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”

So I’ve bedazzled the interior of the van with a mile o’ LED strips, how much power do they draw?

Full brightness:

strip over kitchen area =  0.37 A, 4.7 W

strip over sliding door = 0.39 A, 4.8 W

strip over lower bunk = 0.30 A, 3.1 W

pop top perimeter strip = 1.43 A, 17.6 W

total = 2.47 A, 30.2 W

(funny, power values differ slightly than what I posted back in Feb when I installed the strips over the kitchen and the sliding door. Due to the different controllers?)

With the PWM brightness controllers, the power consumption does go down when lights are dimmed.

For comparison, the stock fluorescent light above the sink found in some westies draws 0.9 A and 8 W. I don’t know what the power draw is with the stock light and incandescent bulbs.

Update: David and I were discussing (in the comments) white LED spectrum. He sent me the pdf file about that subject that is buried somewhere in the Cree website.

LED_color_mixing

Long weekend here in Canada, and it was a warm one. Others might laugh, but out here on the wet coast hitting 30 C is warm. What better time to put in a different pop top canvas. The one I had on was from my old ’82 westy and it had seen better days. My wife had patched it up and replaced zippers but the time had come to give it some rest. Last summer I helped my friend do 2 canvas install and one of the old canvases was in pretty good shape. All it needed was a new bug screen in the window. My wife sewed in a no-see-um proof screen last year so it has been ready to go for a while. Why not put in a brand new canvas you ask? After all it is a pain in the ass to install the buggers. I am storing a brand new (Just Kampers brand) 3 window canvas for the aforemetioned friend, why not whip that in? First of all I think he would notice, secondly I like the way the stock VW canvas fits, the cotton material looks better than the Sunbrella versions inmy eyes (Sunbrella tops often drape like elephant legs). I guess the third reason is that the top was free.

As I was trashing the old canvas I went at it with a knife. Easier than dealing with the lower screws with canvas in place.

After hinges and lifting mechanisms disconnected, I rolled the top back on a long dowel laid across the van. Neighbour was called in to help lift the top onto a worktable beside van.

A couple of years ago when I painted the top, I installed what I thought at the time was a great idea, a fabric covered foam pad on the ceiling of the top. Well, this innovation was a dud, didn’t stay up, dropped, sagged, looked like ass. The idea of having a foam pad up there still appeals to me but I have to figure out a better way of attaching the foam (removable way). This time I went the expedient rote and bought some cheap indoor-outdoor carpet from Canadian Tire. It is very thin carpet, but it’s a not unpleasing texture and colour. The length is just enough to fit the top.

Just a matter of cutting to rough size and spray gluing it down, in stages, to the top. Went pretty well except towards the end (and I foolishly started at the rear) and the limited stretch of the material and my lack of skill created some wrinkles.

But if you squint, and have another drink, the wrinkles disappear.

In the little space between the canvas and the ceiling I ran a strip, on all four sides, of LED lights.

I swear I tested them before I installed them, honestly. Little things like this really pisses one off. The photograph of the lit strips doesn’t really do them justice. It does make a good light up there, and the LEDs are on a dimmer so it doesn’t need to look like the Blackpool Illuminations all the time. I’d show you the wiring and controller but I’m not really happy with the wire routing (down the lifting mechanism) and I want to tidy it up.

Not a bad job, perhaps a little loose at the back, but sides and front are tawt.

One more thing… a little thing to hold a flashlight.

I had 2 niggling problems after the head R&R. One was a pushrod tube oil leak. Seemed to be on the case end of #1 cylinder exhaust valve pushrod tube. I don’t know why it leaked, perhaps I did not expand that tube far enough when I installed the heads? Or maybe there was some dirt on the sealing surface. I did install the seals “dry”, no sealant. So to fix this leak I pulled off the rocker arm assembly on that head, pulled the pushrod from that tube, and removed the tube (large tinsnips – collapsed the rube enough for it to fall out.). I cleaned up one of the spring loaded pushrod tubes that were originally on this engine and installed it, this time with a smear of Hylomar Universal Blue non-setting sealant.

The other problem, and this one had me worried, was a scraping, rattling noise coming from the engine or transmission. You couldn’t hear it if you were standing back at the engine and revving it, it only started when the engine was warm and the van moving. Clutch in or out, or in neutral, when I was driving and revved the engine this noise was there.

I could get it to happen when parked, if I had the parking brake on hard and slowly let the clutch out in 1st gear.

It really sounded like something was rubbing against something else. My rational side was leaning towards an exhaust pipe problem, my irrational side was making up all kinds of horrible scenarios. Well, it turned out to be the forward exhaust pipe hitting the skid plate where the pipe crosses under the engine. I’m going to blame the exhaust maker, Dansk, for this. My skid plate was not bent or damaged in that area. I think the pipe was just not bent correctly. I took a heavy hammer to the skid plate and bashed out some clearance.

I have a confession to make. When I wired up that switch to shut off the door activated cabin lights it did not affect the additional lights (LED strips) I installed in the footwells and the step protector. Had me puzzled for a while, I thought I had connected those lights to the map light feed which I thought was the same feed that the other lights were on . The Bentley wiring diagrams didn’t help until I looked at the “after 1990” pages. Turns out that the map light gets its power from a different feed (but still protected by #3 fuse). So in order to be able to switch off those lights independently of the door switches I would either have to intercept the power feed or simply intercept the power going to #3 fuse.

This post describes how I feed the circuits on #3 fuse from my auxiliary battery. And in this post you can see how I subsequently powered the radio with its own feed. So all that was being powered on #3 fused circuit was the map light, my footlights, glove compartment light, and the cig. lighter. Easy to see that putting a switch on that circuit would do the trick. But wait you say, won’t you want to have the cig. lighter powered all the time so that you can plug in a USB charger or something? Well, yes, I suppose. I’ll see how it works out. I’m wanting to add more power points in the van, the cig. lighter may become redundant.

I went ahead and rewired the switch. Here is the updated schematic.

Addendum: cutting power to #3 fuse circuit also cuts power to the dash clock. I can live with that, I have plans to hard wire the dash cluster due to a very deteriorated instrument foil.