new MC arrives!

  new master cylinder arrived today and its perfect. genuine German-made ATE right down to the boot & elbows. i decided to check the insides for any corrosion from sitting on the shelf for (?) years and found some very light pitting in the area between the outermost seal and the adjacent one, probably just from moisture in the air that was in that area.

 i got a good tip from the 411/412 forum to use a small wooden dowel mounted in a drill with some extra fine scotch-brite stuck to it like a flag. works like a flap-wheel and takes off minimal material, more of a polishing effect. 

  the seals are still pretty good, smooth and pliable. they're a little stiff, but not any more so than what i would get in a rebuild kit, and better yet they're already mounted. 

  as soon as it stops raining i can finish this job up, finally. what a saga...

gas most foul

  since the brakes are on hold for a few days, theres time to start replacing fuel hoses and chasing fuel leaks...

  yesterday i was under the car all day dealing with the foulest old gasoline i've ever encountered. 5 years of sitting in the tank had reduced it to an orange-colored stank juice, and my attempt at starting the car a couple weeks ago had sent it pumping out all over.

  thats the underside of the tank with the evaporated-gas goo leaking out through the plug. my hoses were in much worse condition than i had expected to find...no wonder there was a golden shower when i turned it on:

  all together its about 4 feet of hose, maybe 7 or 8 individual lengths. the whole mess is in a pocket of space above the front end subframe and just under the gas tank, so pulling off ancient, frozen-on hoses makes for lots of contortion and cursing. i used genuine German 7mm fuel hose this time, a new fuel filter, and proper fuel-injection clamps:

  in the background you can just see a vent hose that has completely broken apart and separated from the tube leading back to the engine compartment. this hose runs all the way up to the filler neck, i'm still looking for a decent replacement...

  next i need to get a fuel pressure tester and make sure its adjusted to 28psi, a critical setting for the system to work properly. its something i never checked before, and i'm sure it needs an adjustment by now. 

i curse thee, four-twelve!

  after days of trying to bleed, i discovered today that my NOS master cylinder was rusted and only moving through half of its stroke. i guess thats what you get when you leave a drained system alone for months in a car with moisture-leak problems. the rear piston was so tightly rusted in place that i had to use a torch on the body and tap its face with a punch to break it loose. unfortunately, i broke off a piece of it, rendering it useless. 

  since the master cylinder lives inside on these cars, they are prone to rust problems due to condensation. VW thought that they were solving the problem of it being exposed to dirt and a relatively harsh environment outside, but they created a much bigger problem by hiding it under the dash. as a result, they all die a rusty death very quickly.

  but the best part about it is that to get to it/remove it, you have to remove the steering column and pedal assembly:

 thats it, hanging by the feed hoses from the reservoir (which is in the trunk, where the whole business should have been in the first place).  

 i found my stash of spare brake MCs, and let them all soak in Liquid Wrench overnight, then set about trying to get some useable parts out of them. in the end, every one of them had either a damaged bore or a broken rear piston. bugger. 

 

  the type 4 used a totally unique design for the master cylinder, both externally (mounting) and internally (piston/cup dimensions), and replacement parts are very hard to come by. some crossover exists, namely the rubber lip seals; they are identical to the type 3, and the front piston is the same as a certain year of type 1. luckily i found a new one on ebay, should be here early next week, and i can finally finish with the brakes. what a saga...

calipers, hoses, & bloody knuckles

  once i cleaned off 30 years of filth from the brake hoses i saw that they were in fact the originals, and pretty worn out. 

  the cracking wasnt too bad, but i figured i should replace them as a matter of course. Always V-Dub had replacements, and once i bought a genuine flare-nut wrench the unions broke free...

  this is the reservoir from my bleed kit...possibly the nastay-est brake fluid i've ever seen...or smelled. 

  tomorrow: more fun with DOT 3. so far, filling a system that is completely empty of fluid has been tedious at best, especially solo. i bought a pretty cool Craftsman vacuum-pump bleeding kit that makes it a little easier, but its still a very slow process... 

custom 412s

  some inspiration from around the web:     

 

oldbug.com's custom 412

from Total VW/Tom's Type 4 Corner

412 race car from the UK

  i think these cars look amazing once their nose-in-the-air suspension is "corrected" and lowered an inch or two. the last time i was actively working on this car i started working on a modified strut assembly to bring the front end down. i took the stock strut towers from a 2-door coupe i parted out and cutoff the lower spring perch, intending to relocate it about 1-2 inches lower:

 here it is with the weld cut off at the stock location. once the perch has been re-welded a different damper cartridge can then be used (with a shorter overall length to match the reduced effective length of the spring). lowering the rear is a little more complicated, especially you want to avoid cutting the coils. for now i'd be happy just to even up the ride height front-to-back so i can take out the bags of concrete mix that ive been carrying around in my trunk, poor-bastard-style. 

phase 1 part 2

  after spending most of the day driving around for supplies i managed to make some progress on my front brakes before it started raining. the rotors ended up being in much better shape than i thought; no scoring or pitting, just mild surface rust. in fact, the backsides of them were almost rust-free. a few minutes with a brush and a wire wheel chucked in a hand drill cleaned them off well enough, and i didnt even need to remove them. 

  

although still a little rusty, they're both remarkably smooth...a few hard stops and they'll be good as new...

  the remanufactured calipers i bought on ebay last year were still spotless, and i cannibalized the old ones for the pad hardware. 

412 resurrection phase 1

  i woke up the other day with a feeling of acute inspiration to bring my old car back from the dead, (poorly) stored for the last 5 years in an assortment of driveways, streets, and warehouses. my goal is to have it back on the road by the end of this summer...

  

before i do anything else, i need to do two things: fix the brakes and try to start it. ideally, i would have it running/driving before i tear into it, but i guess i would settle for just a steady idle...

  i was curious what would happen if all i did was charge the battery and forget about the stale, 5-year-old gas in the tank or the pooled oil in the cylinders, so i cranked it over a few times. after a couple false starts i started to smell gasoline...lots of it. thats when i remembered the fuel leaks that had developed right when i stopped driving it, only now they were many times worse. underneath the car there was an ocean of gas and steady drips coming from the entire underside:

  

  

thats all 411/412 parts. i was sick once. i'm better now.

  

  my assortment of manuals...i think i have at least 1 of every one thats ever been published, including the genuine VW Factory Service Manual & Parts List:

  last year i installed the new master cylinder, rebuilt the pedal assembly, installed new wheel cylinders, bought remanufactured calipers, and drained the fluid. its been sitting since then and doesnt even have a functional e-brake. Always VW had brake shoes, and today i installed them. the only thing left now is to fill and bleed the system...

morrison bridge passage for bikes?

bikeportland.org posted this story yesterday afternoon:

new morrison bridge bikeway

i cant believe it took so long for this to happen. finally a "middle passage"

too bad i dont ride pedalbikes anymore...

fun with time lapse!

last year i played around with the time-lapse setting on my camera at work... somehow the slow days ended up being more entertaining than the busy ones...

more soup!

wow. gary bussey is batshit crazy:

zero punctuation

  OK, so i dont have much to do these days besides watch stupid videos on the internet and choose between pollo or al pastor at Los Gorditos... Zero Punctuation is a video game review series by a very grumpy Australian and its hilarious. this weeks game is Little Big Planet, a PS3 exclusive that has become something of a phenomenon:

Joel McHale for president

in other TV news, i'm obsessed with The Soup, and here's why:

next time: mankini & spaghetti cat!

what happened to BSG?

ellen is the fifth? dee blows her own head off for no reason? hotdog's the real daddy? sal's a frackin' cylon? gaeta's a one-legged revolutionary? we're all cool with the skinjobs now that they've had a change of heart? kara's randomly sucking face with lee again? after 4 seasons of searching, the fleet is just going to shrug their shoulders and leave earth behind? what the hell is going on? is this their idea of plot twists? i think they just turned the show over to some high school kids so they could make a getaway before everybody figured out what a piece of shit their show has become...."I'M COMING FOR YOU!"