VW Syncro Westfalia - Build Log with Pics

Tonight's Progress.

Stock lights removed.




Wiring in Relays for the high and low beams. Should provide more voltage to the lights and let the high/low switch last longer.




Relays wired in, they are sitting on the top right of the fuse panel




Wires soldered onto the new head light plugs, and plugged in to the new light.






The middle lights are a little tricky. You need to temporarily attach the grill to locate where the lights need to go, then mark and drill new holes for the assy. They also need to be adjusted vertically so you need to bend the metal tabs till they are centered properly. Here the new locations are marked and ready to drill.




Old headlights....




And new headlights.....






I really like the look of the round headlights, plus I've read where they put out better usable light. Now that I know everything fits and works I will take it apart one more time, seal all the connections and paint/rust proof the new holes that were drilled.

Lots more to come....

Hodakaguy

Since I needed to take the lights out one more time to clean up the wiring I decided to add local grounds at the same time, this should guarantee no grounding issues with the lights.

Soldering and heat shrinking the new ground wire to the harness.




Wiring cleaned up and ground installed.






Hodakaguy

A little powder coating today in preparation for getting the front end back together.

Pre-heating the axles a bit in the oven before heading outside to powder coat.




Hanging to cool down after coming out of the oven.




Preparing the hubs to receive powder.




Finished product.




Hodakaguy

From the looks of your wall board, you seem to be missing some wrenches?

Soooo... your powder coating set up..... were did ya get it and how much if you dont mind me asking. The things I could make look purdy with that stuff. Does a regular automotive paint shop carry the supplies?

Shane wrote:

From the looks of your wall board, you seem to be missing some wrenches?

Soooo... your powder coating set up..... were did ya get it and how much if you dont mind me asking. The things I could make look purdy with that stuff. Does a regular automotive paint shop carry the supplies?

The powder coating setup is a friends, he got the oven at an auction. The gun is a harbor freight unit, not the best but it gets the job done. The powder is pretty cheap, you can order it off the net at places like Columbia Coatings. It's nice to be able to powder parts when you need it, although it's quite a bit of work and time consuming. If you have a local powder coating place it may just be better to go that route.

Hodakaguy

Progress continuing.

Time to get the hubs put back together.

Pressing the new bearing into the housing.





Good thing I saved the old bearing. The old bearing outer race worked great to finish seating the new bearing.




Installing the new Circlip




The old bearing race is also a perfect fit to drive in the new seals.




Pressing the hub into the new bearing. The bearing inner race is being supported from the bottom.






Lookin good.




Finished applying a coat of POR 15 to all the newly drilled screw holes for the center lights, sealed all the connections with Dielectric grease and re-assembled/tested the lights.




Hodakaguy

Hodakaguy wrote:

The powder coating setup is a friends, he got the oven at an auction. The gun is a harbor freight unit, not the best but it gets the job done. The powder is pretty cheap, you can order it off the net at places like Columbia Coatings. It's nice to be able to powder parts when you need it, although it's quite a bit of work and time consuming. If you have a local powder coating place it may just be better to go that route.

Hodakaguy

Ah ha! So I assume that's not your wall either!

It sure makes stuff kook good. We do have a powder coating place here. Just looks kinda fun to do it your self. Nice work once again.

Shane wrote:

Hodakaguy wrote:

The powder coating setup is a friends, he got the oven at an auction. The gun is a harbor freight unit, not the best but it gets the job done. The powder is pretty cheap, you can order it off the net at places like Columbia Coatings. It's nice to be able to powder parts when you need it, although it's quite a bit of work and time consuming. If you have a local powder coating place it may just be better to go that route.

Hodakaguy

Ah ha! So I assume that's not your wall either!

It sure makes stuff kook good. We do have a powder coating place here. Just looks kinda fun to do it your self. Nice work once again.

Nope that's my wall, I have his setup at my house right now It is fun, it does take a lot of time though. I like having it here so I can do parts last minute if I realize something else needs to be done. I recently had some of my front end parts done by a local shop to save time, they did a good job but took 3 weeks to get it done and powdered areas I wanted left clean....more work for me :-(

Thanks, I'm really looking forward to using the van this summer....I neeeeed to get it finished

Hodakaguy

Installed the new Rocky Mountain Westy plate bumper today.

Original bumper removed.




And the new RMW Plate bumper installed :-). Oh yeah, that looks a LOT better.










Hodakaguy

Pressed the lower ball joints in this am. I removed the boots to press the joints and noticed there was very little grease in the joint from the factory.

Here's a picture of the factory grease. The other ball joint had more grease that this one...but still not a lot. They are both Meyle joints, one had while lithium grease and one had a red grease in it.




I carefully cleaned all the factory grease out of the joints and re-greased them with Redline CV2 grease, working it down into the joint. They should last a LOT longer properly greased.






Inner seal pressed in to place. I had this part powder coated at a local company to save time. They did a good job other than coating a couple areas they shouldn't have and leaving a couple spots bare.




A coat of POR15 applied to the bare area around the inner seal.




Steering rack bushings removed.




The new PowerFlex Urethane steering rack bushing next the OEM rubber bushing that was removed.




After pulling the rubber boots off the steering rack you need to pry up the lock tab to separate the Tie Rod Assy from the steering rack.






My father giving me a hand cleaning up the steering rack :-) It is now a lot cleaner, although it has some undercoating on it that doesn't want to come off :-)




After seeing the factory grease in the lower ball joints I decided to check the new tie rod ends as well. They had more grease than the lower joints did although I fully cleaned them out and packed them with the same Redline CV2 grease as well.




The new steering rack rubber boots didn't come with clamps, a quick trip to NAPA turned up the correct OEM style Oetiker clamps :-)




New boot clamped in place.




Nice thick coat of BelRay grease installed on the steering rack bushings...ready to install.




Steering rack ready to re-install.




Using a Dremel tool and wire wheel to remove the powder coating from the tapered ball joint holes that the powder coating facility didn't cover.




Hodakaguy

Installed the Lower Control Arm bushings.




Power steering rack installed, lower control arms installed with Powerflex radius rod bushings.




Burley upper control arm installed.




Here's the factory grease in the upper ball joint....pathetic.




Cleaned out the old grease and packed it with Redline CV2 grease. Ready for service.




Now it's starting to look like something. Drive shaft freshly packed with grease and bolted in place.




Trying the Fox shock on for size. Looks like plenty of clearance....we'll see how it looks when the spring is in place.




More to come......

Hodakaguy

Got up this am and assembled the second front axle.

Prepping the axles was a little more time consuming that I thought. Once the axles were assembled and packed with grease I carefully removed all traces of grease from the bolt holes in the CV's so the bolts wouldn't get contaminated with grease. Then ended up running a tap through all the bolt holes on the output flanges then carefully cleaning them with brake clean to remove any traces of grease. I applied a thin layer of RTV between the spacer and front CV to prevent any grease leakage then used Loctite as well as the OEM washers to lock the bolts in place. Finished it off with the proper torque on the bolts. Glad that's done!

Started assembling the passenger side suspension. I'm using the Febi upper ball joints to hold everything together until my new ones show up :-)




Time to install the shock. Getting ready to use the KTC spring compressor.






And installing the shock on the bus. I'll have to go back once I check the ride height and adjust the spring height, I guessed for now.






Getting closer. More work tomorrow.

Hodakaguy

Time to get the sway bar back in place.

Clamped the sway bar in the vice and installed the new Urethane bushings.




Moved the sway bar in the vice so the bushing can't move back. Lubed the bushing up with some grease and was able to press the first drop link on by hand by working it back and forth as I pushed. Wow...that was easier than I was expecting!




Well I must have got the angle just perfect on the first try because the second one I just couldn't get on by hand. A couple pieces of scrap plastic and a C-clamp made short work of the second drop link though :-)




Ready to re-install in the bus.




Installed! Also mounted the reservoir for the front shock.




Got side tracked with a couple other projects today so didn't get as much done as I had hoped.

Hodakaguy

CAN I BE THE FIRST TO JUMP IT!

Shane wrote:

CAN I BE THE FIRST TO JUMP IT!

LOL

Hodakaguy

You do very nice work

Kevin

09kevin wrote:

You do very nice work

Kevin

Thanks! I'm getting ready for it to be done though!

Hodakaguy

Received the new Lemforder upper ball joints today.

After reading about Lemforder ball joints having more range of movement than the Febi units I had purchased I decided to give them a try.

Here's a picture of the Lemforder joint on the left and the Febi unit on the right.




Now lets test the range of motion. The Lemforder unit is in the rear and the Febi joint is in the front. I'm holding the Febi joint all the way up since the boot is wanting to make it spring back down a bit. Looks like a good 10+ percent increase in range of motion over the Febi joint.




Now lets see how the factory grease looks!

As a review this is the factory grease in the Febi Joint, almost dry! There is no excuse for this from a factory new part, if you are using the Meyle or Febi brand joints make sure you re-pack them with grease before installing!




And the factory grease in the Lemforder Joint, 100% better! It's fully packed with extra grease packed inside the boot. The grease felt good and it was packed well so I just sealed it back up. :-)




Installed.




If your going to replace the upper ball joints I would recommend picking up the Lemforder units.

Hodakaguy

Some more progress today. Not a lot of pictures...but progress.


Ready to install the new T3 Techniques end link urethane bushings.



And Installed. NOTE: If you are installing new end link bushings it's a lot easier to have the anti-sway bar unbolted from the bus during install. Install the end link bushings and tighten them up, then install the four bolts holding the anti-sway bar to the body. I ended up removing the four bolts then re-installing them since I had previously mounted the anti-sway bar.




Installed the passenger side shock, spring, mounted the shock reservoir (they are provided with rubber spacers that fit into the channels), and torqued all the ball joints, bolts etc.




More to come soon!

Hodakaguy

There is a whole rainbow of color under there. I am going to go find some Skittals now!

Shane wrote:

There is a whole rainbow of color under there. I am going to go find some Skittals now!

Yeah there are different durometor ratings and each rating is represented by a different color...makes for a wild colored front end. I didn't like it at first but it doesn't bother me now

Hodakaguy

Time to start getting the brakes installed.

I'll be installing a set of Front CV Protectors but thought I would mock up the brakes to make sure everything fits.

I wanted to upgrade the front brakes on the bus since it's a heavy vehicle and the OEM brakes are marginal at best. I went with the VanCafe Big Brake kit which is a Audi based kit, You can save some money by piecing it together yourself but in the interest of time I just ordered the kit.

Some Stainless Steel hoses to replace the worn out OEM rubber units, should provide a more solid pedal feel.




New stainless steel dust shields.




Kit came with 285mm vented rotors to replace the OEM 250mm solid units.






50% greater pad contact surface than the OEM pads.




Installed for mock up.






Everything fit up perfectly with proper clearances etc. The one thing I don't like about the kit is there is no tab to hold the hose/metal tubing to the caliper. Instead they provide you with a snap tie to keep the hose from flopping around......Hmmmm

Well the snap tie just isn't going to cut it. The Audi calipers have a pre-tapped hold to accept a bracket but the VW bracket is the wrong angle. I did try swapping the VW brackets left to right and they do fit on the Audi calipers that way, but the brackets are to short and they stretch the brake hose at full extension.

Stock bracket at red arrow below.




I'll fabricate new brackets before going any further.

More updates soon.

Hodakaguy

Ok here's the solution for a bracket to hold the brake line in place.

Started with some 1" strips of stainless steel.








And mounted up. It holds the brake line nice and secure and allows enough slack in the hose for the suspension at full drop and a full left turn.




And mounted to the caliper. (Ignore the extra washers on the bolt holding the bracket onto the caliper, I didn't have the correct length bolt on hand to mock it up :-).






This picture is at full right turn with the suspension at full bottom travel. I had to mount the brake hose where I did to get clearance for the spring. I used a piece of rubber hose and a clamp to secure the hose. The clamp is spread apart and one side of the clamp mounted on each side of the bolt hole, if the clamp is mounted on the back side only there isn't enough clearance for the spring.




Hodakaguy

Thanks for posting. This is good $H!T.

Time to get the seat installed again.

Pulling out the old 3/8" cork material. A small leak in the rear heater had deteriorated them. Good time to replace it while its apart.




Laying down some Dynamat sound deadening material in the low spots before re-installing the new boards.




Got a good deal on some 3/8" finished oak plywood, here I'm replicating the old cork material.




That's better.




My friend Mike helping out, here he's removed the old propane tank. I'll be replacing it with the new unit that holds a gallon more.




Had to do a little trim work to get the new tank to fit, it was off by 1/8". I think I'm going to undercoat the ends on the tank as well as the bottom gaurd/bracket to keep them from getting chipped up from rocks and rusting.




More progress tomorrow.

Hodakaguy

Wanted to install some more sound dampening material today before re-installing the rear seat. I picked up some HushMat sound deadening material and then set out to find a small 1" wide roller to apply it with. Figured I could find one easy at a local hardware store....well 4 stores later I was tired of wasting time trying to find one so it's time to make one!

A quick trip to Mike's to use his lathe. Drilling a hole into a piece of aluminum round stock to make a roller.




Rounding the edges on the roller with a drill and a flapper wheel.




Took a old screw driver and cut the tip off then bent it 90 deg.




Tack welded a couple washers on each side of the roller....this should work fine :-)




Starting to install the Hushmat. It molds easier than the DynaMat and sticks a LOT better. I'll cover everything clear to the back with the Hushmat. Hopefully it will make it a little quieter going down the road :-)




My father finishing prep on the new propane tank while I was making the roller tool. I wanted to coat the ends of the tank with bed liner to keep it from being chipped up from rocks and rusting. Ended up coating the ends, brackets, bottom and back with the undercoating. Left the front in factory paint.







As usual I didn't get done a fraction of what I planned. Ended up helping the neighbor on a project so didn't get the tank installed yet. More work on it tomorrow :-)


Hodakaguy