64valiant

hi.



posted this in 2019 and its worth a re post

so oil seals done and oil cooler bolted back down.

time to clean up the intake and parts so i can assemble the engine. a sweet before hand
 

hit the tubes with a wire wheel and then a scotch bright from under the kitchen sink
 

 
and after
 

hit the intake manifold with a scotch bright as well to clean it up. ideally i wanted o get it vapor blasted but no one was open and i really wanted to get it back together so this will do for this time round.
 

gave the twin port intakes a quick scotch bright as well.
 

and after
 

started to get a little bit over the top with my cleaning and cleaned the external of the fuel pump and alternator and then started to assemble the engine.

had mentioned in a group chat that id like to hide the wires a bunch more and would like some spark plug wire holders to clean up. @flyingbrick said he had some anodized pink ones i could have, a quick flick of black paint and look good again.
 

now i could try make the carb fit. turns out it liked to touch the alternator so i had old mate @Geophy make me a 10mm spacer giving me that little bit of room i needed
 

it needed a bit of fine tuning to match my average tolerances but very good!!!!! fast turn around as per normal.
 

boom that on and looking good with the tolerances i needed.

now it was to make the linkage for the accelerator. had me thinking for a bit as its backwards to pulling how my previous one was.

again we chatted about it and @Kimjon had a few good ideas which prompted me to end up making the final design. 

i had shot to the vdub shoppe to grab some other parts and i got this which had a big rod in the middle of it for adjusting.
 

i didn't need it to adjust and a bunch shorter so i just welded it together and made it none adjustable.

next i needed something to leaver the top and bottom, i had previously cut down a spanner so i drilled three holes in that.
 

the accelerator cable will go in the bottom hole and the thingy i modified above will go on the top and will pivot on the center hole.

make it look something like this
 

as you can see i have also made a bracket off the bottom of the carb that has a small bolt with a couple of nuts on it so the cut down spanner can pivot on.

actually here is a video of it working.
 

the top image you can see I've put a spring on the back side to help with some resistance and making sure it pulls back to idle.

with this all done i chucked the engine back in and fired it up. 

and fuck me i was pissed. engine still making a fucken rattle!

so again i removed the fan belt,

yup the fan was un balanced and causing some racket, so guess what i did.
 

engine back apart.
 

i wasn't so happy to have this apart. but again a quick visit to the vdub shoppe and a new one purchased 
 

also found my gen strap was a bit sad and had a big crack in it. hit that with the welder and grinder
 

that fixed and time to chuck that back together
 

All done, I managed to paint the engine bay cleaned up a few other things including some loose wires.

here is what it looked like before hand
 

psych, only kidding!

thing was running like a bitch, so took it out to vdub shoppe to get paul to give me a hand tuning it. was pinking really bad and was maxing out the timing so i put a stronger spring rate in it.
 

now its running at around 30-32 degrees.

no more pinking and running really good, Paul also made it a it richer to try fix the down low stutter i was having.

ive also repaired the coil bracket.
 

welded that back together and painted it black, had already repaired the other side a while ago.

also swapped out my J pipes for some vintage speed steeped down pipes keeping the heat away from the heads.

here you can see the difference with them stepped down.
 

 

put them on and had an issue with the exhaust gasket been to large which must be designed for bigger ported heads.

you can see here these are stepped and the gasket wasn't sealing against the head.
 

so standard exhaust gasket fixed that issue.

welded up my bump stop brackets 
 

 

haven't put them in yet been to lazy. might try put them in next few weeks when i have some time off.

and my favorite mod/addition i have done is putting in the front bunk bed that goes over the front seats for Tayla for camping.
 

 

pretty happy with been able to steel that from a mate as he doesn't use that in his bus.

That's that for tonight's post. kept me occupied for a hour or so. 

if you want to yarn about it head on over to the chat fred.
 

 

Hi all.

long time no posts. Been some big adventures in George the bus since may.

1st little event out of town was to beach hop.

day one at Waihi.
 

supporting my new Westfalia sticker on the front of the pop top.

cooked myself a nice feed by myself later that night, good thing having everything on board with me.
 

Day two was at Thames and spent the day walking around with these two mates.
 

day three i had a flat tyre so just chilled out around town while waiting to get that repaired.
 

day four was main cruise and got no photos of the day but had some one snap a good side on.
 

and you can also now see the new sign writing on the side of the bus, something little to brake up the stripes a bit and give it a bit of retro style.

next trip was down to kapiti for vw nationals, first family trip with Tayla and @Mrs 64valiant
 

made a few stops on our way down, stopping in at Ohakune for the night and catching up with @oftensideways and his family and getting those token new zealand photos
 

didnt really have to many issues along the way other than just leaking gas from somewhere around the tank.
 

 

and from here ive just been using it as a daily.
 

 

 

 

 

other than eating a muffler in under 3 months it had been really good daily.

the muffler is a empi single quiet pack exhaust and better suited for a beetle but i just made it work for the bus. it was hanging down a bit and had slowly worn its way through the muffler.
 

so i brought a new one and cut the two of them up and modified them so i had a bit more clearance 

here in this image below you can see the new one dips down straight away from the flange. so i cut the old one up and done come calculations that it'd work if i made it straight
 

then i cut the good muffler off and rotated it a few degrees and tac welded that in its place
 

sent that home and then test fitted it again and adjusted the last tip on the end to be in a better position as well.
 

call that a success. doesn't scrape as bad going in and out of drive ways now.

next issue has been most recently and the engine hade been rattling a bit, didnt know where it was coming from. thought it was from the oil cooler tin wear.

so u wedged a peace of timber in there to stop it from rattling
 

well that didn't stop it from rattling now did it.

mentioned it to a mate while he was visiting from the gate and he said i should take the fan belt off and that would help eliminate the issue...

and yup it sounded great with out a fan belt on. so i thought i better fix it been it will be the fan and thats a pretty simple job.

so proceeded to strip the engine down
 

i got it to this stage and i tapped the tin wear.... she was rattling like no tomorrow.

ment the fins inside were not tac welded any more. 

soooo
 

yup, engine was required to be removed so i could take the shroud off.

once it was off i shot around to the vdub shoppes home and he welded them up for me.
 

now that the engine is completely out lets do some other things while we are here.

fuel tank removed and sender unit seal replaced, over flow lines replaces and hose clamped on and i also gave the earth wire a clean going from the sender to the body, check out how fast this needle moves now
 

now thats back in and running better than brand new time to carry on with the engine.

ive been wanting to upgrade the carb for a while give it a bit more power by allowing the engine to breath so while i was at the vdub shoppe i grabbed a few other things
 

 
i already had the manifold from buying a few od parts here and there so a 32/36 empi copy was a good option.

also replaced the oil seals on the oil cooler while the tin wear was apart.
 

plenty more to update you all on but that shull do it for today. when i log back on at 2300 i shall continue to update this thread with whats been going on.

hopefully you have enjoyed reading

Me and a mate entered on a tf125 in 2019 and man it was a hoot. Would definitely recommend a larger frame bike.

 

We did 49 laps in 3 hours and came 18th out of 35 that entered and 10th in the two stroke class.

 

There certainly are full time riders actually racing but we went for a bunch of fun and to see if we could finish the race. We were riding in jeans and a jersey where others had full motorx gear. (See bottom image for comparison)

 

I was most definitely sore for a few days after and so was my mate. 

 

 

 

Will definitely do it again for a lol when time allows.

yeah im heading down with @flyingbrick and @Zeubin

my bike is also in a current state

Gidday, me again with the crappy volkswagen.

so last time we left off that i got it out side.

WAHHOOOO
 

the next thing on the list was tires and to dial in the ride height.

i had messaged seedy al a we while back and asked what size tire he ran on the front and i run these also but this time i fired him a message to see what he was running on the back, and yikes it was a small tire compared to what i was running, which was a 205 70 14, i done some tire comparisons online to find something that would give me a smaller tire but nothing to small. I ended up with a 205 60 14. this is 22mm smaller in the side wall, allowing me to go a little lower with out having to ram the tire up into the guard.

but since going lower i now have a lot more toe in, now causing the tire to catch on the spring plate adjuster. so i got some shims from bunnings, yes bunnings stock shims for vw kombis (washers). 

what i needed to do is shim the spring plate out a bit from the arm to help correct the toe in being this is one solid arm with no adjustment. this required a bit of fucking around, with the 1st attempt having to much toe out. so i removed a shim (washer) and put it all back together and it seemed pretty much bang on. So i got my 3 meter straight edge and drew some lines to the front and back and chucked a tape measure over them. i had the wheel alignment 5mm toe in. this measurement was comparing 2 meters behind and 2 meters in front of the wheel. so i thought my 5mm was pretty bang on for something that is not really adjustable.

picture of the solid arm which i placed shims on to correct my toe in issue



   ^^^        this is the rear

i placed spacers where the arrow points 


With that all done i was able to actually drive it out side and down the road a couple of times.

was good to finally have it out side. I was using it a bit here and there to see if anything was an issue or i would need to adjust anything a bit more.

My biggest issue was i was not able to select gears that well, i was really starting to get pissed off about this. got talking to the guys at v-dub shoppe and they gave me a bush to replace in the gear linkage system close to the gear box.


fucked one

this little guy was toast, it was ment to be solid and have no movement but it had about one 8th of adjustment in it causing it to no select gears correctly.
 

replaced that and OMG what a change! while i was up there i got this image of it all done.
 

 

next up i proceeded to loose my drivers side hub cap about 4 times with in 10kms from home, found it each time which was a bonus.

next i needed to sort some shocks out for the front, while i was out at @Fuckedifiknows house i was talking about what i needed to do and he passed me these.
 

and then i got some shocks but i was going to need to do something as the shaft was to big for the bush on the shock. well we had @Kimjon pop in and take my vespa for a ride and he suggested he take them home and chuck it in the lathe and take a few mm off it to make things easier.
 

finished result!

next up i needed to tap the shock tower so these could go into them.
 

she was a tight squeeze but we made it work.
 

time to make some bump stops for the front and the rear. front ones go a little like this.
 

put some holes in them
 

make sure the holes line up
 

then you get them lazer cut and leave them for 2-3 months

back ones go a bit like this

remover rubber dog chew toy (way before we started this)
 

Get smaller rubber chew toy
 

make small rubber chew toy screw into metal thing thanks to @Geophy
 

make metal thing that rubber chew toy screws into be one with George the kombi 
 

glad i still know how to melt metal together not that well. 

so paint metal thing black and screw little chew toy in
 

also removed the big cup thing off the rear control arm for more clearance so i have a bit more travel before bump stop hits, this was only held on with 2 little tac welds so i feel like i done good here. now when it touches a good solid peace that wont fall apart.

done some other things to make clearance issues not an issue but i wont show those as i didn't take photos.......

but here is a photo of it allll done.
 

do you guys like the no hub caps?
 

or with the hub caps?

visited my mates out at the v-dub shoppe to show of and thank them heaps for all their help.
 

and our next adventure was to the bay of plenty to see some vdub people and inquire about getting the kombi checked over for a wof.

the bay of plenty was great to us.

chilled out with beth and tayla before visitng the wof place. re done my wheel bearing while i was at the wof place cause it was making some noise and then headed out to catch up with a vdub mate
 

brought some rego and went to take a comparison photo when i got back home.
 

thats it for now.

next time on adventures with the 64valiant family and George the kombi we head to beach hop and vw nationals.

stay tuned

Hi.

lets go back a few steps. I had just received my beam from Sean at kune re. I put a few layers of brunox on it and painted it black. and stashed it away. the next stage was to fill some holes and touch up some rusty peaces and i was waiting on a mate for a hand with this part but i ended up getting a bit impatient and smashing them out with the mig welder and cleaning them up with a grinder cause im clearly not a welder and while i was at it i went over a bunch of my old welding peaces and ground them up and cleaned them up. a few late nights and got the job done.

next up i wanted to cover the underneath with brunox and get a few layers in to convert the small amount of surface rust it had and set a good base.
 

with that done i went around and chucked a bunch of seem sealer on crap to clean it up and make sure aint no water getting passed my dodgy welding techniques. once that was done i dusted the under body with some underseal. end result was pretty much brand new.
 

next job was to get the beam in the bus, i needed to put the steering arm and the torsion arms on. this also meant i needed to shorten my leaves to now match the narrowed beam.

to have them narrowed i visited a mate who helped me cut them and he welded the ends together to make the leaves go into the ends easy.

here we cut.
 

here we weld
 

then i kinda rounded the edges to help it find its own way into the hole and re drilled my locating hole for my arms to bolt into.
 

next up the torsion and steering arm on the beam
 

next job to put the beam in, and jesus i am lucky to have a hoist. me and @flyingbrick lowered the kombi down over the beam and bit by bit we went up and down with a peace of wood between the beam and the ground as the fitment was so bang on with my underseal on it she was binding up going in, definitely should have used lube. but we got there in the end
 

beam in, the brakes went on the front, new rotors new bearings, new calipers, the only 2nd hand part here is the drop spindle and the retaining nut which was robbed of a bus rotting away.
 

this wasnt an easy job. i ended up using a strop and tightening the bottom arm and kinda fitting the drop spindle in the middle
 

now with that all done i installed my gear linkage. i replaced the bush at the front while it was out before i went and installed this
 

next up was the rear. for some reason i was doing this all to fast and didnt really get many photos of assembly. but the new stepped spring plates are a breeze.
 

actually after that i had to put the rear arms in, which i had replaced the bushes in quite some time ago and they were ready to go. so also installed them after the spring plates. next was the rear hub, i actually drilled my old one out to fit different bolts in for the horse shoes i tried to fit just before covid last year. so i got some second hand ones and headed to evans place to use his sand blaster and clean them up.

before: note the long noes pliers as circlip pliers 
 

during
 

after
 

and new bearings fot the rear hub section.
 

now with this all done i can put the axel in and put the rear brakes on and continue doing small jobs.
 

next up was new brakes lines, hard and soft ones all the way through the bus.
 

also my last slave cylinder was just left sitting out, kinda rusted and also never really worked correctly when installed on the bus. so got a new one of those but the cups where a different size than the last one, so got some small adapters to make it work 
 

also i had replaces both hand brake cables, accelerator cable, clutch cable and complete full axels and cv's some where along the line.

This where i ended up in the last post. made it on the ground and drove it for the 1st time in over a year.

Great success. 
 

one Greg for scale 

i just checked dates on this and i started grinding the under body and doing rust on the 12th of feb and she was on the ground out side on the 23rd of feb at 830pm.