Date:         Mon, 01 Jan 1996 10:30:38 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Dieter Dworkin Muller <dworkin@village.org>
Subject:      Gerbils and Heater Boxes and Mufflers, Oh My!



As most of you probably recall, I've been replacing the heater boxes
and muffler on the Gerbil ('66 camper).  The job's been spread out
over a month and a half due to a lot of things that boil down to
getting with bad parts and trying to deal with them (mixed with lots
of delays from the ``never wrench when angry'' rule).

In any case, now that the job is almost over, I have a few general-
knowledge questions and lessons-learned that might be of interest to
the list.

Everything has been acquired from Rocky Mountain Motor Works.  The
heater boxes were Danish, and advertised that way.  The muffler
appears to also be Danish, although it was advertised as German.

For the heater boxes, I also got installation kits, each of which
includes an exhaust port gasket, new control arm, return spring,
asbestos doughnut and ring, etc.  When assembling the control arm
assembly, I discovered that these heater boxes completely lack the
hole that one end of the return spring is supposed to fit into.
Fortunately, there's also a spring inside, so this is not a major
problem.  The clip used to hold the control arm on was a brass
slip-on, rather than a circlip kind of thing like the old boxes had.
The problem with this is that, if you push it down far enough to
guarantee that the arm will always be engaged to the post that
actually moves the flap, it holds the arm so tightly that you can't
move it.

There were also parts that had no obvious place to go, either on the
new boxes or the old ones.  The part that was most blatant about this
was a kind of thimble-looking thing; it's about thirteen millimeters
across, closed on one end, and open on the other.  The sides are
straight and smooth, rather than angled and bumpy as they would be on
an actual thimble.  Any ideas what this is for?

Another interesting aspect of the new heater boxes is that they are
almost not long enough to get onto the engine.  You have to be mildly
exuberant in persuading them to hook onto the front exhaust studs and
fit into the muffler at the same time, because they get blocked by the
cylinder heads.  I didn't have to do any major metal-bending, but
didn't seem like it should have needed to happen.  It may also be that
the ports into the muffler weren't exactly straight, but it's hard to
tell.  Given the quality of alignment of other welded parts on the
muffler, this has a non-zero probability.

An oddness about the muffler is the fresh air inlet connection.  The
old one had a tube on each side that stuck up through the engine tin,
that you'd slide the air hose onto.  The new ones (apparently Danish
from the labels on them, although the invoice and catalog both claim
them to be German) have this kinda funky flanged thing instead of a
hole for the tubes.  A side view looks something like:

      _                          _
       \                        /
        |                      |
        |                      |
        +------          ------+
        |                      |

The diameter of the || parts is almost identical to the fresh air
hoses (i.e., you can get the end of the hose into the flange, but no
farther).  There's a flat plate with a hole in the middle of it a
little ways in, which appears to restrict the flow to about one third
of what it would otherwise be.  I suspect I did not get a normal
bug/bus muffler, although it was sold as being for VWs from 1963 until
sometime after 1971 (the catalog's not at hand at the moment, so I
don't know the cutoff date, but it's definitely after 1971).  I ended
up using some metal-ribbed rubber dryer hose and a clamp to hold it on
there.  It's going to make life interesting the next time the fan belt
decides to go on walk-about, and take the hoses with it.  Any ideas
what this sort of connector is meant to connect to?

Lessons

Hmmm, what have I learned from all this?

- Avoid Danish exhaust parts.  If you want to be frustrated and have
  to fix someone else's sloppy work, you can buy Brazilian parts much
  cheaper.

- Rocky Mountain Motor Works does have a pretty good customer service
  department.  I'd never looked closely at heater boxes or mufflers
  before, so I didn't know I had bogus things until after the sixty
  day return policy.  For the things I did know were wrong, they were
  good about shipping out replacements immediately.

- Rocky Mountain Motor Works has either a questionable catalog or
  stocking group.  Parts that were supposed to be German were Danish,
  and don't fully match the description in the catalog.  They've been
  doing some sort of reorganization over the last few months, so
  that's probably partly to blame.

- Look at what you have closely before ordering replacements.  As soon
  as the parts come in, make sure that what you got is like what you
  had (except for the broken bits, of course).

- Having an assistant while working helps a lot, particularly when
  things get frustrating or depressing.

- The last quarter inch of travel is always the hardest when trying to
  put the engine back in.  I know this, and still always neglect to
  allow for it.

- If you have to work in the driveway at this time of year, get an
  early start.  Sunset comes way too soon.

	Dworkin