Well, after a year of part-time work I was finally able to drive my '74 std on a simple errand. Having replaced all the wiring, patched the floors, de- rusted the body, replacing the exhast system, rebuilding and then replacing the carb, not to mention undoing a whole host of well intentioned but poorly done work from the previous owner (ok, and some from me) I finally have a legaly inspected well running car.
Still horribly ugly, but well running.
My question is this: when I replaced the (stinger) exhast system with a new muffler, there was a space between the heat boxes on the muffler that the fresh air hoses hook up to and the mouth of the heater boxes mounted on either side of the engine. We bridged that space with a short lenght of the same aluminium hose that we used for our fresh air, held on with hose clamps. The person who just re-built my engine though, says there is a part which works much better. He says that it looks like a two inch wide hose clamp with no slits in it. The local autoparts place say that there is no such thing and never has been, other than fuel injection clamps which only come up to 5/16 diameter.
Of course this is the same autoparts place that, although they carry the aircooled vw oil change kit, were reluctant to sell it to me unless I also bought a new oil filter. And yes, he really did mean an everyday oil filter, he showed it to me and insisted I must be confused when I told him I had nowhere to put it.
Winter, The part described is described well enough and is definitely one of those parts that will have to be sought from the Swaps, or on The Samba.com..................or maybe someone here has a spare set.
I have only enough to fill my needs and the ones I have are not all that nice, but still do the job.
Hope someone elese has 'em for ya here...........Speak up guys...............
( your fix is a good one till you can come up with the part,..............come to think of it,...............it may actually be better than the original part, as far as sealing the gap well enough to keep other contaminents out of the fresh air system.)
The person who just re-built my engine though, says there is a part
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What you're looking for is a sleeve-type clamp that connects the plenum to the heat exchanger. (The 'plenum' is that odd looking chamber that fits around the exhaust stacks on each side.)
They're available. They're also expensive as hell when you find them. And usually leak, since after-market mufflers rarely have the right diameter outlet, seldom align properly and the original sleeve was secured with just a single screw.
So try this.
Go find some .010" stainless steel shim stock. You need a piece at least 18" long for each side and as wide as it needs to be. Seriously; crawl under with a piece of card stock or whatever and determine the width YOUR engine requires. Because of the differences in mufflers, the width can vary by nearly half an inch from one vehicle to another. No problem; simply cut the shim stock to match.
Now you've got a razor blade about a foot and a half long by about two inches wide. Handle it carefully or be prepared to bleed a lot. Your choice.
What you want to do next sounds pretty silly but follow me through. You want to coil the strip up like a clock spring so that its outer diameter ends up slightly LESS than two inches in diameter. How? By progressively 'shoe-shining' the strip back & forth over a smooth bar having a small diameter. A socket-set extension will work. Start slow and keep your hands fairly flat. Do it once or twice then let the thing curl up. Small enough? Then stop. But if the coil is still larger than the air-inlet to your heat exchanger, then shoe-shine it some more. The key here is to not over-do it; you want the thing to WANT to curl up, but not too tight.
Next step is to go find yourself some stainless steel hose clamps that are at least an inch larger than the air inlet diameter -- you want a lot of tongue sticking out.
You need TWO hose clamps per side. Make sure they are ALL stainless steel; cheep-o's use a carbon steel screw. It'll rust on you and you'll be unable to remove them without breaking the thing and probably screwing up the sleeve you've just bled to make.
Or you can use stainless steel safety wire. But only if you know how, as in securing virtually idential sleeves on airplane engines. (And if by now you've gotten a hint that I know whereof I speak, I do, I do, I do.)
Installing your home-made, aviation-quality demountable sleeves is a no-brainer. Pretend you're loading film in a camera. Once you've fed the first wrap around the fittings, the thing rolls itself into place like a window shade. (...so long as you keep turning it. So do.)
Yeah, it'll feel kinda loose. Don't worry about it.
Got your hose clamps? Get the tonge of the clamp around the sleeve and started onto the worm of the screw. (Now you see why they had to be a little long. ) Get BOTH clamps onto the sleeve.
Okay so far? The sleeve is in place... kinda loose... And the clamps are in place, even looser, probably leaning against each other down by the heat exchanger.
Move one of the clamps into position on the PLENUM and hold it there while you tighten it down. But not tight-tight, just snug-tight. Then go do the other one.
Now here's the tricky bit: If you gradually tighten AND THEN LOOSEN the hose clamps, the stainless steel sleeve will coil itself up to make a perfect fit. The tricky bit is that you need to work back & forth. Bring one clamp up snug then go LOOSEN the other clamp... and then tighten it up snug... and keep doing that, back & forth, until the sleeve is as tight as it can go. Now you can put a little torque onto the clamps (the ones that will accept a socket are easier to use than the ones that will only accept a screwdriver).
Leave the ends long. If you're a neat-nik, drill the ends of the tongues (earlier) to accept safety wire, make up a loop of the stuff, pass it through the hole, pull the tongue up nice & neat then wrap the wire AROUND the sleeve and secure it to the turnbuckle of the hose-clamp.
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First time you do this, you think it's crazy as hell. But ten years from now when you have to do it again, it will make good sense because the stainless will still be rust-free.
I've been using this method for more than thirty years. Try it; you'll like it :-)
-Bob Hoover
PS - So how are aviation-type sleeves different? Instead of hose clamps, which weigh quite a bit and aren't all that reliable, a piece of wire gets folded into the shim stock about four inches from the end (for a 2" diameter tube) and secured with hollow rivets; usually three for something this wide (think shoe laces and you're on the right track). The end of the shim stock closest to the reenforcing wire gets folded over and secured with ONE MORE hollow rivet (ie, that would be four instead of three).
You then install the thing as described above... being sure you start with the 'free' end, and simply LACE IT UP to work out the slack.
Bottom line is that you can locally fabricate any type of connector-sleeve that is required.
PPS -- Rolls of shim stock in thicknesses up to about .032 are available from machinest supply houses like Enco or whatever. But for a VW heater sleeve you can get by with used stuff. Or 'tin-can' stock... or even beer can stock.
I bought the sleeve clampys along with a german stock muffler from my Mechanic friend. Seemed pretty available at the time. If you need some I can check....... kp
The clamp you (and the others) are referring to is the middle clamp in this picture:
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Item 24 on this page:
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lists them for $1.59 if you decide you must have them.I don't know if those are the real deal or not ... if so, most likely theyare used ones but you could email and ask. He usually replies prettyquickly.
Per a previous writing by Bob (Veeduber) I did the procedure that he described above of adding the shim stock to seal up this joint. My heat worked well before I did this and I haven't driven it in cold weather yet since doing this but it made a noticeable difference in the amount of air pumped into the cabin.
Here's the shim stock cut to size:
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made it 2" wide and about 16" long ... long enough to wrap completelyaround twice. I clipped the corners to make it a little safer to work with(and wore gloves too). Muffler and right side heat exchanger before installing the shim stock and clamps:
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Shim stock in place:
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One of the smaller end clamps and the wide middle clamp in place loosely:
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All three clamps in place:
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The left side:
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Using the wide middle clamp in addition to the two smaller stainless clamps was probably overkill but what I did was to snug up the middle clamp first so that it would align the plenum with the opening in the heat exchanger, then tightened the outer clamps to seal it.
On Thu, 03 Jul 2003 05:26:23 GMT, "Scott H." , who was sitting in a corner eating his Xmas pie stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and began to run off at the mouth like so:
Cool. I did something a *lot* like that on my truck. I'd cut the exhuast pipe just in front of the muffler and had wired the pipe off to the side, so the exhaust gas would exit just before the point where it would normally go into the muffler. It was my free "performance" (redneck) exhaust system. Before I went to go get the truck inspected I knew I needed to reconnect the exhaust system but I didn't want to weld it back together since I wanted the reconnection to be temporary. Since my connection only needed to be a temporary one, I just used tin flashing. I cut a piece about 4 inches wide and about 2 feet long, enough to be able to wrap around the joint a couple of times. I wrapped it around and used regular hose clamps to hold it in place. It worked great and as a matter of fact I haven't gotten around to removing that patch to the exhaust in several months now. Maybe I'll just leave it there until after the next inspection and by that time I'll be in the mood for a loud exhaust again and will remove it once I get my inspection sticker. :-)
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