Screwing around with a Eurovan!
- Thread starter Cole
- Start date
Cole
Expedition Leader
I appreciate the comments guys !:wings:
Short story.....
My very first car in 1987 was a 1967 Camaro. I didn't know a thing about cars. Zero, zilch, nada! All I knew is that I wanted a cool car and didn't have much money. Found a great deal on a Camaro for $1,000. (A lot of money when you work for $2.87 an hour) It looked awesome! But didn't run.:drool:
My dad talked me into dragging it home. He bought me a Chiltons manual and said "it's already broken, you may as well try to fix it before taking it to a shop ". :sombrero:
I rebuilt the motor (ironically for this thread it was due to a rod bearing), rebuilt the trans, etc,etc.
Got voted "Coolest car" in my senior class!:wings:
While working on the car one day I had a moment of mechanic's frustration combined with teenage rage. I punched the fender and left a dent.:Wow1: Not a huge dent, but a dent none the less. It was a flaw in the car, my pride and joy of the time, that I created out of frustration and anger. The only flaw! A flaw I couldn't afford to fix!
I learned a lesson that day, and everyday I walked up to that car and saw the dent it reminded me of how it got there.
Every mechanical moment since has been approached with a much higher level of zen! :ylsmoke:
Here is the car the day I brought it home at age 16!
Short story.....
My very first car in 1987 was a 1967 Camaro. I didn't know a thing about cars. Zero, zilch, nada! All I knew is that I wanted a cool car and didn't have much money. Found a great deal on a Camaro for $1,000. (A lot of money when you work for $2.87 an hour) It looked awesome! But didn't run.:drool:
My dad talked me into dragging it home. He bought me a Chiltons manual and said "it's already broken, you may as well try to fix it before taking it to a shop ". :sombrero:
I rebuilt the motor (ironically for this thread it was due to a rod bearing), rebuilt the trans, etc,etc.
Got voted "Coolest car" in my senior class!:wings:
While working on the car one day I had a moment of mechanic's frustration combined with teenage rage. I punched the fender and left a dent.:Wow1: Not a huge dent, but a dent none the less. It was a flaw in the car, my pride and joy of the time, that I created out of frustration and anger. The only flaw! A flaw I couldn't afford to fix!
I learned a lesson that day, and everyday I walked up to that car and saw the dent it reminded me of how it got there.
Every mechanical moment since has been approached with a much higher level of zen! :ylsmoke:
Here is the car the day I brought it home at age 16!
Cole
Expedition Leader
Yep. Same car. The one in Better Off Dead had a red "Deluxe" interior. But otherwise the same.
ColinTheCop
Adventurer
Yeah, if it was me, I'd be grabbing the first $1300 that some passer-by offered me.
:bowdown:
Cole
Expedition Leader
I got a call from a lady down in Colorado Springs that needed some help. She bought a GLS that was converted to a Poptop. It came with an interior but she had no idea how to install it.
The conversion was not that great and the van had some other issues (van is green, top is blue) :snorkel:
She had been driving it for about a year basically with a bare steel cargo van interior and desperately needed to make is a more functional van for her family.
She called me because I had done the conversion. I offered to help if she would bring it up to me. So this 50 ish year old lady and her 70 ish year old dad. Showed up to my house with a van FULL of misc interior parts.
Long story short.......the fasted way to get here a functional van with the parts she and I had available was to assemble the GLS lower panels and the upper Poptop panels.
Sold her my GLS middle seats/mounts, side panels, a tail light, and a bunch of misc stuff. Then the three of us spent 5 laughter filled hours assembling the van for her. :wings:
At 1 am she finally had a 95% complete van ready to drive her family on a trip next week. (No carpet yet as she will need the GLS carpet and we didn't have the time to disassemble my van to get mine out)
In the execution of the deal I ended up with a few parts she couldn't/didn't want to use but I needed. Picked up all sorts of little things like a rear florescent light, complete weekender floor that I can cover in vinyl, etc, etc. Once I have the weekender floor installed I told her she could have my GLS carpet.
That was enough to kickstart some of my interest to work on my own van again today. Which was perfect timing as one of the two back ordered seat swivels was on my porch.
Figured having a little easy success is always a good motivator. So I installed the one seat swivel. Sorry for the bad picture. It's on on jack stands in the back of the garage.
After the seat install I got more ambitious but was running out of time. I got to take the oil pump off and checked just two of the rod bearings with plastigauge.
The crank surface isn't "perfect" but it also doesn't have groves you can feel so not really sure what to do with it.
Here was the measurement of the two rods I checked. Looks to be about 0.66mm out of spec.
The bearings themselves look pretty bad. So the question is.....what are the odds I can install just new bearings and get some reasonable life out of the motor?
The conversion was not that great and the van had some other issues (van is green, top is blue) :snorkel:
She had been driving it for about a year basically with a bare steel cargo van interior and desperately needed to make is a more functional van for her family.
She called me because I had done the conversion. I offered to help if she would bring it up to me. So this 50 ish year old lady and her 70 ish year old dad. Showed up to my house with a van FULL of misc interior parts.
Long story short.......the fasted way to get here a functional van with the parts she and I had available was to assemble the GLS lower panels and the upper Poptop panels.
Sold her my GLS middle seats/mounts, side panels, a tail light, and a bunch of misc stuff. Then the three of us spent 5 laughter filled hours assembling the van for her. :wings:
At 1 am she finally had a 95% complete van ready to drive her family on a trip next week. (No carpet yet as she will need the GLS carpet and we didn't have the time to disassemble my van to get mine out)
In the execution of the deal I ended up with a few parts she couldn't/didn't want to use but I needed. Picked up all sorts of little things like a rear florescent light, complete weekender floor that I can cover in vinyl, etc, etc. Once I have the weekender floor installed I told her she could have my GLS carpet.
That was enough to kickstart some of my interest to work on my own van again today. Which was perfect timing as one of the two back ordered seat swivels was on my porch.
Figured having a little easy success is always a good motivator. So I installed the one seat swivel. Sorry for the bad picture. It's on on jack stands in the back of the garage.
After the seat install I got more ambitious but was running out of time. I got to take the oil pump off and checked just two of the rod bearings with plastigauge.
The crank surface isn't "perfect" but it also doesn't have groves you can feel so not really sure what to do with it.
Here was the measurement of the two rods I checked. Looks to be about 0.66mm out of spec.
The bearings themselves look pretty bad. So the question is.....what are the odds I can install just new bearings and get some reasonable life out of the motor?
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that sounds like fun indeed.
being on the pessimistic side, i wouldnt put any more time/cash into it.
but that doesnt mean you wont probably be able to go to mexico and back with it
if nothing else was affected. after that,all that grit you mentioned before will have 'sanded down' too mucho.
being on the pessimistic side, i wouldnt put any more time/cash into it.
but that doesnt mean you wont probably be able to go to mexico and back with it
if nothing else was affected. after that,all that grit you mentioned before will have 'sanded down' too mucho.
Cole
Expedition Leader
Okay, here is my thinking this morning.
Let me know what you guys think.
I've had a hard time finding a reasonably priced replacement motor or diesel for a swap at this point. New long blocks are insanely priced at around $6k
This motor was horribly sludged with varnish when I got it. I'm sure that is what caused the timing gear issue. That combined with running a bunch of SeaFoam through it to clean up the varnish may have cleaned enough varnish off the rest of the parts to "free them up" allowing the bearings to rattle or wear a bit more with the sludge/varnish and SeaFoam floating around in it.
With the too and bottom of the motor open I can flush the rest of the system out pretty well to get the microscopic flakes of metal out. (Almost impossible to see with the naked eye they were so small) Most was in the pan anyway.
I'll put a micrometer on the rod journals to make sure they are round and within a usable spec. Then polish them.
Then install the appropriate sized bearings. May just change out the cam bearings too since I have access to them. We will have to see what they look like.
This is all assuming the main journal bearings are still "good enough" I will at least remove the caps I have access to and look.
This *should* make for a fairly reliable motor again if all the measurement work out.
I'll also clean up the pan and clean out the oil pump.
Then.....I can start collecting parts for a a diesel swap a bit more slowly.
Thoughts?
Let me know what you guys think.
I've had a hard time finding a reasonably priced replacement motor or diesel for a swap at this point. New long blocks are insanely priced at around $6k
This motor was horribly sludged with varnish when I got it. I'm sure that is what caused the timing gear issue. That combined with running a bunch of SeaFoam through it to clean up the varnish may have cleaned enough varnish off the rest of the parts to "free them up" allowing the bearings to rattle or wear a bit more with the sludge/varnish and SeaFoam floating around in it.
With the too and bottom of the motor open I can flush the rest of the system out pretty well to get the microscopic flakes of metal out. (Almost impossible to see with the naked eye they were so small) Most was in the pan anyway.
I'll put a micrometer on the rod journals to make sure they are round and within a usable spec. Then polish them.
Then install the appropriate sized bearings. May just change out the cam bearings too since I have access to them. We will have to see what they look like.
This is all assuming the main journal bearings are still "good enough" I will at least remove the caps I have access to and look.
This *should* make for a fairly reliable motor again if all the measurement work out.
I'll also clean up the pan and clean out the oil pump.
Then.....I can start collecting parts for a a diesel swap a bit more slowly.
Thoughts?
Cole
Expedition Leader
Good news...I've definitively found the bad news:Wow1: (and also confirmed that I have way too much practice at this sort of thing and that my initial diagnosis was correct based on what I heard when it happened:coffeedrink
It always bugs me when you can't find that "ah ha moment" of diagnosis. Well, I finally pulled the rest of the rod caps off it measure the journals and found the #3 rod had spun its bearings.
The unfortunate thing is that this journal has some slight ridges when felt with your finger nail. They seem to be from the bearing material though. So going to try to polish this one journal up first and check it again to see if it smooths out.
FWIW, all the journals measures the same at just about 0.007 under the factory new spec, including the #3 with the spun bearing.
It always bugs me when you can't find that "ah ha moment" of diagnosis. Well, I finally pulled the rest of the rod caps off it measure the journals and found the #3 rod had spun its bearings.
The unfortunate thing is that this journal has some slight ridges when felt with your finger nail. They seem to be from the bearing material though. So going to try to polish this one journal up first and check it again to see if it smooths out.
FWIW, all the journals measures the same at just about 0.007 under the factory new spec, including the #3 with the spun bearing.
T.Low
Expedition Leader
You are Herbie's long lost brother from a different mother! http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...ie-s-Chevy-Astrolander-ZMB-Build-Thread/page6
Here's a shot of adrenaline for you: Dealership in town has an '02 Euro Pop Top Weekender with 148k mi with a $22,500 asking price! :Wow1:
Here's a shot of adrenaline for you: Dealership in town has an '02 Euro Pop Top Weekender with 148k mi with a $22,500 asking price! :Wow1: