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Ur a bus


1982gl4
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Started in on my newest project today, well thats not entirely true. I've had this 72 VW Westfalia for the last couple years, and it has actually been very good. I had to do quite a bit to it initially to get it up and going, new shocks, tune the carbs, fuel lines, tune the carbs, redo the front seats, tune the carbs, adjust valves all the usual plugs, points, wire, and tune the carbs. Overall its been a pretty dependable summer driver. The end of last season it started to develop a miss at idle, and I think the #3 valve seat is on its way out. So I was left with a few different options rebuild the anemic 1.7 gex boat anchor that came with this thing, rebuild the stock 1.7 I have in a box (either of these options leave me with fiddling with carburetors for the rest of my life) Or swap it. I decided to do the 2.2 as I already have done an ej swap on my brat, although the alh diesel swap was tempting... Here are some pics over the last couple of years of some of the work I have done to it.  

 

First day

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First mod! 
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Reupholstered the seats
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Weekend of Stowe car show (the beetle I restored a while back, my friends mom purchased it)
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This summer I lifted it slightly, and added koni adjustables to it
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I had the curtains redone in the factory plaid. 
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One of my camping adventures this summer
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And today, I dug into my 95 legacy parts car, no loss here, completely rusted out. It has a lot of miles, but if the engine ever has issues I'll simply swap in another, but it sounds great, and I drove it home. I'll be resealing it, and putting a new timing belt on along with coolant tubes before its swapped into the bus. I need to order an adapter plate this, along with a heavy duty clutch, and the engine can be put in place, and I'll start working on the harness here soon as well. 
 
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Cool stuff! I'm digging the plaid and the BFGs!

 

Just helped a friend of mine tear apart an engine out of a 71 beetle (belongs to a friend of his) and found a hole through the exhaust valve on number 3, and the crown of the piston melted and blown down across the rings on number 4!

Both heads cracked.

 

He's also working on a 79 bus engine to drop into his own 73 Super beetle. I tried to talk him into an EJ swap for that one, but he wanted to keep it VW.

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Thanks! I had to have the plaid, its super close to the original curtains that came in it, and the bfg's are a high enough load range for this, plus they look killer. My plans for it were to keep it looking mostly original, but make it far more useable for camping. I really like working on the air-cooled engines (#3 always seems to have the issues...), and I love owning them, but I don't want to rely on one for  actual transportation, a fun car I drive to work or on the weekends sure, but not for a trip. I really wanted to keep this one original, and was against swapping it for the first year or so, but ultimately I decided I want this to be something I can get in and drive long distances and not think about having to pull the engine to replace the heads, or mess around with carbs all the time.

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This is an Awesome Project, I like the idea. Thumbup.jpg

 

My family had a VolksWagen like that, but was an '80 made in Brazil, which gave us a Lot of troubles on the Engine, my Father swapped in another VW engine just to sell the bus; but that bus had small windows all around, even curved glass on the rear corners... I wish I knew about the Subaru engine swap on the late 1980's decade... 

 

Kind Regards.

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Sounds like you had a 14 window bay, the Brazilian busses are so cool. I'm jealous of how much later you were able to get them down there. The air-cooled engines always seem to have issues, everyone that has owned one of these has the "I could remove the engine in half an hour story" The ea's used to be a more popular swap, but with the power, and availability of the ej they have phased out.

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Oh its no problem it certainly pertains to the thread, thanks for the info! If I could I would import one of those in a second, but they don't meet emissions, or crash safety here. I'll be running two radiators in mine in the engine bay, I think its the best looking way to do it, and the most functional for what I do with it. I don't want to put one underneath to limit ground clearance, and cause potential leaks while venturing off road. 

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I would do that, but our busses don't have the provisions for a front radiator. I would want it to look factory, like the one above and with out importing a half cut I have no good way of doing it. Plus I have a spare tire carrier that I haven't installed yet that will be going back on the front. 

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That's an awesome split window! Yeah I'm over on the samba a lot been doing a lot of research about the swap. Also working on a 64 beetle, and have two other bays that are up for sale, I'm not going to have time to do what I want with them. 

Edited by 1982gl4
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  • 2 weeks later...

I have done some more work to this over the last week. Started stripping the harness down, after about 4 hours I nearly have it finished, the third one goes a lot quicker. I'm leaving the cruise control for now as I would love to be able to use it. Most of my swap parts came in, adaptor, flywheel, and high torque starter. I ordered new timing covers, coolant tubes, and all the timing components for the engine. I still need to purchase a low profile oil pan, and I'm going to upgrade the motor mounts while I have it, I have the group N ones in my legacy and love them, thinking the bus is going to get the same treatment. I also still need to measure and order radiators. I hear early sirocco ones are the way to go, but we will see. Today I took the bus on its last drive as an air cooled. It was very cold out, and inside of the bus, but it started and made the 18 mile journey to my parents where I pulled the engine, and that is as far as I have gotten right now. 

 
Loom covering stripped 
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mostly stripped down. Still have a few things left. 
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Last pic with the air cooled engine still installed, today was very dry, so It didn't suck up salt on the drive.
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I need to find a way to use this muffler, shouldn't be too hard as I have access to a pipe bender, just have to come up with some flanges and make a header that will work, with both this, and have a collector so the 02 sensor is reading from all 4
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  • 3 months later...

This is pretty close to running now, should be able to finish up the harness and give it a test fire tomorrow I'm hoping. After that its spending time at work so I can finish the cooling system, exhaust, and build an engine x member. 

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very nice build :)

 

i see here are more volkswagen boxer guys :D i had four vanagons too from 79 to 87, one was a syncro (vw 4x4) and 4 bugs my last aircooled was a 68 cal looker...

 

nice engine swap.. i´m looking forward, what will happen next B)

 

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my 68 cal looker

 

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My 87 vanagon syncro

Edited by dielinde
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Nice beetle, and I love the syncros, they are getting pretty hard to find. Anyway I got this up and running yesterday, only for a few seconds as the mass air flow meter fell out of the intake and it stalled. But it does start, now I can take it to work and finish up the plumbing. Here are some photos from over the last few weeks.

 

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  • 2 months later...

I need to update this thread bad, been busy in life, and haven't really had time to post much on here, This is now on the road, i have a bunch of photos i'll have to post at some point over the next couple of days, Over all its is so much more usable, way more power and reliability, although it could use a taller set of gears, its a bit short on the highway. 

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i love my vdubs ive got a 73 campmobile and a 71 convertable bug both were very reliable when i daily drove them there parked now for no other reason other than i just stoped driving them the weber swap stops the endless duel carb adjusting but the fuel economy sucks big time round ones i want to ej swap both of them some day bit for now there just sittin

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here are some photos I have been meaning to post, just haven't had the time. Its running pretty well. I've had a few issues so far. It overheated once on me on a long hill on the interstate. I think i need to move the exhaust to get more of the heat out of the engine bay. Also have a slight fuel smell, I think the filler neck is leaking ever so slightly. It also needs a taller gear set... 

 
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Cut up the subaru temp gauge and mounted it in the bus dash vent. 
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I also had a new windshield installed, and ran into some rust issues.... Fixed it the night before the shop next door to us put one in.
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exhaust set up, I cut up a legacy header, and rewarded it to fit the bus. 
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Also won a couple awards at a local vw show a few weeks ago. 
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Last night and tonight I spent a good amount of time on this. Tonight I rotated the tires, and checked the front end, going to have to do some brakes soon... and ball joints as the boots are decaying. Last night I tracked down the fuel leak, one of the factory vent lines near the tank had dry rotted and started to leak. I had to removed both radiators to remove the fuel tank shield so I could get back there kind of a pain, but I bought a tubing roller and rolled all of the coolant tubes at the same time which I had been wanting to do so one won't pop off like it did on me last week... 

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