Day 4: Retirement

Well, day four was exciting, sad and happy all in one. I got a buyer for some essential engine parts so I cranked the girl up and took her for one last ride to say goodbye for now. A good hour or so was spent zooming around on our local streets here taking some of my family members for one last ride in the old family car before I put her out of commission for an unknown amount of time. Now, there is something worth stating here. With the removal of the intake, (Excluding the MAF I had to temporarily put it back on to start the car.) exhaust and all that weight the MPV already acts like a sports sedan, and pulled 0-60 in a little under seven seconds with the overdrive on of course. It was a lot of fun to put the car through her paces one last time.
But then I had to move on and remove the distributor rendering the car undriveable for obvious reasons. Pretty straight forward and easy, but this marks a turning point, I'm actually doing this, I don't have the money yet, but hopefully something with come through and I can get started in earnest. Whether I sell enough parts to fund this or I get a part-time job I don't know but I certainly hope for either, but with the removal of a key part of the engine this signifies no going back to the old JEV6 now. The family car has been laid to rest and a workhorse for our family shall never be the same again...
Now the real adventure starts, turning a minivan/SUV crossover into a SCCA worthy race car.


Drove down the road to a gravel parking lot to get some final pictures of her before I retire the old JEV6.

The stickers shall be coming off when I repaint her.

Drove back home and popped the hood to get to work.
The distributor all hooked up like it's supposed to be.

After you pull the spark plug wires and remove the connectors from the distributor this is the only bolt holding it down. This is mostly a reference picture so we can get a good idea of where to set the distributor to get started with ignition timing. (Hopefully I won't be doing this again on this engine, but you never know.)

Removed. Noooo! There's a hole in my engine now! Plugged it with a red mechanics rag.

Also pulled the fan, fan shroud, and fan clutch off. Whee. Makes the engine compartment start to look really empty.

 Here's the fan clutch. This is not an original clutch, the original is in a box somewhere on one of my workbenches needing to be fixed.

Distributor after it was pulled off. Nothing special really, it's the original and it's in really good condition, my buyer is getting a steal of a price for it because I'm so desperate for the money. Anyway I'll get the gunk cleaned off of it and packed away in a box for shipping later.

And that's it for day four. Didn't do much aside from those joyrides. Heh, Imma miss being able to drive this girl up and down the driveway occasionally.

Day 3: Trimming the Fat

So, after a couple of weeks of tinkering with the Bradley and the other vehicles we have here on our land I finally got another day to make some real progress on the MPV. 

Mostly I've been working on pulling stuff out of the interior that either needs to come out to prepare for the swap or shall be replaced due to weight issues. I've also been doing a lot of research on the vehicle and what is and isn't compatible with it.

Anyway on day three I got the roof rack off, pulled a lot of the interior out and continued to dismantle a few bits of the engine to sell later. Also pulled the middle seats out to reduce weight, I'm looking into some lightweight racing seats for her later. Anyway, enough boring text right? On to the photos!

Removed the roof rack from the girl, I like the smooth lines it creates without the rack on. Plus, with something as blocky as this van I'll take all the aero I can get! Definitely going to sand down the holes and fill them since I have no use for a roof rack in the MPV's future.

The roofrack removed. I currently have a lizard residing in it.

Removed the rest of the plastic intake system, including the MAF and filter.

I also pulled the hood catch off for ease-of-access to the engine since I decided to put the hood back on. (My shop sprang a leak right on the engine bay. Unacceptable.)

Pulled the carpet and siding out of the back. Not hard to do, just a little tedious in my opinion. Also, you can note the rear heater unit here (White round plastic thing.) that'll come out as it weighs a good bit and I'm not going to need it as I don't use the heat, let alone the rear heater.

The other side with the tank for the rear-window cleaner.

I also took the side panels for the doors off, since I want to replace them as well as fix the door handles which are broken.

The rear door in it's un-assembled state. I'm thinking LED's to replace all the lighting in the vehicle. Those are lighter than the typical incandescent bulbs anyway right? I think so, but I need to research it later.

Anway, all in all I think I probably pulled about eighty pounds at least from the girl in siding and carpet.

The MPV has been sitting down in the shop for maybe a month now, and already it has collected it's own unique blend of... tenants. At least these guys are amusing and aren't poisonous.

I'm thinking... Well no I'm going to repaint the MPV sometime I'm not sure of the color yet, but there are a few very tiny rust spots that aggravate me right now, so I'm gonna do something to get right of them for now.

More rusties.

Now this is cool. I took the seats out because they weighed so much and I wanted to get to the fuel tank without dropping it. To begin with I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to get to the bolts for the seats. Hidden near invisibly are little seams in the carpet where you can lift little access flaps to get to them. Nifty!

The seats removed. It's quite spacious without them taking up all the room back there... Maybe I should install a hot-tub in the freed up space...

Anyway, mostly weight reductions performed today, and I can't wait to keep moving forward with this project.

Until next time,
Edward K. A.

Day 2: The Sound of Potential

Day two has come and gone. I didn't get much done today, put some trim back on the car after giving it a good scrub down. Pulled the exhaust out from under it and drove it around in it's un-muffled state for about ten minutes with an ear-to-ear grin on my face. Oh yeah, also threw some new fuses in and checked all the electronics, they all seem to work fine.

This JEV6 is a noisy booger! I mean, I thought the two massive mufflers were overkill, but now I know why they added them onto the van. It was so much fun to rumble around on our property with the floors shaking to the bass rumble of the engine, honestly though, a straight pipe system may be too loud for the finished product. I'd still like to be able to hear the radio while I'm drivin' around yah know?

The roof. It was sooooo dirty to begin with. Much cleaner now.

The hood where it now sits in my shop. I should have take a before and after photo of the underside. It was like black to begin with. Now the underside has the best paint on the car.

The second catalytic converter, and first muffler out from under the MPV. The first cat is still up in there just to keep the exhaust gases under the vehicle in case I have to move it around some.

Second muffler.

That's about it. I recorded a video showing just how loud this van is without a muffler. It doesn't do it justice, trust me, my ears hurt afterwards. Anyway, more to come soon!

The Bradley GT-I: A high school senior year project.

A little more than ten years ago my mother purchased a Volkswagen Bradley GT-I. Beautiful little kit car, I don't remember much about it from back then, but the important thing is, it quit. Mum and dad took it around to several mechanics and they all said it needed a rebuild. So bummed out at the cost of a rebuild my mother placed the car into storage. And there it sat for ten years. About a year and a half ago when I was entering eleventh grade, we decided I needed some hands-on experience in the world of mechanics, since this was my dream job. So armed with a pair of manuals, some hand tools, as well as some choice two by fours, I set to work. Unfortunately my brilliant self didn't document much of anything in this rebuild up until now, I have very little to show for this endeavor, aside from a really cool car that rumbles around under it's own power now.

This was supposed to be my senior year project, and here I am at the beginning of the year and my mechanic's elective is about done. Over the summer I've easily put about 150+ hours into this vehicle. Which, I know, isn't great for rebuilding a VW motor, but this is the first time I've ever done this. Now with what I know I'm confident I could do another complete tear-down and rebuild in a little less than a week.
 Alright, enough rambling I suppose. I'll show you what I did document.



Yeah, Imma fix this car! I'm an idiot with no clue what he's doing! (I really don't remember the context of my face in this photo.)

Anyway, enough silliness. This is before I'd touched anything on the car. That first crucial moment when the hood is opened. About at this moment I realized I didn't know much about cars. Oh, well best way to learn is to do it!

Got her opened up and check out the rust. Even on the pulleys! it's a good thing the block is aluminum, otherwise there might not have been much left.

I did some research and started on my merry way. First bit of business was to remove the engine cover. And then drain the oil. Now I'd done simple stuff before like oil changes, it's always a good idea to wear a thick leather glove, whether the oil is hot or not. Unless you like not being able to hold on to anything.

Now everything I read said that getting stuff back together was hard. So I labeled everything. Which worked for the most part. Didn't have too much trouble piecing her back together later.

Again, I labeled it all. And I mean it all.

As a note, if a car sits for years on end, it tends to acquire... tenants. They were easily evicted with a shop-vac.

Pulled the engine out. This actually took me a long time. I couldn't get the mounting bolts unstuck. It took me two days before I figured out I was turning the bolts backwards! Ahh, well. Live and learn, turned them the right way and pop! The engine came out. (Notice my fancy engine removal devices.)

Engine's out and I'm quite excited to finally have something to do again. I did throw a plastic bag over the transmission to keep the critters out.

The engine again. It's a '69 Beetle engine, 1500cc, with single port heads, and a PICT-3 carburetor.

Aaaand the covered transmission. The pipes are for the heat for the vehicle, currently disabled due to an exhaust leak. The old Volkswagen's had heater boxes around the exhaust pipes for... well, heat, they were notorious for rusting out and getting exhaust fumes into the cabin.

The brakes. Disk-brakes on all four sides. This Bradley has a '71 Beetle frame, the rear brakes where a challenge, as I though it had a '69 frame (Same as the engine.) until I looked up the frame's serial number. I had to do some work on the brakes later on.

Pile of parts as I pulled them off the engine block. It's amazing the way these engines are engineered. The fact it can keep itself cool with out some sort of liquid coolant still blows my mind.

An example of before an after for the cylinders. They were kinda crusty and the rings needed to be replaced. These are the 32.95mm cylinders for the 1500cc engine, so the rings were a challenge to find. I actually ended up using 33mm rings, but it such a small difference I don't think the car cares overly much. I didn't want to put 35mm jugs on the car, too expensive.

Check this out! This engine is tiny once you pull everything off it! Still weighs a bunch though. I pulled several muscles goofing off with it.

Again, the engine. I got most of the black crud cleaned off later. And this ends the documentation of the tear-down. I didn't document the rebuild at all this summer. (I'm bad I know.) I replaced all the gaskets, got a new distributor (Important for later.), cleaned the carb, got a new ignition coil, and oil cooler.

Engine's back in here! No biggie, just took about an hour to get her lined up with the transmission since I only have a cheap jack and some two by fours. After that I shoved her in and found she didn't crank. This is where I added the ignition coil. Fired right up after that.

Pulled the wheels off now that the engine's back in. She needs some new rubber since the old tires were dry-rotted. While she was up in the air I serviced the brakes, new shoes and hardware all around. We're going to get some disk-brakes one day. I don't trust these rusty drums very much.

The lightwieght Fenton racing wheels waiting for some new rubber. No real trouble here, we think one of the rims was bent (it didn't hold air with the new tire on it) and took it back to the tire mounting place. They sealed up the holes in that one wheel for no charge and we brought it back home. If any of you live near Westminster, SC go give Black's tires some business, they're local, honest and friendly. Not to mention they got me a good deal on these tires.

 Also checked all the lights while it was up in the air.

They all seem to work.

Got her to crank up and rolled her out of the garage for cleaning.

Look at her out in the sunshine for the first time in years! She looks so happy.

IT WORKS! (Mostly)

After all that we got her on the road for a test drive and I found I have the wrong type distributor. I need a vacuum advance distributor for the PICT-3 carburetor this motor is equipped with. Those are a little hard to find for a decent price but hopefully something'll turn up. Also there's a little roll pin on the throttle plate in the carburetor that's missing, easy fix I just gotta get to it.

That's about it for today. I'll get the carburetor fixed soon and hopefully we'll be able to find a vacuum advance distributor.

(The photography contained within this blog is a mixture of the photographic talents of my mother, Cherry at Studio Seventh Sanctuary, my little brother, and myself. All rights go to them/us)