Saw this on the samba, i think it was syncroghia that posted in his thread about adding high top to his 16″ syncro. I thought it was a good idea so i gave it a go on the rear hatch.

It is just water pipe insulation, I think its foam polyethylene, cut to length and wedged into the cavity. Now that summer’s over one might find pool noodles going cheap and I think they would do too.

I like this because it is cheap and fast to install. No gluing and I don’t think it will trap moisture against the metal.

I stuck on a bit of peel and stick roofing stuff to dampen panel noise. My van had some factory applied bits already there. Remember this is a converted 7 passenger tin top. I don’t think we sties have the factory sound proofing in the back hatch, but they do have the dreaded fiberglass batting.

And just because i had some, i pushed in some 3/8″ thick closed cell foam. Left over pipe insulation stuck on lip of cut out.

I liked how it went in, I think I’ll do more of it.

About 2 months and no blog posts, sheesh, the next few posts will be playing catch up.

The 85 model year and newer vanagons have a much improved sliding door. Easier operating and a bit quieter than the old style but I thought it could be even better. I had tried UHMW polyethylene tape on the surfaces that the rollers ran on would be the ticket, blog post about that here. But the tape wore out after a year and a bit.

So i thought about a plastic version of the steel rollers. I made a quick and dirty prototype from some Delrin to try on the middle track (the track under the cover on the side of the van).

Not quite an exact copy and a bit out of focus. Here it is installed.

Verdict? Well it is quieter than the steel roller and it rolls just as easily. But with that track silenced a little, now I could hear the lower track roller noise. So some time later I set about making another middle slider roller and seeing what I could do about the lower track roller.

Middle roller, more care taken. Oh, I should mention that the bearing used in the roller is a 607RS. Dimensions are 19mm OD, 7mm ID, 6 mm thick, and rubber shield.

I took the sliding door right off as I was working on the lower roller at the same time. Here is the stock steel roller.

And my Delrin version installed. See the 2 other bearing above the plastic roller? They run in a vertical channel above the rail the main roller runs on. I didn’t do anything with them, but i probably should have thought about it.

I was going to make a lower track roller from scratch but I found a plastic roller in my junk pile. I think it was from a hanging door, but I can’t remember anything more about it. I wish I did because it is very close to the stock roller dimensions. I just had to reduce the OD by a few millimetres and replace the bearing with a 607RS. It originally had a 6mm ID bearing. The circlip retaining the bearing was a real bear to remove and I accidentally broke a little of the plastic.

here is the stock steel roller. The roller is on a post on the lower assembly , secured by a circlip. The plastic shield can be pried off and the clip removed and the roller pulled from the shaft.

This is not a roller with a pressed in bearing, the bearing and the roller are all one piece.

Has a rubber shield on the inside, the bracket side, face.

Comparison of the stock roller and the hanging door roller. Both have somewhat similar profiles. Close enough for me anyway. But as I mentioned before, I had to turn down the OD of the plastic roller.

Plastic roller with new bearing installed

And showing where I broke the darned thing.

And there it is installed on the door bracket.

So did it make a difference? Yes, it did. Again quieter and smoother. The door still is not as quiet as I would like and I think some of the noise is coming from those vertical bearings on the middle slider, the pair I should have paid more attention to.

You know, this is the kind of project that 99.9% of people would look at and shake their heads, mutter “get a life” and then wander off to chat with someone else. It is only when i sit down and write this post does that realization sink in.

Crikey, forgot to add an important thing… to thank “ZsZ” for posting measured drawings on this Samba thread. I’ll be cheeky and link directly to the drawing.

This is the result of Felder Enterprises announcing a lantern holder made using a Bus Depot awning gutter clamp. I can’t let FE get ahead so before I got down to paying work I made my own version. It is based on a design I’ve seen on the web that uses PVC tubing and a PVC “T”. But I had some aluminum stock so I used that.

I milled a slot at one end to hold the lantern bail.

And a slot to go over the rain gutter.

And a bit of paint protection.

On the van.

And surprise, it clears the sliding door.

I have no pressing need for a lantern holder, I guess i was just in one of those moods this morning.

Addendum, 28/03/2014

Well it seems that i didn’t get the itch scratched, i made another hanger. This time from some scrap thin walled stainless tubing. Part of it was the end of a roll, so it had a little bend to it. I thought that might be interesting. I ground the welds out just to make it look a little sleeker. I don’t think it works as well as the aluminum version, the tubing is so thin that the slot that goes over the gutter spreads a little when weight applied to the hanger. But it might be strong enough, we’ll see.

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Ok, I know this conical latch idea of mine is flakey but bear with me. I got some things tacked up today to see what was what. First is the upright that will hold the spare tire. In my last post I said how I had to make an adjustment to get the upright close, but not too close, to the back of the van.  My solution was to cut and bend the upright to mirror the profile of the rear of the van. Here are some pics with the upright (not fully welded out yet) roughly in place. My swing away arm is just clamped to the stock bumper.

I think this might work.

Ok, on to the latch. I tacked welded a bit of U channel onto the upright and I also bored a hole for and tacked in the short section on alluvium tube that you saw in the previous post and that houses the female Delrin part of this cockamamy set up. Here is the latch assembly more or less assembled. But some notes of explanation needed. Of course the threaded rod has not been cut down to size yet, and that metal but you see right against the left most flange represents the back stop I have yet to weld to the bumper. the two flanges meeting (and I think I might slim them down a tad) are the male and female parts in tight congress.. on the right hand side of the box section upright you can just see a trimmed down nut on the threaded rod, the thread rod, then the hand wheel. See the collar in place inside the “cage”? I need to make a set screw for it. The collar does two things, keeps the hand wheel from falling out of the cage when it is unscrewed from the rod, and when the hand wheel is turned to unscrew from the rod the collar pressed against the cage and pushes the upright away from the back stop.

I really am not doing a good job of explaining this. You’ll have to wait for a video or something.

Face on view. Aren’t I a clever fellow making 5 holes in the hand wheel reflecting the five holes in the vanagon wheel? It’s this attention to useless details that distinguishes my crazy ideas from other crazy ideas. 🙂

(Here’s something educational.  Click on the pic to bring it up in a new tab, then zoom in on the tack weld on the left side of the fully visible seam.  You can just make out a hairline crack on the tack. This happens because the heat sink of the thick walled box section tubing draws heat away very quickly from the cooling puddle of the tack weld. To reduce the chance of this happening I should have warmed up the tubing, it was pretty well dead cold. )

Male and female separated. Time for a smoke.

I think I can weld out everything now, and trim down a few of the moving parts.

Update: 21/02/2014.

Dirk over on the IG16 syncro forum expressed some concern that the upright being made of aluminum would waggle back and forth like one of my dog’s tails. Any time a German engineer gives advice it behoves one to listen 🙂 . So today I welded up (not very well, i was rushing) the upright and tacked it to the swing arm, and I cut out a reinforcing piece to weld in (3/8″ thick 6061 stock).  I am almost positive now that things will be wedding night stiff  when finished.

I’ve been amusing myself (!) by attempting to make a latch for the swing away tire carrier that’s going on my aluminum bumper. I have this almost unreasonable desire to make sure the horizontal arm of the carrier is fixed hard against a back stop on the bumper. I know other designs use an over the centre draw latch mechanism, and I am sure they work well. But I got in my head that I wanted to try another approach.

The back stop mentioned will be a sturdy bit of aluminum plate welded vertically to the forward top edge of the bumper. Something like a 4″ X 6″ bit of 3/8″ plate. It will be positioned at a point on the bumper were the end of the swing arm end up when the arm is “closed”. Now imagine a truncated cone projecting horizontally back from that plate that fits into it’s female mate that is in the swing arm. The cone arrangement will, I think, locate and secure the arm to the back stop.

Instead of a draw latch I decided to have a captured screw handle on the swing arm. This screw handle will engage a threaded rod projecting out from the male cone.

Yeah, it doesn’t seem very clear and I don’t have a sketch of my idea. But here are the parts I have made so far.

From left to right: hand wheel/screw handle, male cone (will be attached to back stop), female cone partially inserted into bit of tubing that will be welded into the swing arm.

The cone couple. 10 degree included angle, made from Delrin. It is a tight fit into the aluminum tube that will house the female cone. A bit of glue and a couple of countersunk screws on the flange will hold the Delrin in the aluminum.

The hand wheel (going to call it that from now on) is made from scrap aluminum with a centre section of stainless steel pressed in. I mean really pressed in, a shrink fit. I heated the aluminum and drove the stainless into, the somewhat enlarged by heat, hole. Then I fancied it up with a turned recess and some holes. The stainless centre is threaded for 1/2″ NC.

The other side. The narrow section will be inside the “cage” that I have yet to make that will hold the hand wheel to the swing arm.

Arranged in order.

I had to make a collar to put on the narrow portion of the hand wheel to stop it falling out of the cage when unscrewed from the threaded rod. Of course I broke the damned tap when i was threading a set screw hole.

Grr.

I didn’t want to make another collar so i ground down the stuck tap (carbide burr on die grinder) and drilled for another set screw.

I was so pissed that i broke a tap I didn’t get the new hole exactly centred on the collar. Too bad, thats the way it is.

Enough of this for today.

Addendum: found a pic from happier days 🙂

I’m still in a funk about all my unfinished van projects. I seem to be easily daunted these days. I can’t find things in my workshop (a key component for a swanky audio accessory and a canoe thingy I promised to take pics of for James F.), the rear bumper project is still halted, and locating that new big-assed battery has me scratching my head.

I’ve come to the realization that if I don’t make something each day I feel unsettled. I suppose this is a personal issue I have to deal with.

What to do, how do I get back in the game? I know, why not make something simple. Ok then, I’ll do something I have been thinking about for years. In the Vanagon electrical system, and this holds true for all years, the power leads from the alternator are not fused at the source. Seems suspect perhaps. I agree that the vans with the battery up front under the passenger seat complicates matters, i.e. having an unfused power lead from alternator to starter then a big assed unfused cable from starter to battery. But even if you set aside the issue of fuses, what if you are like me and add more wires to the alternator, don’t it all begin to look untidy?

For years I have been using one of those fuse boxes found in 2000 and up Golfs and Jettas (maybe others too) as a handy little fuse box/distribution panel. First in my old ’82 Westy where it was located back in the engine compartment, and latterly in my ’86 syncro up under the drivers seat to distribute and fuse accessories.

Here it is in my I4 ’82 Westy, on the battery.

And here it it under the driver’s seat of my ’86 syncro.

Same old box. But the other day I bought another from the wreckers, and this one will go back to sit by the the alternator. Now, how to mount it?

Some scrap aluminum again, you should know by now that the scrap aluminum pile is my go to place. First some 1/8″ plate cut to this shape.

See how the plate fits into the tabs on either side of the fuse box?

Holds fast.

Then, more bits and bobs of scrap and a bit of tubing are welded on to the plate. I have to apologize for the picture quality in this post, I couldn’t find my little Canon point-and-shoot and used my iPad mini instead. Maybe hard to see, but some tubing and 3 tabs added to plate

Better view, the tabs with the holes in them will fix to an unused hole in the alternator body. the other tab will rest against the inboard end of the alternator.

Now you can see what I was up to, the paired tabs fitted around the unused hole in the alternator body (will be secured by a 5/16′ stainless nut and bolt).

And here with the distribution/fuse box attached.

Another view sans box.

But, there is always a but, I think I made the mounting  bracket too long. So I cut it up and trimmed it down.

Re-welded the tube to the plate.

Much better.

I haven’t shown what’s in the box. Originally there was a thick wire coming into the box at the top right hand side. This was connected to the positive battery connection in the donor car. That wire supplies power to the bus in the box.  My box had that wire cut short, so I trimmed it right back flush. To compensate, I used the first lead on the right, the black wire at the base of an 150A fusible link. On the other end of that black wire I crimped on a ring terminal to attach to the positive stud on the alternator. Next left is a wire connected to to a 110A fusible link, then two 50A fusible links. Three 30A spade fuses protect the smaller wires in the connector on the left.

I just swapped over the wires I had connected to the alternator stud, I do need to clean things up a bit, perhaps combine the two 8 gauge wires I have added into one, didn’t have time to do that tonight.

Looks much neater than before and I think it is better than stock having the power leads fused at the alternator. I know, there is more to it, but thats for another post.

Things are never finished eh? I decided to cut down the length of the arm on the iPad mount (previous post about it here) and to glues some leather onto the mounting plate. Looks better I think, but it is still not finished, the cup washers I used are not large enough…

And yes, the heads of the machine screws are a bit awry. I’m not by any means OCD, but those screw heads really bug me.

Peter R. sent me this info on swapping in an LED bulb to replace the stock incandescent bulb on the rear marker light. He writes:

“Well here is an image of the new lense with LED bulb installed. As they say, the photo does not do it justice. Remember that this is with new reflector/lense and there is a significant improvement even without power as the old plastic was cracked, discoloured and scratched.

Biggest improvement will be the fact that the LED bulb generates no plastic deforming heat whereas the old bulb in that tiny enclosure was like an easy bake oven”

“hThe bulb part # is BA9S-4 LED”