Posts Tagged syncro
Trip – turned out to be more of the same
We were planning on exploring some new areas when we left late Sunday afternoon but were thwarted by closed gate on the access road. Where there is active logging the contractor usually restricts access to the area by locking a hefty steel gate across the road or even just a steel cable with signage. I think they do that mainly to reduce chances of vandalism or theft of machinery or equipment left on site during non working days. So we headed up to one of our fall back view point spots while there was still heat in the day and we could sit back and enjoy the view and some beverages.
So there we were, again.
Bridging ladder used to level the van. My van is a rolling advertisement for my slowness in finishing things. Sliding door skin repair, rear bumper build (well it is getting closer), still no tires for the 15″ alloys I bought a while back.
Took a walk, into newly logged area. I was taken by this cloud on the hill.
And took a bunch of pics for a pano. If you click on image it comes up in new tab/window, at my default image size of 1500 pixel max dimension. You might be able to make out the beach at Port Renfrew.
Then suddenly it seemed like someone turned on the smoke machine to film some post apocalyptic movie.
And almost as quickly turned it off.
You know, i never get tired of the view looking over to Washington, summer sunset. You notice the orange haze? Could be from a forest fire somewhere. A couple of summers ago we had amazing sunsets when camping in same general area that were due to forest fires in Russia. Hard to believe eh?
Next morning I got up early and took some more pics to stitch.
We left at about 0930 and made a few exploratory trips up roads like this. But we didn’t find a good spot to camp.
So it was a fall back to Loup Creek. It is pretty isolated, I don’t think many would make the effort over the moderately rough and slightly overgrown road just to be able to sit on a bridge. No, I’m not picking my nose.
The creek is beautiful, but quite cold. We hiked around, exploring a few km upstream and a little ways downstream. Here are a couple of pics of a little feeder stream, posted to point out a couple of things. First is that I find it really hard to take a pic of theses streams during mid-day. The river rock reflects light, the shadows and greenery suck the light up. I think i would have to set the camera on a tripod and take a series of pics with varying exposures/aperture and sam them together for an HDR image.
Second is that these short steep streams on the west coast of the island vary in flow tremendously.
You’ll find debris high up on the rocks or the bank that was deposited during floods.
All that white rock would be underwater during winter spate.
Supper time on the bridge. Chairs now on south end to catch the sun.
Eco-Que being used. Marinated chicken on flat steel skewers. Still haven’t used the grill surface of the Eco-Que. Yeah, just nine briquets.
Lid on to finish cooking.
Had this canvas bucket for years, US Army issue, one of the most useful accessories.
Next day we explored more, sunbathed more, read more, drank more, ate more, dunked in the frigid creek more, and then drove home in the late afternoon, early evening. Van ran like a champ, fridge worked from when it was lit at leaving on trip to when we got home. Garmin Glo and iPad mini remain a superb navigation combo – I should do a post on the software I use.
Vanagon – syncro clutch slave cylinder replacement adventure
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon on June 21, 2014
Seems to be a real busy time of the year for me, just the time to put a new slave cylinder into the old syncro. It had been leaking for a few weeks, but it still worked the clutch. I procrastinated replacing it until I felt like hurting myself.
I’ve swapped in a slave cylinder a couple of times on a 2wd vanagon, I4 powered ones at that, and it was not that bad. But the stock motor in the syncro makes access to the bolts holding the slave to the bracket really painful. The rear most bolt is somewhat accessible front he engine compartment but the nut for that bolt is pretty well hidden by the bracket. A good fix for that is to weld that nut to the bracket so you only have to deal with the bolt and no need to hold the nut. The front bolt is somewhat easy to access, from under the van. I tried to get those bolts off, but I couldn’t. I even bent a wrench to get it in there, but no luck. I had heard that some folk take the bracket and cylinder off as a unit and that means taking the actuating arm off the shaft that goes in the bell housing (and moves the throwout bearing). There is a cir clip on the end of the shaft and theoretically, on a brand new van, when the clip is removed you can slide the arm off the shaft. I don’t see how you can do that easily on any van that has seen any kind of use. The arm is on there but good.
I had a spare arm (and shaft) so I decided to grind the arm off. I used a steel burr on a die grinder. Yes I chewed up the shaft, I got sloppy. But I didn’t do enough damage to make the replacement arm a poor fit, still went on tight.
I tagged the bracket too.
The arm.
Now it was just a case of removing the 13mm head bolt on the bracket support strut and the 17mm bolt holding the bracket to the bell housing. Then you can ease the assembly down and let it hang by the hydraulic line. Great thing here is that the syncro has a flexible nylon line to the slave (and banjo bolt) rather than the steel line of the 2wd.
I had the new, FTE brand, cylinder already to go, bolted to a spare bracket. A bracket from a diesel vanagon… yes, you know what’s coming.
I had welded the two nuts to the bracket, here is a pic of the front nut. Yes, you know what’s coming.
Quick with the swap over and now bleeding with the cylinder hanging.
And up it goes into position… except I forgot the support arm is held to the bracket by that front nut which I had welded on. Doh, what a bonehead, ok off it comes with the zip disk. Right, up again with support arm attached…except it didn’t fit. The support arm would not line up with the bolt hole in the transmission. Son of a bitch. Out it comes, let’s compare with the old bracket.
Gee, whaddya know? They are different. It takes a special kind of bonehead to assume a 2wd diesel vanagon bracket would be the same as a wax syncro bracket. I am that special bonehead.
And, to add insult to injury, after cleaning off the muck from the bracket I could see someone had brazed on the rear nut and had brazed on the nut to the support bracket. So i could have removed the slave by itself after all. Well, no, not really. The bolts were in there real tight. Even with the bracket held in a vise I had to grunt with the spanner to remove the bolts.
Righty oh then, back to the van to install new slave and old bracket combo. All went well, replacement arm on shaft, cir clip in place, slave bled. I tried the clutch pedal. The friggin pedal stopped hard about 2″ above where it should stop, no clutch activation. What the heck was going on?
The arm would move when the pedal was depressed, but only a little way before the pedal felt like it was hitting metal. I pulled the push rod from the slave and compared it with the one from the old slave, it had a longer effective length. New push rod at the bottom of the pic.
With the rod removed the clutch pedal would not move, with the shorter old rod the clutch pedal would move down a bit, with no rod and the bleed screw open on the slave the pedal would press down full range. Can you guess what was up? I couldn’t at that point. I talked to Dave the mechanic, we both were stumped but were leaning to an internal problem, perhaps the throwout bearing retaining springs had come adrift. Looked like a tranny pull. I was so desperate that I looked on the Samba and found something interesting, here is the thread. Now I had some hope, so I quickly made a bit of an extension using the old rod (I removed what remained of the plastic that was inside the metal cup end) and some polyethylene.
I made a hole, stepped hole, to mimic a socket to engage the ball on the lever arm. I installed it and yes, more pedal travel. Not quite enough so a made another using some Delrin rod. Here it is. BTW, it is a press fit into the metal socket.
And, yes, success. Clutch works just like it used to, perfectly. Man, I was relieved. The modified pushrod had overall length of 112mm, socket in the Delrin was 4-6mm deep giving an effective rod length of 106-108mm. That’s 18-20mm longer than the new FTE push rod.
So what the heck was going on with the new slave? As I didn’t want to take it out and measure I can only guess that the new slave had a shorter piston stroke than the old one. And even with a longer push rod it was not enough to fully activate the clutch. And before you ask, I did have the slave cylinder properly installed in the bracket. I wonder if the syncro bracket locates the slave higher from the arm than the 2wd bracket?
Vanagon – new wheels and tire fitment
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon, vanagon mods on May 10, 2014
Too long i have suffered the jibes from fellow syncro owners about the teeny stock wheels and tires I use. Finally I found some wheels that might let me join the real mens club. They aren’t my first choice but the size, price, and offset were all right. They are 15×7 Mercedes 15 hole alloys from an early ’90’s 380SL. The offset is 25 which I kinda like, I wanted good clearance from tire to suspension components. Another good thing about these particular wheels is the thickness of the casting where the lug stud goes through. In this case it is only 11mm, some can be as thick as 44mm. I would have to install longer studs for any wheel thicker than 11mm and that was something i did not want to do (its a pain to do the front studs on a syncro). This wheel thickness will come up later.
Anyhoo, I’m not going to go into all the tire choices in this post. Im just going to show you what I did today to see if one particular tire would fit. The tire in question is a Yokohama Geolander GL AT-S 225/70 15. They have I think a load rating of 100, which is my, probably flexible, lower limit.
Here’s one bolted up. I sanded this one a bit (they all need painting) to try out a primer. The wheels have to have the stud holes drilled out to fit on the 14mm Vanagon studs. They were originally drilled to accept 12mm studs. You also have to get new lug nuts, the small seat ball type as opposed th the conical Vanagon variety. I got the hardware from T3 Techniques, and I also have received a lot of great advice from the owner Chris over the years.
Here is the small ball seat lug nut from T3 Techniques.
The trial fit was done on the rear wheel for a few reasons. First, the rears have the shortest stud projection, just flush with the stock steel wheels. With the alloys I got about 6.5 turns of the nut to hand tight. Now with the thread pitch being 14X1.5 mm that means the nut goes on 9.75mm. I would have liked more, 14mm would be the same as with the steel wheels. I don’t know if this amount of thread engagement is not sufficient, anyone have any thoughts?
edit: 9.3 turns would give me 14mm of thread engagement. That would be grand, but there is a German notice of requiring 6.4 turns minimum. So what to do? I am leaning towards longer studs for the rear. The front studs might be ok, there is a couple of threads exposed with the stock steel wheel, unlike the flush situation on the rears.
The second reason to check fitment on the rear wheels is to determine if rim and tire combo clears the trailing arm. I made a rough template of the tire profile from published data. What I am not 100% sure about is the sidewall height. I initially made the template so that the sidewall height was measured from the lip of the rim. When i held the template up to the wheel it interfered quite a bit with the trial arm. I thought this strange as I am sure I have heard of this size tire fitting the stock trailing arm, even on rims with higher offset. So i trimmed the template so that the sidewall height includes the tire bead section.
Not a great picture but you can see the notches I cut and you can see there is not only about 1/4″ of clearance between template and the pinch weld seam on the trailing arm. My template does not have radiuses corners so that might exaggerate things a bit.
I don’t know if this close up illustrates the clearance any better.
I’m reconsidering this tire size based on this quick and dirty measurement.
The other worry is that with a wide tire and a 25 mm offset rim there might be interference with the sliding door. Well no worries there, it clears with about 10mm to spare (close to my paper calculation).
I’m going to have to pour over the tire choices once more. Please, don’t mention Nokians, I know, I know.
During all this my friend was giving me skeptical looks.
Vanagon – stock tire carrier replacement idea
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on May 10, 2014
I should have spent the time finishing the rear bumper build but over the last two days I grabbed a couple of hours alone in the shop and tried out an idea.
When I do get the rear tire carrier built, and I am almost there, I will be moving the spare from the front to the back. I guess I didn’t need to tell you that. The free space up front, what to use it for? Well I have that big assed AGM battery that I’m struggling to find a spot for. Why not put it up front? There are arguments pro and con for this idea, but I decided to have a go, at least a start.
There were three kinds of stock spare tire carriers. The tray type, in two sizes, and a cage type that you don’t see that often here in North America. Here’s a pic.
I like that carrier and i like Tigerbus’s take on it.
I can’t make anything as nice as that, but here goes with my attempt.
I’m using aluminum scraps again. Schedule 40 1 1/4″ 6061 pipe (OD about 1.66″, wall thickness 0.140″), some Shmoo shaped 1/2″ 6061 plate that were left overs from a water jet cut, a bit of 3/8″ plate that was cut out of a boat hull, and some 1″ x 2″ box section 6061.
The Shmoos were welded onto the ends of the pipe, attachment points to match up with the hinges on the van spore tire tray.
And at the other end the pipes notched and welded to the box section at a bit of an angle so it fits up against the back of the bumper where the stock tire tray bolts up.
Trial fitting.
More or less fits.
The rather skanky bit of hull.
Yeah, the other side is painted. That made welding a bit of a chore.
Tacked in place.
I did a full weld-out on the unpainted side. I welded it hard and fast so that the paint didn’t fume too much. I should have used the wire feed welder instead of TIG.
Now at the front, I will be adding more stuff there, coming up in front of the bumper similar to the Tigerbus version. Im also going to add some side pieces that will angle up to meet the frame rails on the van. These bits will add side protection and will be additional points of attachment to the van. I do worry about the thing falling off with that big battery.
Vanagon – bridging ladder
it’s been a while since i posted anything, busy at work and at home. I have some Vanagon stuff to post and I’ll get on it as I can.
This post is about a bit of fiberglas grating I picked up to use as a bridging ladder. I’ve been looking for off cuts of the is material for quite a while now and last week I finally found some. The source is interesting but I really can’t say where. This kind of bridging ladder is commonly used in the UK and Europe but I don’t see it being used much over here in Canada. Here is a link to a UK source.
What I found was slightly different as what you see on that link, it has extra webbing on one surface and a very coarse anti slip grit embedded on same surface. Also it had been partially cut, annoyingly so as it screwed up a neat division into two long usable pieces. And it is about 38mm thick, major grid size is about 1 1/4″ square. You have to love the mix of measurements.
I cut it it to get one good strip and gave it a test. You can see how it bends but doesn’t break.
They left over strip, still with the partial cut in it, was strong enough to make a ramp.
And the un cut section supports well.
I have to explain why i want something like this. On logging road spurs you often find water drainage trenches cut across the narrow road. Seems to be the norm nowadays instead of installing a culvert. The trenches can be deep and steep sloped, either by design or by the drainage water eroding the sides. Sometimes the shape of the trench makes a perfect tank, I mean, Vanagon trap. You only need a little help to get across and I think even one bridging ladder will do.
Vanagon – yet another bumper build update
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on April 1, 2014
I got something done today on this never ending project. I bought some C channel steel (1″x2″, 3/16″ thick) to replace the stock bumper mounts. I cut them long enough so a third bolt can be used to secure, just like the stock VW trailer hitch set up, and just like the RMW bumper system. With those channels rough cut and inserted I was able to offer up the bumper to the van, fitting it to pretty well its final position.
I attached the unfinished swing away tire carrier.
And popped on a spare. I was worried that I had screwed up my measurements and the tire would cover part of the left rear light. But It clears it ok.
The bumper was not attached to the rails so it did tilt back a little. The tire carrier upright should be closer to the hatch.
And swung out, the tire clears the van.
Vanagon – rear bumper build news
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on February 12, 2014
Man, with this damn bumper build, have I been dogging it or what? Here is a post showing just how little I have done over the last few months.
I have the actual bumper more or less in the shape I want it. So I went on to building the swing away tire carrier. I drilled a hole through the driver’s side corner and welded in a section of aluminum tubing.
On the top surface I ground things down flush. What I haven’t shown is the heavy duty bracing I did to the bumper in this area.
Skipping ahead (too lazy to rearrange how the pics were inserted), making Delrin bushings.
The shaft is a bit of 1″ stainless rod let into a bit of 1/2″ stainless plate, welded to rod on top surface.
End of rod drilled and tapped 1/2″ nc.
Bushing for top of tube.
Bottom bushing is similar to top bushing but has a smaller flange. Here is top bushing being inserted into tube. The fit on the stainless shaft was a nice sliding fit, but the fit into the tube was tight. This resulted in the shaft having a very tight fit into the installed bushings, too tight really, so I had to take shaft out and take off a couple of thousands (inch).
Oh here we have the bottom bushing being inserted.
Just to be clear, this shows how the bushings fit on the shaft.
Skipping ahead again… today I offered up the bumper to the van. Bear in mind the bumper is sitting on the stock bumper mounts. I will be making new mounts which will move the bumper closer to the van by about 1.5″. Please keep that in mind when you look at the pictures, it is important.
You can see the swing away arm installed. More on that arm further down. But right now see how the arm hits the bumper? I did machine things so that the mounting surface was parallel to the arm so either the bumper has a curve or the tube welded into the bumper was not 90 degrees to the bumper top surface. I think the latter is correct. I will mill the arm mounting surface to correct this.
I’m liking the shape of the bumper more and more. I wasn’t pleased at first, but I think it is ok. If i had to quibble I would say the end caps are too thick. That’s Lily, one of our two dogs, looking very bored with what is going on.
Ok, time to explain the arm. I had some water jet off-cuts, 1/4″ 6061 aluminum, that had curved ends. And the ends matched the radius of the stainless disk welded to the shaft in the bumper. I cut the off-cuts to fit inside the arm and ground down the ends to extend the radius around. I then stacked and inserted into the arm (2″ box, 1/4″ wall, 6061 aluminum) and welded them up. Then I drilled 3 holes for 12mm cap head bolts and threaded 3 holes on the stainless disk to match. I’ll try and remember to get some pics of the end for the next update.
Now to determine where the upright should be positioned on the arm. I used and old bike wheel (25″ diameter) to help me decide. Now remember the bumper is sitting further out than its final position. So if I welded things up as shown, the upright would hit the hatch.
Figuring out the lateral position. Have to avoid the tail light.
And have to make sure there is clearance when arm swung out to the side. Too close here.
So moved the upright inboard about an inch.
Better clearance when swung out.
But still too close to hatch.
That means relocating the upright to the rear face of the arm. Not as tidy hand will mean some re-thinking of my latch/arm securing set up.
All for now, I really have to make the bumper mounts and do final welding of the trailer hitch sub assembly (which is hidden inside the bumper). That sub assembly will provide more support to the bumper – I’ll be screwing the aluminum down hard to it.
Vanagon – measuring axle runout
Apologies for the dearth of postings over the last month or so. I have been doing a little Vanagon work but nothing that was ready to blog about (I’m looking at you, Mr Bumper Project). This post is an effort to get back on track.
I made up a spare axle (rear) with cv joints and boots some time ago and carried it around in the van thinking it would be a talisman against breaking an axle or cv joint during one of our logging road trips. Additionally, I had made some end caps for the cv joints so the joint could be all greased up and ready to go. Good friend Simon envied the idea so I gave him the assembly as a Xmas gift.
I ad another spare axle so the other day I dug it out and started to make up another spare assembly. I stripped it down, degreased the shaft, and took off the old paint and rust. I put the shaft on the lathe, tailstock and centre supporting the far end, to make painting easier. Yeah, I know, pretty sloppy habit to paint something on the lathe. But I covered the lathe to protect against overspray, put the lathe in back gear and had the shaft rotating as I sprayed the paint.
As I was doing that I noticed that the shaft had a bit of runout, i.e. it looked a little bent. Today the paint was hard enough to allow me to measure just how much runout the shaft has.
Shaft was supported at each end by V-blocks and the dial indicator positioned roughly between. I rotated the shaft by hand and watched the dial indicator. About a 0.013″ runout.
I did the same at both ends, one end it was around 0.003″ and the other end about 0.002″.
To be sure, this was a very quick and dirty way of measuring the runout, and to tell you the truth I have no idea if this is an acceptable amount of bent-ish-ness.
Vanagon – syncro – more underbody protection, pretty well finished
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on November 20, 2013
Finally got the plate done and installed. I made a change to it since the last update. The length of 1/4″ 6061 aluminum I welded more or less vertically on the outboard edge of the plate was cut off. It didn’t do what I wanted it to do, that is straighten out the warps formed by welding up the individual pieces of the plate, and it made attaching to the frame rail very awkward.
I welded on 2 lengths of 3/16″ 6061 at an angle that would allow me to attach the outboard edge to the bottom of the frame rail. The process of welding those bits (and yes, 2 pieces as I was using scrap again) on took a lot of the warpage out of the plate. I used those 1/4-20 riv-nut type inserts in the small oval holes that are on the rail bottom. The forward hole was larger than the rest so in that spot I used a 1/4″ 5/16″ riv-nut set into a small bit of 1/4″ plate and fed that plate inside the frame and forward to the hole. The bottom of the frame rail also has large oval openings with I guess you would call flanged edges. Those flanges stop the protection plate from pulling up tight to the frame rail, sits off about 1/8″.
A small cut out at the front edge to clear the front diff mount.
Still wavy, warpy. But much less than before.
It did take a little persuasion to get it lined up and in place. The curve of the plate seems to make it much more rigid than if it were flat.
Not a great job, but not awful. I need to get some of those lower profile machine screws that I used on the propshaft plate and replace the regular phillips head screws.
Now my coolant lines, heater lines, shift linkage, are all well protected against flying rocks, branches, slush etc.
Update 22/11/2013:
So I’m a little slow on the uptake. I only realized after I installed the side plate that I could eliminate those stainless connector pieces and weld both plates together. So I pulled the plates late yesterday afternoon and welded them together. I was worried about distortion during welding and subsequent mis-alignment of the mounting holes. So I tack welded the plates together with the connectors still in place.
Here are the plates held together by the connectors.
I made small tacks on the inside and larger tacks like this on the outside of the joint, in about 5 places.
I then stitched the inside, when I say stitched I mean 3″ welds on about 10 places on the seam. Then back to the outside and stitched in the same way, but only about 5 stitches. Then I welded in between the stitches on the outside. I filled the screw holes on the propshaft plate and opened up the screw holes on the side (curved) plate for drainage. I actually opened them up more than is show in this pic.
I was surprised and happy that the holes still lined up and the combined plates screwed right up with no bother
Yeah, still no drain holes on the propshaft protection section of the assembly. I haven’t decided what kind of holes to put in.
Vanagon – syncro – more underbody protection – another update
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on November 9, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 update on battery fitment. Not liking the way the thing sits under the van I though it might fit under the back seat. But no, the seat latch gets in the way of it sitting against the vertical face of the bench. Can’t see any other spot in the van for the bugger, looks like I will be mounting it under the van. Up front in the stock spare tire location would be workable. Ifonly I had a tire carrier on the rear, you know, attached to the bumper. But no, not me, I diddle around and haven’t finished the damned rear bumper build that is going to have a tire carrier on it!
I thought I would have buttoned up this damned project the past week, but work interfered and I was thrown an 128 lb curve ball.
A Northstar, NSB M12-210, 210 Ahr AGM battery. Yeah, sure, it is more battery than I need, but it was a gift and it is much, much bigger than Simon’s battery. The latter is the important thing.
It is approximately 13″ high, so on its side it might fit between the frame rail and the outer body box section. This space is occupied on the driver’s side by the propane tank (in a Westy), and is free and clear on the passenger’s side. The passenger’s side is where I have been buggering around with the protection plate and so before I finish attaching that I thought I should make sure the battery would fit.
What I’m trying to say is I didn’t want to add any fasteners that would interfere with fitting the battery. But… before I do the test fitting I had to replace the J pipe that connects the collector to the cat on the stock WBX exhaust. Yeah, yeah, I should have replaced it when I did the heads back in May/June. But I thought I could get the old one to work. No dice, the flares on both ends of the pipe had eroded away so much that the pipe was not making a seal. You can see the difference in this pic.
That done, back to the battery fitting. Well not quite, I got distracted by my old Simplicity walk behind, 2 wheeled tractor. Got mucking around with that and I think I might post something about it soon. Ok, now to the battery.
It is a tight fit. It sticks down about 1.5″ and I agree with you, it makes me think twice about this location. Sure, I would make a good stout plate to go underneath the battery, and come up the exposed side, but I dunno…
The almost forgotten protection plate is being held onto the frame rail by some 1/4-20 bolts for now. I’m going to make some more tabs, probably weld on, to secure it better. But I have to make up my mind about the battery location (I think it might fit under the rear seat) and if i do decide on an under the van position I have make sure the securing tabs for the plate won’t interfere with things.
Vanagon – syncro – more underbody protection update
Posted by albell in metal working, metalworking, syncro, vanagon, vanagon engine swaps on November 4, 2013
I’m trying to keep the momentum going, really I am. Over the last couple of days I got some work done on the side plate. The last post had me with the welded up, wavy and bent,skid plate. Now i had to mount it under the van. I didn’t think long and hard, but this is what I came up with.
A bit of 1″ X 0.25″ stainless flat bar cut up into 5 pieces, nominally 2″ long. Very nominally as I used a Zip disk in an angle grinder and I am notoriously bad at cutting a straight line.
As each bit was more or less 2″ i marked out hole locations from one end. I used a blue Sharpie as lay-out dye. You can barely see the scratches of location the hole positions.
I feel presumptuous to lecture on how to do this kind of thing. I really am a ham fisted metal worker. I say that with no false modesty because I have seen what real metal workers can do. But allow me to go through the steps I take and maybe some of you might find something I say useful.
I scratched out the hole locations using my digital callipers. Then I centre punched on location using a cheap optical centre punch purchased from Lee Valley, direct link here. Then I like to make the punch mark a little larger with a regular punch. After that I drill pilot holes using a small bit, something less than 1/8″. The reason for that is the thin bit catches and hangs on to the punch mark better than a larger sized bit. I have the workpiece on the drill press table held in my hand. Allows the workpiece to move around a bit to get aligned. With a small bit there is little chance the drill will spin the workpiece around and gash your hand. With the size of holes I am drilling here, the next drilling step is the full sized hole. I’m drilling for a 1/4″X20 tapped hole and so I would be using a #7 drill bit (or something like 5.01mm). I put the part in a drill press vice for this drilling.
Now I try, in this blog at least, to avoid absolutes. But I am telling you now something you should heed. When drilling in stainless steel your drill bits have to be sharp and of good quality. Really, any other bits are just the road to perdition. What ever country of origin you like your bits to be from, buy the best you can. I think at one time nothing could beat US made made twist drill bits. But there are excellent bits from Australia, the UK, and Europe. Price is the discriminating factor, buy the most expensive you can find. It really is false economy to buy cheap bits (unless all you drill is wood).
A good resource for basic and advanced metalworking is Mrpete222 on YouTube, here is the link. And learn to sharpen your bits, might take some time, and god knows it took a good time for me to learn, but you can freehand sharpen bit larger than 1/8″ with good results. When drilling stainless a sharp bit is mandatory. If you see the bit is not cutting stop immediately and change out bits or sharpen. I use cutting oil, the sulphated kind, when machining stainless, I’d say it was mandatory to use cutting oil unless your only going through thin stock and then heading right over to the TIG welder and don’t want any contaminants.
Enough of the lecture, back to the project. The holes drilled then on to tapping. Same advice for taps, buy the best you can, cheaper taps work ok in soft metal, but in stainless and the like you need the best quality.
Poor pic of tap starting in hole.
Then i held the parts in the vice and wailed on them with hammer to make a slight bend.
The threaded stainless tabs connect the new plate to the existing propshaft plate. I had to make the holes in both plates elongated to give me wiggle room to get things in place. And remember the new plate is curved and needed a bit of persuasion to get in place. I snapped this pic tonight, in the dark. The vertical part of the plate has not been fixed to the frame rail, it needs to be pushed up about an inch. but believe it or not, as is, it is quite secure and stiff.
I’ll get better pics tomorrow when i fix the outboard side to the frame rail.
Vanagon – more underbody protection
Posted by albell in metalworking, syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on October 31, 2013
What am I doing screwing around with another project when I have a couple of unfinished ones on my plate? Well it’s just that yesterday’s propshaft protection plate build got me all hot and bothered to add at least one extension to the side. To the right hand side of the propshaft, between the skid rail and the frame rail, the coolant lines, the heater lines, and most importantly the shift linkage are exposed. You all know, but I’ll repeat, the shift linkage is protected by a tube on 16″ syncros, regular syncros with the bad road package, and ’91 (maybe ’90 too?) syncros in North America at least. The tube protects a couple of the joints in the linkage and I think that is a very good thing. In the winter I have had slush and ice build up on the linkage such that the van becomes hard to shift. Rather than try and reproduce the stock protection tube I thought that a plate over that entire section would be the ticket.
I needed a bit of stock roughly 11″ X 53″. I couldn’t find anything in the scrap pile that size so I had to do it the long way. Got these cut offs, bent, 3/16″ 5052 aluminum.
I cut them up.
Then tacked them together. I welded a length of 1/4″ X 2″ 6061 along one side, welded out full on the concave side, then back gouged the convex side.
Welded out those grooves and ground the welds flush. The welded up assembly, and no points for guessing this, did take a curve. I laid a little beatin’ on it but accepted the wow. I think I can make it work for me and pull it out somewhat in the install. Is that my thumb in shot? I was using the iPad to take the pics, left my point and shoot camera at home.
Clamped it in place on the van, to see what’s what. BTW, my welding was shit today. I had a lot of oxides bubbling up, never did get in my groove. Maybe it was the old stock I was using or maybe I was not on the ball.
The outboard edge will sit a little higher on the frame rail, I just couldn’t clamp it that way. You know, the curves in the beast makes it stiffer than you’d expect. Now I have to make a few tabs to mount the inside edge to the propshaft protection plate, and I’ll bolt the outside vertical section to the frame rail (there are holes already in the frame that I can use).
Vanagon – egg on my face – hall sender connector
I swear, yes swear, that the connector looked fine when I pulled the engine for the head job at the beginning of this summer. Yes, I knew it had no boot, but I am sure the wires did not look like this.
I had a spare connector, from an inline 4 Digifant engine, and I spliced it on. Butt connectors, dielectric grease, heat shrink, you know the drill.
And to boot, the “new” connector has a boot!
Vanagon – wow! a coil cooler
Posted by albell in metal working, syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on October 30, 2013
File this under “D” for daft.
Once, after driving the van for a while on one of our summer trips, I had occasion (don’t ask) to feel the ignition coil. Crikey it was hot. Do coils normally run as hot as the dickens? Oh this can’t be good, something has to be done. Some action needs to be taken.
The result of this feverish worry.
Yeah, I agree, get a life 🙂
Vanagon – propshaft skid plate of sorts
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon mods on October 30, 2013
Edit: I wrote that I used 10-24 insets and screws. I made a mistake, they are actually 1/4-20.
It seems like an age since I have posted on the blog, I guess I’ve been in the doldrums. No major van projects completed, the bumper build has been on a bit of a hiatus as I don’t want to be doing the steel fabrication part (trailer hitch) at work when we are doing aluminum work. But i have to get back on that horse soon or else I never will. I have done a little work on it however, I cut off the end caps and slimmed them down some. A trial fit of the originals showed that they were a bit clunky.
Even being in the doldrums, or maybe it was the horse latitudes, I have managed to do a couple of little things and this post is about something I did this afternoon. I had a bit of 3/16″ aluminum plate (5052 alloy) earmarked for propshaft protection. Oh I know what you are thinking, that’s not beefy enough is it? Perhaps not, if you want rock crawling type protection. But I’m just looking for something to protect the propshaft from flying sticks and stones and the occasional scrape over gravel.
I cut the plate to size (and by the way the two propshaft rails are not parallel, they taper in about 3/4″ towards the front) so that there would be a 3/4″ projection on each side of the stock skid rails. I want that projection so that I can attach (later) some more plate to enclose the space between the skid rails and the frame rails. I drilled 1/8″ pilot holes, 10 places, locations for machine screws to attach the plate to the skid rails.
Then I clamped the plate to the rails and drilled 1/8″ holes in the rails using the previously drilled holes as a guide.
I removed the plate then enlarged the 1/8″ holes to accept threaded inserts. I bought this cheap insert tool at Princess Auto, back in the hazy days of summer. It came with a selection of inserts. I’m using the 10-24 inserts here. You screw the insert onto a threaded boss on the tool, insert the insert (!) into the hole and squeeze the handle. A couple of broken blood vessels later the insert is secured. Tool with insert in hole and an insert itself shown in this pic.
How it looks after insertion.
After a few more ruptured blood vessels all the inserts were installed. Oh I did spray some high zinc paint in the drilled holes before insertion of the inserts. Originally I had thought of counter sunk machine screws to attach the plate, but you know how it is with counter sunk screws, you have to get things perfectly aligned. I opted instead for these rather nice large (almost a truss head) headed stainless screws.
I have a notion to weld some braces on the back side of the plate just to beef it up a bit more. But then again I’m only using 10-24 1/4-20 screws to hold the darned thing on.
I’m happy with the result, and happy to be back blogging about the arcane things I do for fun.
Trip – Klanawa river again
Update: fixed access problem with the alder road video.
Last Friday we took off for a 4 day exploration of the Klanawa watershed here on Vancouver Island. Was a repeat of a trip we made last year, same people, same dogs, same van. One difference was we did not stop at Nitinat Falls, we drove on and camped west of Blue Lake, about 2.5 km from the ocean.
Long exposure makes the fire look larger than it really was.
And the next morning, weather was good. We were hoping the weather was going to be good – after a month of dry warm weather the rain had started a week before. Pretty heavy rain at times and we hoped that the forecast of a fair weekend was accurate. The recent rain had filled the rivers, we noticed that as we drove in. Our plan for this day, Saturday, was to head down to the Klanawa river and we were a little concerned that the river might be to high to wade across.
Got down through the alder choked trail around noon. There is bear poop everywhere, the bears are gorging on red huckleberries and salal berries.
Down at the river and it is higher than on last year’s trip.
My son had convinced me that we should bring along a little inflatable dinghy. That was a good idea.
You might think it would be foolhardy to mess around in these little rapids with no PFDs or helmets. Maybe you’d be right. But the guys had fun.
(I stupidly left the GoPro back in the van, movie shot with the little Canon Powershot with a dirty lens)
We managed to wade across the river to get to an area that is old growth, untouched, river bottom forest. The trees in this spot are Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Red Cedar, and a few Bigleaf Maples. More info here. Impressive place, the pics do not come anywhere close to how it looks in reality.
Then back to the van and up the alder choked road which was a bit less choked after the van’s trip down it. For some reason I had a heck of a time processing this vid shot with the GoPro. Must have been slightly corrupted or something. The vid is sped up, but try selecting the 720p option to reduce the blockiness.
This kind of road is one of the reasons I don’t worry too much about the condition of the van’s paint.
All four of us agreed that we wanted this evening’s campsite to have a view, and we got one.
We’re looking down the edge of the island, Washington State way in the distance.
For a little perspective, here is the picture of previous night’s spot and arrow points to approximate location of viewpoint campsite. Why didn’t we try for the higher ground? Access was more difficult and would have taken more time. We really wanted to set up camp before the sun disappeared so we could enjoy the spot.
We wanted to explore more around Blue Lake, we had this idea we could get closer to it. So that is what we did the next day. No luck getting closer than about 300 metres to the lake. We did run into a bear when we were walking an old road – the dogs took off after it. When we caught up to them they were barking at the bear from the edge of the road. The bear was against a tree. Got the dogs under control and tried to get a video of the bear. Not very exciting vid, par for the course for this type of thing.
We camped that night at the little gem of a lake that we camped at last year. I’m not saying the name.
Next day was our last day. We stopped for lunch and afternoon exploring at a spot further upstream on the Klanawa. It is the nature of these short freestone west coast rivers – they go from a stream to a full grown river in a short distance. And you can judge by the gravel bars just how much the water level changes.
We did some exploring, sans camera, doh! Big Sitka spruce, Western Hemlock and moss covered Bigleaf Maple. At one point, the boys went off upstream with the dogs and ran into a large male elk. Much excitement ensued, but thankfully no creature was hurt.
The westy table mod was used throughout this trip. We came up with a name for it- “Swelegent”
It was one of the best trips ever.
vanagon – bumper build – starting the hitch
Posted by albell in metal working, metalworking, syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on August 27, 2013
I’ll blame good friend Simon for the recent dearth of posts, you might understand why at the end of this post. The bumper is pretty well roughed out and before I can finish the aluminum I need to make a trailer hitch to fit behind. I do have one of those tow loop mounted hitches but I want something stronger.
So the idea is a receiver style hitch with a crossmember behind the bumper welded to the stock bumper mounts (which I will modify and extend further I the frame rails), and the receiver part of the hitch coming through the lower part of the bumper. I’m not being very clear, sorry, it all make sense as I post my progress.
And what progress have I made? I’m going to pad out the little work I have done.
Well, here is my existing hitch and the bits for the 2″ receiver.
I cut the bits off.
I want to have this bar sit as close to the inside rear face of the bumper as possible, To do that I need to make a couple of bends. Pretty sloppy work cutting “V” notches to make a 7 degree bend, I could have done better. Oh I did cut the tube in half before I did the notches.
Up it bends, leaving a big gap, grrr.
Get the idea of what I am aiming for?
It might come as a surprise that I can’t stick weld very well. The MIG welder is set up for aluminum and stainless and very likely will never see steel. So until my welding teacher comes by to give me some stick welding pointers I TIG tacked the bends and other parts onto the tube. I used some rod to help me jump the gap with my tacks.
All tacked up and ready to start trial fitting to van and new bumper. Oh, btw, I will add some reinforcing plates between the receiver and the main tube.
So why is Simon partly responsible for me not posting more often? He gave me an Ipad mini. Yup, what a guy. I’ve been playing with navigation/map apps and I think I might post some stuff on that. Also started mocking up a mount to install it in the van. It’s a start, by no mean the final thing, but gives me some ideas.
Thanks again M&S.
Trip – quick look at Loup Creek
Just back from a short overnight trip. Our goal was to see if we could find a camping spot on Loup Creek (a tributary of the Gordon River). I’ll leave it up to the reader to discover just exactly where we ended up.
July set records here for the lack of rain (it did shower for a couple of days at the end of the month) and we were worried that gates would be closed on some logging roads. Turned out many gates were closed and that stopped us from exploring some other spots before we got to Loup Creek. We drove up some fairly steep and rough roads, but at the end of them there was neither a good view or a creek or lake. For some reason I didn’t take any pics of the steep roads, I guess I was distracted by the search and the road conditions. I have to say that the little mods to add some more ground clearance on the van really paid off. No more scraping the spare tire carrier or the trailer hitch when going over the ditches cut across some of the minor logging roads. Those roads can be fairly steep (+20%) and the road surface is loose sharp rock.
The only pic I took of this part of the trip (not steep and not rough)
So off we went northwest alongside the Gordon until we found the old, abandoned Forest Service road. Moderately steep climb, loose rock, few over hanging alders. Toodled along until we came to the first bridge over the Loup. This was a bridge built to last – large concrete abutments, 2 giant I-beams spanning, and precast concrete sections as deck. Deck about 30 feet above creek. Other side of the bridge was pretty well alder choked, and the roads led to nowhere interesting so we decided to continue upstream to find the second bridge. There was this sign just up the road.
Then there was a steep section and the surface of the road was made up of larger than normal loose rock. At this point the van started to miss and buck, just the same thing it did at the end of our last trip. We barely made it up the steep section, van bouncing, tires slipping. Not that much fun with a ditch on one side and a very steep drop down to Loup Creek on the other side. We had to drive on a kilometre or so before we could find a level spot to stop. I won’t go into any thoughts about why the van was missing and bucking in this post, but we let the engine cool down (it was a hot day and we had been working it hard) to see if that made any difference. Well it didn’t and even thought I really wanted to go on to find the second bridge we decided to turn back and camp at the first bridge.
It really wasn’t a bad place to camp. Secluded, beside a creek, bugs not *that* bad.
So here I am sitting and thinking. Am I marvelling at how good the classic Thule Combibox 250 looks on the van? (that’s for you Phil Z.). Am I enjoying using the table mod? Am I enjoying a drink and some potato chips? Or am I wondering why the van engine is acting up?
All of the above 🙂
As the creek runs pretty well north – south at this section, and as the sun was in the west, I couldn’t get very good pics of the creek from the bridge. I did get a pic of the van lit up by all the led strips later that evening, for Jerome.
About 11 am next morning, sun made it down into the creek. Still hard to get a shot, the river rocks reflect a lot of light
Looking upstream (north).
And downstream.
We packed some food and drink and clambered down to the creek and walked up stream a short distance. My wife and Jake found the way down.
There are some small trout, and perhaps salmon fry?
You might be able to make out the bridge.
And about 6pm we packed up and drove home. Van bucking came and went, no rhyme or reason. Ah well, that’s something to figure out later. It didn’t spoil a nice little trip.
Vanagon – kludgy roof rack rail
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on July 27, 2013
A while back I made some artificial rain gutter things to quickly get some roof racks on the van so I could carry my son’s kayaks. They worked even if they were ugly. But then this year I found a good deal on an old school Thule ski box. I think it is a Combibox 250, you know the kind, seemed to be on every Volvo station wagon around here during the ’80’s.
Anyhoo, the distance between the mounting points on is greater than the distance between the mounting points in my quick and dirty solution done for the kayaks. I didn’t want to drill more holes in the pop top to add another pair of mounting brackets so I came up with an another kludge.
I took some 1/4″ thick, 2″ deep 6061 aluminum flat and drilled some holes in it (for looks mostly). The rear end of the strip attaches to the top two bolts of the pop top hinge. Up front I screwed up and drilled holes in the centre line of the strip which did not line up with the holes in thhe pop top that I drilled for the old bracket.
So I drilled a bit of 1/2″ aluminum plate, and pressed in some nuts (M6). The plates then screw into the old holes and the pressed in nuts take bolts from the strip. I beveled the lower edge of the strip to fit the hooked arm of the roof rack. The strip got some rattle can bedliner as a finish.
I have some spacer blocks to go between the front end of the strip and the pop top. Just to prevent branches from snagging. But i ran out of double sided tape so they are not installed yet.
Well it works, no points for aesthetics, but it works.
Now I need to make a ladder to access the damn box!
Trip – stopped by snow but fun anyway
This past weekend my wife and I headed off for a quick overnight trip. We didn’t plan a destination, but ended up, again, in the area north of Port Renfrew. Snow level was much higher than it was back in January, and we managed to get up Grierson main and we had hopes of getting to the viewpoint we visited last May.
But the combo of thick crusty snow and a steep final approach thwarted us.
No really, it was steep.
We really wanted to get to the end of this spur, but no way. Just above that steep section the road flattens out.
What it looked like last May.
And this time.
And the spur we wanted to camp at, as it was last May.
And this time.
Our fire pit was still there.
So we went back down the road about 200 metres.
Wasn’t too bad, sunshine and a nice view.
Walked down the road a ways and looked at the desolation after logging.
If you look closely you might be able to see the yellow shoots of Skunk Cabbage poking up at edge of the water.
Pretty little oasis amongst the logging.
One of our dogs, loves the snow.
Cape Flattery, Olympic Peninsula, Wash. State.
We had the Go-Westy rainfly up, and the Westy pop top insulation blanket installed inside. We also brought along the Olympian Plat Cat heater (not used when sleeping). The set up worked very well, and with the pop top vent cracked overnight, we have very little condensation on the windows in the morning. Must have had some sort of chimney effect going.
A little bit of snow falling next morning.
Breakfast, and the tell-tale sign that someone in the family is a Molecular Biologist.
The old “Excelsior” at work again.
The dogs taking up space.
Then off we drove to explore more of the area. The weather cleared a little, if it wasn’t for the wind it could almost be described as mild.
Nice little lake, second growth forest.
Edinburgh Mt. in the background, steep logging in the foreground.
And wouldn’t you know it, we even checked out the Camper Creek area campsite that we spent so much time at last summer.
Ooh, kindling!
Notice how the mirrors take a bit of a lashing on these trips?
Came back home via Gordon River and Cowichan Lake (a round trip we have done many times before). Saw signs of kayakers along the Gordon – crazy folk who paddle down the canyons.
Vanagon – syncro front outer cv joint protection plate
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on February 16, 2013
The story goes that VW introduced these protectors in 1990 for 14″ syncros with the rough road package, and on all 16″ syncros. Here is the English language bulletin.
I wanted some. I worry about logging road debris catching on the front outer cv boot, and that boot is a pain to replace. You can buy them, one good source is Burley Motorsports, but seeing as there are plans for them on the internetubes I thought I’s have a go at making a set.
Here are the pdf’s of the plans I used: CV_protectors_bracket, CV_protectors_Rubber. I scrounged all of the material used, so my version differs slightly from the plans. First up are the metal parts. I had some scrap 14 gage stainless which is not quite as thick as speccified ( 1.6 mm vs 2.0 mm), and I glued a print-out of the plans to the metal and cut to shape.
I bent the parts in a vise (that accounts for the less than crisp bends), then I made a hack-job of the tig welding. I need new glasses, well that is my current excuse for my poor welding.
Next was the hunt for rubber. You’d think it would be easy to find some 1/4″ thick, fabric reinforced conveyor belting, wouldn’t you? I spent an hour looking then I used some 1/4″ rubber sheeting that my neighbour had. It is not the best stuff, it is like thin horse stall matting. You know, crumbled tires pressed together. I can always replace the rubber when I find the belting. Ok, enough mumbling, I cut the rubber and I cut some 1/8″ 6061 aluminum for the backing strip. I used 1/4″ – 20 ss carriage bolts (the square part of the bolt shank will dig into a 5/16″ hole drilled in the backing plate) and nylock nuts to hold all the parts together. Well all but one, I ran out of nylocks and had to use a split washer and plain nut.
Okee-dokee, out to the van and installation. It is a bit of a pain, you have to remove the brake calipers and rotor to get to the backing plate. The same old but important safety warnings apply – van securely supported etc.
Two phillips headed screws holds the splash to the steering upright (or bearing housing, as VW calls it). They were fekkin tight, I doubt they had ever been removed. I had to use an impact driver, but even so I still managed to bugger up the screw heads a tad. I have said this before about my van, despite the ugly areas of body rust I have, all the fastenings (despite how tight they have been) are not rusted in.
Once the splash plate is off the cv protector goes on and the splash plate reattached.
Another view.
Brake rotor back on and the splash plate is now closer to the brake rotor by an amount equal to the thickness of the protection plate, but they do not touch.
The other side went a lot quicker.
And with the van down on the ground.
I got more satisfaction from this little mod than seems normal. I don’t know why this should be. Perhaps because I do worry about catching a branch up there when I’m on logging roads. Or maybe it is because the project went without any real screw ups.
Addendum/clarifications:
Vanagon – home made muffler installed
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on February 4, 2013
Finally got the muffler installed. Some pics of components are in this post. Since then I made some rough mounting brackets, copy of the stock brackets, but made from aluminum (3/8″ plate) with some 1/2″ studs welded onto the sides (for T-bolt clamps). I didn’t take any pics of the brackets, perhaps I forgot on purpose as my TIG welds were overheated and sloppy (I’m learning, slowly).
Here are the brackets before final shaping, mounted to a spare engine mount.
I copied the stock mounting brackets bolt holes and approximately the curves but adjusted to fit the 6″ diameter muffler. I also copied the relief curve on the bottom side of the brackets, allowance for the transverse connector exhaust pipe. A 90 degree SS elbow and a home made tail pipe was TIG welded on.
Install was pretty easy, brackets bolted right up to the engine carrier, ok, I admit, I didn’t get the muffler quite level. Once installed I realized I could have made thing a little differently to tuck the muffler up a bit higher. But all in all I’m pleased with how it hangs.
You can make out how the T-bolt clamps hang around the welded studs on the bracket. You might also make out the section of SS flex on the transverse exhaust pipe – a quick and dirty repair after cracking that pipe on a logging road trip.
And I made a little video to give you an idea of the sound. It is not as quiet as a stock muffler, but neither is it loud. Does have a throaty note.
I’ve always wanted (for some obscure reason) to make a muffler. And now I have, and by gum it worked. It’s the little things that get me through the day 🙂
Vanagon – Syncro propshaft angle measurements… again
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon on January 13, 2013
Warning: what follows is a very long-winded and tedious description of my further exploration of propshaft U-joint angles. Experienced and knowledgable readers, please, cut me some slack and refrain from face palming at my antics.
Being quite adept at re-inventing the wheel, I’m now re-inventing measuring propshaft angles. If you are a regular reader of this blog, and man it feels good to write that (evidence of my amusement with small things), you know I have spent some time exploring the flange angles of the transmission and front differential (my previous attempts, one, two, three.). I came cold to this subject, never having to deal with anything like this before, and Bentley has nothing to say about the matter. So perhaps I could be forgiven for my naive approach to the matter. Perhaps, but really no, I should have cut through the crap right away.
A little background
The transmission is connected to the front differential via a propshaft. On each end of the propshaft are U-joints (single cardan joints) that allow a little bit of misalignment between and movement of the transmission and the front differential. Now the problem with U-joints is that they do not transfer the rotational motion of the propshaft perfectly smoothly, ie. without pulsation, especially when the U-joint angles are greater than 3 or 4 degrees and also if the angles differ from each other more than 1 degree (more on those angles later). Most of you know this, and also about the correct phasing of the the U-joints on each end of the shaft, but I do recommend having a look at this document from Spicer that explains all:
Spicer info on driveshaft install, angles, vibrations, etc. (pdf).
And this Spicer document on measuring angles succinctly describes using Spicer’s angle finder doodad.
Spicer info on measuring angles
One subject not really covered well in that document is compound angles. That is when there is mis-alignment is in 2 planes, ie horizontal and vertical. I’ll go into that at the end of this post.
Over time I became dissatisfied with my last attempt at measuring flange angles with my laser tool. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a pretty neat way of measuring the flange angles and it measures both in vertical and horizontal planes. But you need to have the propshaft removed.
After some email exchanges with J. Slider, I reconsidered the protractor/angle finder method of measuring flange angles. I wasn’t very happy with the results I got when I tried this method a while back. I was unable to get consistent results measuring the flange angles with my propshaft removed. It came down to getting the electronic angle finder positioned correctly on the transmission and front differential flanges. But Jon’s argument for the angle finder method convinced me to try again.
I was sidetracked by an idea of a false propshaft jig thing. I reasoned that if I could make a jig that mimicked the propshaft but was constructed so that flange angles could be more easily measured it would be a good thing. I even thought of making a false propshaft with fixed, *ideal* flange angles that I could use to adjust the transmission and front diff. mounts. I still think this would be a worthwhile tool to make for those folk who install propshafts in vanagons.
– This flurry of innovative thinking (ha!) coincided with me removing my propshaft and having it checked for balance by Royce at Island Torque Converter & Driveshaft. Royce is THE guy to take your propshaft to for repair/balancing. He does good work, prices are very reasonable, and he is willing to work with you in solving driveline issues. Local (Vancouver Island) phone # is 250 388 4248 –
Royce and I talked about the syncro propshaft and about making a shaft with Rzeppa type CV joints. That discussion is another story but when I was Googling around with the idea of Rzeppa joints on shaft I came across a document describing the install of a marine, Rzeppa jointed, short prop shaft. In that document (you can see it here) the use of jigs that I described above is detailed. Foiled again. Is it always to be thus? Are all my ideas “a day late and a dollar short”?
I took my propshaft to Royce around the 15th of December and got it back the next day. But with one thing and another I did not get the shaft re-installed in the van until the 9th of January. During that time, when I was not working, eating, drinking, Xmas shopping, sleeping, putting up then taking down Xmas trees, etc, etc, I was mulling over the propshaft jig idea.
Too much mulling, not enough action. So I ended up going back to the protractor/angle finder on the installed propshaft method. You’ve seen this before, and it is described in the Spicer document, I just added a very minor twist.
Home-made tool
I mentioned at the beginning how I was never happy with the measuring propshaft angles with the angle finder because I could not get a good surface to place the gauge on. So I decided to do what others have done and use the ends of the U-joint bearing cup as the reference surface. That meant making a little tool.
A bit of scrap steel from some failed project.
Turned it down and machined a recess in one end to accept a rare earth magnet.
Fits in fine, held in firmly by magnetism and Locktite.
The magnet face is recessed from the rim of the tool by a gnat’s crotchet.
Here is my other propshaft, to be used for trial fitting. Big note here, ideally the circlip should be removed so that the tool can lie directly on bearing cup. But I reasoned that these circlips would be lying parallel to the bearing cups. Any dirt or damage to the circlips would screw things up.
Tool on the joint.
Angle finder on tool, held by magnets on side of angle finder. It looks like the angle finder is resting on flange, but it is not.
Angle finder on end of tool. I was not sure at this time which way would be better.
A bit of channel to provide a base to measure the propshaft angle.
Trying out the tool
Ok then, out to the van. First I had to install the re-balanced shaft (not the red one pictured above). I jacked up one side of van and supported on blocks. Wheels off the ground.
Small aside, I finally replaced the 1/2″ bolt used to hold the jack adapter onto the jack with a gated pin thing.
After the propshaft was installed (please note, I do insist on loosening the 3 bolts that go through the rubber mounts on the front diff. when I am installing/removing the shaft) I took the van off the blocks, released the parking brake and chocks, then crawled under to have a go at measuring angles. First I moved the van back and forth so that a bearing cup on the U-joint yoke that is attached to the flange was pointing directly down. I gave it a bit of a scrub then attached the tool.
See how the angle finder is a little askew on the shaft of the tool? This affects the angle measurement. It was hard to get the angle finder aligned true to the shaft when I was scrooched up under the van. Would have been much easier if the van was on a lift. But I persisted, went on to measure the propshaft angle.
And see how I do not have the angle finder aligned along the channel? It is askew too, and this affect the readinghh. And then on to the front diff. end of shaft.
Repeated the procedure a few times.
A bit better alignment on channel.
Again on the front.
And on the rear.
But I was not happy with the procedure, I was not sure of confident of the accuracy of the readings.
V-block modification and engine carrier adjustment
I tried a nice little Starrett V-block on the tool. I thought it might help me to keep the angle finder aligned along the long axis of the tool.
I was running out of afternoon and I wanted to try something more. I knew from previous measuring that the transmission flange pointed down more than the front diff flange. I wanted to reduce that angle, but I also new that there really is no easy way to do that. The transmission mounts towards the front of the transmission are really awkward to get at and fiddle with (especially when you don’t have a lift), so that leaves the engine mounts at the rear. But the arrangement/relative placements of the mounts means that it takes a fair bit of movement at the engine mount to effect a little movement at the transmission flange. Perhaps these data from R. Jones illustrates this (front diff. data included).
“4) I measured the distance between the flanges and the
mounting points, tranny and front diff, and worked the ratios.
Using washers, here’s what one can do:
a) raise front mount, front diff, lower flange.
1 unit raising gets 0.83 units lowering the flange.
b) raise rear mounts, front diff, raise flange.
1 unit raising gets 1.2 units at the flange.
This is the wrong way however.
c) lower tranny at front mounts, lowering flange.
1 unit at mount gets 1.25 units at flange.
Again, this is the wrong direction.
d) lower engine at carrier attachment to frame,
raise flange. 1 unit at engine gets 0.25 units
at flange. Hardly worth it.”
I wanted to try “d”. So I supported the engine carrier (“moustache bar”) with a jack and removed the 2 bolts, each side, that hold the bar to the van frame. I had no time to record flange angles vs. amount of lowering of rear carrier, and I decided to try 5/16″ as the distance lowered. Handy number, I had some 5/16″ aluminum plate scrap on hand. On the top side of the flange on the van body that the carrier mounts to there is a steel backing plate. I used that plate to lay out the bolts holes in the aluminum spacer.
Holes drilled.
And spacer inserted. I used longer bolts. Damn mudflap mounting strut interfered.
Maybe you can tell, the light was fading fast. I got back under and measured angles, using the V-block innovation.
Transmission flange angle.
Front diff. flange angle.
By now it was dark and I was cold. I left things as they as far as I got to: rear engine mount dropped by 5/16″.
It now occurs to me that I have not mentioned another little thing I did (a year ago) to resolve flange angle difference – I removed the topmost metal washers of the two rearmost mounts of the front diff. This did drop the flange of the front diff. a bit – I reasoned back then, that if I could not reduce the flange angle of the transmission the I would increase the flange angle of the front diff. I hoped that matching the flange angles did more to reduce vibrations than trying to get both flange angles below 4 degrees. I’ll clear this up at the end, I know this story is getting very muddy right now.
Road test
Okee dokee, I drove the van for the next couple of days. Felt pretty smooth, my 50-60 kph minor vibe has gone. I do have the very, very slightest vibration especially when accelerating, at around 40-45 kph. But I noticed this when the propshaft was removed so I am discounting that it has anything to do with the shaft.
I was pretty happy with this. I’d say that the re-balanced shaft is sweet.
Further modification to the tool
But I still wanted to measure the flange angles with somewhat more confidence. I cut a chunk of 1.5″ X 0.25″ hot rolled flat stock, drilled a hole, and screwed it (1/4 “- 20) to the end of the little tool. I checked it for square, was good. Now I had a better reference surface to place the angle finder against, and I could line up the long axis of the plate with the propshaft.
Here it is on the transmission end of the shaft. It is much easier now to use the angle finder to determine that the tool is pointing straight down, and the plate can be lined up fore and aft with the propshaft. Those two things are important in measuring the true angle of the flange. Remember, the tool is on the bearing cup in the flange yoke of the U-joint. That means it projects the angle that the transmission flange is making with respect to the propshaft.
One way of doing it. The angle finder was inline with the bottom plate of the tool. This was not a recorded measurement, I had not adjusted propshaft so that tool is pointing straight down.
I found that having the angle finder in this position was the best. The magnets in the angle finder held it to the vertical shaft, but still allowed it to be aligned to the bottom plate.
A another measurement (using the channel) of the propshaft angle.
And a good measurement of the front diff flange angle.
Results
Ok, I was getting more consistent measurements, now to look at some of the data. Remember, we are measuring relative angles here, not absolute angles. For example, the propshaft could be pointing down towards the front at 1.30 degrees, or at 2.85 degrees depending (apart from measuring errors) on the level of the van (ie just exactly where it was parked in my driveway). The sketch below summarizes my results. The top cartoon represents the situation right after I installed the propshaft. Let’s go over it, bit by bit.
The transmission flange (and the transmission and engine) is pointing down towards the front of the van at 5.5o degrees. The propshaft is also pointing down in the same direction, but only at 1.30 degrees. If we subtract the propshaft angle from the transmission flange angle we will find that U-joint operating angle, and it is 4.20 degrees. Remember: if the angles are in the same direction then subtract the smaller angle from the larger angle to find the joint operating angle.
At the other end the front diff. is pointing down towards the rear of the vehicle, in the opposite direction of the propshaft angle. I added a negative sign to that measurement to remind me of its different direction. So in this situation the absolute value of the front diff. measured angle, -2.50 degrees, is added to the propshaft angle of 1.30 degrees. Result is a 3.80 degree joint operating angle. Remember: if the angles are in opposite directions then add the absolute values of the two angles to find the joint operating angle.
As clumsy as those two paragraphs are, I hope you get the idea of how the operating angles are arrived at. Of course with an electronic angle finder I could have zeroed on the propshaft angle and read the working angles directly. But I thought it would be clearer to me and to you if I did it explicitly.
Now the measurements after I installed the 5/16″ (8 mm) shim back at the engine carrier.
And finally, the same set up but this time more accurately measured (bottom plate added to my home-made tool).
I am fairly confident in this last measurement. Even if it is not perfect, I am sure the two flange angles are within 0.2 degrees of each other, though I do wish that the operating angles were less.
Compound angles
At the beginning of this post I said I was going to discuss compound angles, so here we go. The above sketches show angles in a vertical plane, but you can imagine that the same thing could be going on if you could look down from above. The transmission and front diff. could be laterally mis-aligned. What is interesting, is the combined effect of both lateral and vertical misalignment. The Aquadrive document I linked to previously has some good information on compound angles.
The accurate formula for calculating the compound angle is:
Lovely stuff eh? Shall we do an example? (and please God, let me do the math correctly).
Let’s say we have a vertical flange angle (ie the kind we have been measuring ) of 4.1 degrees. And let’s say the lateral angle is 1.0 degrees. First step is to find the tangents of those angles.
tan 4.1 = 0.0716808913
tan 1.0 = 0.0174550649
we square both of these numbers and add them together:
(0.0716808913)^2 + (0.0174550649)^2
= 0.0051381502 + 3.0467929066e-4
= 0.0054428295
then we take the square root of that number and we get:
0.0737755345
now we take the arctan (inverse tangent) of that number to find the answer, our compound angle:
compound angle = arctan (0.0737755345)
compound angle = 4.22 degrees
(Another example – 4 degree vertical angle and a 2 degree lateral angle, then the effective compound angle would be 4.47 degrees)
Not much of a difference, 4.22 degree compound angle compared to 4.10 degree vertical angle. So should we worry about lateral misalignment? Well, in the stock set up there is some room to laterally adjust both the transmission and the front diff. The old trick of leaving the front diff. mount bolts a little loose after installing the propshaft, then driving the van for a few miles before tightening those bolts, probably serves to reduce or eliminate lateral mis-alignment. But with vans that have non-stock engines/engine carriers installed, then there is a very good chance of having the engine and transmission laterally askew enough for that trick not to be enough.
Conclusions:
- no matter what you read or hear, in the vanagon syncro the propshaft operating angles should be 4 degrees or less (but not zero degrees). Ideally they should be less than 3 degrees. Unfortunately there is no easy way to adjust the front diff and transmission vertical flange angles to achieve this. On vans with engine conversions and modified engine carriers, careful attention MUST be paid to the transmission angle.
- U-joint operating angles should be the same or within 0.2 degrees of each other.
- measuring the angles can be done fairly accurately with home-made tools. A smart phone with an inclinometer app could be used instead of my little electronic angle finder. But some sort of adapter between the joint and the phone must be used to ensure accurate and consistent readings.
- lateral misalignment of the transmission and resulting compound angles are very important to check and deal with if a non-stock engine has been installed. Remember that the angles combine and result in an effective angle greater than any one of the individual angles.
- Your man on Vancouver Island for propshaft balancing is Royce at Island Torque Converter & Driveshaft. Phone # 250 388 4248
Vanagon – my auxiliary battery wiring
Posted by albell in syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on January 6, 2013
I only had a little time to do any Vanagon stuff over the break, a couple of things were dealt with, I’ll post it up over the next couple of days.
First up is my auxiliary battery install. It has been working fine for the last couple of years, but recently I have noticed (with the help of the Doc Wattson, blog post here) a couple of disturbing things. First one is, and I have not figured this out, is a peak amp reading of 20 – 30 Amps. I never see it happening, even with mucking around with stereo settings while I look at meter. And I don’t have a circuit in my aux. battery set up with a fuse larger than 20 A. I do suspect the stereo amplifier, but it must be a very brief transient spike in current draw.
The second thing is a chronically undercharged aux battery. I suspected, and suspicions confirmed by the Doc Wattson, that the Blue Seas ACR (a now discontinued model, CL series BatteryLink, p/n 7600) I use to switch between the main/starting battery and the aux battery was not combining the batteries when it should have been. The ACR ( automatic charging relay) does have indicator lights on it, but the unit lives under the driver’s seat.
The ACR has provision for wiring in a remote located LED that lights up when the ACR combines both batteries. So I set about adding that and at the same time I would go over connections and ACR settings. I suppose a picture to give you the lay of the land would be a good idea. I admit, it is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Working around clockwise the stereo amp is on upper left (old Alphasonik that came with van), then auxiliary fuse panel, to the right and up is the Doc Wattson meter, below that is the 31 A/hr AGM auxiliary battery, Schumacher trickle charger, then finally the Blue Seas ACR.
Yeah, clear as mud. Fine then, I’ll make a quick sketch.
Edit: link to how I connected to main fuse panel S3 circuit from aux. fuse panel.
Under the cover of the auxiliary fuse panel. Its is from an early 2000’s Golf/New Beetle and was installed right by the battery. Useful little thing, I’ve had this one for about 11 years (used it on my old ’82 westy).
Ok, back to the ACR trouble shooting. I ran a pair of wires up to the dash, and mounted a blue LED indicator light in a rather temporary way under the lip of the dash. The light is from Princess Auto, made to fit a 1/2″ hole and has resistor built in, much easier to buy than to fiddle around making one up – ha, I must be getting old. Disregard switch and knob to the left of the light, has nothing to do with this job.
Testing connections, oh, brighter than I imagined. Looks like it is going to provide some mood lighting.
Ok, so I have the indicator light installed which will let me know when the ACR has combined the starting and the auxiliary batteries, and I have gone over wiring connections and ACR settings. First time I drove the van all went well, the LED came on after about a minute (this is as it should). The second time I drove the van the light did not come on, the ACR did not combine the batteries. What is going on? I moved the driver’s seat and looked at the ACR – well blow me down – the over voltage light was on.
I should explain, the ACR has 2 user adjustable settings. One is the voltage at which the batteries combine or un-combine. I have it set at 12.5 V and that means when the ACR senses that the voltage on the main (starting) battery drops below 12.5 V it will un-combine the batteries. And when the voltage measured on the main battery is above 12.5 V, than the batteries are combined (there is a time delay built in to weed out voltage spikes).
The second user adjustable parameter is the over voltage setting. The manual states:
“The OVERVOLTAGE potentiometer is used to adjust the voltage at which the CL-Series BatteryLinkTM ACR switch opens in response to high voltage. This is a protection feature when one battery needs to be charged at a lower voltage than the other. It also protects the second battery bank in the event of an overvoltage condition produced by the alternator.”
The van is still running and I glance over at the Doc Wattson meter and notice that it reads 14.94 V. So that’s it, the ACR has un-combined the batteries because of a too-high alternator voltage. I had the over voltage set to 14.85 V, and that seemed fine as I had adjusted my alternator to 14.5 V (yes, I have an adjustable reg. on the alternator), but now the alternator was putting out 14.94 V. It is strange, I didn’t see that high a voltage any time before.
I re-adjusted the voltage reg back down to 14.5, and the over voltage light went off and the batteries were combined.
Edit: Dennis H. advised me to re-adjust the voltage reg down to a max of 14.2 V. I think I will follow his advice.
So was this the ironic reason my aux battery was being undercharged – alternator voltage too high? I have to admit that I’m not 100% confident in the adjustable volt reg. I put in the alternator. I had one flake out on me on my old ’82, and now this one might be showing signs of “wear”
Finally (thank god, what a long winded and dull post), I still have that old Halon fire extinguisher I had in the ’82.
Vanagon – Syncro propshaft bushing – 6 month update
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon on December 15, 2012
Today, after the latest storm blew over and rain stopped, I got under the van and pulled the propshaft. “Again?” I hear you say, yes again. This time prompted by a few things:
1. I still have the slightest bit of propshaft vibe around 55-60 kph
2: J. Slider and I have been having an email correspondence discussing measuring flange angles on shaft. I want to re-do my measurements after the exchange of ideas we had.
3. I have a jig in mind to set flange angles.
So I pulled the bugger and it will be taken to driveline guy to check balance. So seeing as I have it off, I thought I’d check how the internal Delrin bushings I made back in June are holding up (the original posts describing how I made them, part one and part two). Well, the fit of the shaft in the bushings is as tight as it was when first installed. I tried to get some pics, in one of them, you can make out the split bushing still intact at the end of the bore. I have to admit that I worried that the split bushing wouldn’t last, I’m pleased that the Delrin held up.
Vanagon – muffler update
Posted by albell in metal working, metalworking, syncro, vanagon, vanagon mods on December 13, 2012
I got the final end cap welded on today, not the neatest tig weld due to my poor cutting of that end of the can. No filler was used in the weld, just flowing the parent material. I gave the muffler a quick once over with a cup wire brush on the angle grinder. I think this is as far as I am going with the finish, I don’t see myself holding the thing up to the buffing wheel for a couple of hours.
The pics show the muffler sitting on some aluminum off cuts ( I have access to a lot of interesting shapes in various thicknesses of aluminum, remnants from water jet cutting of work parts). These scrap bits had curves to match the radius of the muffler. The scrap is clamped to a spare engine mount casting so I can see how I need to move things and what metal to remove. I’m leaning towards the aluminum supports (yes David, there will be electrolysis where the ss and Al touch:)) with some T-bolt ss straps holding the muffler tight.
Vanagon – Fluid Film on underbody pics
I just took quick snaps but you get the idea. The entire underbody looks wet, and in some places you can see a beige coloured thicker layer of Fluid Film where i hesitated with the application. I did take some time to spray into the hollow frame members.
Vanagon – Fluid Film doesn’t taste that bad
I bought a gallon of Fluid Film, that lanolin based rust preventative, a few weeks ago and I am just in from spraying the underbody of the van with the stuff. I had a bit of difficulty with the applicator I used, it did not spray the as thickly as I’d would have liked. But I think the multiple passes did the job ok. Well I have to confess, I found another applicator during the day and did a re-spray just before dark. I’ll take pics of the results when there is more light, but meanwhile here are pics of the can and the first applicator used. BTW, the consistency of the Fluid Film is a tad thicker than good quality latex paint. And yes, despite my best intentions, I ended up with the stuff everywhere. But is does make your hands baby bottom soft.
Have a look at this, a drop of Fluid Film (one of many around the workshop now) that fell onto the top of the new jerry can. I consider the grinding dust to be evidence of my hard work, not of sloppy housekeeping. Note the creeping wet spot.
Vanagon – bent syncro bash plate
Or syncro bash plate bent, or bash plate syncro bent. I was under the van the other day patching up my rotten exhaust for the umpteenth time and I noticed this part of the stock skid rail/bash plate bent. Worryingly close to the engine and I don’t recall hitting the rear end *that* hard this summer.
Vanagon – front brake fandango
Posted by albell in syncro, syncro specific repairs, vanagon on September 19, 2012
I hope the story that follows will help someone be less stupid than I have been the last 2 days. No, that doesn’t sound right, no one would have been as dim as me notwithstanding.
Story starts with passengers complaining of squeaks from front left brake/wheel. Further development was noticing a clunk/rattle when going downhill on washboard/rough roads this last weekend. Noise seemed to be affected by brake application. Signs say examine front end and brakes. So I do that, could not find any loose or broken suspension components but did find that my brake pads were getting thin, and one pad on pass. side had a broken spring. So here is where I should have sat down and thought things through more. New pads are a good idea, but what about new rotors too? I did measure old rotors, they were within wear spec, so ADD boy here rushes out and buys some expensive Pagid pads and leaves rotors alone.
Quite a difference in thickness between old and new eh? Hint: that should have triggered a response in my brain other than “gee, look at the thickness difference”. Oh and another oversight, I mentioned that I measured the old rotor thickness, doing that I did note the ridges on the rotor (peripheral and internal) where the pads do not touch. I didn’t think that would be an issue, ha!
So I popped in the new pads. Bentley describes the procedure well, but did I do a careful reading? No, I didn’t. I removed both bolts from the caliper slider and removed slider to install pads. That is NOT how to do it. There are bold warnings not to re-use those slider bolts and the new pads came with just 2 new bolts (with pre-applied thread locker). I was puzzled by this, I thought I was shorted 2 bolts. So I used loctite and re-used the old bolts. This was both good and bad as you will see later. I finished pad replacement Monday evening and did not take van for test drive, yet another dumb-assed mistake. Next morning I had an important errand and as I drove out I noticed a rubbing/clicking noise from front right wheel. Bloody hell, drove back and popped that wheel to look. Rushed examination, pulled pads, noticed scoring on inside pad where it was hitting the un-worn area of rotor. Aha I thought, and beveled that part of pad a tad with stationary belt sander. Noise still there. Borrowed car and rushed out. I had the chance to drop by Autospiel that day and talk to Russ about this noise. I explained situation, he asked if I had checked that the rim, or balancing weights were not hitting caliper, I said no, I believed it was the pad on the un-worn part of rotor. Why don’t I listen and think? I decided to by a couple of new Brembo rotors from him (39 bucks a piece), and at same time, noticed them on the counter, a set of radius arm bushings (mine are old and worn out, I’ll post about replacement later, nothing to do with brake job). Got back home and set about rotor replacement.
This time, doing it right. First remove the pads. Undo lower bolt of caliper slider, in this pic I have 13 mm wrench on bolt and crescent wrench on flat of slider rod.
With that bolt out, the caliper body swings up and the pads exposed. Pull out pads.
Now those aneurism inducing 22 mm bolts (2) that hold caliper body to suspension upright. They are on tight (200 ft-lbs) and not much access for the lift deprived driveway “mechanic”. Shoot, forgot to state the usual warnings, ie support van SECURELY on jack stand/good wooden blocks during this procedure. You are really putting a lot of grunt into the van when loosening and tightening those bolts.
Ok, caliper off and hanging on breaker bar stuck in suspension. The slider part came off and is sitting to the right in this picture.
That hex socket bolt need to be removed, 5 or 6 mm? can’t recall.
Then the rotor should slide off the hub. Well, it started to but then hung up on something. At this point I really was not sure of anything, I consulted Bentley again, and again, finally used a puller.
I think it was this rust that was making the rotor difficult. Look at the state of it! What in the name of all that is holy was I thinking when I first decided to leave the rotors alone?
What it looks like with rotor off.
New and old.
New rotor on. I must say that it did give me a warm fuzzy feeling to look at it.
Caliper body re-installed and 22 mm bolts torqued back up to, ugghh, 200 ft-lbs. Pads installed, caliper slider swing back down into position and new bolt used in bottom position. You may find that you have to press in the brake piston to get the caliper to fit over new pads. I used a C-clamp to push piston in.
Other side done, wheels back on, tools put away, brow wiped. Ok, test drive…. rub, rub, rub. Son of a gun (or words to that effect), the noise is still there. Noise goes away when braking, that is a clue. On passenger side I had installed a no-name (drivers side is a Girling) caliper a couple of years ago when I broke the nipples off both calipers. I cannot recall why I got a Girling for one side and a no-name for the other side, but that is the way it is. I looked closely at the caliper. Oh yeah, scoring. So it seems that the added thickness of the new pads pushes the slider outboard enough to hit the rim (stock 14″ steelies yeah, yeah, I know I need bigger wheels. It is on my to do list)
And one of the curious little tits on the rim that is hitting.
Allright! Time to do some real work. Blending disc.
Grinding disc.
Caliper modified.
And yes, happy ending. Rubbing noise gone, and as a bonus, the brakes work.
Summary time:
– read the manual closely, don’t be a dolt like me and skim.
– replace rotors if replacing pads. Don’t screw around, the rotors are so inexpensive it is not worth having them turned. I suppose if you liked experimenting with different pads rotor replacement would get expensive. I have read that for good pad break in, the rotors (if not new or turned) should be scuffed to remove any old pad compound. But after all I went through, I’d recommend just buying new rotors and be done with it.
– be careful with those 22 mm bolts holding caliper on upright. The buggers are awkward to get full force on, don’t let wrench slip and for god’s sake support van well.
– think before and during doing this job. Please don’t be like me.
– Russ told me that the Pagid pads I chose are excellent, the only downside is that they make more dust than the stock pads. That might be a concern if you had alloy wheels.
shooftie 