The "What did you do to your B4 today" thread...

[Steve Addy]

Installed this B4 VR lower belt cover on the B3V conversion since it's doubtful that I'll ever find the TDI front lower cover / belly pan intact. This way the belts can't get soaked from water as easily.

Steve

 

[Abacus]

Oh man, I wish you were closer, I'd give you mine.

 

[Steve Addy]

Oh man, I wish you were closer, I'd give you mine.

You never know, that might actually happen. There's a JY in CT with a white hood and front bumper I really need. They said the front bumper is 'exceptional' which if true might just make me drive there to get both, discarding my old ones while I'm there...haha.

You just never know....

Steve

 

[Abacus]

If you do come out this way we have plenty of room at the house, no need for a hotel room.

 

[thechoochlyman]

I scored a new-in-box Autometer pyrometer for $100 this morning from somebody who decided to take a different route. Now to wait for a good time to drill and tap my manifold, and find a decent place to route the wires through.

 

[Yblocker]

I've been noticing a degradation of straight line stability, and a pull to the left upon throttle application. Turns out the right side inner tie rod has about 1/16" of play, so I removed them both and will just do the whole inner/outer set with new boots. There was water in that right side which I'm sure hastened its demise. Looks like the hardest part of this job will be getting the new boots in there!

 

[Steve Addy]

I scored a new-in-box Autometer pyrometer for $100 this morning from somebody who decided to take a different route. Now to wait for a good time to drill and tap my manifold, and find a decent place to route the wires through.

I need one of those too, I was hoping to catch one on bargain but kind of gave up a while back when I started doing my bargain basement mountain bike build to ride cyclocross and needed to buy junk for that.

Steve

 

[thechoochlyman]

I need one of those too, I was hoping to catch one on bargain but kind of gave up a while back when I started doing my bargain basement mountain bike build to ride cyclocross and needed to buy junk for that.

Steve

You can find good ones for about $100 every now and then on eBay if you look hard enough. I happened to find this on one of the Dodge Cummins diesel forums - usually a lot of people selling off accessories, new or used. I would have bought the matching boost gauge too, had it not read 100 PSI!

 

[vanbcguy]

You can get a full EGT gauge setup for less than $100 pretty easily. There are plenty of probes available for about $35. Most gauges are compatible with any K-type thermocouple so you can mix and match bits as required. Check out Auber Instruments for a $50 digital gauge and a $35 probe... Their gauges are great and can be connected to an alarm or light if you want.

Sent from my XT1097 using Tapatalk

 

[sootful]

I replaced the glow plug wiring harness, glow plugs and the cps. Long day yesterday.

 

[john.jackson9213]

Started for TDIFest yesterday in the green B4V. Got 150 miles before I lost the head gasket at the end of a climb to 4100 feet.
Fortunately, this is not my white wagon in my signature.
Now I am waiting for a plane to be repaired at San Diego airport.

 

[kooyajerms]

well damn, was hoping that headjob wasn't gonna git ya.

 

[tdidieselbobny]

Started for TDIFest yesterday in the green B4V. Got 150 miles before I lost the head gasket at the end of a climb to 4100 feet.

Now I am waiting for a plane to be repaired at San Diego airport.

Geesh,I hope this isn't a sign telling you to stay home......

 

[Campbellonh]

Washed it (hoping to make it rain). There is a couple of spots from pine sap that I can't get off, but it looks good.

 

[turbodieseldyke]

Started for TDIFest yesterday in the green B4V. Got 150 miles before I lost the head gasket at the end of a climb to 4100 feet.
Fortunately, this is not my white wagon in my signature.
Now I am waiting for a plane to be repaired at San Diego airport.

Even-more-fortunately, you weren't in a plane at 4100' when your head gasket blew.

 

[Bob S.]

R&R the oil cooler oil seal as part of regular OCI. New tires, 195/60/15 (Conti Pure Contacts) in place of prior 195/50/15. Much improved on ride & appearance to my eye. Thanks those that shared their tire size & experience info. It sure helped the decision to move up in size & profile.

 

[bikeprof]

R&R the oil cooler oil seal as part of regular OCI. New tires, 195/60/15 (Conti Pure Contacts) in place of prior 195/50/15. Much improved on ride & appearance to my eye. Thanks those that shared their tire size & experience info. It sure helped the decision to move up in size & profile.

Great you have upgraded to 60's, next step (IMHO) will be to enlarge to 65 aspect. VERY CLOSE to almost perfect, the ODO and speed gauge ? !
Many more options in 195/65/15's... ?

 

[Bob S.]

Great you have upgraded to 60's, next step (IMHO) will be to enlarge to 65 aspect. VERY CLOSE to almost perfect, the ODO and speed gauge ? !
Many more options in 195/65/15's... ?

Interesting. After driving them for a couple days now, I understand I could have gone up to the 65 series without issue. I was hesitant to pull the trigger for that large. One thing I do see with the 60s, & probably more so with the 65s, is the need to install mud flaps. I certainly will give the 65s serious consideration 60k+ miles from now.

 

[cal327]

Installed this B4 VR lower belt cover on the B3V conversion since it's doubtful that I'll ever find the TDI front lower cover / belly pan intact. This way the belts can't get soaked from water as easily.

Steve

Where did you find one of these? I've been looking for one to hack up and put on with my skid plate to cover the p/s belt that slips every time I hit a puddle in a parking lot

 

[Steve Addy]

Where did you find one of these? I've been looking for one to hack up and put on with my skid plate to cover the p/s belt that slips every time I hit a puddle in a parking lot

I found it at Ye Ole Junk Yard where oddly enough two 97 Passat VR6 sedans showed up recently. Both had the lower belt cover but this one was the best, the other one had a little melty area at the lowest point, not sure why. I pulled the other one last time I was there just to look at it and found a hole where it was melted.

Your reasoning for the shield is exactly why I wanted one, on the B3V there was nothing there for the 16V engine and I really didn't want to start drenching the belts or the PS pump with road water if I could help it. I really don't want stuff spraying in there during the winter either.

Steve

 

[Steve Addy]

Besides mowing the lawn today I managed to get some more things installed on the B3V wagon, the car that I'm now driving all the time and have been since it came out of the garage earlier this spring.

I was in Omaha yesterday again so I managed to get a few hours to go rummage at the JY where the lower belt cover had come from. I managed to get some bits that my car was lacking, namely the plastic undercarriage covers that mount just ahead of both sides of the rear axle and amazingly enough the very rare VR6 exhaust shield, most of which are ripped off and tossed by the shop doing the replacement exhaust work.

What I had before (sorry for the odd angle, it was only way to get a decent view. You can see here that there was nothing left of the cross piece or the plastic covers that I think came with the car originally. I could be wrong, maybe it never had anything back there? I think the parts catalog suggests that it did have something.



This is the rare VR exhaust shield, the car that had this still had original exhaust. The front of it I had to straighten because the JY people ripped it down and back to cut the catalyst out. It was quite bent but fortunately I managed to get it back into shape.



Here's everything in place, again sorry for the awkward angle.



Oh, and I managed to score two decent grey visors. Unfortunately when I got home I couldn't find any more than two screws so I should have taken those as well but didn't. I will dig around, I'm sure I had some, just not sure where I put them.

Steve

 

[Steve Addy]

Also, forgot, I ran it up on the scale at the JY just for fun. The scale oscillated between 3260 and 3280 so 3270 is probably a good measure. It had a half tank of fuel, 50 lbs of tools and a 200 lbs guy inside at the time.

I've read that curb weight was around 1360 kg (2998.3 lbs) for the diesel B3 so the scale wasn't too far off at 3260/80 if you subtract me and the tools. It was getting late, picture quality nothing to write home about.



Steve

 

[john.jackson9213]

Interesting. After driving them for a couple days now, I understand I could have gone up to the 65 series without issue. I was hesitant to pull the trigger for that large. One thing I do see with the 60s, & probably more so with the 65s, is the need to install mud flaps. I certainly will give the 65s serious consideration 60k+ miles from now.

Bob, I have been running 195/65 x 15 for about 2 years now with out any incident. And yes, mud flaps are nice to have on that size. Put mud flaps on when the car was repainted earlier this year.

 

[Digital Corpus]

Started for TDIFest yesterday in the green B4V. Got 150 miles before I lost the head gasket at the end of a climb to 4100 feet.
Fortunately, this is not my white wagon in my signature.
Now I am waiting for a plane to be repaired at San Diego airport.

For those wondering, I am now in possession of the green wagon. It's fate is not fully decided, but if anyone is interested in parts, PM me and I'll add you to the waiting list once it's fate is decided.

...This is the rare VR exhaust shield, the car that had this still had original exhaust. The front of it I had to straighten because the JY people ripped it down and back to cut the catalyst out. It was quite bent but fortunately I managed to get it back into shape.


...Steve

WANT!


I've replaced the starter on my car with the rebuilt one I had due to the break in weather/heat. On our other B4 I bleed the brakes again which is the 3rd time in a year, replaced the passenger front wheel hub, both front wheel bearings, regreased the slide pins, and soldered in a new glow plug harness a couple of weeks ago.

On a similar note, I know there are a bunch of plastic parts on the B4/B4V that are NLA. I've picked up a 3D printer and through the nature of hacking I'm fixing it up and making it better. I do plan on producing replacement parts for us.

On that same note, the green B4V's fate is being decided upon. It'll be parted or fixed up. It needs work outside of the head, but it's not bad off per se. Due to having too many cars, it's fate will be decided within the next week and it will be converted to being fully operational or parted out by the start of November. The printing stuff is on hold until then, fwiw.

 

[Windex]

Jus' wondering...

The heat shield is on the VR6 due to the exhaust heat. Diesels don't produce heat in the exhaust like gassers...


But it looks cool!

 

[FordGuy100]

Started the car up! Been away from it for about 3 months now. Thinking about doing a BG109 treatment on it since it needs an oil change anyways.

 

[Steve Addy]

Jus' wondering...

The heat shield is on the VR6 due to the exhaust heat. Diesels don't produce heat in the exhaust like gassers...


But it looks cool!

That's true, it really isn't necessary on the diesel cars but I'd been hoping to run across one for a while and finally I managed to stumble upon one. I think it kind of goes with all the undercarriage paneling which I've been keen to add for a while now since all mine was missing.

I had one located in Chicago a few years back but they seller wasn't too keen on shipping so I let it go and eventually it got tossed...:-(

Steve

 

[PD41]

For those wondering

Hey DC, I got some parts of a green 96 Passat TDI sedan at the
U Pick U Save in Gardena yesterday. Near the 91 and the 110

I picked up the Injection Pump for $100 for a spare and all the relays.
The car has a lot of parts on it. Thought let you know since it is a 45 min drive for you if you need anything.

 

[Digital Corpus]

Hey DC, I got some parts of a green 96 Passat TDI sedan at the
U Pick U Save in Gardena yesterday. Near the 91 and the 110
I picked up the Injection Pump for $100 for a spare and all the relays.
The car has a lot of parts on it. Thought let you know since it is a 45 min drive for you if you need anything.

How was the passenger front door and was the tansmission still pressent?

 

[turbodieseldyke]

i think i have a green pass.front door, and you wouldn't have to drive to Gardena.

I'm gonna have to hit that yard today. I'm already dreading it, since the last time I was there, the [edit] *special person in charge* [/edit] behind the counter was making up prices out of thin air; not using a real (published) price list like LKQ.

moderator's note: please try to refrain from using derogatory terms to describe people. I'm not saying things should be kept PC to the Nth degree but some terms go against forum decorum. Thanks.

[okie doke]