Cleaning an oil bath air cleaner

Well, I decided to show how I go about cleaning a Volkswagen oil bath air cleaner. Not just changing the oil in it but actually cleaning the coconut hair that's inside the top part of the air cleaner. Most times the oil in the bottom of the filter barely gets changed and the coconut hair rarely if ever gets cleaned. Here is how I did the one on the baja and it worked great. First, start off by cleaning both the upper and lower portion of the air cleaner with solvent. If you don't have a solvent tank, you can use kerosene or gas but be careful.

 Here you can see how gross the coconut hair is. The engine I pulled this from was blown and the car has not run in over a year. That meant the gas was bad and turned to varnish and that had penetrated into the air cleaner.

 After cleaning it in solvent I get a 5 gallon bucket with hot water and a degreaser. I used some stuff we have at work, but laundry detergent or dishwasher soap works just as well. Let it sit for a few hours and soak. Make sure you give it a shake every 30 minutes or so to break loose the crud inside it.

 after a few hours, I rinsed it off and put it in a bucket of Jet fuel. I used jet fuel because it is plentiful at my work, but some kerosene or diesel fuel will work just fine. I let it sit for another hour or so shaking it occasionally.

 I pulled it out and rinsed it off with some hot water. I then put it in the sun and let it dry out completely. You can see the difference in how the coconut hair looks. It is much better and ready to be installed on the carb as soon as I get it rebuilt. Actually I am going to paint this air cleaner. The one on my other bug was in such good original condition that I run it like it is but this one has more rust than I like to see so I will sand it down and paint it.

Here I am pulling the carb apart so I can soak it in carb cleaner overnight. I will show the rebuilding process on the next post.

Getting started on Tugger!

Well, the time has finally come to start some work on the baja bug. This is the bug Isaac thinks he will drive in high school and he's named it Tugger. Isaac has been pressing me all summer to work on it but the time never was there. Finally most of my other projects are done and I have some free time so we decided to start working on it. Here the family is ready to go to work. Dixie had a salad social to attend so she was MIA. I am sure she would of liked getting her hands dirty working on a bug but maybe next time.

We are going to use the carburetor off the engine that is currently in the baja, but it needs to be rebuilt. I figured that's a good place to start. We removed the carb and I will rebuild it tomorrow. I love the little oil bath air cleaner on this engine so I will clean it up and most likely use it on the new engine.

 We removed the air cleaner, unhooked the wire to the idle solenoid, unhooked the throttle cable and pinched the fuel line to keep fuel from leaking.

Ellie was the boss while Isaac and myself did the work. Steven got distracted by Lego's and we lost him in the house for most of the time. Ellie is yelling something at us but we couldn't understand her.

 Here Isaac is taking off the back nut from the base of the carb.

 Almost there. One nut left and it will be off.

The front nut is in a pretty tight spot so I got that one off.

Isaac is starting to pull the carb off the intake manifold.

 Isaac got the carb off but we still had the wire for the electric choke hooked up. That's what Ellie must of been yelling at us for. We just need to listen more closely I guess.

 Well, that's all we had time for tonight. I will take some pictures of the carb rebuild tomorrow. Hopefully this carb will be an OK match for the 009 distributor that is in the engine that will be getting put in.

Here is the engine that's going in tugger. It's a 1600 dual port that should be a good little engine. It has the alternator conversion and in this picture it has a header system, but that will be changed out for the exhaust that is already on the baja. Maybe tugger will be up and running for winter so I can drive it instead of ed. Ed acts more like a snowplow.

Trading in Ed for a new toy.

Well, I was surfing the net and came across a new toy I really want. It was on Jay Lenos garage. Here is the link if you want to see the video of it.  http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/extras/extras/morgan-3-wheeler/

Below is a picture of it. It is a three wheeled car made by Morgan out of England. I was ready to go and sell Ed and purchase one of these beauties but then I found out they cost $40,000.00 Dang outta luck buying one of those.

So then I had a good idea. I figured I am pretty handy with my hands so I would just build one. I pictured it in my head and I know I could build it cheaper than what they cost new. I thought some more about it and what was in my head and what the final product would turn out to be would be 2 very different things. I obtained some pictures of what I would end up with if I were to try to build a car on my own. Here they are.

See how impressed Dixie would be if we pulled up in this beauty. It would be a crowd pleaser, I am sure of it.


 I think Steven would even let me drop him off at school in it.

I wouldn't really need any gauges. Just an old alarm clock to make sure I am where I need to be on time.

Well, enough day dreaming, I have too much stuff to do than build my own car. Besides, I still like Ed. He's kinda like a part of the family.

Cruising and a car show!

Well, We finally entered Ed into his first car show. It was the Wasatch Classic and is held in Provo every year. We met up with the local Volkswagen club and then we all drove to Provo. It was a blast to cruise with a bunch of other VW's. The day was pretty long and very Hot but lots of fun. Steven and Isaac went with me and Ellie and Dixie stayed home and went to the new Harry Potter movie. Dixie really liked the movie. Here are the shots.

Here we are loaded up and ready to go.

This is in American Fork just leaving the In-N-Out Burger

There was about 30 VW's that congregated here to finish cruising to Provo.

Some of Stevens Shadow Photography.

I tried to get the photo to show the cars ahead and the other VW's that are behind me in the rear view mirror but I didn't get the mirror one to work.

The Boys at the show.

 Here is our Bug at the show. It definitely wasn't the nicest but it also wasn't the worst one there.

We ended up eating hot dogs for lunch because that was the only vendor there that had food. They did taste good though or maybe we were just really hungry!

 They had a playground at the park we were at so the boys spent some time there having fun.

 This was a cool Bug. He gave out free root beer in the morning.

 We drove behind this bug for awhile as we cruised to the show.

As you can see the boys had so much fun they crashed on the way home. It could of also been from the heat in the car or maybe the exhaust fumes? Really we had a blast and plan on going next year.  Hopefully the Bug will be painted by then.                                                                                                                               

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been!

Well, The last couple of weeks have been a complete whirlwind. Between work and vacation and to do lists time has just flown. The last time I blogged I just finished painting the wheels on the bug. Here are the photos. This is the before picture. This was right before I realized my back tires were bald.

So the bug went up on jackstands and I decided to paint all the wheels so they actually would match. I powder coated the front ones and the back ones were rusty and needed some attention. Now was the perfect time to do it while I had the tires off anyways. My work has a tire machine so I was able to remove and install the tires myself. That saves on money because tire shops won't give you a brake on removing or mounting tires especially when you don't buy the tires from them. I had one minor setback with the wheels. I was cleaning them in an ultrasonic tank to remove the paint and rust. The chemical in the tank is the equivalent of Drano. I was in a hurry and ended up splashing the stuff all over my face. NOTE: This is not very pleasant on your skin or eyes! I was a tough guy and wiped it off washed my face and called it a day. Well the next morning my eyes were swollen and I had a rash on my face. A trip to the clinic and a lecture from the DR. along with 3 eye flushing's that felt like they used nails and broken glass to flush my eyes and everything was good as new. (If you get Drano in your face go to the doctor immediately because it can cause blindness and it will keep the doctor from telling you how stupid you are for not coming in sooner.)

Anyways, Moving on. Here are the freshly painted wheels with tires installed on the bug. I am still not sure if it was worth a faceful of Drano or not. I am leaning towards NOT.

While the bug was stuck in the garage without any tires we hit a couple of car shows and went to Bear Lake. The first 2 pictures are the from the Cache Valley Cruise In up in Logan. I picked these 2 as my best of show winners. I don't know if they won anything or not but in my book they did. 

We then went from Logan up to Bear Lake for a few days. It was fun. The lake is full and our new trailer worked out awesome. Here Dixie is holding out the camera and snapping a shot.

Steven and Isaac at the campground. We stay up St. Charles Canyon on the Idaho side. The mosquito's were really bad but other than that it was nice weather and an alright weekend.

The remainder of the Photos come from a local Cruise Night at Jordon Landing. This truck was just too cool.

 I have the family pick their favorites at every show we go to. This 49 Chevy was mine. I love the 50's customs and this one was unbelievable. I like everything about it.

This one was the family favorite.

This one was Dixie's Favorite

Ellie chose the pink Mustang with flames. Well at least she drooled on it or maybe it was spit?

Steven chose the cool Army jeep as his top pick!

Isaac actually likes every car at all the shows and takes pictures of them all but he narrowed it down to a few. He thought these 2 were cool.

Steven is trying to imitate the head on the grill of this car.

Another one of Isaac's favorites. I like the flames on it.

So the summer is in full swing and we are having some fun!