The Vanagon is alive - and big things to come...

First off, I apologize to anyone reading along for the long lapse in blog posts. I'll just put this out there - the Vanagon is running and back in service.

Shortly after my last blog post, I got it up and running again. Once everything was back together, I tried to start it. It certainly fought me, but eventually it did start and run. What's more, it's running well. There were a few hiccups, but nothing really required any readjustment. I've been driving it on and off for a few weeks now, including a traffic-filled trip across the city at rush hour to pick up a heavy TV.

It's running and driving very nicely with no additional signs of leakage. I'm happy. It wasn't an easy job, and was absolutely time consuming, but the results speak for themselves. I have yet to do any long distance driving.

When the van was done, I parked the Mercedes in the garage again. Despite sitting outside for two months and its condition, it started on the first bump of the key.

I want to get back to work on the project, but the garage was a disaster. A few weeks back, I picked up some free industrial shelves which will help me get a lot of stuff off the floor. I've thrown out several large bags of trash, and the garage is closer to being a real work space again. As usual, the garage would be done already if not for the fact that I had to work last weekend. It's unlikely I'll be able to do anything the next two weekends, either.

But, I will finish the garage and get back to working on the Mercedes. And, as I said, big things are in the works. What, you ask? You'll just need to stay tuned to find out.

Learning when to call it quits...

Well, it looks like this may be the beginning of the end. If you've been following along, you know that I replaced the cylinder head in my 1995 Subaru Legacy daily driver earlier this year, which supposedly cured a misfire issue I;d been having.

As of this past week, the misfire is back, unfortunately. The car threw the same P0302 code again. I did a compression test and verified that I have low compression in cylinder 2. This is the same test I did back in April. I had meant to re-test the car after replacing the cylinder head, but never got around to it. Earlier this year, cylinder 2 clocked in at around 70 PSI. This time, it's showing around 100 psi, which is still bad compared to the other three cylinders, which are showing 165, 165, and 160.

I'm not 100% sure why the misfire took so long to return, but it may be because I cleaned the carbon buildup off the cylinder 2 piston when I replaced the cylinder head. To buy myself some more time, I ran a can of Seafoam through the car this past weekend and replaced the spark plugs. As it is, I think I'll get through the winter (most likely with the check engine light coming on at times). But, come springtime, I'm hoping to be driving the Mercedes project, and hopefully can start looking for a "new" daily driver.

I was hoping for more miles out of this car (I've put around 45,000 very well maintained miles on the car as of now). But, the car has never run quite right for me. I'm guessing that cylinder 2 has been problematic for as long as I've owned the car, most likely due to mistreatment by a previous owner.

Because of the car's overall poor cosmetic condition, including rust, a rear suspension crossmember that's suspect, an aging transmission, an already-patched gas tank, a leaky cooling system, and numerous other issues, it's probably not worth it for me to try and replace the engine, and rebuilding it is out of the question. So, I'm most likely going to end up replacing the car. With what? Time will tell.

The Mercedes is running and the Vanagon is in storage...

The title of this post says it all... but as usual, I'll say more.

As per my last blog post, the Vanagon made it home after Transporterfest, but only courtesy of a AAA tow. My long-term plan is to do a Subaru EJ22 engine swap. I've been around the original VW waterboxer engine since my parents bought their first Vanagon in 1985, and have owned my stock Vanagon since 2003. So, this isn't a snap decision. I've seen these engines fail more often than they work properly.

I didn't want the van to rot in the driveway while I saved and made preparations for the engine swap, so my goal has been to get it into the garage. In order to do that, I needed to move the Mercedes out.

The problem with that is that the Mercedes hadn't been so much as started in the better part of two years. I've been working on it bit-by bit - bodywork mostly up until this point. Thankfully, I'd been maintaining the battery. Still, I had to do a marathon of maintenance before the car would start:

After the Mercedes finally started, I took a chance and started the Vanagon. Amazingly, it wasn't completely dead. It was weak, noisy and smoky, but drove into the garage under its own power:

So, as it is, I'm currently trying to sell the Mercedes, for two reasons. First, I need to start raising money for my engine swap. More importantly, I just can't have two big projects sitting around. The Vanagon was my backup car. It's my project now. As such, I'll need to get something a little more roadable for a backup car.