  Not the ideal working-on-the-bus
weather.  The first thing I did was get the Y-fitting off the headers.
This required a copious amount of elbow grease, and a few strategic blows
from a mallet.  Once separated, I then had to take the y-fitting in side to
the work bench in order to get the rusted bolts out.  Putting the flange of
the y-fitting on the side of a vice, I had to tap way on the bolts using a
punch and a mallet.  Next came separating the cat from the old muffler.  I
couldn't get the Dermal cutting wheel in the correct position to cut thru
the bolts.  So I had to cut the muffler flange ninety degrees to each bolt,
being careful not to hack into the cat flange.  A chisel and mallet were
used to bust out the bolts once the flange was cut away.

A word about the Dermal tool.  If you have on, you know these little
buggers are great tools.  But you also know that they eat up cutting wheels
for lunch.  If you don't have one, Home Depot has a 51-piece kit, with the
flexible extension, for something like $79.  Worth every penny.  But make
sure you pick up extra cutting wheels -- and the small wire wheel, that
does not come with the kit.

After separating the cat and old muffler, the next step was to clean up the
mating surfaces on the parts being reused.  The exhaust system on Phred
appears to have been something other than original.  There was exhaust goop
liberally applied to ALL mating surfaces, probably from a failed attempt at
sealing the system rather than replacing the leaking parts.  Again, the
Dermal tool, with the wire wheel, turned out to be a great advantage.
However, in retrospect, a bench grinder or drill with a courser wire wheel
would have made this an even easier task.

Finally, at around four o'clock Sunday, I could install the new parts.
First came the new muffler brackets, then the new muffler.  If someone has
an easier way to install the muffler, I'd love to hear about it.  Maybe,
again in retrospect, the muffler needs to be bolted strapped to the
brackets, then installed, because the way I went about it, it sure wasn't
easy.  However, once bolted up in place, attaching the cat, J-pipe,
Y-fitting, and tail pipe were cake.

I'm certain a more experienced Vanagon owner would have made much shorter
work of this whole procedure.  Indeed, if I were not bent on cutting
expenses I would not have used any existing parts over again, thus saving a
great deal of time and labor cutting everything off.  I should have bit the
bullet and just purchased new everything -- y-fitting, j-pipe, cat, O2
sensor, muffler, brackets, straps, and tailpipe.  It was not an
insurmountable task, and I feel great having tackled it.

Note to list vendors, if you're reading this:  You may want to offer, for
sale, the following...  (1) a stainless steel mounting hardware kit; (2) a
complete gasket kit (vs. picking and choosing from a list of available
gaskets).

Oh, one last thing...  If there's a list member in Rochester that had a
Grey-ish van at the Meineke shop on Brighton-Henrietta Town Line Road on
Saturday, p-mail me.  The guy doing your exhaust, when I spoke to him, was
talking about "...making it work with whatever parts (he had) from
stock..."  Nice bus, BTW...

Exhausted....

Alan Bosch
& Phred ('88 Wolfsburg)
...shhhh