Austin's 1977 Tintop Camper

[ohiowesty]

TIL that buses are helpful to win a girl's heart. Congrats! Great pics to look back on for when you guys get old , you should have worn a LEAKOIL shirt tho'

[Kooper271]

Thanks for the congratulations everyone!

[Marla]

Great News Austin! I love the pictures. Hopefully you will make it to a few events.

[Kooper271]

Hopefully the struggle bus and I will be at this months third Thursday. It has really been a long winter. I have been very sick, and I've spent a lot of time in the hospital.

I got to take the bus out in March, but it broke down in the middle of an intersection on the way to a doctor's appointment. I had it towed home and havent felt well enough to look at it until today.

The motor all of a sudden was very loud, and I lost power. I could keep it running with my foot on the gas.

Today I hooked up my smoke machine, hoping to find only a vacuum leak. Instead, I found the #1 spark plug laying on the side of the engine. I chased the threads then blew out the spark plug hole. Runs like a top now.

I know that the plug shooting out is probably indicitave of an issue, but I won't be addressing it until after September. I screwed up that head in a couple of ways because I made sloppy mistakes. I will likely just replace the head and fix the exhaust this year.


I hope that I can keep the bus running over the summer, and I hope to be healthy enough to enjoy it

[wwebner]

Hope your health is better Austin. I had a plug blow out once. Layed on the foam engine seal and started it on fire. No damage thank goodness. A helicoil will fix your problem, but a little tricky with the tin on.

[TRL]

You might get lucky the plug will hang on. Or if not, an insert can get you going. I hope the summer brings better health for you.

[Kooper271]

A few updates:

I installed a leisure battery and a split charge relay, then wired the leisure battery to its own fuse panel. I also installed a 12 volt plug in an existing hole in the dash.




This allowed me to run 12v LED lights, and a fan at night. We went camping over Memorial Day weekend. On the way there, my turn signals quit working. The hazard switch fell apart. I tried to zip tie it back together, but couldn't get it to hold right, so it was hand signals there and back.




This morning, I decided to figure out why the horn wasn't working. I had to replace the turn signal last year, so that is where I started. I found that by grounding the horn contact on the turn signal switch, I was able to make the horn work.



I noticed the contacts for the horn were dirty, so I cleaned those up.



I figured out that the steering column was too low and my gap was too big. The horn wasn't making contact when you pressed the button.



I had previously installed a new ignition switch, and at that time I drilled out the shear bolt and replaced it with an allen head bolt. I loosened the bolt, and moved the steering column up until it was in the right position per the Bentley book. Now the horn works correctly. Thanks for the tip on the ground circuit for the horn, Rick.



I still have a bad exhaust leak, and based on the look of the spark plugs the engine is still running lean. I'm working to correct those issues.

[Kooper271]

Can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update. I think I only drove the bus a handful of times in 2019, hope to bring it out more this year.

Since my last update, I replaced one cylinder head, fixed the exhaust leaks, and the lean issue. I think I did all of that during summer 2019.

With the coronavirus slowing work down significantly, I decided to try and work on the bus more. I had been having issues keeping my points adjusted, it seemed like the gap was tightening up every 200-300 miles. Eventually found that the adjustment screw wasn't holding tight and didn't want to struggle with it anymore so I replaced it with a Pertronix distributor. Set the timing and all is well in the ignition system.

Still chasing a rough cold start issue, I believe I have a leaking injector or cold start valve. Fuel pressure at 35 psi while cranking and ignition disabled, 28 psi at idle, 25 psi with engine off and pressure drops to 0 psi overnight. Could also be my crappy harbor freight gauge, I will probably check it again using my Matco one at work. I will spend some time this week identifying the root cause of this concern.

As I grow as a professional technician, I realize how big of a hack I was when I started this project. I was the worst kind of hack too, one that thought forum posts and videos would provide technical ability and I couldn't even recognize my own shoddy work. I would like to say thank you to all who have helped me with this project.

I will need to spend a large amount of time correcting my previous "repairs." I'm surprised the engine even runs

[wwebner]

Great to hear from you Austin

[Marla]

It's a learning process. It's great to hear you're back at it.