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When I bought my 77 bus, it came with an incorrect and non-working clock. Someone had put a smaller VDO clock in place with what looked like a home-made adapter to fill the hole. I just had to correct it! Watching for correct black faced VDO Quarz clocks that are in working condition I realized they are not insignificant in cost. Other projects on the bus got priority, but the incorrect clock just bugged me. I found one that was correct and the seller sent me a video of it working, so even though it looked filthy, I thought his price was fair. Photos below help tell the story. When it arrived, sure enough, it was really dirty. The dirt on the class and the condition of the outer bezel holding the glass to the body was just cruddy. Probably had not been in a bus in years.  First step was to gently use screwdrivers and fold back the flange holding the bezel to the main clock body. Glass was dirty on both sides.  I was able to wash off the big globs of dirt with running water and then gently clean the glass. That was simple. Although the bezel does not show when installed in the bus, I noticed it was made of brass. Out came the 0000 steel wool and Brasso. It really made a big difference. I also gently cleaned the clock face and then used Q-tips and 409 cleaner on the clock hands.  I am happy with the result. Installation went smoothly and the clock keeps great time! 
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I have been working on my vacuum hoses and breather hose to make sure I have no vacuum leaks. Everything is running great, but I am replacing all the hoses anyway, except for the formed cloth covered hoses (decel and breather). Using all cloth covered metric hoses to keep an original appearance. On the connection of the breather hose to PCV, I could not push the hose on fully because of the distance of the "pipe" to the main body. Just not enough clearance. Of note, I removed the breather box/PCV and cleaned and tested the diaphragm and was lucky in that mine is GOOD! But, even with my nice clean box and original hose, there was not enough room to get it fully pushed on, and certainly not enough room to slide on a clamp or zip tie that would be straight. So... The PCV is mounted to the box by two bolts with an o-ring to seal them together. I wanted a little more height away from the box so I made a gasket out of cork and left the o-ring in place. By the way, again lucky, my o-ring is supple. Anyway, it added only a little height, but it's enough to push the hose fully on.  Thought I would share my journey to solve a problem with a fast idle issue in hopes of helping others who might experience this. When I rebuilt the top end of my 1977 2.0 FI engine last summer, I replaced all fuel lines. Over the last few weeks I have been replacing all other hoses in the engine compartment. I had been having an intermittent problem with high idle, and thought I might have a vacuum leak. Even with the lines replaced, the idle would be ok at times, others not. I started working backwards on the air circuit and decided to check the Auxiliary Air Regulator. When I blocked it off, and blocked the corresponding port at the S-boot idle went from 1400 to 650 and held steady. Ah – ha, getting closer. I removed the AAR and found it in the partially open position. Photo below. The aperture isn’t like a partial moon, it is more like a scripted capital letter “P”. Following the advice here, I put it in the oven at 200F and magically, it closed fully.  Given time to cool, it went back to the partial opening in the photo. I cleaned it with Marvel Mystery oil, sloshed it around, and then cleaned with Q-tips. Black residue came out. More reading, and I then tested it with 12 volts on the terminals. Worked perfectly. Time to go back in the engine. Once installed. High idle continued at 1400 RPM. OK, keep working backwards. I knew it was a working AAR, so must not be getting voltage. As readers here know, the wires to this are kind of down in there, so I fished them up and found the wires to the AAR were slightly bare on both positive and negative. Time for another test. Getting out the test light, no voltage with the engine running. That’s not good. Working further back in the process the voltage comes from 88c on the double relay. Time to pull it out and test it. I pulled the relay from the wall and decided to take it to the bench and open it up.  The mapping of the circuit board was good, just not attached at the solder point. The outer coating on the board looks poor from heat, but the underlying mapping is good.
So, I then used some solder and some heat shrink to repair the wires at the AAR- I believe what happened is that the shorted wires caused the damage to the double relay. Started engine and..... Problem solved! AAR working as it should and when warm it idles back down to 950. As for why the issue of fast idle was intermittent, it seems often I was starting the bus and taking it out on the road rather quickly. The engine would warm enough that the engine heat was moving the bi-metal strip in the AAR and closing the aperture without any voltage at all. So, my adjustments on idle on a hot engine were fine. However, if I was just working in the garage and the engine not really warm, I had fast idle. Mystery solved. I think sometimes when I post pretty pictures of how the bus is looking, I forget to show how it was before a repair. Truth is, the bus was seriously lacking in maintenance. So, That is both good news and sometimes bad news. Good news is that the bus is fairly original and not messed up with bad do-it-yourself repairs. It is also a rather good body in terms of rust issues. Bad news is that the lack of simple maintenance can be,,,, well,,, amazing. Here is how it looked when I went to replace the side markers. By the way, the silly 4 watt bulb was still working!  I have been going through all the locks on my 77 Transporter and getting all locks to work with one key. Have completed restoring the locks for the hatch and sliding door. The key tumblers were filthy and took considerable time to clean and lube. I used some teflon based spray to lube the key cylinders. I am now doing the passenger door, and the tumbler was the same story, but all good now. On to the lock/latch mechanism. You can see from the photos below that inside the door was very filthy and the door lock mechanism itself was just caked in old grease and dirt. I have cleaned and cleaned, and it now operates smoothly. Door cleaned up as well. A big hit for Willie Nelson, and also a happy event to be on the road again with our 1977 Volkswagen Transporter/Bus! We call her Lucy. What started out as a repair (see the post directly before this one) turned mostly into a top end engine rebuild. The work is now complete, with the engine back in its place. The test drives have been strong and smooth. Here is a brief description of what I did-
I am sure there is more that I have forgotten to list. This work took about 10 weeks, but the result is a smooth, strong engine. After about 50 miles I will recheck valve clearances, and after something like 300 miles I'll change out the oil and filter. Some photos and a video of the result are below. Lucy is now On The Road Again! In July we were pretty excited to get Lucy (our 77 VW Bus) home, and I gave it a good cleaning inside and out. Took it out for a couple of very short drives and the engine sound was just not right. Gave her a tune up and valve adjustment and sound did not go away. Then, suddenly, the sound got worse, and pulling off the valve cover on the drivers side revealed that the rocker arm for intake on #3 broke! Yes, in two pieces! I knew the engine had to come out. I found the valve seat for #3 intake had come loose, caused the valve not to close, and subsequently the valve struck the piston. I cleaned the head in my soda blaster but in the photo above, you'll see there is also a crack at 11 o'clock coming from the exhaust valve. The head was not worth rebuilding. I found a source for a pair of good original VW 2.0L heads that were in a condition that could be rebuilt, and Northwest Connecting Rods rebuilt them for me. In the meantime...... I removed everything from the engine, and it was filthy and then started the long process of cleaning, removing not only grease, but rust and then finally painting. I also bought a replacement piston and a rocker assembly to replace the damaged parts, as well as the pushrod for #3. Some before/after photos below. Note the entire exhaust system was not wonderful. I removed the catalytic converter, and bought an NOS Leisteritz muffler. That horribly rusty thing in the photo below is a heat shield that goes above the muffler- it also is getting replaced. Hopefully you can see some improvement in the photos below. I removed all of the pistons and they came out wonderful, and I borrowed a scale from John Brooks to balance them after cleaning. Below is a comparison photo showing one before cleaning and one after. Evapo-Rust was used on rusty pieces and the results were quite amazing. I tried to take some after photos of most of the parts, but hard to get good focus on them all. Hopefully this represents how the parts generally came out.
I looked carefully inside the case and did not see any damage or wear, so the case was not split. I do not consider this an engine rebuild, it is just a repair. I also borrowed from John his nice set of vials so I could cc the heads. My wife was kind enough to assist in this, as it definitely takes 4 hands. Net result was the heads cc'ed at 53 cc's and the dish in the piston was 14 cc's, giving a total of 67 cc volume. The engine was still stock stroke and bore (94mm), and after measuring deck height I chose to get the gasket/shims to give me a compression ratio of 8.0 Trial assembly with clay showed good valve to piston clearance, and the heads are now torqued down in place. Over the next few weeks I will receive all new gaskets, new bolts and copper nuts for the exhaust, the Leisteritz muffler, new motor mounts, and a few other goodies. I'll clean and carefully inspect the fuel injection, and hope to have the bus on the road next month. We have owned not only air-cooled PORSCHE cars, but also VW. Back when we started raising a family, we needed more room than our 356 had, so we bought a 1971 Volkswagen Bus. Now we need extra room for dogs, not kids! Solution, a 1977 Volkswagen Bus- the year we got married! I'll later change this website around to split the PORSCHE portion from the Volkswagen portion, but for now here is an introduction to Lucy, our new to us VW bus. I looked for a few characteristics:
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