Weekend work - Oil change, replaced plugs, points, rotor and distributor cap

So Sunday was spent doing some tune-up work on Big Blue while jamming to Terrapin Station on vinyl from the old record player in our garage. I know it doesn't do much to discourage the whole hippie/bus thing, but I felt it was appropriate.

This is the first time I got down into the engine so far on either VW. First up, an oil change, which is getting pretty easy. It feels good to get it all cleaned up under there...

This oil catcher is about full...

Replacing parts with all Bosch parts...

So I had some leftover tune-up items from when we bought Big Blue. Monty had left a sack of points, rotors, distributor caps and what not among the boxes in the back of Big Blue. I ordered new plugs last week from Wolfsburg West, who is quickly becoming my favorite source for parts. If you look closely at the picture above, you may be keen enough to notice the condenser here is the wrong condenser. I wasn't keen enough to notice until I got into it, so I wasn't able to replace that.

The old spark plugs. 1 year of wear. All except the cylinder 1 seemed in good shape. If you see any concerns, let me know.

Little odd plastic things...

Perhaps the readers of this blog can give me some insight into these little plastic bastards on the end of the spark plugs. I have always worked on cars where the plug connects directly to the spark plug wire. Since they were already on the bus, and since Monty had left a bag of new ones behind, I swapped them out exactly as I found them. It was interesting to take them out and to disconnect them - you have to pull apart where the wire meets the reddish plastic thing by pulling back the rubber piece at the very right of the picture above. Seemed like a bad way of doing it, so if anyone has ideas, let me know.


A few things failed on me while doing the tune-up. I tried to check the compression of the cylinders which a compression gauge I bought last month, but I couldn't get it to read on the gauge. It would put pressure into the tube (screwed into the spark plug socket) but something wasn't connecting between the gauge and the tube. I will try to find replacement parts for it as I am curious about my compression and want to know how to do this procedure. Also, I need to order some condensers for the next tune-up. I also want to test my coil, but that seems to be a two person job...

In addition, setting the gap on my points and plugs were tough because neither my spark plug spacer nor my spacer for doing valve adjustments had the right size spacers. I was able to add them up and use multiple spacers at the same time, but for the next time, I will be buying the right sized spacer.

A question for you bus guys out there; Do the points really only come apart when they are at the top of the lobe? So they are together more than they are apart? I am still understanding the basics of this, so any insight would help. Perhaps I should have turned down the Dead and thought about it more, but it might be beyond my knowledge.

I also found out that my distributor on the bus doesn't have centrifugal advance, just vacuum advance (which I figured out how to test and it works fine, but tastes like crap), so I am going to look into the nature of that and see if I should upgrade and what that means. I bought a Pertronix Electronic Ignition and may convert it over, but would like to know how to adjust everything first. I'm thinking of doing the whole "2nd distributor backup in the bus" thing, but we'll see.

Big camping trip this weekend, so I am trying to get everything up to speed for the journey...