Ok, this last week I has been pretty busy and I haven’t had too much time to sit down and post. But for today, I have some pics. These are the hinge covers for the rear hatch on a later model bay window vw bus. These have turned yellow a bit but are still in good shape. If you have the westy cabinet on one side, you wont be able to put this up there. Not enough room. Interestingly, one of the screws that holds the cover to the corner, can be seen through the body of the bus if you look in the cooling vents.Pics HERE.
Monthly Archive for March, 2007
Previously, I had picked up another slider unit for our sliding door. There were two problems with my existing one. The bearings for the roller (211843359B) were completely gone and the plastic guide piece (211843368) that sits to the rear of it was broken in a way that it could no longer follow the channel on the body of the bus. You can see the broke stuff here. This caused the rear section of the unit to pop out and grind against the metal cover. It’s important to note that with this piece damaged, its possible for the slider to come off the body of the bus completely. This would be less than ideal as the door isn’t exactly light and can be awkward to work with with out planning.
The Bentley covers this pretty well but there were a couple things I learned the could have saved me some time. First off, the metal roller is attached to the body of the slider with a circlip. I looked at this bit for a while and for whatever reason couldn’t figure this out until after I found yet another slider with a working roller. The other one is how to replace the plastic guide piece. This unit is riveted to the slider body and I didn’t have the correct tools to replace the rivet (and don’t know the size–please comment if you do.) For now, I have used a nut/bolt setup to replace the rivet. The bolt goes through the body of the slider first and then the plastic unit. The nut then sits inside the plastic guide piece. Although not completely flush like the stock rivet, it does not cause any clearance issues. Add a couple drops of oil to the roller and springs before putting the slider back on the body.
As far as working on the door, I left the forward rollers attached to the body. I removed the cover that shields the whole sliding mechanism. About half way back, there is a notch where the plastic guide piece can pop out. Since mine was broke, the slider popped right of the track anywhere. Then I propped up the bottom rear section of the door with a couple boxes to keep it level while I worked on it. Easier than removing all the other parts that you may not have to work on.
The complete unit in its correct state can be seen here.
Im not sure if the air conditioner will make it in too soon, but we’d like to see the Westy interior installed by the time we head for EveryBus. My weekend starts tomorrow and my four year old son has promised he would help me work on the bus. So hopefully there will be more progress than there was last weekend, when I pretty much got tired of messing with the BN4 heater. The install on it still is not 100% complete and after a little bit of tinkering, I decided to leave it be for a few days and come back to the bus after a good rest from it. That being said, I still have many of the miscellaneous parts from Busted Bus that I still need to install. The Westy interior will only be one more item on the list. It is quite possible that the heater will be moved from its current location after installing the folding westy bed. We’ll see what happens 
