Winter is starting to break, everyone is hunkered down because of the virus and I'm stuck here working on my bus instead of being in sunny Florida and going to the Lakeland VW show next week. I figgered it wasn't a good idea to be traveling right now so I cancelled my trip.
Anyway, here's what's been going on with it. While it was on the run stand the fuel pump was acting up- I use a marine outboard fuel tank and ran it dry a couple of times. As long as the pump was primed it would pull fuel and run, but if it ran dry it would not prime on it's own due to a sticking check valve. I ran a vacuum test on it and it pulled zero inches which is bad. For S&G I disassembled it to inspect the parts as it was a low mileage Brosol pump but I didn't find anything of note with the check valves. I was pleasantly surprised to find a filter screen inside the pump like in the old Pierburg pumps. This one is not serviceable but at least it's there. The new pump pulled 15"hg when operated.
Here's an update on the clutch: I emailed Kennedy Products about the problem I had with severe chatter on the pressure plate I had and they responded immediately that they couldn't help unless they had the PP, so I sent it to them. They called to tell me it was bad for many reasons- the cover was bad, the diaphragm spring was bad, it was total junk and not even rebuildable. I'm really not too happy to hear this as it is 10+ years old but has only a few (3-4000?) thousand miles on it. I'm very easy on a clutch- no drag starts, no slipping, etc. Anyway, they offered no help except to sell me a new PP so my opinion of them just slipped a few notches. The stock clutch is in there and holding up nice so we'll see how long it lasts. The soft pedal is nicer than the stiff 1700lb pedal.
The rear bumper has been a little crooked for years so I figured I'd correct that before making a tailpipe. I tried bending the bracket in a vise to no avail so I bolted it on and used a long piece of water pipe to bend the bracket to fit. It's nice and straight now.
Back to my hillbilly exhaust- a stock Bug muffler has a pair of 1.375" exhaust outlets but a bus muffler has only one 1.25" outlet, with a 1" core in the tailpipe resonator. Wow, talk about restriction! I cut the 1.25" spigot off and welded on a 1.5" outlet and fabbed up a 1.5" tailpipe. I formed the spigot to use the stock style clamp assembly where the tailpipe attaches. You can see the paint I used was not high temp.
Oddly enough, I think the 2180 is quieter than the 1904 was with a very similar muffler setup.
The air cleaner hose from the Ghia that I made up a long time ago fit with almost no changes, so on it goes.
I probably have 500+ miles on the 2180 so far this year and it runs great! Tons of power, smooth, I'm really happy with it. I haven't measured my 0-60 times but I wonder if my bus would outrun TRL's with the dual carb 1904. He'd probably still have me but it might be a good race.
The Zenith 32NDIX is a really smooth carb with no issues at all like the 34PICT had, amazingly I don't have a choke cable hooked up (they're all manual choke) and it starts perfectly cold/hot and idles on it's own within 10 seconds when cold. I'm driving it every day that the roads are dry. I'm going to buff the paint soon as it's been over 6 years (can you believe it?) since I painted and last buffed it.
I have a Thing in the shop right now for a list of stuff, but I'll get back on mine before Tune-Up Day. The 1904 from Bus 1 will go in Bus 2 shortly......