bushbasher

for the back fenders I went to a yard with a sawzall and got them to hook me up with power, and I cut out the rear quarters of a mint wagon. The quarters are lying at my house now, ready for me to cut out the old ones and braize the new ones in (no mig, my arc blows holes) I'll just leave a lip around the area to be replaced so that the new fender overlaps, then I'll braize the new fenders together, and pound down the high spots. Then it gets a nice layer of bondo.

Well im thinking trashwagon 4x4 sounds good. 4x4ing will be the primary reason for this cars existance. ooh I just found a decal book with a library of words I can label switches with! lets see "DANGER", "EMERGENCY START" "PHASE SHIFT" "HIGH" "LOW", looky here ive got "flux" and "capacitor" hehe and "TIME CONTROL" This dash is definitely going to be trashwagon style. Maybe "TRASHWAGON 9: BACK TO THE FUTURE"

i think that he just means fooling with the air filter pod and hoses.

my car is going to be fairly trashwagon-like, its got rust, itll have a home made 4-6" lift, toy rims from the tire pile, 27-28" snow/mt/at tires, flat black paint with stripes of some color (orange?), with custom bumpers, and I'll be welding plate steel into the rockers and rear quarters, and sheetmetal flares. It'll also have dual cherry bomb exhaust As for the interior, it'll have a variety of switches for driving and rock lights, home theatre speakers and a cd deck (no amp and subs) In the back it will be fully outfitted for sleeping in (tinted windows) to give me a place to crash after parties or out camping. I'll do the doorpanel carpet in order to get the trashwagon name, though it might end up muddy. I was considering the battlewagon moniker and painting it camo but battlewagon_medic's already got that one. whaddya think? I just gotta get my rump roast over to the metal supply to get some 4x2 steel and then the transformations begin.

I got a ride in an original clearcoated aluminum 289 cobra with 4 weber dcoes boy was that a thrill, and the motor was real eye candy with those velocity stack/trumpets those idf's are used on high performance vws alot I think, one per bank

so... no compression? maybe you should downgrade to 8.5:1 carb pistons if you have to take the motor apart. Then you can get back into the boost again with less det probs.

cylinder 2 fouled with oil, cylinder one not firing, what did you do to your motor?!

well theres a chance that some of those hoses require the vacuum, in that case you have no choice.

thats a good idea... government seized vehicles converted to cop car duty

you could just run the emissions line into the tube going to the pod.

no sway bar on the back of my 88, but of course the turbo wagon had a rear sway bar.

it looks like they would be held in with circlips on the inside of the joint. I think you can get a replacement u-joint for the car, but the problem was getting the originals out cause they are staked in. The replacement would likely be a servicable/removable type of the same dimensions, not an exact copy of the stock one

does it just click or does it draw alot of current? The solenoid contacts go bad, preventing the starter motor from engaging. What can also happen is a bad spot on the armature, and if it stops on that spot it wont move again until you rotate it past manually. Try pounding on it with a hammer while you've got current through it, or rotating it then trying it, to see whether these are the problems. wait I read more, it does sound like shorting out, so that would likely rule out what i said above

my 2.0l wasnt a water boxer, it was the last and highest tech version of all the vw air cooled motors

hey don't knock the 2.0l vans! My mom had a '78 transporter with the 2.0l mpfi hydraulic lifter motor, and it beat an mr2 on a straight stretch, and held its own in the twisties those vans look alot more ungainly than they are, all the weight is still down low, and they have stiff suspension. Id really be drooling over that van if it had synchro 4wd

your carby wagons not gonna be a speed demon, but cutting up your air filter box to allow better flow through the filter would be a start. Then get rid of the choking stock muffler and replace it with a performance muffler of your choice. For more gains you could redo the exhaust from the cat back. If thats not enough you can upgrade to a weber carb, which would set you back around $3-400. This would probably be the biggest improvement. Then theres ignition: Get a performance coil and wires, gap your plugs .45-.5. As for the turbo idea, best not to venture into a project like that if you're new to working on cars. If you want a quick suby you'll want to find a turbo RX or XT. Do a search on these items and you'll probably come up with more detail.

or maybe put a chev s10 diff in the back with some custom axles

very cool, but I'd be getting worried about diff stubs with 33" tires

wouldn't it be way cheaper to throw in another used longblock, maybe with new gaskets, a cylinder hone and new rings? Youve got parts yards down there right? And no shortage of subarus I'm sure. I wouldn't use the same head bolts, I've had other cars overheat, and had the headbolts/studs begin to stretch as I was getting them to their spec'd torque, even thought the engine wasn't too bad. The heat can anneal them.

put a cone filter on the end or hack off the bottom of the intake box below the filter.

the finger method is the way I did it on a sammy motor putting on the timing belt after a valve job, it worked fine.

This pinging feels like someone is tapping the shifter rods with a small hammer, a very metallic feel. In my experience missing feels like a quick lurch. The "electrodes" in the cap are fairly worn, so I will replace the cap. My conclusion is that a spark is jumping to the wrong cylinder, causing it to ignite way before the valve closes. Theres no way the timing could be adjusted to fire this quickly without preventing the engine running at all. It feels like there is just one cylinder creating the problem. And like you say it cant be mechanical if it is on and off like this. It is weird how heat affects it though, and how my car heats up with a recent rad and a fan on constantly. Anyways, Ill get a new cap and after that maybe mess with timing for the hell of it.

I got in today and it started up fine, and I drove it around, got it up to 1/2 heat, fairly spirited off-road driving, and it was working smoothly, though I could still feel a light pinging feeling in the shifter, though I couldnt hear it at all. I parked it, then 1/2hr later went out to try it just to test, and sure enough, the pretetonation was enough to stall the engine in its tracks while cranking, then once I got it running it backfired through the intake again. Exactly the same experience twice, same amount of time driving, same amount of time parked, same experience.

having the 8.0 or 8.5:1 is a good thing for the turbo swap, wjm has to run 93 or 97 octane to keep it from pinging on his 9.5:1 but the turbo 8.5:1 rx has a bit more oomph but no det problems, or so I hear. If your gonna be on your own for the swap (well there is the board) your probably going to be at it for along time, and begging for info on the board alot. 2 heads is better than one, and I know that 2 people working on a problem pointing out mistakes without offense is a huge help. I'd be hesitant to set a deadline on a project like this if I were to do it alone. Sounds like youve got some database of knowledge in your grandfather. Thats a good start. One thing I have to stress is an fsm and a multimeter if you are going to deal with wiring.

electric fans are great, they are remotely locatable, they are easily switchable with no losses when they are off, wereas a clutch fan still takes some energy to keep it loosely spinning when it is off, and they are compact. What they do not do is give you 16hp. The only possible way you could gain power is because of a really crappy fan blade design on the mechanical fan, with a blade angle not suited to the rpm it runs. Even then the difference would not be even 10hp. 16hp is not even comprehendable in terms of human strength. 16hp to spin a 12" fan blade enough to cause a breeze? 16hp can propell you up to 60mph on a motorcycle, or lift a 2person hovercraft off the ground. A home fan probably makes close to the same cfm, but the motors are less than 1/2hp. When a clutch fan is engaged, it is like a straight shaft. How could you lose more power through a straight shaft than through an alternator, then through little wires, then to another motor? Converting motion to electricity then to motion again is really inefficient. I'd like to see what the standard deviation of the dynos you used are. Would the dyno give exactly the same reading every time? It could be that the dyno and the truck together can vary readings as much as 10hp with no modification to the truck. If the truck was dynoed, then driven somewhere to get the fan converted, then driven back to the dyno, that doesnt make for a very controlled experiment does it?