[T2] And the bus is home again!

[Sami Dakhlia]

It's been 30 years since I bought the bus, almost that long since I joined
the original vanagon list, and close to a decade since I last posted on
type2, at least on a regular basis, so here is a much overdue update.

We moved to France in 2010, took the '79 bug with us, but left the '75 bus
with my brother, way up there in the Santa Monica Mountains. Already back
then, it had an issue with poor performance and the drive from Mississippi
(where we used to live) to the bus's new home in California (with a pit
stop at David Schwarze's place in Dallas - hey David!) ended in Flagstaff,
Arizona, at which point we rented a UHaul and trailer and schlepped this
drama queen of a bus the rest of the way to L.A.

The issue that had beleaguered the bus over 11 years ago was poor top-end
performance: head temperatures quickly climbing up to 420F/215C and oil
temps past 250F/120C. Back in 2010, having fiddled with the timing to no
avail, I eventually latched on to a theory that it might be running
excessively lean, perhaps because the '75 L-jetronic was optimized for a
1.8 liter engine, not the replacement 2-liter engine now on board.

A BS theory, debunked by Chris Dreike (hey Chris!) about 5 years ago while
I visited family in California. He hooked up his wideband O2 sensor to the
tailpipe and we got 11.8 to 12.5 AFR depending on load, so no lean running.
Chris and I continued to exchange emails long after and he eventually
encouraged me to look again at the timing. In place of the original but
sloppy dual vacuum dizzy was a newish SVDA, which I had been timing at 7.5
BTDC (as opposed to 5 ATDC for the dual vac dizzy). But being overseas, I
was just not able to investigate the matter further. In the meantime, my
nephew got his driver's license and drove the bus, but it ran worse and
worse, holding up Topanga Canyon traffic.

Well, we moved back to the U.S. three years ago (beautiful Chattanooga,
Tennessee), built a two-car garage during Covid time, and finally brought
the bus into its new home right before Christmas (we had it shipped). It
needed much TLC after having been neglected for so long. A good polish
brought back luster. I changed the oil (whoever changed oil last time put
in a Dynalube oil filter - the horror!). Old seals and vacuum hoses needed
to be replaced. Doors needed lubrication, and so forth.

And this time around, I bought a digital timing light and timed the bus at
[what I _think_ is] 28 BTDC @ 3,500 rpm (vac hose off), which is 2-3
degrees less than where it was before! (The notch in the pulley now points
to 5 BTDC at idle.) The bus has a lot more pep than what I remember,
especially uphill, and I plan to take it on a longer highway run to test it
some more.

But wait, there's more! the reason I'm actually not sure it's really timed
at 28 BTDC @ 3500 rpm is that I have some doubts about the accuracy of the
two timing scales, one old and sagging plastic, the other shiny aluminum. I
don't know which one (if any) is accurate, but they disagree with a
non-trivial difference of 3 degrees between the two. Right now, my timing
is based on the new aluminum scale, which points to more advance, so that I
will have dialed in less advance than with the old plastic one.

Long story short, the combination of using a different timing scale and
timing at full centrifugal advance rather than at idle means that timing is
now set at 5 to 6 degrees less than before. It's a big difference.

Sami