Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:36:30 -0600
Reply-To: Michael Knight <vwdormer@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Michael Knight <vwdormer@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Another Newbie With Heads Fixed
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Hi all!
Friday night pulled the Vanagon out of the Garage just before midnight. Turn
her around to face the garage for the morning. Saturday morning everything
went well. She fires up and drives really well now. I took the family for a
victory cruise toe mountains of Texas. Yeah I know what you are thinking but
there are some here, they are just very short.
So far the JB Weld trick is holding up. Besides all the rusted nuts and
broken studs all over the place, the hardest thing I found to deal with was
the additional things i kept finding to replace. So far the list goes this
way:
-Heads unpitted by JB Weld, drilled and tapped a few studs, and holes for
bolts.
-New Water pump and thermostat.
-Replaced the two short connecting water hoses, Pump to head and the one
that is on the crossover pipe behind the crank pulley. Both I made from a
radiator hose I found at my FLAPS for $5.
-Replaced all the fuel lines and filter.
-Replaced all of the valve adjusters. Two were bad, one was extremley awful.
-Replaced the plastic connector for the Hal Sender on the side of the Dizzy,
it had disintigrated over time.
-All injector seals replaced.
-Front main seal replaced.
-Many parts were cleaned and painted.
-Backfiring problem was found and it was a broken flange on one of the
exhaust headers. Replaced the header.
-Spark Plugs and Wires were Replaced.
I hope to have pics up in a location where I can share really soon I have
more of the disassembly than the reassembly.
One note I have is that my Elring seal kit came with more of the little
pushrod tubes seals than the bigger ones. What a pisser, I had to reuse a
few of the old seals for now and I have a few oil leaks again. Lesson
learned. I will be buying a few of the expandable tubes later to replace the
seals.
All in all this job was not a diffcult and really helped me to learn about
the water cooled engines. I used Boston Bob's write up to get the basics and
Ben's Webpages for visualization of the task at hand. Kudos to you both what
an advantage to have this information available prior to the job.
Thanks,
Michael Knight
'77 Westy Deluxe, "el Verde"
'85 Vanagon GL, nameless
