The All New, New "What have you done to your Bay today" thread.

Bum bracket!

 

Flange attatchment!

 

Annulus!

 

Somebody take his batteries out!

 

Parting tool!

 

Ballcock!

 

Oak futtocks!

 

Remember those nice men in the white coats are your friends, just go along with them nicely when they come knocking.

 

Pumped up a tyre that seems to like going down slowly.
Sorted a backing plate on the nearside front wheel that made grinding noises on the first two right turns every trip.
Changed over a piece of brake line that being from China was copper plated steel that starts rusting after about a year. Swapped it for copper.. had fun with the proper flaring tool.

 

This one had batteries still.

 

MOT

no advisories -

same chap does it every year, usually moans about my silly small front number plate, or how crap the windscreen washers are. I guess he’s stopped mentioning stuff he knows I have no intention to do anything about.

 

Went to change the offside front rigid brake hose.. noticed the bottom of the front beam was in a bad state.. the original metal between the many patches had vanished in one place so there was a series of joined cracks and holes. Must have gone bad pretty recently as the metal was still bright where paint had come off.

I think theres something wrong with the inner tube at the bottom, as I could adjust the size of the crack with a jack, but nothing moved anywhere else, like on the inboard side of the side plates.

So its time to consider either my spare but patched front beam, something from FBI VW or a narrowed beam with cool factor made out of sheet steel.


As a stopgap, knowing it had not actually fallen apart, made yet more patches from 1.6mm steel sheet and welded them on using 0.6mm flux cored wire.. which is messy but probably better outdoors..

I didnt take a before, but this is after, CBA to grind it flat as its going to be replaced long before the next MOT..


Tidied it up and went for a drive aiming for potholes to see if it broke again .. no. .. so if I have to I can drive it.

But its just as well I still work from home.

 

Obviously heavily “ edited”. But classic .

Well done Mike , nothing will deter you

 

Today, I got the new AFR computer working - I had it installed on Saturday but it wasnt working right, because the documentation from DiyEFI on their website is misleading and incorrect.
They sell a little module to control the LSU4.9 sensor, and this either drives an analog input on your ECU or it has a digital output which I wanted to use.. and then I found their mistakes.
To work out what I had done, I had previously hooked up a logic analyzer, and did a serial protocol decode on it to get the exact order and timing of what came out - it actually polls its output at 25Hz.

So what actually happened this weekend.

Saturday at about 1500 -

• installed a new nearside copper front brake hard line because the one I fitted not long back turned out to be made of copper coated steel which rusted in about a year.
• Installed LSU 4.9 sensor and new AFR computer, and stopped work before testing it.

Sunday at about 1100 after a walk down to the Point, and a cup of coffee in a teashop.

• Started installing copper offside front brake hard line for the same reason.
  
• Discovered cracked front beam.
• Spent a few hours piling weld metal and 1.6mm sheet plates on cracked front beam. Strangely failed to weld any holes in my clothes or me ... Started getting annoyed at welding helmet not darkening because my head was jammed against the wheel arch blocking its solar panel "detector"
• Finished installing offside front brake hard line.
  
• Around 1600 : Went for test drive, noticed AFR meter wasnt working properly but didnt care - it occasionally showed numbers like 12 then 160 ...

Monday at about 1630 after work-

• Reflashed AFR computer after having made a few changes on Sunday evening.
  
• It worked.

 

Cleaned and polished it....then placed the new 'Maypole' cover on it so as to try and keep it dry inside due to the leaking 'Claytonrite' seals.

Even put the old 'Just Kampers' cover over the 'Maypole' cover as I'm desperate to keep the rain out.....and to be able to dry it out inside with some confidence.... (just don't tell the wife I'm going to sneak the portable oil fired radiator into the inside of it and leave it on when she's not at home)




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Use a dehumidifier.. 300 watts of heat plus it removes water..

And put some tent waterproofer on the JK cover.

 

Went to the allotment in it, then to the supermarket.

Came home, decided to attack what I thought was a small rusty hole in the chassis under the rear tube.
Got out the welder and everything, jacked up the bus on the side nearest the hole.
Took off the rear wheel. Slid under and had a look.
The rusty hole turned out to be a rusty patch and some flaking underseal.
So a scrape and some Kurust and then decided to do other work while the bus was up in the air.

• Fitted a new air inlet hose to the Propex , that cost me including postage twice what the heater cost. That will allow me to make and fit a "vehicle in motion" bracket over on the driver's side as both hoses are just under 2 metres long now. The heater is on the nearside, the exhaust is on the offside.
  
• Relocated the fuel shutoff solenoid valve to somewhere cooler, moving it to just behind the suspension tube - I have a suspicion that the Curie point of something is being reached as the solenoid is a bit too close to the exhaust - the symptom I was suffering was a complete stoppage of fuel through the shutoff valve when the bus was in a traffic queue on a hot day. What was confusing was the flow would stop from tank to engine, but you could blow air back the other way - the valve would be lifted off its seat by the air pressure, but drop down again with the fuel flow from the tank, when the solenoid was not lifting the valve open against the spring.
• Made up a new brake line for the nearside rear, again the copper plated steel one I had before was going crusty before my eyes. Using a proper British made flaring tool on copper brake line is a pleasure.
  
• Noticed the handbrake cable outer sleeve is cracked in two places .. so thats going to have to go on the list.
• Sprayed underseal onto the treated rust.

Put the wheel back on, bus on the level again.

• Used my new working AFR meter setup to tweak the idle AFR back up to 14.7:1. [As the sensor failed on the previous setup , it had led me to set it to about 12:1.]

Decided I was cold, hungry and went in (this lot took from about 1130 to 1700.. )

 

Patted it, said " hello, we'll go for a ride when the rains stopped."

 

Ordered some brake parts to overhaul the rear brakes