Date:         Sat, 18 May 1996 20:31:54 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Thom Fitzpatrick <thom@calweb.com>
Subject:      '56 Bus Work

        Today was a bus day.  Old Ray brought his '59 mango standard over,
and I helped watch him do the front brakes on it.  I adjusted the valves,
changed the oil and plugs on the '56, and then tried to figure out why it
was running so bad.  I tried a different carb, a 30-pict-2, and the bus
started, and ran great, but would not idle.  I fought with it a while and
put the old 28-pict back on.  The problem with the 28 was the rod to the
accelerator pump ha come off.  I fixed that and everything was fine...

        Also, this time when I adjusted the valves, all of the exhaust
valves were pretty tight.  I could not get the guage in.  Is this a bad
thing?  It had been 5-6k since I last adjusted them...  All of the intakes
were fine, and one was a little loose.  

        All of the spark plugs looked really, really nice.  I probably would
have re-used them if I didn't have new set right there.

        Oh, and I installed safari windows, too.  Got them from Wolfgang.
The quality is so-so.  I think more attention to detail should be made when
the make these.  The tabs for the sliders are not square to the windows, and
the rubber and glass were just jammed together, and
the rubber is trapped under the glass in a few spots, which will let water
in.  The latches are sloppy, and I imagine I'll be getting a new set very,
very soon.  And on one of them, the two halves do not meet up very cleanly,
so there is a lip, if you were to run your finger on the top of the frame.
I had a local guy install them.  For $60 he did a pretty decent job; my only
complaint was a welding burn on the front seat...

Thom Fitzpatrick
thom@calweb.com - http://www.calweb.com/~thom
Keeper of the Barndoor Bus Web Page: http://www.calweb.com/~thom/barndoor.html