TDI Town & Country

Frankendiesel said:

Here's some picture of the carnage:

Thanks for your input everyone. I'm working with some mechanical engineers to figure out the best way to get these half shafts setup properly. I read some forums on racing pages about welding half shafts...they say don't do it. CFM, does TIG welding induce a lower temperature on the welded material? If so, yours might be in a little better shape. It took about 500 miles for mine to snap. Right now, we're leaning towards repairing (with a longer bushing to compensate for the broken piece!) and then annealing them both to neutralize the localized hardening effect. At least, that's our theory for now.

Also, thanks for all the input on the surging. I'll try to get the brake and clutch switches wired in properly. Right now, I have the clutch switched 'bypassed.' That is, a jumper in the connector so I can start it! IOW, the ECU thinks the clutch is depressed all the time. If that and the new AHU pedal don't make the surging go away, I'll look at the injection adjustment as recommended.

Thanks again!

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In your bottom picture at about 10:00 location is a high cycle fatigue area (actually ~7:00 to ~11:30) and it looks like there was a crack started there maybe with a rusty edge.

The rest of it looks like low cycle fatigue

I think the trouble with welding it is getting it/keeping it straight to prevent bending which will cause the fatigue on the outer side of the bend.

I think the thing to do would be to make a sleeve or bushing or collar to hold both halves of the shaft co-axial, then weld each half to the sleeve. Clearances should be tight (couple thousandths or less if possible - a light press fit is fine acutally.

I don't think you want to anneal the whole shaft as the CV cups need to stay hardened. You might be able to locally stress relieve the welded areas while keeping the cups cool, but if it's TIG welded, you might not have as much trouble due to better heat control of the weld.

Might be worth a try compared to having custom axles made?

TIG welding is just a much more precise method, allowing greater control of heat and adding material...I do a lot of it at work, so it's just a natural thing for me to do. My Saturn axles are pressed into a 2" long sleeve, and TIG-welded just on the end that fits into the VW axle tube. The VW axle tube is just mild steel, so it was no problem to press the Saturn axle and bushing into that and TIG it together. This also made life much easier in keeping them straight...I was able to measure the runout between centers with a dial indicator, then tweek them a bit in the press to straighten them.

Welding hardened solid stock like that is always a bit of a trick; it takes some prep work and a good deal of skill and knowlege to do it correctly. Going the bushing route adds structural and metalurgical integrity to the axle, since the weld is not directly supporting the splice or subject to torsional loads. I have seen it done (such as the lengthened main and pinion shafts in my Gene Berg 5-speed gearbox in my '60 Bug), but it's a fairly involved process.

Hi guys; you probably thought I left the country. I do apologize for being absent; life has just been busy. Enough excuses, on with the update:

So last spring I busted the driver's half shaft as seen above. I called out to Mark Williams Enterprises in Colorado and had them spool up their lathe and turn a custom half shaft for me. I'll try to upload pictures of that beauty later. Anyway, after putting it back in, I drove it to work once and noticed some grinding noise happening during hard turns. Long story short, the outter CV joint let go in my driveway. I'm not exactly sure the root cause, but the shaft was too short and not allowing the outer joint to stay in the center of rotation. So I bought a new Chrysler half shaft (isn't that ridiculous; a new halfshaft is cheaper than a CV joint...) and swapped in a new CV joint. I then discovered that if you reverse the VW inner race, it will effectively lengthen the joint. That put my outter CVJ in the center of rotation and still allowed enough lateral movement of the CVJ's with full motion of the suspension. Disaster averted.

Then late last year, I finally got enough adapters in hand to plumb up the heater cores. Yes plural; we have rear heat. So I was able to drive it all the way through the winter for the first time. On a side note, I cleared out enough crap in my garage to park TWO cars in. Wow; what a luxury. So it has done everything I've asked it to all winter long. Then last week...

I noticed some squealing from under the hood while driving to work. A quick look under the hood didn't reveal anything, but I assumed it was the tensioner, so I drove it home. I probed with my stethoscope and discovered the sound was coming from inside the timing belt cover! Not good! A quick exploratory surgery revealed the source; the oil pump pulley had worked its way loose and was cock-eyed. Another disaster averted. I tightened it as hard as I could while holding the pulley stationary. Does anyone by chance know the torque requirement on that pulley? Does it use a stretch bolt? I did the timing belt back in '08 and have no recollection of whether I replaced that pulley or not.

Then today, another milestone; the speedometer on the dash moves! Notice my careful wording; it moves - it is not accurate. After finding a replacement for a bad vehicle speed sensor (boy are those hard to find for a reasonable price! Thank-you Amazon...) and bad wiring (I had somehow left the +12V feed unhooked.) I simply plugged the output of the sensor into the Chrysler input and viola; the needle moves. I now need a multiply-by adapter though. At an actual speed of 55mph, the speedo indicates ~39mph.

I need to go PM e*clipse and see if his little magical adapto-matic would
work...

Later all,

TLG

Oh, and PS - I picked up a 2000 NB TDI last October. Cherry of a car; little old couple owned it originally. It still smells new inside! Incidentally, those 0.210 injectors are HOT!

Glad to hear that you got it up and running again - and avoided a few potential disasters! I had good luck with the Dakota Digital signal converter, but the e*clipse version might be a lot more affordable.

Frankendiesel said:

I noticed some squealing from under the hood while driving to work. A quick look under the hood didn't reveal anything, but I assumed it was the tensioner, so I drove it home. I probed with my stethoscope and discovered the sound was coming from inside the timing belt cover! Not good! A quick exploratory surgery revealed the source; the oil pump pulley had worked its way loose and was cock-eyed. Another disaster averted. I tightened it as hard as I could while holding the pulley stationary. Does anyone by chance know the torque requirement on that pulley? Does it use a stretch bolt? I did the timing belt back in '08 and have no recollection of whether I replaced that pulley or not.

Click to expand...

The answer to your question is 33ft lbs. No, it is not a stretch bolt.

If it was spinning I have to assume that the woodruff key is sheared or missing. Get a new woodruff key in there and it might not be a bad idea to pick up a new pulley as well.

028 115 021B Ribbed belt pulley
N 0127 082 Woodruff key

Thanks greengeeker. I don't know if the pulley was spinning per se; when I tried to tighten the bolt, it spun, but I assume that's because I was turning the pump shaft as well. I put a socket in through one of the pulley holes to hold it stationary and wrenched on it as much as I could before the pulley holder started to give. If I had to guess, I'd say it was up around 40 ft lbs, but my arm hasn't been calibrated in a while.

Thanks for the data though. You TDI geeks are awesome!

Lots of progress lately for those interested. My girls are in Texas, so I took some time to tweak the van of the last few remaining items to address. Lord willing, we're going to have our third child in August, so my wife will need this econo-van ready to go like real soon. (The Beetle will be a tad bit too small for everyone). Anyway, on to the interesting stuff...
I repositioned the fusebox to make room for the go-pedal swap (more on that in a second...).

I also took out any unnecessary wires from the backside. You'll notice only one fuse remains, #21, which is only for power to the OBDII connector. I do need to put back in fuse #4 (IIRC) which is for the cruise switches (not 'installed' yet.)
I got a Dakota Digital speedometer calibration box and put it in yesterday.

The unit worked just as advertised, though the lack of techinical data in the manual had me guessing the dip switch position. I had it going after a little twiddling. Sure enough, you push the up button, the needle drifts up. Push the down button, it drifts down. Got it matched to my GPS. I'm embarassed by the shoddy wiring; I put in remote starters for folks and I should know better....I'm waiting to tweak all the wiring first, then I'll put everything in split-looms and zip tie it up.
Got the correct style go pedal installed.

The ALH pedal I've been using for years had some erratic behavior, so I got ahold of an AHU pedal a while ago for a good price. Had to move the fusebox to make room for it though. It still has some weird behavior though; every once in a while, shortly after starting it, it will work for a few seconds, then the ECU will ignore it for a few seconds, then it will work fine the rest of the trip. Any ideas?

So here's the short list of things yet to do:
-Hook up A/C lines
-Hook up the fan control thermostat and dash temp indicator
-Hook up cruise control wires

I'd also like to find a good way to make the shifter more aesthetically pleasing. Any ideas on that one?
Thanks,
Travis

My truck has the same go-pedal behavior, i have to press it until it does nothing then let off it and it's fine after that. I think i have narrowed it down to the clutch or brake switches. I think the ECU is expecting the clutch to be depressed to start the engine and when it's not, it get's a little confused. My guess is that after you hook up everything for the cruise control, it will go away.

Luke

That is a good point, Luke. I don't have the brake and clutch switches hooked up yet (one more little item on the list to do!). I also want to mention the surging issue again - if you shift at just the wrong RPM, the engine will surge/lurch/oscillate until you pull out of that RPM band (or push the clutch in). I'm thinking that behavior is really giving my drivetrain a work over and I'd really like it to stop. The TDI Insight guy said he had similar behavior; again, possibly related to the brake/clutch switches. Maybe I should hook those up tonight....

Thanks,

Travis

I can't say i have had surging problems, my switches are just plugged up so i won't get a code, but they don't actually do anything. I have been meaning to try holding the clutch switch closed when i start it to see if that solves the problem.

Luke

YOu;re describing EXACTLY how my Kick would act on first start up: push down on accel, truck returns to idle, release, then press again itll drive normally... till you shut it down and start it back up again...

It IS the clutch and brake switches.

Had it explained to me like this: the ECM will cut the engine to idle if it detects the accel and BRAKE pressed at the same time (in stock form or otherwise). Not being able to sense the pedals, itll assume the "worst" the first time out.

I installed a set of microswitches (id already scrapped the car not having removed its OEM switches) using wiring schematix I found on the Club somewhere.

Cured!

As an aside, you'll get a perpetual flashing glowplug lite if you dont have the switches.

I d never had any surging issues, so i cant comment that the switches will solve that.


Cheers!

Did any vans have a center console? Mom's 99 has a nice net that goes in the spot where you have the shifter.

-J

OK, switches it is. I'll get those installed sometime. I don't have a GP indicator light yet, so I haven't been able to monitor its behavior. Speaking of....I made an accidental discovery last week. A friend and I were looking over a '96 T&C and as I parked it in the sunshine, I looked on the dash and to my surprise, a stream of light lit up the driver's "Information Center" and behold....a Glow Plug indicator!! But my '98 doesn't have it. So I'm on the lookout for a dash from a '96 T&C w/the rare glow plug indicator. Let me know if you see anything.

Negative on the center console. I've seen a lot of these vans and none have had a floor mounted console save for some aftermarket thing screwed down. I talked with a guy at an Auto Interior shop yesterday and I think I'm going to make a little wooden box and have him cover it with either carpet or vinyl to match the van. That will come later obviously....

Thanks all!

Travis

Status Report:

Been a long time, thought I'd give an update on the latest effort:

This issue has been worrying me a little more each time I see it - right after you start the van, you rev the engine a little bit and the lights make a step change in brightness as the voltage goes up suddenly. It stays there the rest of the time, never diming no matter how much of a load I put on the 120 Amp alternator. Only after startup does it do this. And with a weak battery, the ABS light will stay on until you rev it. So I dove into the schematics to find what I thought was a possible load that is latching on startup only to let go after a quick rev. Well, long story short, I went to my favorite next door neighbor (who is a EE) and we/he found it. The sense line going to the alternator was never hooked up! You know that little light on your dash that illuminates to indicate a problem with the charging system? Turns out that really is important. Yeah seriously. So anyway, I found the dash connector in the VW harness and located the two pins that the bulb is supposed to go between. Scratching my head, I thought "Well, it's just a lamp, I should be able to just short the two lines together and it'll be happy." (My neighbor was not present to correct my error at this point.) Well, it was happy. No more step change in voltage as the alternator comes online immediately after starting! Hooray. Wait, the engine won't turn off now. Oh yeah, that lamp is important - you need the filament in there. Dug around in my drawer-o-stuff and pulled out a Mercedes harness with two little lamps. Wired those up to the "charge indicator" pins and whadya know, it starts, it runs, it turns off. And now I get this cute little light from under the dash whenever I turn off the engine. Why didn't I use the Chrysler bulb I hear you asking - well, Chrysler did something <ahem> different. The engine controller is in charge of toggling the alternator sense line. Any issues with the charging circuit are reported on the Chrysler data bus and the dash controller turns the lamp on. I may try to hook the VW alt. sense line to the Chrysler controller. I'll probe my stock minivan to see what that controller pin is really doing first.

So back while I was still at my neighbor's, he brought out his Bluetooth OBDII adapter and I fired up the Android I recently acquired. Whoa baby, you guys gotta try the Torque App! It will display any data stream coming off the OBDII bus in live form on a digital display, graph, analog-type gauge, or any of the above. It's like designing your own dashboard. I needed a tach; done. I needed to know water temp; done. How about speed - you want that in GPS calculated or what the engine is telling you? Wait, the engine isn't displaying its speed. That's strange. We thumbed through the pile of schematics and found another wiring error! The VW dash cluster not only takes in the vehicle speed sensor, but it also buffers it and sends it back out to the ECU. So I took a buffered output from my Dakota Digital speedometer correction box (there are 5 buffered outputs available) and hey, the ECU knows the vehicle's speed now (well kinda knows - it's now in Chrysler form being sent to the VW so it's off by about 15%). And as an added bonus, the low RPM surging issue I've been tolerating for way too long is gone!

All this with two little wires. Happy little van. It's very smooth accelerating and is also much quieter now at idle thanks to a motor mount fix I did last weekend.

Next up, I need to replace the fuel lines under the hood as they are cracking (I used non-fuel rated hoses - it's what I had, OK? ) Also, I just had to replace the in-tank fuel pump. And the new/used fuel pump I just put has a bad fuel level sensor. So I'll wait until the fuel is mostly gone, drop the tank and put in the old level sensor off the old pump ass'y. I swear, one of these days I'm going to cut an access hole in the floor to get the pump out.

So since the conversion, I've driven it about 3k miles. The last year has been mostly trouble free and I'm getting more and more confident in the van. It may very well be taking an 8 hour trip south next month. I really want to do a thorough inspection under the hood to make sure things aren't rubbing up against each other first, especially the coolant hoses!

Travis

Awesome. Thanks for the update!

Any current photos of this beast inside & out?

Been wondering how you've been doing with it...sounds like you've made great strides in getting things sorted out!

Nothing has really changed for pictures to show. Just some wires here, a few hoses there. I did find the picture of our first car show. Our company has an auto club that I'm part of and we had a GTG this last spring. I got a lot of requests to bring out the beast, so here we are, the whole family. The girls had a great time giving all the other kids a ride. It was a great time.



Speaking of hoses, last week I drove about 15 miles south to a friend's place. When I got there, I could smell fuel - yep, burst one of those stupid fuel lines again. I was able to cut out the bad section and just shorten the hose. So I went out and got some real fuel line now and have grounded the van until I get all that crumby coolant line out of the fuel passages. I shoulda known better.

Maiden Voyage

Hi all,

First, this Saturday, we're taking the Frankenship out of the harbor all the way down to Dallas. (If you live between Iowa and Dallas and would be willing to assist should anything happen, PM me!) That's a 13 hour trip with adults. With three kiddos...who knows. the van has performed very well for us the past year or so with only some minor incidents (like the fuel hose bursting ) and we've racked up a total of about 3k miles since the conversion. Time to put this thing to work!

I've done a bit of tweaking lately to get ready for the trip. The most essential piece was getting the cruise to work. Using VAGCOM, I figured out how to properly wire the two brake switch sense lines. As some of you know, one goes to ground, the other to +12 when the pedal is pushed. (Interesting application of redundant circuitry for a fail safe operation.) For the clutch, since I don't have a switch yet, I simply jumpered the connector. Then I tied the cruise on/off switch line to +12, so I have it on all the time. I then wired a relay to trigger when I push the steering wheel mounted switch for on/off. The Chrysler switches are on a resistor duplex line, the on/off switch shorts the line to ground when pressed. So, when it's pressed, it toggles the relay which drives the VW set/resume function to +12. No decel, no cancel (except for the brake pedal of course). I have a circuit dreamed up to allow me to 'demux' the resistor duplex line, but I just needed something working in the interim.

The exhaust was resonating a bit too much for us, so I had my guys at Professional Muffler put in a resonator pipe. Much better! It still seems loud/rough at idle, but that may be a worn motor mount.

On the chassis, I've put on new sway bar bushings & sway bar connecting rods. Both notorious for wearing out at ~100k on these vans. That got rid of the clunking on rough terrain.

I have a video of the van on my Android, but I exceeded Youtube's limit, so I'll have to refilm it in smaller chunks.

So, place your bets - will the Frankenvan make it? I'll be sure to post updates...stay tuned, sports fans.

Travis

Got my YouTube vid uploaded. Not my best work. I'll post a follow-up with it running and all. It's my first YouTube, what can I say....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZjGusL1Wrw

Nice walk-around! Looking forward to a test drive video.

Safe travels!

PS, please start a thread in the road trip forum with lots of juicy details.

How's the acceleration? Nice job!

We made it!

See thread in Road Trip forum. Highlights: 850 miles, 31mpg overall. Disappointing, but might have some tweaks to get that number higher. Sorry so short, gotta get back to the family!

Travis

That's beter than the 20 MPG you'd have gotten from the V6!

Well, the V6 gasser would have got me 25mpg (I've seen as high as 27mpg with my 3.0L). I'm going to run a tank here in known conditions and see if my mileage shifted. I was getting upper 30's consistently before the trip. If that has changed, I'll know something is different. One thing I did do was put a resonator in the exhaust before the trip. If the shop goofed up and put on a muffler and my backpressure went up too high, then perhaps I need to remove the reso. We'll see.

Another bit of data, my wife went to start it yesterday to run errands and it wouldn't fire. It's in a warm garage, so the cool temp's shouldn't have affected it. I just replaced the fuel filter not too long ago, but perhaps that's gotten clogged again. I have had issues with this mysterious black gunk in my tank. I attributed it to the rotten fuel hose I was using. Perhaps my plastic tank isn't so diesel friendly?

Stand by for news,

Travis

Frankendiesel said:

See thread in Road Trip forum. Highlights: 850 miles, 31mpg overall. Disappointing, but might have some tweaks to get that number higher. Sorry so short, gotta get back to the family!

Travis

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Travis, what speeds are you traveling at? What engine rpm at those speeds? Overall on the highway cruising the best I have gotten is almost 30 mpg. I imagine the vanagon and the town and country have similar weight and aero. I have had mileage as high as 36 -37 and as low as 24 -26 depending on where I am driving and how fast. mark

Hi Mark,

We had varying speeds on the trip, but it was mostly around 70mph. At 70mph I'm spinning 2,150RPM (from the ECU, not the dash) and that is, of course, in 5th gear.

In mixed driving (highway at 60mph, in town at 35 to 45mph) I'd been getting right at 40mpg very consistently.

What is your RPM at speeds around those above? Low of 24mpg...yikes. That just doesn't sound right! Do you have your A/C running and towing a trailer at that point?

Thanks Mark! You're the first ALH/Van owner I've had the chance to chat with!

Travis

Travis, it sounds like you are geared much better than my Vanagon. I see about 2900 rpm at 70 mph and that is with an aftermarket ring and pinion and a taller 4th gear and taller than stock tires.

At 40 mph in 4th gear l am running about 1600 rpm, but it is about lugging.

At 50mph in 4th gear looking I am running about 2000 rpm.

I am curious how your town and country does in the hills with that tall of gearing. I would imagine we have similar weight and aero. mark

Intermediate Shaft Pulley Repair

Intermediate shaft pulley took a beating last month. Here's the thread that covers the latest repair. Now my gasser minivan just thrashed its engine; time to get Frankenvan out of the garage!

Upgrades & Repairs

Hey All,

I've been woefully absent from participating here for a while and I do apologize. Just going to make a quick post and let you know we've been putting many happy miles on the Frankenvan. It's been to Texas twice and all over our home state. I did have yet another in-tank fuel pump failure (this makes...I lost count.) So I finally was able to see what I was doing wrong and have revamped the fuel supply to a much more reliable method which also maintains the factory fuel pressure loop for the Chrysler pump. I'll describe in detail later.

And more excitingly, I was able to score a factory floor console and shifter mechanism from UK thanks to an awesome guy over there who helped me out (shout out to my good mate Nick! ). Turns out, if you go to Google's UK site, you can find out all about the Chrysler CRD minivans! Google US? Nada. So here's a quick picture of the finished product:



I'll post more later today.

Awesome conversion! Keep us posted!