November 24, 2010

This short little Craftsman prybar is all the pry bar you need to pull the front torsion arms. You have to lever the torsion arm off its rest, and that is just a 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch. Once the prybar is wiggled under the arm a decent size hammer (2 pound or so) will tap the torsion arm past the rest. If you use a real long pry bar you preload the spring pack and make things more difficult to come apart.
This is a harbor freight ball joint press. They work great for separating tie rod joints without tearing the boots. I've used snapon's and mac's but this one set me back $20 bucks... I used it to start the ball joints, and finished them up with two pickle forks, though mine almost were not wide enough for the bus ball joints.

This is a german made shifter bushing. I installed it 2 years ago, and drove my bus 5,000 miles. It is already torn... It fit tighter than the red polyurethane empi piece, so I used it. I should have known better. German rubber isn't all that great any more.

A brick is the perfect height to hold up the transmission...

No rear axle hubs? I grew up with american cars, these Volkswagen are weird in the rear suspension. Beefy... but weird.

Since the bus will be following me to the beach, I decided to scrape loose all the old flaky undercoating. Found some rust above the outriggers, which is pretty common on these old bus. Pretty much directly in the line of fire for a rock.
This top is for sale... or for trade, I'd like $100 or a new drivers door. Mine is bent.

Pictures and stuff from August...

Heading back to do some more work this weekend... done a little here, and a little there since august but nothing real noteworthy.

I am going to swap out the inside of the beam of all the old grease and goo, and put the front suspension back together.

I will also be pulling the heads off the engine, and getting ready to put a new set of push rod tubes and seals in place, as she leaks a bit.

I did a bit of exploratory paint removal around the rear fenders to decide between welding in some new panels or hammering out and patching what is there. Further review this weekend on that!

Cheers,

Zach