Under Pressure

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This is registering zero, thus proving it is not taking my blood pressure.

More work and frustration yesterday.  Well not frustration about work (that is going well thanks) but rather more pressure involving Testy.  I spoke with the injection Guru at VAN CAFE and he suggested that despite the results I got from the fuel flow “hose in a bottle” trick that I should check not only the VOLUME of fuel the pump was putting out but also what PRESSURE it was being put out at.  This required I get on my trusty Suzuki and brave midday traffic in Petaluma to get to the auto parts store.

Now if you live somewhere like San Francisco, New York, the Silicon Valley or Austin you must think the terms “traffic” and “Small town” are laughable but that is far from the truth.  In the twenty odd years I have live in this burg the population has almost doubled.  Those who have moved in have had kids.  Those kids have to get to school, or their parents need to get to STARBUCKS or such.  During the same period I can tell you that the capacity for the roads has NOT doubled.  Picture putting a litre of fluid into a half litre container.

I did make it there and back though and I did do the test.  The Bentley manual says that I needed 29 lbs of pressure to pass, I got around 35 consistently.  I checked it 6 times (I still smell like Regular gas, which makes me feel cheap). When I called back Van CAfe they were stumped as am I.  More parts are on the way.  I am having second thoughts about my trouble shooting abilities (did I miss something so SIMPLE that it is STUPID?) or is the van UN-SAVABLE (A nanometer of exposed wire in a hidden cable run that can never be found).  All this papered against a horde of other barbarians at the gate, pound on me for attention and money.  Oh pooh.

Just a note

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Monday’s work Day Charlie Brown, which in my case means pushing pixels around on a screen all day.  Testy languished in the driveway on a beautiful coastal day, warm and wonderful.  My demons took me fo a couple of falls so I had to go for a walk, which meant a talk with my Vanagon advisors.  First on the agenda was Chris down at VAN CAFE, who has been a great help through all this and on this occasion offered help I won’t repeat but in this day and age was welcome and unexpected.

It’s nice to get that once in awhile.  In return Van Cafe will be getting my business.

Frustration

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Shot from happier days on the road...there will be more

Well I did more analysis today on the injection system and it was pretty frustrating.  New evidence points to me having to replace the gas tank due to rust. Also ran the Mass Airflow Sensor through the wringer again, might be suspect as well.  Ah well, it’s a Volkswagen thing I guess!

Eating my own fuel system…

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Sometimes working on this Fuel Injection system feels like this!

A couple of months ago, when I first got TESTY, I had the first of the problems with keeping her running.  In the end it would up being the fuel pump.  I replaced it with a USED <sic> unit from a local Buggy house and the results were miraculous.  When she died in the rain this last time I made a classic mistake, I ASSUMED (as in “An ASS out of U and ME”) that it could NOT be the pump I just replaced.  it just HAD to be something NEW er, old that needed to be new (as in replaced).  A blind spot in my head did not want to admit that I had thrown away $75 on a used pump and that it had to be replaced AGAIN.

Today when I got “SCHROEDINGER’S PRESSURE REGULATOR” (Until I installed it the unit either repaired my problem or it didn’t) I lifted the deck, installed the new unit and turned the key.  Nope, still the same problem.  I muddled and fiddled and called my sounding board, Mr. Toad, who is at Buttonwillow with his son who is running a VARA (Vintage Auto Racing Association) race in his Formula Vee.  Toad continued to play right into my blind spot, fuel delivery issues and not electronics.  I knew he was right but I was still hip deep in de-NILE (I saw Cleopatra float by…she rolled her eyes at me which was just RUDE!).  Toad said just yank a hose and see how much pressure I had.

Finally, I did better than that.  I looked in the BENTLEY Manual, after lighting the appropriate candles (far enough away from the van to avoid fire risk, I am working on the fuel injection after all!).  There was a simple test to see if the fuel pump is delivering enough fuel.  I ran it 3 times, with varying results but none of which came close to being adequate.

The possibility exists, he said as he put on his papyrus hip waders, that since I have taken the gas tank out that a bunch of bottom-feeding-crap from it got stirred up and it prematurely clogged the new fuel filter I install a couple months ago.  We will see. the local Autozone is holding a new filter for me which I will get in the morning.

If I have to eat that pump I will have my own tail as a side dish, a fuel injected Ouroborus

Learning a new language

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I am guessing this one's name is "Ken"?

I am learning to speak fuel injection.  It’s an arcane language, especially the sub dialect that is my course of study whose roots come from the stygian depths of the Black Forests of Bavaria.  The syntax is kinda obtuse and the structure is absolutely arcane but I am starting to get the hang of it. The thing it has a basic structure that is familiar and that is a good place to start.  As English and so many other languages have roots in latin fuel injection has a base that it share with carburators, internal combustion.  It all revolves around the primal elements of Air, Fuel, Fire and Timing.  Get those elements to play nice and you have internal combustion.  What I have learned about fuel injection is that it leaves less to chance in a lot of ways.  In the same way English is more complex than the earlier languages that it evolved from, o rather it is more precise in the same way Inuit is about snow.  Fuel injection takes into consideration air temp, engine temp, fuel pressure and a lot of other stuff.

How does it do this?  Well if you ever actually took time to investigated the bowels of the WESTFALIA Bentley manual you would know it was simple.

...and I this is what I expect "Ken" looks like, at least on his driver's license )or when he is on the potty now that I think of it).

Captive Demons.

The best demons are from the Black Forrest of course.  They aren’t large, something on the order of a sparrow or a healthy mouse.  Their powers are obviously limited in scope as simple aluminum can contain them.  They communicate with each other through an elaborate system of telegraphs whose gayly colored wired run through out the body of the Van. If those lines of communication are severed though absolute chaos reigns and things get out of hand.  I have notice in my case that as I replace each module, which by implication means replacing each exhausted demon, the weather outside has gotten better.  The old demons are sent back to BOSCH for what I can only assue is a spa treatment, some R&R and night courses before they are sent back into the world.

The post office didn’t deliver the fuel pressure daemon I ordered today, probably be here tomorrow.  I hope he isn’t too pissed upon arrival as I want the motor to run soon.

Stop (or Start) Excess regulation!

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Pressure Regulator

Have you seen THIS REGULATOR??

I was graced with a visit from Mr. Toad, Late of Toad Hall Racing, this rainy morning for to examine the woes of my poor Vanagon.  Though I trust my own judgement it always help to have a fresh, knowledgeable set of eyes looking at a project.  When you get to close you miss things.  Like getting the firing order wrong…BUT THAT WAS AN HONEST MISTAKE!!

In any event Toad and I perused the manual and redid  bunch of the checks that I had done with Nick earlier, this time with two sets of attentive eyes to monitor.  In truth she wanted to start and sort of DID a couple of times but in the end what initially seemed like a timing issue began to look more and more like an ECU.

Then Brian made an observation that rocked me back on my heels.  We had pulled the injectors and they had actually been delivering some juice so Brian began to say comment that I should consider replacing them.  I was hesitant at the time, which was before I found out that the Injectors are $145 each, but it made me think.  When the Van died it was like someone was turning the power off gradually, like a faucet.  I had experienced something similar when the fuel pump began to go bad.  All of this brought up an anylytic process.

Since I got the Van she has started hard and erratically.  Since I had been told for years that the injection system on VANAGONS had electronic problems, and of course THEY know more than me (don’t THEY always?) I assumed it had to be ECU problems.  Still when I started the car I found myself pumping the accelerator just as I would in an old VW.

NOTE: Pumping the accelerator on any fuel injected car, especially one without a mechanical enrichment circuit, to try and get more gas is like flapping your arms to try and fly.  The form is there but the success rate is pretty damn low.

Habits like that pumping come from experience and even though in this case it was misguided they can present us with clues to other possibilities. I was pumping the throttle because my EXPERIENCE told me that I needed more gas to start. Brian and I went back to the Van and took the engine cover off.

A quick check told us that we had vacuum to the pressure regulator and a turn of a screw told us there was in fact fuel going to the injection rails.  That left the question of the regulator, the next potential culprit in the fuel starvation tree.  A quick call to Chris at Van-Cafe and I will have a regulator in hand tomorrow.  After that, if it doesn’t fix the problem, I wil address the issue of new injectors.

One more step.

Injection Interuptus

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Well I got the new distributor yesterday afternoon, along with a bag of FAMOUS AMOS cookies (thanks Van Cafe but I am on a diet!) and it was everything that the web posting advertised!  Shiny, Teutonic and it even fit into the engine block and settled in after I lubed up the O \-Ring real good.

Why does it always seem to come down to lube? April 15th is already past (see what I did there??)

As I have said before I went into this swap with no illusions that it would actually SOLVE the problem but since the engine has always had cold start/ advance issues I have reached the point that I figured what could it hurt?  When you are working  on old cars you have to acknowledge from the start that if the CAR is old then the parts are EVEN OLDER.  There is also the additional wildcard added in when it is a VW that since it is touted as THE PEOPLE’S CAR then PEOPLE will work on them, qualified or not.  That means odd spliced wires in odd places, christmas light hangers used to suspend mystery wiring and the synchronicity of finding lost roach clips in some of the oddest places.

Superfluous Fitting alert!

BEWARE! Horrifying 1950s airbrushed thumb!

I thought I had encountered a bit of this when I found the wire connector attached to the distributor cap dangling like the Christopher Lee’s superflous nipple in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.  Turns out though it was a factory artifact, earlier versions of the distributor required the cap to be independently grounded, something remedy in the new unit.  Still I left it in place in the name of sheer Germanic nostalgia. Also it is like a time capsule to confuse possible future owners of the van.

As I work more and more on the top of the engine ( cleaning, repairing, replacing and such) something strange has been happening, I have been learning to understand what is what and where it goes.  In the end I find that the injection on my WESTFALIA, something I had been told to fear, is not as complicated as I feared.  Additionally if you have the BENTLEY manual, a Volt Ohm Meter and some patience you can figure it out as you go.  Toss in a helpful bunch of guys, like the ones at VAN-CAFE and I have developed a calm feeling of well being about the whole thing.  a feeling that even if the old girl has no injecter firing right now, she will have.  Zen VW mechanic 101, without the aid of external chemical influence (unless coffee counts).

Well THERE'S yer problem...or not.

A simple side by side comparison of the two distributors showed that even if it is not the PRIME culprit the old distributor could NOT be helping the matter! The Halls sender connector, the injection system;s connection with the ignition system, was crack and falling off the side and there was slop in the unit as well. Still I was frustrated when after installation TESTY didn’t just fire off, the problem persists.  I have gained allies though, Peter and Chris at Van-Cafe were patient and more than helpful on the phone and we went back and forth for quite a bit, both of us working from the BENTLEY manual.  They asked questions, I told them what I have done trouble shooting and after about a half an hour we agreed that it was either a broken wire in the harness, a dirty ground or a bad computer.  Chris pointed me at a new cluster of grounds I was unaware of which I cleaned with no results.  Mr. Toad says he will have some time today to help me move through the harness (a two man job) before I drop the coin on a new computer.

Good thing TESTY is still as cozy to sleep in as she is!

Out for Delivery…

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Old Hall Sensor

The Halls Sensor unit on TESTY has looked like this since Day one and the distributor cap has been hard to fit...Can this be the "King Gremlin"?

…that’s what UPS says about the new distributor.  Yesterday morning I tried to start TESTY and she did the “sounds like the injectors aren’t working” sound.  I was bummed the rest of the day.  Before I bedded down for the night though she threw me a bone though and gave it a little bit of a try when I turned the key.  This continues to make me think that the distributor/halls sender might have been the cause of her running the way she does from when I first got her running again.  If it isn’t though I have finally gotten comfortable with the situation and I will work out what is wrong.

When I say “am comfortable” I mean I have finally admitted what I DON’T know and asked for help and applied what I DO KNOW.  For years I have avoided working on electronics because it was “VOO DOO”.  After a little time on the phone with my pal Mace Gjermain and a careful study of the Bentley manual (the WESTFALIA Holy Text) I can see that solutions are to be had if you are patient and pragmatic.

I will let you know this afternoon…

Well Distributed

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So I have been tracking down any number of Injection Gremilins in Testy the past few months but if feels like bailing out the Titanic with a Dixie cup.  Yesterday I went at the phones AGAIN to ask surly guys in greasy shops far away from me about things that they purport to know about DIGIFANT injection AGAIN.  The trouble is it immediately drops into a scene from Harry Potter, only “he who shall not be named” is the injection system.

Everyone says the same thing about grounds.  CLEAN THEM.  I have the cleanest grounds in Sonoma, I thought, (SPOILER).  There is a switch on the power steering pump that connect to the injection and tells it to rev the engine if the pump ups the load.  When I pulled those leads off that switch connections looked like something from Saruman’s forges in that they were jet black. Guess I missed that one.  I took the switch off the pump, ran it through a wire wheel and when I reconnected it the engine TRIED to start, injectors and all.

NOTE: The sign of a true WESTY owner?  it is encouraging when an engine TRIES to start.

During the day’s conversations I was also told there was a sensor in the distributor that tells the injectors when to fire.  Since the black box on the side of Testy’s distributor has been hanging off EVER SINCE I GOT HER The penny that was in the air dropped. THENI dropped the dime (well, a LOT of dimes) and ordered a new distributor from VAN CAFE in Santa Cruz.  It should be here tomorrow but , being a cynical Scot/Irish/German lad I don’t hold out much hope.

I will let you know what happens.

Aotearoa – The land of the long white cloud

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I have this place I have to go.  I have to go there for the same reason I am an artist, I have no choice in the matter.  See I wanted to be an engineer when I was younger, I wanted to design and build race cars, I wound up doing animation. In the same way I have to go to New Zealand, the island won’t leave me alone.

I grew up surrounded by the Air Force.  Even though by the time I came along neither Dad nor Mom wore a uniform, both of them had before I was born, they worked full time for the Air Force as civilian personnel.  My Mom was a computer programmer and my Dad was an engineering systems data manager.  (Yeah, I never did really know what that was either!)

My folks had the habit of adopting liaison officers from all over the world.  These were young guys who were on detached service in Southern California, far away from home. My folks figured these guys all needed some place to go to get a home cooked meal, a cold beer or just find someone to chat with.  When Dad was stationed in Japan during the Korean war he had been befriended by a local family, the Menabes, and I guess he felt he needed to pay it foreword.  In any event I grew up surrounded by accents from all over the world.  I credit this for my ability for mimicking accents and mannerism, a talent that my son Nick both envies and covets.

Amongst all the visitors though the Aussies and the Kiwis held a special place in our house.  I don’t know if the folks connected with them more or if those families were a better fit with ours but those were the voices I remembered the most, and the people I actually didn’t just like but loved.  My “Uncle” Jon Freeman, who later retired as an air vice marshall, taught me to play chess. He also spent a goodly part of my adolescence trying to get me to immigrate to Australia (they needed young marriageable men).  I know that if I had gone I would have wound up a RAAF officer and that is a path in my life that I have always regretted not taking.

I don’t know when New Zealand actually took a hold of me, I think it was shortly after my return from Los Angeles and I worked with a MAC consultant from Auckland. She and her husband would never stop talking about New Zealand and they further drew me in with photos of what appears to be the most beautiful place on the planet.  Additionally there is racing.  If you get involved in racing in more than a club racing level you will meet Kiwis.  You will meet them, drink beer with them ( a lot), laugh uproariously with them and wake up with some epic headaches.

Whatever the source I do know that it is a siren call from the south pacific that clings to the pant leg of my soul with a tenacity that I have not often experienced in my life of late.  In a time where I am bored with the games industry (the one place I have known in my career), inured of animation and the internet and generally bored there is a Kiwi attached to my heart like a remora.

Things have started to settle down a bit in my life, and the canny old Scot in my life hopes that by typing that I haven’t jinxed that trend. Settled down enough to start looking towards not what I NEED to do but what I WANT to do.

Additionally I have always believed that if you follow what you love in your life everything else will follow.  I lost track of that, which only re-enforced the truth of it to me. Additionally my best buddy, Steve (who is “Wade”), and I have always shared the idea that life is about making stories.  I have been doing that, no doubt, but few of them have been positive until recently.  Now it is time to make some good ones.

Now is the time for new horizons, new languages, new stars and new stories. Time to get on the road.