Security Buggin! keeping a 74 baja alive doing timber patrol in Southwestern Oregon

[Leatherneck]

Remember KISS,it is easy to get caught up in the rat race of off roading. Looks like you have a cool gig for yourself.

Spoken by the guy who is going from turbo VW to water cooled V6 Honda.

I love my Type 4 VW, but it does not follow Leather's KISS principle. Everything about them is more expensive than the Type 1. Something around the 1900 cc range would give you good power, reliability, and the cylinder walls are thick enough for good cooling.

Just trying to help someone from making the $$ mistakes I did. I had the 1915, beat the snot out of it without and with the Turbo, ran Rotella 30 weight in, great engine.

[Dougstr]

Good morning everyone! I posted awhile ago that I was getting ready to buy an engine from aircooled.net but unfortunately they haven't gotten back to me. I am looking at other options. Does any one have any comments on

https://www.gex.com/hi-performance-vw-engine.htm

I am looking at the 1904cc.

Thanks in advance!

Doug

[Steve Arndt]

Email john directly [email protected]

DO NOT use GEX

[chuckput]

DOUBLE DO NOT buy from GEX!!! Horror stories abound! Is Strictly Foreign in Grants Pass still in business?

[Dougstr]

DOUBLE DO NOT buy from GEX!!! Horror stories abound! Is Strictly Foreign in Grants Pass still in business?

Grants Pass is a few hours away so I don't get down there and I don't know. Steve's advice was good and I have connected with John at Aircooled. I am going to go ahead with them.

[chuckput]

It's all good. I can't vouch for Strictly Foreign's work as I have never had any dealings with them. I just remember they used to advertise in Hot VWs a few years back and I was trying to give you an option since you are in Oregon. They do have a web page. I look forward to seeing more progress on your bug.

[sideshow]

Strictly Foreign is a legit shop just south of me, that last few times I have outsourced work for my own use I have used them to good success.
Also John at ACN is a good mail order shop.

I have parts both from SF & ACN that have decades of use on them.
I have labor from SF with decade of use on them.

Generally I am suspect of glossy mail order only like GEX based on what I have seen first hand of low mileage used...granted I see more second hand observations of low quality but it doesn't differ much on what I have seen first hand.

[Dougstr]

So, this is going back to about mid March.

The security bug ran pretty well/consistently for about the first month. I had few issues. It was definitely reinforcing for me that it was an ideal vehicle for getting around out in the woods and doing the security mission. The only limitation that it has is space. In Oregon, it's hard to say what kind of weather you're going to get, and looking back on the photos I took, I had everything from beautiful sunny days to nasty ass storms. All of these days though tend to start out pretty cool and so heat was an important thing. About my 3rd or 4th week into the job I started realizing I was bringing in a lot of engine gases through the heating system. I went back and looked at my exhaust and didn't see any issues. I looked at my heater boxes and saw that they were wallered out around the exhaust pipes so I thought maybe that was where gases were getting in. When I looked at the car in the morning I could see that lots of exhaust fumes were eddy around the back cowling. I assumed that was my issue. My slow speeds were allowing lots of exhaust to eddy around the cowling and then getting sucked in through the fan and also through the wallered out heater boxes. I was wrong of course I didn't look closely enough at my exhaust system. At least about the heater boxes.

As I was trying to decide on my next course of action and was looking the system over again I looked down from the top and noticed that the support for the muffler seemed out of place.

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Yep that's a problem.

I replaced it with this.

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The new muffler has been working well to this point.

[Dougstr]

I went ahead and replaced the heater boxes anyway. The turn around on this was pretty quick and I was back Security Buggin in short order. We had more snow in the mountains and so I got to spend more time playing around in that.

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I began developing some shifting issues. I hadn't changed out the fluids in the transmission so I was thinking that might be part of the problem. It seemed my clutch was slipping and it wasn't going into gear very smoothly. I decided I would change out the clutch and I hoped that would help. Prior to doing that I changed out the fluids in the transmission as well. Changing the fluid helped a lot. I had ordered a new clutch but sat it on the shelf as things were working pretty well.

[Dougstr]

About two weeks later while traveling a gravel road on Eckley Mountain I had my red alternator light come on. I revved the engine a little bit and it went off and then about another half mile later it came back on and stayed on. That didn't look good. I got out wiggled a couple of wires and looked things over. I couldn't come up with a solution. I decided to keep on going as I figured the battery would last for a while.

One of the rules that I have to comply with while working is that I keep my headlights on. So I was able to run it for about another three or four hours. I made it back to civilization (Powers Or.) just in the nick of time prior to losing all juice. I left the bug at my sisters cabin, pulled the battery and hauled it home to put on the charger. The next day I put the battery back in and drove it home. Once I got it home I started trying to figure out what the issue was. I went through the wiring next to the speedometer. I looked here first because there had been an "electrical incident" when I had been wiring some new led spotlights. All of that was good. After reading some forum posts I checked the voltage at the alternator. I was getting 6 volts. the car has a twelve volt system! The way I understand it the alternator light circuit acts similar to a transistor. In other words, it's got two sources of voltage coming to it one from the battery and one from the alternator. As long as those voltages (pressure) are equal no current flows and the light stays off. Because I was only receiving six volts from the alternator it allowed current to flow from the battery and the light came on. So what this led me to believe was one of the diodes had gone bad, and I had a bad alternator.

Well, that's a good opportunity to put in something with more power. I ordered the 90 amp alternator from Pertronix. I went back and forth about staying with the 55 amp or going bigger but one of my goals with the security bug was to have an inverter so that I could have 120 volts available. So far the combination seems to be working well. After reviewing the procedure for changing out an alternator on Rob and Dave's site I decided my best option was to go ahead and pull the engine and take advantage of the opportunity to put the new clutch in. So that's what I did.

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I got the clutch off of Amazon.

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I was a little bit concerned because I couldn't read anything on the packaging. But everything bolted in fine and it has been working great.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

You might want to check the coupler at the end of the shift rod that connects it to the trans. The opening is covered by a removable plate at the back of the tunnel.

The other thing to check is the bushing just behind the shifter that the shift rod goes through. It is about a finger length into the tunnel. It looks to be nylon and has a lightweight slip on clamp that locks it in it's mount.

Neither are that expensive... yet! .

Lee

Access to the shifter rod is the cover in the front of the front beam mount.

[ninelives17]

Lee is 100% correct. Replace both items for less than 50 bucks and you won't believe how much better it will shift.

[Dougstr]

You are both correct!

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I was noticing the rattle that you hear at around 25 + MPH and after researching here figured that the bushing was the problem. I went ahead and replaced the shift coupler as well. the new pin for the shift coupler wouldn't go in so I used the old one. It is worn but not too bad.

I did this when I had the ball joint problem

[Ol'fogasaurus]

... I did this when I had the ball joint problem

Yeah, old age does bring out the bad in our joints!

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Bug spindles.

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If you can find them get some Thing spindles.

The Thing spindles are stronger as far as the lower BJs go as they press in from the lower side and can't be pulled out. The upper BJ is stronger hence the BJ shaft is thicker but it is the adjuster on it is very hard to find because of the BJ shaft design. I think, but am not sure the stock BJs and adjuster might work. Need more info as I have forgotten a lot about this. In my BJ beam build I did do some talking about this when I was doing the beam build. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=136514&start=60 This is the conversation on the upper BJs used with Thing spindles.

I wonder why someone hasn't duplicated them yet.

Lee

[Dougstr]

The Balljoint problem was addressed on Lee's thread here.
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=136514&start=315

It began like this.

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