Ken's 68 Single Cab

[Mike Kever Kombi]

Nice to see it on the road again after all these years. Even nicer to see that you plan on using it for what it was designed to do.

Don't forget to add the obligatory hauling wood/logs picture

And...check.

[Ken]

Nice to see it on the road again after all these years. Even nicer to see that you plan on using it for what it was designed to do.

Don't forget to add the obligatory hauling wood/logs picture

And...check.

Got it.

[Ken]

Next job is to get the fuel gage working.

The fuel gage now works perfectly. It turned out to be a rusted/corroded wire that grounds the sending unit to the chassis. All I did was remove the screw, wire brush the wire and reconnect. Some problems are awfully simple, others are simply awful.

[Marla]

Way to go Ken!

[Ken]

Continuing to work on the electrical and wiring. After I got all the instrumentation working, I noticed the generator light (red) was still lit while the engine was running. This would indicate that the generator or voltage regulator is not charging the battery. I verified no output with a volt/amp meter.

Bummer, time to pull the generator. This job can be a royal pain, most repair manuals recommend pulling the engine first. I've done it before on split busses with single port engines without pulling the motor by removing the carburetor and distributor so I decided to give it a try on a dual port bay window. It was still a pain but there was just enough room to raise the fan shroud and pull the generator. While I was at it, I also removed the voltage regulator.

I took the generator and v/r to Kolar Electric in Elyria to get them tested. It turned out that the generator had an open in the stator coil and was shot. The v/r tested ok.

Next stop was Bill's shop. He had a new Bosch generator for me the next morning.

Got it all back together the next day, Bill reminded me to "polarize" the generator after installing.

Everything is working fine now. I even found a loose wire in the engine compartment marked "Coil+", so I plugged into the coil+ and bingo the back-up lights even work.

[TRL]

Yeah! Looking good!

[Ken]

The driver side window regulator never worked since I got the bus. There is a bracket on the regulator that is spot welded to the window channel in order to raise and lower the window. Over time the spot weld rusted and broke causing the window to drop down inside the door. Fortunately the window didn't break.



I picked up some 3/4" metal angle brackets at Home Depot, drilled some hole in the broken piece and pop riveted them to the metal piece that broke off the regulator.






I put the two 5mm screws back in and the window works just fine for now or until I can find a decent new or used window channel at a swap meet. At least now the window won't drop down inside the door and break.

[Rob]

Sometimes figuring out the workaround is more fun than having the right part. Plus it let's you keep driving it while you look!