Screwing around with a VW Eurovan!

I would like a leather wheel too. I have considered the leather wheel on my 2004 VW Jetta but I think my wife would notice. I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

I hope that comment is there because she's allergic to leather.

You must remember that when discussing thing like this with your wife that all mods are done for "safety" reasons and "only cost $30"

Thanks, I'll look for them.

Went to the "VW on the Green" event this Sunday to check out all the cool VW. Still trying to put some miles on the fresh motor.

We paid up to enter the show so that we could have the van close by for the baby. Have to say, having the van with the poptop, table, swivel seats is a nice place to hang out with the family on a nice day.

I was surprised how many people came over to talk about it. There were 4 T4 Eurovans there. Three 1993s, one was a Poptop, all were white.

Most of the Vanagons and Buses were awesome!!

That is a great looking van good job and enjoy it

I don't know if anyone has noticed but this an has a subtle red and grey pinstripe down the side and around the grill(red is very noticable around the grill) to give it kind of a GTI flavor.


All the old Westys buses had these wonderful funky plaids. So I was considering doing a red/black GTI plaid for the interior (bed mattresses, the curtains, seat inserts, door cards Poptop fabric?!!) that would match the black/red outside and tie the van to modern and vintage VW style.

Anyone know of a good source for the interlagos plaid or something very similar?

Yep!

I noticed and had been wondering about it. Looks good and makes it subtly different from the other EVs out there. Something you or the previous owner did? What's the stroy on it?

PO had it done. Its really subtle. Probably the first time in my life I've been okay with a pinstripe.

Photo taken by my friend Max at the VW show. Pretty much describes the pack structure here;-)

^^^^^Fantastic pic

Since my friend John's Porsche 993 steering wheel has been sitting here I felt compelled to do something about the boring plasticy steering wheel.

The 993 wheel felt MUCH better than the stock VW one but despite having the right splines the holes for the airbag wires and turn signal cancel were all wrong. Not impossible to make work but the 993 wheel just looked too similar and was too expensive to be worth modifying to work.

But.....now that I knew exactly what I was looking at I figured a Audi Sport wheel from a S4/S6 would work. The spines are wrong but conveniently VW/Audi made a factory spline adapter that can be found on MK3 Jettas/Golfs.

I found a deal on a 2001 Audi S4 wheel on craigslist for $50! Then immediately ran off to the pull-n-save to snatch an adapter.......which would be its own adventure!

For those of you with a short attention span.......oh squirrel!......I mean here is the cliff notes picture! The thick three spoke weighted sport wheel feels MUCH nicer to drive with!!! I had no idea a weighted wheel would make such a difference. I swear it handles better!





Now, for those of you with nothing better to do and want to know the silly tech and my follies at the junk yard, keep reading!

For quick reference this is the part I'm after. It's only $42 at the dealer. Figured it would be about $1 at the junk yard.



I read all these posts on various VW forums about how to get these off. Some said they could get it off with a screw driver....B.S!!

I went to the junk yard with a fairly well equipped bag of tools, including a bearing puller, gear puller etc. My bearing puller wouldn't grip onto the part, I even figured out that a wrench between the puller and the spine adapter would create the grip needed but the wrench would just grind into the soft metal adapter! Boo! I messed with the stupid thing on two cars for about 1.5 hours with no luck!! One of the cars someone else had obviously already tried to remove the spline adapter with no luck. They even tried drilling out the safety bolts to remove the whole column with no luck. I left the yard last night defeated by such a simple part.

Ghetto fab trail fix attempt at its best.



After reading the forums some more I came up with an idea........I returned to the junk yard today with 1 tool.....a BFH!!

Trip back to the junk yard......wasn't a bad deal for the aussie!





So I figured out from reading the forum that the steering column is collapsable and the spline adapter is sitting on top of the upper spring. Which lead me to my evil thoughts about how to get it off. I figured I'd try my evil plan on the first car where I had already destroyed the adapter. Take a massive swing at the steering shaft with the hammer and it collapses the column and the spine adapter jumps off like a grashopper. I had so much fun with this method that I picked up three adapters in 3 minutes of work, SO MUCH FUN!!! Hope nobody was in need of a good steering column.


The spine adapter is actually just a touch too long for use on the Eurovan shaft. So it must be trimmed by this much...



After doing the very precise measuring I went over to my high dollar CNC system and trimmed it down!



Perfect fit!



The airbag/horn plug is identical. So is the airbag unit installed in the airbag cover. Plugged right in and didn't throw any coded. However, something on the horn is contacting and causing the horn to stay on. Didn't have time to sort it out today but I'm sure its an easy fix. I think the wheel mounted at this angle allows the weight of the horn to activate itself. So a little trimming of the connectors should cure it.



It's amazing how much of a difference this wheel makes in the overall feel of the van.

Nice!

Nice that you include your dogs in day-to-day life.

Is there any other way?. They go everywhere they can with me. It's the only thing I don't like about motorcycles.

While I think my 4 spoker would have looked great, the 3 spoke S4 wheel looks awesome.

That's what sidecars are for brotha :).