The Party Pickle is Reborn

This is my 51st post in this blog and if you read all of them (freak!) then you'll see that I've learned a lot and worked pretty hard over the past 3 years to try to understand VW buses and make them happy. What follows is my lastest journey that started nearly a year ago back in September.

That was the day Colin (VW GURU) visited me for my annual VW lesson and confirmed my worst fears.. that the Pickle engine was damaged beyond any simple repair and that it would need an overhaul before it could be trusted to take us far from home.



I had a decision to make. Should I have someone around here locally try to rebuild it, or should I go mail order from someone who specializes in Type 4 engines. You see, while they are not rare engines, they are not all that common either. So if I have a local guy do it, chances are he/she hasn't done many and doesn't do them that often. And I wanted this rebuild to be right. So after much soul searching I decided to fork over a lot of money and have my engine rebuilt by Jake Raby of Cleveland, Georgia. Jake has a great reputation and is probably the foremost expert in these engines in the world. He makes about 18 engines a year.. and mine would be one of them.



So the first step was to remove my old engine which I did with the help of Jasan and my other friend Steven.

The next step was to build a crate for the engine to be shipped in on its way to Jake.




I knew that there was a lot I could be doing to get the Pickle ready for its new engine, while Jake was building it. One simple place I wanted to start was with the old 30 year old foam that makes up the bed.. and the old covers that have seen their share of use. So I bought completely new foam and washed the covers.





I also wanted to clean and scrub the ceiling and cleaned it with bleach to kill any mold that might be growing there.



What's funny is that even though the Pickle couldn't move anywhere under it's own power, we still missed camping in it. So my friend Stephan brought his daughter Lilly over and we had a campout butt end to butt end in my garage.

It was still really fun.






There were many other projects that have been documented in detail on this website which you can find if you're that interested. There was replacing the fuel lines and vapor lines to the gas tank... rust repair and repainting the engine compartment, straightening and repainting the bumpers..even the firewall. The final coup de gras was the installation of three gauges in the dash.. measuring Cylinder Head Temperture, Oil Pressure and Oil Temperature.



The Middle one wasn't hooked up at the time of this picture, but is now.

And so finally after all the preparation, the Jake Raby engine arrived and we installed it post haste. After working out a few bugs the Party Pickle is now back on the road and ready to take us to our next years of adventures... including the longest trip yet.. which will be the subject of my next post.