Hippy Prairiemobile II (Un-Breaking)

Hippy Prairie mobile II (repairs)

 

I have decided to add another page to this site.  This page is to document the repairs I have made to my 68 VW buss.  The Hippy Prairie mobile Page will be updated soon I promise. 

So a little re-cap about what I have done so far. 

When I first bought the bus I stripped the interior down to mostly bare metal.  Painted and re-decorated, built furniture, etc..  What I didn’t cover on my Hippy Prairie mobile Page are all the interruptions to otherwise faithful service.  During the restoration a number of interruptions occurred that necessitated emergency web store visits to California Import Parts Ltd. 

The ignition switch. 

In a seemingly random fashion the buss would not start when the key was turned.  However the bus would start just fine if you used the screwdriver method.  This is where you lay under the bus and short the power lead to the starter solenoid with a screwdriver.  Anyone with an old VW is familiar with this way of starting an engine.  So I replaced the starter switch.  It worked just fine for about a week.  Then the symptom returned and back I was under the bus with a screwdriver.  I did some looking around on the web and in the book “How to keep you VW alive” and found that sometimes the wire gets old and warn and needs to be replaced and or a relay installed right next to the starter.  Since I am kind of a geek, and have lots of powerful 12 v relays lying around the shop, I went that route and installed a relay to replace my screwdriver.  Worked like a charm for a while.  Then I found that the cheap ass key switch I bought stopped working.  So I installed a button on the dash board.  Now it works just fine.  Kind of strange, but that’s ok, it makes it even more difficult to steal.

 Brake hoses. 

That is documented here in a post I call Braking Allen.  So now I have nice new stainless steel shrouded brake hoses for both rear tires.  Adjusting brakes on a bus is not as bad as on other cars I have owned.  Still sucks.

Clutch time

I was on my way to pick up my son from school when I went to shift into third, the clutch peddle went to the floor and didn’t come back up.  So with some skill and a lot of luck I managed to turn around and drive home with out stopping, in second gear.  The clutch cable broke at the pivot joint where it attaches to the pedal.  It took over an hour to realize that I can’t get my big fingers into the tiny space where the attachment to the pedal is made.  It another five minutes for me to figure out how to disconnect the pedal.  I used some pliers, washers, bolt, and sweat and managed to make a repair that I hoped would last a few days until I could get a new cable.  I went online to order the new cable and what I found was that I own a bus on the cusp.  The buss I own is a 1968, the same year that they changed to the bay window style.  So on to the CIP1 website I had two choices of clutch cables.  One was 3116mm long and the other was 3200mm long.  I crawled under the bus and tried to measure the distance with out pulling the cable out (I still had to drive the bus) and found that the distance was 10’ 5”.  Converted to metric it came out to be 3175mm.  So I bought both cables, and a nut and pin, just to make sure that I wouldn’t be missing any parts.  

 

When the parts arrived it was time to delve into the project, the fun part is getting the old cable out.  First I tried simply taking the nut off the transmission side and pulling the cable.  It stopped at a tube with an s-curve.  I spend about an hour under the bus with a flash light, reading glasses and a mini screwdriver trying to figure out how to disconnect the damn tube.  For some reason this is not covered in the Volkswagen bible.  I found that it simply required force to pop the tube out of its mountings, straighten it out and pull the cable out.  Installing the new cable only took three tries.  I adjusted the tension and drove it around the block to make sure it was working properly.  Yahoo its good to go.

The great fire is documented here 

After replacing almost the entire electrical system around the engine, fuel hoses, filter, and associated connectors I thought I was done.  Nope, it seems that heat does wonderful things to springs.  So while driving to work a week later I found that the engine seemed to idle way to fast.  I looked in the back and found that the spring that returns the throttle when you let off the gas peddle wasn’t quite as springy as it should be.  So thanks to keeping a Leatherman handy at all times I was able to shorten the spring enough last me until I can find a replacement.     

To be continued