Bad Wabbit

[Una]

Seems like I'm constantly tinkering on my '81 Diesel rabbit I picked up just over a month ago. I need a place to keep track of it all. I should have started a project thread a month ago when the car didn't make it home from the DPO's house and I had to have it towed the rest of the way home.
Let's see if I can do a little bit a recapping.. I'll try not to be too long winded.. I already posted some of this before..
My first car when I turned 16 was an '80 Diesel Rabbit, it was 4 door, yellow, and it was only 13 years old (I'm 33, don't think too hard trying to figure that out hehehe..). I got it from my father who had planned to use it for commuting but couldn't because of the dreaded runaway problem with blowby. I solved that with a downdraft tube and drove it for a few months. It overheated all the time, but never let me down. I always had it stuffed full of my friends, barely pulling hills in 2nd gear (it was a 4 speed), and I never got less than 36mpg out of the poor worn out thing.
But this project thread isn't about that car, I just wanted to give some back story on my history with diesel rabbits. As for Rabbits, I've also owned an 83 GTi, about a year after that first one. The brakes failed one day and I crashed that poor car. and 3 years after that I had a gasser with an automatic for awhile, the auto didn't last long so I got rid of it. About 7 years ago I had an '84 Cabriolet with a gas motor that I MegaSquirtted. The motor in that hemoraged oil faster than I could pour it in, unfortunately. I almost swapped a 2.0 into it, but moved on before I got around to it.
Ok ok, that's the end of my backstory.. So about this Rabbit.. I bought it from an old guy, who said he bought it from a really old guy several years earlier. It seemed to be in very very good condition, and I paid quite a bit for it. I had to drive about 60 miles to get it home, I made it about 30 before it started starving for fuel on the freeway. I ran and bought a gallon of diesel and put that in the tank and made it about 500 feet farther down the freeway. Some quick googling on my phone told me that the fuel filter in the tank was probably clogged, so I simply had the car towed the rest of the way home.
Next day comes and I find that the in-tank filter is in the trunk with the spare tire, rather than in the tank. The tank has something in it, it's very full, but I don't think I'd call it diesel. I go under the car to drain the tank and find someone has taken a 3/8" fuel line and forced it onto the 13mm fitting on the tank, and clamped the snot out of it to fit onto the 5/16" hardline. It's also kinked pretty bad. While I'm under there I notice two kind of clean, damp spots on the bottom of the tank. I poke at one of them and it starts dripping. I rub at it and the epoxy falls off and I find what looks like a nice clean hole from about a 1/8" drillbit, which is now leaking profusely. I grab an oil drain pan, and a gas can. I unhook the fuel line and start draining the tank into the gas can (had to jack the car up to do this). While draining the tank, I notice all sorts of debris (fungus) coming out with the fuel.
At that point I realized I HAD to replace the tank. I looked around at the local parts store's websites.. Then I checked eBay.. I eventually went with one from eBay, the local parts stores had to order it anyways, might as well order it myself, plus I saved nearly $80+, got the tank for $100 shipped or something like that.
Anyone that's removed a tank from one of these things knows it's a hell of an adventure. This thing is completely rust free, so I had that going for me, but I still had to drop the rear axles, and cut the exhaust system off to get them out of the way of the tank. Even then it took some fighting to get the tank out from under the car.
When I put the new tank in, I had to weld the exhaust system back into one piece (I had cut it in two places). To fix the fuel line problem, I picked up some hose barbs at the hardware store. One was 1/2" barb to 1/4" female NPT, the other was 5/16" barb to 1/4" male NPT, threaded together, they made a nice adapter for the tank to the hardline.
I chose not to put ANY of the old fuel into the tank. I didn't trust it, and didn't want to re-introduce any of that fungus into my brand new fuel tank.
The new tank doesn't have a spot for the in-tank filter, so it didn't get it. Oh well, I guess. I put a fresh filter under the hood.
Oh yeah, while I had the car up in the air for a few days waiting for the new tank to arrive, I pulled off the horribly dry rotted tires and had them replaced. The date code on them was from 1990! I had nice new 155/13's put on. I also installed new speakers and a modern stereo while I was killing time. It's got a real nice Sony with bluetooth and iPhone direct connection interface now.
Anyways, I'll post more later. That probably covers the first leg of my adventure..

[Una]

At this point I had found this forum, so some of this, even the gas tank swap, is posted here. But I'll restate it anyways, to have it all in this thread. Anyways.. I ordered a hose kit from Jack, because the coolant hoses in my engine bay looked factory original, and that's not exactly a good thing on a 30 year old car. I also started thinking about the fact that this car had been parked for a long enough time that the tires from 1990 still had good tread depth, and decided that I couldn't bear to drive on the old timing belt any more. I didn't have the special tools needed, so I used a white paint pen to mark the timing belt and the pulleys, as well as writing down the number of teeth on the belt between the marks. I figured while I had it apart, I should replace the water pump and thermostat, as well as install that hose kit that had arrived just prior to this.
This is where the next adventure started. It turns out there are 4 different water pumps for this motor. The first one I got was completely wrong, wouldn't fit my pulley, the second one was the wrong shaft length, it would have misaligned my pulleys, and the one I actually needed was special order. So the car sat for a couple days while I waited for the pump to come in, I'd already torn it apart by the time I realized this. I also had a problem with the timing belt tensioner, I had the right part number, right box, but the wrong part in the box. I just had to drive to the next town to get one from another branch of the auto parts store. (Did this before I realized the problem with the pump, I could have just waited on the tensioner).
While the car was down for a couple days, I decided to try to fix my odometer problem. I forgot to mention it, but I had already tried once, while the tank was out. What I found was that the whole odometer assembly was rusted solid, it wasn't just a case of gluing the plastic gear onto the shaft. A friend of mine had a cluster from a '85 Golf diesel that he was kind enough to give to me. I couldn't just toss it in because it mounted differently, and the wiring was different. I tore it apart, instead, with the intention of swapping the guts into my housing. That didn't work, everything bolted up differently. I eventually took the face off the golf speedo, and the rabbit speedo and put the rabbit face on the golf speedo. Then with some clever bolt placing, I was able to secure it in the Rabbit housing. I thought I had broken my fuel gauge in the last round of tinkering, so I swapped the golf gauge into my cluster. My next problem was that the golf speedo cable uses a plastic clip on end, while my rabbit cluster used a metal screw on end. I decided to just duct tape my cable to this cluster. It worked. The fuel gauge and clock were still not working, but I now had a speedometer with a functional odometer.
I also finally got the engine reassembled and my paint mark trick worked. The IP pump stayed timed properly and the car ran fine afterwards. I also put fresh coolant in afterwards, assuming the old coolant was very very old.
More later..

[Una]

Ok, so where was I.. Ahh yes, spent a fair amount of money on preventative maintenance to make sure my new commuter car would be reliable. I commute 63 miles each way to work every day, that's why I bought this car. I got a new job, looked into moving closer, decided it was cheaper to commute, and to maximize my savings, I chose the best mileage car I could think of. Anyways, the first day I had it all back together and drove it to work, it drove great. But after work one of my co-workers walked up while I was letting it warm up in the parking lot and informed me that I was leaking coolant. So I got out and walked to the front of the car and yeah, it was leaking, pouring out, but it wasn't coolant. It was diesel. I figured I had popped a hose somewhere, so I went back and popped the hood and took a look around. Nope, not a hose. The freaking cold advance lever was dripping fuel at an amazing rate. I tried pulling and pushing the lever in the car a couple times, but it just wouldn't stop leaking. So for the second time in the two weeks I had owned the car, I called a tow truck to come drag it home.
I had expected the seals in the injection pump to eventually fail due to the modern diesel. Eventually as in within a year or so, and fail as in it'd start weeping, maybe a drop a minute, not a quart a minute, and not inside of two weeks. It was clearly a factory original pump that probably hadn't been used since 1990ish (maybe 95, I imagine 1990 tires would have been in use around 1995 or so).
I think this was the Tuesday before the 4th of July (which was on a Monday, so it was a 3 day weekend), I wanted a rebuilt pump immediately because my other car gets a wopping 20mpg, I built it as a dragster, not a commuter. I got in touch with Jack and had a rebuilt pump overnighted from his rebuilder. UPS raped me, but the pump was great. By the time it got here I had fully researched the tricks required to time it, and I was already familiar with removing the timing belt. I made my own dial indicator mount that screwed into the back of the pump, and did my best to time the new pump. I say did my best, because every time I would set the pump, and then turn the engine 4 revolutions and go to double check my setting, I got a different reading! I was aiming for .039", but on double checking I'd get .033" one time, and .051" the next.. I finally decided that all of my readings were "in the ballpark" and called it good. The guide I had printed out and followed said that the pump WILL self prime.. But after cranking on the thing forever, it was clear that no fuel was getting drawn from the filter, so I busted out my vacuum pump I use for doing air conditioning. It's not really a PUMP, it hooks up to my air compressor and uses the compressed air in a venturi effect to pull a vacuum. Probably for the best, since it eventually got a whole lot of diesel fuel pulled into it, I rigged up a hose from the large port on the OUT at the pump and fired up the vacuum "pump", it ran for about 30 seconds, it was clearly pulling fuel through the IP. Finally the fuel made it all the way through and I shut it down. I put the return line back on the IP and cranked the car over. It fired up fairly easily, just having to purge the air that remained in the injector hardlines.
My timing seemed fine, maybe a touch advanced, but probably not any worse than 1980 specs. The idle seemed really high, like 1200rpm or more. I tried adjusting the throttle stop screw, without much luck. It did nothing for several turns, then suddenly dropped to a point where the engine was running very very badly. I brought it back up just a touch. But after a test drive it was back to the high idle again. I drove it like that for a week, and it seemed to smoke A LOT under load. So I backed the "smoke screw" out 3/4 of a turn, that instantly and dramatically affected the idle. I actually backed it out till the idle seemed nice and low and smooth. That helped the smoke problem significantly. Still more smoke than the stop pump, but the mileage is sitting right at 50mpg, so I can't complain I guess. Maybe it's a "performance rebuild"?

[Una]

Ok, now the new pump had been installed and the car was up and running again. I actually made amazingly good time on the pump replacement. I used a steering wheel puller to get the sprocket off the old pump. Put the new pump on, and was ready to time the thing Friday evening. Saturday morning I went to the hardware store and bought the parts to make the timing tool. So by Saturday evening, my Bad Wabbit was up and running again.
July 4th was nice, I actually spent the day making a 1/2 gallon test batch of biodiesel from some WVO I had sitting on my porch from my wife's FryDaddy. It was a fun learning experience.
July 5th, the car drove to work well, but on the way home it blew the hose that goes from the head to the water pump off at the head. Luckily I carry a spare gallon of coolant with me, because I like to be prepared. I also carry a large assortment of tools. So I pulled over to the side of the freeway as soon as I realized there was a trail of something on the freeway that was following my every move. The engine didn't even get to the halfway point on the gauge before I noticed, it pretty much hadn't leaked half the coolant out yet. It took me about 30 minutes, burning the hell out of my fingers, and cursing whoever thought it was a bright idea to make this hose TOO SHORT to properly reach. I eventually got it reinstalled and clamped the hell out of it. I poured my gallon into the engine, it was pretty much exactly the right amount.
I think that pretty well brings us up to date.. So I can finally post what's going on in real time..
Back when I did the fuel tank, I noticed that two of the shock absorbers were wet, they had sprung a leak and were leaking their internal oils out. So I knew I needed to replace them, but unfortunately, the triage I've been dealing with has prevented me from having the luxury of replacing things like shocks. Well it's gotten to the point where when I run over a bump in the freeway, the car all but changes lanes because the tires reverberate from the bump with little to no dampening. So after having a close encounter with a dump truck on the way home Friday, I stopped by a local tire shop where I have a revolving account, and made an appointment to have them replace all 4 of my struts and do an alignment. So that's next weekend.
Today, I replaced the o-ring on my vacuum pump. I didn't have one for it when I removed it to do my injection pump timing, so it's started leaking pretty bad around the base where it meets the block. I picked up a 473 piece metric o-ring kit from Harbor Freight for $8, it had a size that did the job nicely. On the trip to work on Friday, I noticed my alternator belt was squeeling a little bit, so I looked into that while I was under the hood. The belt had become extremely loose. Kind of strange, since I replaced that belt with the timing belt, and I had tensioned it quite tight when I put all that back together. Oh well, easy fix.
Then I moved on to my instrument cluster. The clock had never worked, somehow both the ground wire and the power wire on the cluster had their traces burnt off. So I had to jumper around them. I also had broken the contact for the glowplug light on the cluster the last time I had it out, so I soldered a jumper wire around that. And finally, the speedometer needle. I had removed that to change the face, when I put the needle back on, I put it in the wrong place, so it was reading 7mph high. So to do 60mph, I had to get the needle up to 67.. I removed the needle and tried to carefully lower it 7mph. I missed, it now reads 4mph low.. So when it says 60mph, I'm actually doing 64.. Oh well, it's closer and I'm not going to fight with it any more. And finally the fuel gauge hadn't worked since the first time I took the cluster apart, despite having swapped in the golf gauge. I started with removing the plug from the sender at the tank. I noticed the gauge dropped from reading empty to it's parked position in the far left. That was a good sign. So I used my meter and checked the ground to the sender. That was good, I checked for voltage on the feed to the sender, good 10v power, which is what the voltage regulator puts out. So that was fine. Must be the sender? So I removed it from the tank. I plugged the wires back into it while I had it out, and all the way down, the gauge read empty. All the way up, the gauge read full. Ok, strange... Maybe I installed it in a way that it got stuck against something in the tank? So I put it back in, to my half full tank, and it's now reading half full. So fuel gauge problem is now fixed. Which means I have a fully functional instrument cluster for the first time. Speed (more or less), odometer (reads very accurately), coolant temp, clock, all the lights, and fuel gauge.. Yay..

[Una]

I let a shop work on my car yesterday. This sort of thing is an exceptionally rare occurrence for me. Typically in the past, I've let a shop do my tires, my alignment, or my exhaust. Now that I have a welder, I do my own exhaust, aside from bending the pipes. I may get a bender and solve that last problem too.
Anyways, I had them replace my shocks. This thing still had it's factory original shocks on it, two of them were so dead that they were leaking, one of the leaking ones was actually dripping onto the axle below it. When I first got the car, the first day I drove it, the suspension was really really stiff, they seemed to be locked up and frozen. After that they got really really sloppy. I finally made the appointment when I was coming down the freeway and hit some bumps and the thing all but changed lanes on me. Kinda freaky. It's also always handled really really poorly. I just figured that's the way it was supposed to be..
As for why I had a shop do it, rather than do it myself, mostly simply because with all the other things I've had to buy for this car over the past month, I just flat didn't have the funds to do it. I have an account at this place and just had them toss it on the account, $75 a month like usual, so I don't even notice the expense. Love that place.
They did an alignment afterwards, and I went ahead and had them flush the brake fluid too, since it was probably extremely old and waterlogged and corrosive at this point. I could definitely do that, but I HATE doing it, they have a nice automated machine to do it.
Anyways, the car now sits at least an inch higher, you can see it when it's parked, and when you're driving it, it feels almost like I'm driving a truck, it's noticeably higher up in the air. heh, I guess it'll be good in the snow? And the handling now.. Holy cow is it better. I think the real limitting factor now is this 155/80-13 tires it's got on it. And I'm ok with that, I don't need my 50mpg commuter to be a sports car. I'm just amazed at the difference.
For the record, they put KYB GR2 struts all around. They said they had a hell of a time replacing them, spent a full 3 hours just doing the struts. I'm kind of glad I was able to just drop off the car for the day.
So yeah, that was about the only time anyone will be working on this car for me.

[Una]

Thursday evening, I decided it'd be a good idea to take the grinder to a cancerous rusty spot on my windshield pillar, so that I could put some rust treatment on it.

As I said, I took a grinder that normally only removes the paint, and hit some cancer spots, this is what I was left with. Was pretty clearly rusting from the inside out. And it was doing that because of that rubber pad the factory had installed in there, it was holding water up against the metal. The funny dark color and white powdery stuff is the rust killer I used.

It took a lot of work, but I was able to dig out everything inside that hole. Was kind of handy the hole was so big, I guess. I found a lot of rust in there, so I decided to hit it with more rust treatment.

I didn't want the problem to continue to grow inside the welded shut pillar.
At this point I took some paper and made a rubbing of the hole. I cut that shape out, and traced around it on an old computer case. Then I cut that shape out with a cutoff disc tool.

It turned out pretty good, matched the shape of the hole pretty well, with a bit of overlap. I wanted it inside the hole, so I need some way to hold it in place while I weld it.

I simply grabbed the first screw I could find, and tack welded it to the patch.

You don't realize how thin the metal really is till you decide you want to bend the patch panel to match the curve of the car, and you do it barehanded, easily.
Click here for the video at YouTube
I had my wife shoot some video of me trying to weld that panel in. It was a bit of a fiasco, but I got the job done.

I never post a picture of my naked welds on the internet.. heh.. There it is after I ground it down. Could be worse.

Just needed a little bondo at this point. I didn't get a picture of the bondo after I sanded it flat, I should have.

Primered up. I let the primer dry overnight, and hit it with 400, 600 and finally 800 grit before putting some paint over it.

I'm not a body guy, mostly because I hate body work, so I didn't go for perfection on the finish. At some point in the not too distant future, this car will get a full repaint. At that point I'll go back and smooth that out and blend it in, properly. For now, the problem is gone, and I'm happy.