Madalynn and I drove down to Fresno this time.  She dropped me off and I got some visiting time in before checking out what the mail had brought.

My main mission for this weekend was to drop the engine and prep for removing tar.  On the way Madalynn and I picked up some xylene to help removing it.  Quite a few boxes arrived.  One big one from Wolfsburg West with a complete stock exhaust setup.  Another flat box, which was the decklid I found.  It’s in pretty bad shape.  A couple of drill holes that should be easy to fill, but a medium sided dull dent, which is probably a bit harder to get out.  A tach/dwell from a store on Amazon and a small box from Wolfgang Int with slave cylinders and reduction box gaskets.

So first things first I needed to finish testing from two weeks before when a bad sound started coming from the engine.  I removed the engine tin and fired it up.  There still was the sound.  My dad and I tried a few different variables and found that it’s loudest at low rpms and sort of evens out as it revs up.

Since it isn’t a simple problem I’ll need to have it checked out and after a little food I decided to pull off the old muffler and prep for tomorrow.  The bus came with a peashooter bug muffler and I ordered the entire bus setup to replace it.  Taking off the peashooter pipes it was obvious that the engine was running rich by the thick layer of black soot inside.  The muffler itself was pretty rusty and I’d like to find a good paint to ensure the new parts I bought will hold up.  In unbolting the manifold’s passenger side top bolts one twisted apart like butter.  Luckily the bolt snapped off in the old muffler instead of the manifold, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.

Once the muffler was off it was cool to look at the push rod tubes more directly.  The rear most passenger side tube is actually patched by the previous owner.  The patch is a hunk of rubber that is held on by a hose clamp.  A bunch of oil had sprayed every were and it’s been slowly leaking.since it’s at my Dad’s house.  Pretty amasing that he ran it that way.