So. Spent today fitting the engine into the bus. Had a bunch of shits and bits to fix up like fixing up my dizzy, rewiring for the alternator, fitting a new exhaust, adding the electric fuel pump, running new fuel lines, cleaning red dust from everything. In fact it took most of the day just getting everything to the stage where I could fit the engine.



I opted to drill and tap my dizzy so that I can dial in the overall advance. Much better than locking it out completely



Annoyingly I also had to fabricate a throttle adjuster / stop as I had failed to realise the DHLA carbs do not have an air bypass circuit and so require a throttle stop to be able to set the idle. D'oh!

Got to say. This is the worst engine install I've done. Normally I can get it in pretty easy (said the actress to the bishop  :lol: ) but this time no matter what I did the engine simply did not want to line up. I must have struggled for half an hour trying to align everything before I finally managed to get the thing home. I recon it's the damn stoopid sump extension that I have fitted - it was in the parts bin left over from a previous project so it got fitted to the bus. The issue is that the jack doesn't sit centrally so the engine doesn't sit right on the jack, which makes fitting the engine a bit of a PITA. Fortunately I picked up some spare flywheels last week so I will make myself up and adaptor for my jack so that the engine sits nice and flat.

By far the most annoying issue was that my 5 minute dash to the local motor shop to pick up some more fuel hose ended up with me stranded for an hour as the damn stoopid immobilizer on the Range Rover decided to play up. Eventually I manged to get the thing started but the remote control has decided take a holiday. Arrrrgh - just what I need - 2 cars off the road. Think It's time to put some rego on the scooter.

With the bus engine finally fitted I checked everything over and found that the banjo fitting to the carby had a hole in it.  This was easily remedied by tapping the hole and fitting an appropriately sized bolt. However, when it came time to fire her up she would not start. I checked the spark - which was okay. Checked that there was fuel getting supplied to the carby, even checked that fuel was getting through the carby into the stacks. The engine would occasionally catch, but not start. This led me to think that the issue was not enough fuel getting through.

So I removed the carby and stripped it down. One can of carby cleaner later I have one cleaned carburettor. I will wait until tomorrow to see if this has fixed my issue.

Thinking aloud - my main concern is that the jets are simply too small / lean to work in this configuration. I had originally assumed that even with incorrect jets the engine would still start, but having never had a blown engine before I'm not 100% sure how the blower will react to incorrect carburetion. (sp?). I'm happy to drill the jets out to get the thing running, but only if I am pretty sure that this is what the issue is.

I will do a bit of reading to see what I can figure out before tomorrow, but it's 12:30, I stink of petrol and carby cleaner and I figure that I probably should get some sleep.

Actually - on a positive note. One thing I was a little concerned about was the belt tracking. My biggest fear was that it would throw the belt. Well, I'm happy to say that the belt stayed put. Yay! one positive to take from today!!

So I've been busily chipping away at developing the supercharger kit. I pretty much ironed out the design and started getting materials together to build the prototype. I also took the bus to West Torrens Dyno to get the 'before' baseline power readings. It was pretty comical seeing the bus on the dyno.

It was even funnier when I got the results - a whopping 39.8 hp at the wheels (an estimated 51 at the flywheel) WOO HOO. At least the only way is up!!

Been doing a bit of work on the supercharger project and decided that I needed to work everything our properly.

The pulley that I have fitted to the supercharger is one that I managed to procure to fit the charger, however, it is normally used in a much different application. My initial napkin calculations ended up at a figure of approx 6psi at max rpm. Tonight I decided to start from scratch and work everything out properly.

To start with I have made a few assumptions:

Engine Displacement - 1600cc

Supercharger Displacement - 500cc

Hi all,as some of you know, I've been flat out doing a 57 panel patina monster for the last 18 months so I figure its time to share the highs and lows.So here goes..

The bus is a 1957 Dove Blue panel that was advertised on DSK in July 2011.It looked good,the usual rust,but for me it ticked the major box,ORIGINAL PAINT!! Turns out that the guy who was selling it had bought it from the first owner,he'd done nothing with it except drag it home so I like to think I'm the second owner or at least the second driver.

These photos were taken by the first owner when the bus was new.Too cool!!!!!

After seeing the ad on DSK and talking to the seller,the panel seemed like a good prospect but I wasn't about to dump a shit load of coin without seeing it first.Andrew E agreed to come with me to check it out as he was getting the job of doing the body work.Flights,accommodation,meals,hire car etc for 2 of us came to $1000.A drop in the bucket as I planed on doing this one properly.We got into the Gold Coast about 11pm on the Friday night and drove down to Mullumbimby on Saturday morning which just happened to be my birthday,as it turned out a very good omen.

G'day everyone,

My family and I recently purchased two Type 3 Notchbacks, a 1968 and a 1970. They arrived by truck on the 4th of December.

Plan is to go through the '70 (Honey Brown) and get it road worthy then start work on the '68 (Ruby Red).

If you are into Type 34 Karmann Ghia's, chances are that at some point you would have come across the name Mick Percy. If the name sounds familiar to you it's probably because you have spent some time over at Type34.com or as it's more commonly known The Type 34 Registry where Mick has been the resident webmaster for the past ten years. You might also know him from right here on VDubber.

The build of Mick's '65 Sunroof Type 34 spans some 18 years, two continents and several changes in direction.

Here's Mick to tell you a little more ...

If you've been following the build of the Ghia you may recall that I previously blogged about narrowing the IRS arms to help fix a tyre clearance issue that I have with the Ghia. Well having sourced another set of IRS A-arms some time back, this weekend I finally set about getting started.

My idea for narrowing the IRS arms is slightly different from the other 'how-to' threads. Instead of simply grinding the hubs out of the arms I decided to carefully grind away the weld and remove the hubs from the A-arms without taking away any additional material. To give you some idea of the 'normal' way of doing things, take a look at this thread on the Airkewld site (originally form germanlook.com but NLA). As you can see the hubs are cut out of the arms and then re-welded back in using a jig. If you cannot be bothered to read the thread, the following images will show you the basic nuts and bolts of it...

One thing to be noted, is that this is an 'extreme' narrowing job. In fact from the photo's I would say that this is a good 30-35mm possibly even 40. On the Ghia I just need to scrape 10mm to pass the engineering inspection so I'm aiming for 15mm.

As I do not need to be so extreme with my narrowing I've determined that if I can remove the hubs without damaging either them of the arm I can turn them down the the lathe to remove some material from the shoulder and then simply weld them back on. The benefit of dong it this way is that unlike the method above I can retain all of the original material of the A-arm and avoid weakening the rear hubs. You will probably note the additional strengtheners on the about arms, using my method these will not be necessary and the arm will basically retain a stock appearance - a good thing when you are about to enter your car into a full engineering inspection.

One thing that really struck home on our recent interstate jaunt to ReVolks was how damn slow the bus is. I have often joked that when I toured around Europe (also in a 1600 bay window) you would have to go flat out down the hills just to be able make it up the next one. Well somehow the reality of driving a 1600 bus over very long distances  had managed to become little more than anecdotal humour. This is a bit of a shame, as had I remembered how painfully slow driving a1600 bus was I might have opted to build something a little larger. After all, as our cousins in the good ole yew ess of aye say... 'there's no substitute for cubic capacity', or is there? Faced with the reality of having to build another bigger engine I opted to take the easy way out. Forced induction!

A buddy of mine (Razor here on VDubber) has been collecting parts and researching adding an AMR supercharger on his 36hp powered oval. Inspired by the 36hp medusa oval he's opted to use an AMR 300 blower on his project. After doing a bit of research of my own, I decided that an AMR500 blower would probably work reasonably well on a stock 1600 engine.

It'd been a good many years since I've camped in a bus so I'd really been looking forward to ReVolks. For the non-Aussies here ReVolks is a VW show held in Geelong in Victoria - Some 700k's away from where we are in Adelaide. The mad rush to get the lowlight finished in such a short period of time was mostly so that we could take a bit of a holiday and take in the ReVolks show at the same time.

With the bus more or less finished the only thing left to do was put a few k's on the engine and figure out where to store everything. I'd been using the bus to get back and forwards to work in and was quite happy that the engine was running okay. The only real mishap was the DVDA dizzy that decided to go FUBAR whilst I was out at Haandorf. Fortunately I was visiting a VW buddy of mine who was generous enough to lend me the 009 off of a customers bus. With new SVDA installed I gave the bus a service and tune and set about figuring out how to fit all of the stuff that we'd been collecting into the bus.

We put the 4x4 3-way fridge in behind the drivers seat, this also doubled up as an extra seat. This was plugged into a 12 power outlet above. The general foodstuffs and stuff that we needed to access regularly / quickly were packed into plastic containers in the rear overhead cupboard. The stove, pots, pans and other stuff was packed under the rear seat and bedding was stashed in the area behind it.

With the bus packed, baby seats installed, kids strapped in and a rough idea of our route we set off for Bordertown. The plan was to split the journey to Lorne into three smaller chunks. Most folks were travelling over the course of two days, but with two toddlers this makes each leg a bit too long so we decide to travel to Bordertown the first day, Hamilton the next day before travelling on to Lorne via the Great Ocean Road.

With the ReVolks trip looming and the interior in the bus it' time to get things finished off and start packing for the road trip. Everything at floor level is pretty much done, carpet is in, rock and roll seat is in, rear cargo area is carpeted, in fact the only things that havent been done are up in the roof.

For some reason at some point the headlining has been cut out of the bus. This left a nasty view of the guts of the poptop conversion. It also meant that there was nowhere to mount lights into. Afte a little pondering and being inspired by the wooden roof Devon conversions I decided to use some 3mm MDF to quickly make up a cover for the roof area. I made two strips; one for each side of the roof to fill in the gap between the pop top and the missing headlining. For the rear area I made a full width cupboard. The result of fitting these two strips in is that I now have a nice area to fit my lighting.

For the lighting I am using LED downlights; the kind that you would normally see in your house. The beauty of using LED downlights is that they are already 12volts, you simply use them without the transformer. In addition to the downlights I am also using a dimmer unit to control them. I stumbled across the idea as I'd seen a bus with downlights in it before. I'd also seen LED strip lighting used but was told by the owner that they were far too bright. Armed with this info I did a bit of research and determined that I could fit dimmable LED downlights - best of both worlds. The dimmer unit I sourced also has an infra red remote control allowing you to set the light level and turn them on and off; no need to clamber into bed in the dark any more. 

The bus has been pretty good over the past week or so, it starts up on the button and apart from a little bit of a flat spot when cold is running pretty good. I readjusted the choke by aligning the (rather small) mark on the choke element housing with the mark on the carburettor, this has made a massive difference but there is still a bit of hesitation when pulling away. This disappears when warm so I'm guessing that I've still got a little tweaking to do.

MelleMel did a fantastic job of cleaning up the interior, the bus looks like new, there's no more grime on the dash, and the interior trim now looks like you could eat your dinner off of it, which is pretty cool. As Mel says, at least you know that the only grime in the bus is your own. 

This past weekend I spent some time getting the interior finished off. I removed everything from the inside and set about wire brushing the floor before giving it a coat of enamel paint to stop any further corrosion. The floor is in really good condition with only some light surface rust adjacent to the door where it has a leaky door seal. I've got a new seal to fit up although I haven't done this yet.

Since getting the bus roadworthy I've spent the past week and a half cruising to work in it which has been pretty cool. It's great to have a veedub as a daily driver again and even cooler for it to be a bus. It's also given me a chance to iron out a few bugs and make a list of stuff that needs to be looked at.

One of the the things that found its way to pretty much the top of the list was a leaky fuel tank. Ironically when I was originally fitting the engine I looked at the bottom of the firewall tin and noticed that the foam seal looked a bit 'melted', I even thought to myself 'I bet that's due to a leaky fuel tank'. Well, guess what, I knew it! the darn thing leaks. Fortunately Volksfactory once again helped me out from their stash of stuff and provided me with a nice early style fuel tank (early bay tanks have a bolt in style fuel sender unit). I also picked up a few other bits and bobs as well, including a passenger window. 

So this past weekend I dropped the engine out of the bus and removed the old tank. At first glance things seemed okay, but a quick look underneath soon showed some tell tale rusty patches.

Last weekend was a bit of a milestone in the build with the bus's first trip around the block. One thing that was instantly apparent from the maiden voyage was that the accelerator linkage was absolutely cactus. The second thing that was also readily apparent, and was made a lot worse by the first thing was that PICT34's and 009's do not play nice together. The bus had the infamous flat spot, which made you want to stamp down on the loud button to get things moving. This worked (to a degree) but ended up with the worn throttle sticking in the down (flat out) position. All in all it made for interesting driving.

After a quick look at the throttle linkage I decided that the best thing was to simply replace it, so I ordered one from Just Kampers here in Aus. I also ordered some other goodies as well. I decided to replace the front indicator lenses as the ones I have now let the bus down quite a bit, I also ordered a new ignition barrel and key as starting the bus with a screwdriver is not really how I want to do things.

 Nick Bentley's Badass Rat Oval

Nick Bentleys 56 rat oval is a regular part of the South Australian scene and can often be spotted at events and meets. Sporting perfect patina, a big Type 4 power plant, all round disc brakes and a close ratio box not only does it look badass, it's lots of fun to drive too. Here's a bit more about the man and the rat straight from the horses mouth...

You might recall from my last blog Paint Your Wagon, that I ordered some parts from MoFoCo, unfortunately they were not posted out so after a bit of chasing up they were finally mailed out to me express. Well according to USPS they should have arrived no later than 5 days later, so after waiting for 6 days I decided to lodge a paypal dispute. The initial slackness on MoFoCo's part, and time limit that PayPal put on making claims pushed me past the point of trying to pussy foot around the issue. I figured that if the parts arrive - all well and good, and if they didn't, then at least I could order them form somewhere else.

Rather than simply sit about and wait for the bits to arrive I decided to continue on with getting things done. I took the engine tin and some other parts down to the local furniture strippers who did a great job stripping the paint off. I also had a bit of a result whilst I was there as I spied a large anvil. I've been looking for one for quite a while, they are not the easiest thing to come across either new or pre-loved. I asked if it was for sale, expecting that it was a customers, but figuring of you don't ask... well... as luck would have it, it was the owners and it was for sale. Result! What was even better was that he also had a nice bench vice and a smaller insert for the anvil for making sheet metal flanges. Double result! With the engine tin back I set about making good use of my Hills paint booth and gave everything a generous coating or two of black enamel.

Not updated the blog for a week or so, but that doesn't mean that I've been idle, just too busy to be able to get my thoughts translated into the electronic ether.

Last weekend I spent some time getting the doors prepped ready for painting. The front doors both needed painting, both having been partially prepped. The passenger door was already mostly done with only a few minor blemishes requiring attention but the drivers door needed a fair amount of work. The drivers door has at some time been badly dented and could ideally do with a new door skin, but in a bid to get the bus on the road I decided to see if I could make it a little straighter then it was.

First off wast to remove the remaining paint from the drivers door, the door had been partially stripped when the initial repairs were made, the rest of the paint came off pretty easily with some paint stripper.

To get rid of the dent I decided to use the technique of quenching. This involves heating the dent around the edge with an oxy acetelene torch and then quickly cooling it by using cold water and a sponge. The idea is to heat and then quench the dent in several small areas around the edge to shrink the metal and pull the panel back into shape. I had limited success with this and decided that the torch that I was using was not big enough. I managed to get rid of one dent and partially remove another before giving up.

To get the door ready to paint I filled the low spots and sanded the filler back ready for primer. After the door was primed I blocked it back and refilled it again. I did this a couple of more times before I was happy. With the drivers door prepped I moved on to the passenger door. This needed minor filling and some stopper. I also took the time to strip the rear bumper and give that a coat of primer as well.

The long overdue update to Vdubber is finally here. The new look site is now live and not only does it have a new appearance but the whole site has been rewritten from the ground up. There's heaps more features and its far easier to use than the old site. The reason for this is that the software platform that the site runs from has been replaced with a more streamlined version. But rather than bore you with techno-mumbo-jumbo, the best way to tell you about the new features is to give you a bit of a tour.

Front page news feed

The news feed on the front page, or 'activity stream' as it is known is still present but is now enhanced with better reporting and improved privacy. Some of the reported activities such as photo posts have been revised so that instead of showing an entry for each photo posted, they are grouped together in one entry. More site activities are also included in the activity stream than before and it is also now possible to comment on more activities directly in the activity stream. The activity stream can also be filtered so that you can view all posts of only those posted by your friends.

Took a few days off in the week to get some more stuff done on the lowlight. My target for this week was to get the brakes finished off, get the gearbox in and paint the front doors. As I had already done most of the brakes there was only the front nearside left to do and change out the rear flexi hoses and shocks.When I removed the front nearside drum I was met by a bit of a surprise, the brakes were missing. There had been a Burnley.

Unfortunately the backing plate had also taken a bit of a hammering but as the whole thing needed to be removed I straightened it out on the anvil in the garage. It was a good job I had decided to replace the cylinders and shoes with new, so the missing parts were not an issue. The only parts that I needed to recycle were the adjusters which fortunately were still present and salvageable.

Was stoked to get a text message today from MelleMel. In it was a photo of my new rego plates for the lowlight. See if you can spot the mistake...

The plates were supposed to read LOLI 70 (1970 Lowlight - geddit?). For some reason I wasn't surprised that they had been screwed up, seems to be par for the course lately.

Decided to sort out the brakes today. I had already ordered new shoes, cylinders, hoses and master cylinder, and whilst waiting for the remaining engine parts to arrive thought that it would be a good idea to fix up the other things on the todo list.

Anyone who has worked on a VW before would probably have encountered the dreaded rear axle nuts, and whilst there are a variety of different ways to crack that particular nut.

A long pipe on a t-bar and some judicious jumping on the end of it usually does the trick for me. However, this is where the trouble began...

Last time I did this I didn't attempt to do it on a gravel drive, I also had an engine in the car, and the handbrake worked. No matter what I tried I simply ended up spinning the wheel in the gravel. I even dragged out he oxy set and the rattle gun from the garage to no avail. After about 3 hours of battling with the nut I finaly admitted defeat and decide to grind it off.