Aircooled VW South Africa

At last!!! Today my 181 can alive. After weeks of delays I finally got to finish off the wiring. I completed the wiring going to the front brake switch and connected the reverse light switch. ( it sound like nothing but took the better part of 1.5 hours)

After this all was completely recheck against my diagram. I discovered I left the 15 power to the coil off. Once discovered it was connected to the fuse box.

Next in turn was the fitment of the fuses then in went the battery and the earth to the body was connected.

After this I made myself a cup of tea and relax for 15min. It’s at this time that you hope your work is good.

I connected the live and the clock started to tick, she came alive without popping a fuse, I passed the first test.

Next I tested all the components that must be able to run with the ignition off. Hazard lights worked all round first time. Next, Park lights worked with the exception on the right rear. It turned out I pushed the wire to deep into the connector. When I crimped it and I caught the plastic instead of the copper. With another connector fitted all the park lights worked

Next on the list were the dashboard lights. All was working but the speedo ones were dim. I turned up the variable resistor and the Volts gauge's reading started to climb. So, with the lights on you can change the read out of the Volts gauge with a turn of the light switches variable resistor. I spent the rest on the afternoon checking the circuits. After about 2 hours if was narrowed down to something with the speedo's panel lights. If you disconnect the speedo lights or the fuel gauges positive the problem disappeared. I gave up and went home.

On the way home I click what the problem is. The speedo is not mounted for the testing. When I switch the lights on there is no earth for the speedo. It therefore flows back through the earth of the fuel gauges voltage stabiliser and into the ignition live. This then causes the voltage gauge to give a reading.

Its at times like this that I can “Klap” myself for stupidity. Sometime I forget my own motto. “Remember and Check the simple things first”

Tommorrow I will connect a earth to the speedo and I know the problem will disappear.

I have a few pictures of my 181 with its lights on. Unfortunately I can’t get it off my phone. Every time it gives me the error. “Windows Mobile Device Centre has stopped working.” After googling it I have found its one of the things that MS has broken with their last update. On Monday I will check for new updates or do a rollback. I should then be able to post the pics.

Tonight I am one happy little piggy.

Way to go Tom!!

Oh man... you are soooo... erm....uh... hmm...ACCURATE!!

Tom, it's looking absolutely amazing....how much longer do you think?

Sorry Dutch, Only saw your question today.

The Answer, not long any more but still lots of niggles to sort out.
I have again battled with my wiper motor for the last two weeks. I could not get the homing circuit to work correctly. This wiper motor belongs to a 181 only and is completely different from any other VW.

You will have seen me bitching about the wiper motor in one of my earlier posts. I think this thing is going to bring me to my knees.

It uses a set of points to control the homing circuit and someone had bent the arms of these points when they disable this circuit. Now there are two problems, first how are these points meant to be bent to work correctly and once something has been deformed you never get it back to its original shape.
Through trial and error I got the homing circuit to almost work but every now and then the homing circuit would not stop the wipers when you switched the wiper arm off. They would slow down when they were meant to stop (homing circuit earth) but then go back on the homing circuit live.

In the end I found out that it was not getting a good earth on the homing circuit earth. This was caused by dirty contacts in the wiper switch. After dismantling the steering cluster again and taking the whole lot apart I water papered the corroded contacts. After putting the lot together all works well.

To date this is the longest time I have spend trying to fix one problem.

Then came the time that is needed during every build.

A proper cleanup and throw out. You gather lots during a build and your space to works gets less. My 130m2 had been reduced to little hiking paths.

After a 4 hour clean up and throwing away parts that I know I will need next week my place looks decent again. It’s hard to throw parts away and this is the only time the wife helps me with a project. She just wants to through all the rusted old stuff away. Once I have looked at a part, turned it over a couple of times, and handed it over to her, it’s gone

I know that last feeling oh to well

Gentleman, you will all soon hate me and run when you see a post by me. As a paramedic by trade I can't fix anything unless it bleeds and as such will be asking as many questions as the administrators will allow me. Mr. Bishop, that truly is a awesome 181. Any left over parts you'd be looking to flog?

Grubby wrote:Gentleman, you will all soon hate me and run when you see a post by me. As a paramedic by trade I can't fix anything unless it bleeds and as such will be asking as many questions as the administrators will allow me. Mr. Bishop, that truly is a awesome 181. Any left over parts you'd be looking to flog?

There are some spare parts but untill the build is complete I dont want to part with any of the parts that cant be sourced in ZA.

BTW my late Father in law was a male nurse. One day I saw how he had fixed a hole in his exhaust by setting it in a cast.

Hi Grubby, let me be the first to ask.

Could you please do a "How to stitch an open wound." post.

Yes, it's a funny request, but believe it or not, that stitch method is also used by upholsterers when fixing cuts in leather and vinyl.
So your knowledge would be greatly appreciated on that score.

As always, PICTURES ARE VERY HELPFUL

I'll work on that "stitching an open wound" post for you, no problem. I'm not using myself for photos though, will have to find some poor drunken mate who will do it for another bottle of whiskey.
Strangely enough the 181 that I'm working on has already cost me a trip to the local hospital trauma unit and nine stitches to my right wrist. It looks like I tried to slit my wrist. Let me workout how to upload photos and I'll put some pics up for you.

I was kind of hoping you'd rather opt for two peaces of material to do the demonstration
But I'll be willing to suffer through the blood and gore if your drunk mate is willing to do the same.

Tom, your 181, does it have the limited-slip diff? I think somewhere along the line my gearbox got removed and an old beetle one was put in, thus losing the limited-slip diff. I mate of my old man's (a German in Eshowe) has a 181 too and he has the original limited-slip diff but seems to be having a few problems with it. He has suggested we swop gearboxes. Do you know of anyone who would be able to have a look at the limited-slip diff box and fix if need be.
Dr. Porche's nephew also has a 181 down in the Harding area. It's been really poorly restored but still doesn't look too bad. If I wanted to increase the ground clearance a bit, I'd need to extend the length of the drive drive shaft a bit too, wouldn't I? If I don't the rear wheels would have a greater amount of camber to them, I think.

181s were not fitted with lsd as standard.

Does your back axle has CV joints or solid arms.

The simplest way to increase ride hight is with larger wheels.

As far as I can recall it has CV joints. (I haven't been there for sometime) In terms of the larger wheels won't they impede on the wheel wells, particularly in the front with the turning. I'm not a big fan of putting smaller tyres on the front.

Tom, during the restoration of your Thing, did you make use of www.thingparts.com? If you did, what was your impression of them. I'm looking at getting some parts from them and was just wondering if you had any experiences, good or bad.