From Veeduber@aol.com  Wed Oct 11 01:41:45 1995
msgnum: msg17304
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 02:41:42 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Grendel, Tuesday III


Rain.  All through the night and into the early afternoon.  

The brake light switch arrived as promised but there was only one of them;
only one had been ordered.  I thought I ordered two; I can't clearly recall.

I installed it in the rain, wet but not rained upon under Grendel's bulk.
 The blue-eyed cat joined me, head-dived against my watch-cap, finally sat
and watched the rain.  It seldom rains in Egypt.

With the switch installed I was ready to bleed the brakes but had no one to
pump the pedal.  Began tracing the brake-light wiring.  It runs into the loom
of wires that was burned, vanishes.  I've picked it out of the loom running
through the fore & aft frame member, know it's good from there back.

I track the wily wire into the mess behind the turn-signal relay and suddenly
realize that failure of one will effect the other -- early buses use a
two-light system, the brake light also serving as the turn signal.  

My host arrives home for lunch and helps me bleed the brakes, happy that
three of them bleed properly, unaware of the portent of the one that does
not.  The driver's side front flows neither oil nor air when I open the
bleeder valve, yet I can hear the upper cylinder actuating.  This is the one
wheel I've not rebuilt.  Grendel is paying me back for my neglect.

But it's the brake lights that bother me.  And the turn signals.  I put on my
thinking cap, scratch a schematic on the back of a receipt, mosey down toward
the harbor and the nearest FLAPS.  I ask for and receive (surprise!), a
double-pole, double-throw center-off switch, a heavy-duty two-terminal
flasher unit and a pair of after-market tail lights, the kind with a
two-filament bulb.  The bill is about twenty-five bucks.

Back at the house I dig through my spares, find all my wire, select a roll of
#14 and two of #16.  Tie the ends together and nail them to the fence, start
backing up, paying out the wire until I reach Grendel's stern.  Hang a right,
keep backing down until I run out of blue wire, hoping it will be long
enough.  Put the cast off brake drum on the wires to keep them from coiling
up, go back to the fence and start looming them together with electrical
tape, my last roll of the stuff.

Twist, twist, twist, wiping the rain from the wire as I wrap it with tape,
shielding it from the sprinkle with my head and shoulders.  Twist, twist
until I reach the brake drum.  It takes a while.

The main fore & aft wiring harness for the VW bus runs through the
passenger-side frame member, up and over the torsion tubes, a well protected
place but difficult to pull new wire through.  I try pushing a piece of
bailing wire through the frame but it fails to clear something.  Try it from
the other end but it hangs up.  I'm laying on the damp ground in my damp
clothes, head and shoulders protected, under the bus, legs getting sprinkled
on.  

Is heavy gauge stainless steel safety wire stiffer than bailing wire?  It
takes a while to unspool enough but once it is straight it proves stiff
enough, if pushed through from the middle of the frame member.  I lash the
loom of wires to it, pull them through, do the same with the rear half of the
frame member.  I now have three new wires running from the front to the rear
of the bus.  

It takes over an hour to loom the wires and get them threaded through the
frame.  Up front, I make up connectors and put the #14 wire onto the brake
switches.  Use the safety wire to find a path up into the cabin, pull the
ends of the #16 wires up near the turn signal relay.  It all takes time and
I'm getting wetter.

Climb into Grendel, turn on the trouble light and start the engine.  Out of
the wind it feels warm, even if it isn't.  In a few minutes Grendel is
blowing a faint breath of warmth around my feet.  I think I've blocked my new
heater duct with the foam meant to insulate it.  If so, it's going to stay
blocked until I get home.  I start making a new turn signal.

A DPDT switch has six terminals.  It's really two switches in one housing.  I
will wire the hot lead from Grendel's defunct turn-signal relay to the center
terminal on one half of the switch, wire the switched power from either side
to the flasher.  The output of the flasher goes to the center terminal on the
other half of the switch.  Push the switch to the left, the second-half left
terminal will have the flasher's signal, push it right, the right will have
it.  Simple flasher system.  I do the wiring and begin gnawing a hole in the
dash.  There's already a hole there but it's too small to accept the threaded
neck of the switch. My gnawing tool is a small drill and Swiss files.  It
takes longer to make the hole than it did to wire the switch but I'm out of
the wind, thinking of Baja and beaches without footprints.

When I found Grendel's tail light fixtures to be damaged I removed them and
installed a pair of boat trailer light fixtures in the holes, first making up
cover plates to close the openings.  Now I dismounted all that and figured
out how to mount the second pair of tail lights, the ones I'd just purchased.
 The only way they would fit without drilling holes in the body was to
reposition the first pair and mount the second pair above them.  I drilled
the necessary holes in the cover plates, kneeling in Grendel's cargo bay,
drilling atop a block of wood.  It was dark before I was through; I knocked
off about eight pm, went in to eat and warm up, get dressed for working in
the rain, which was coming down again.

To install the fixtures and wire them I worked sitting on a piece of plywood,
the wind blowing down my neck, dressed in a garbage bag and wearing a turban.
 Some folks would call it a towel wrapped around my head but it was really a
turban covered with a small white plastic garbage bag.  The neighbors arrive
home form somewhere late, mutter to one another, go into their house without
speaking to the strangely bundled creature squating behind Grendel's engine.
 I have the trouble light and my timing light inside the engine compartment,
protected from the rain, as are my tools.  I'd be there too if I could figure
out how.

The work took about two hours.  When I was done I was so cold I had to roll
onto my knees before I could stand.  I loaded everything into Grendel, wiped
down my tools and sat dripping as I tested the circuits.  The two #16 wires
were for the rear turn signals.  I connected them to the front turn signals
and to the output of the DPST switch.  Got it right the first try; left was
left, right was right.  And brake lights, too.  The turn signals were wired
to the bright filament of the upper fixture, the brakes to the lower, running
lights to the low-power filaments of both.  The result is perhaps the most
visible '67 Volkswagen bus on the planet.  Clunky as hell of course, but it
works.  I mounted the switch horizontally; flick it to the left for a left
turn, right for right, center for off.  No self-canceling, no indicator lamp.
 I'll do it right when I'm home and dry.  

Tomorrow I'll insulate all of the connections, tighten down the fixtures,
check things out.  But I've a hunch Grendel is about ready to roll.  I need
to fill the tranny and check the toe-in but other than that, she will pass
any highway safety inspection.  Even mine.

-Bob