Finally… getting round to putting the innards of my ’82 Westy into my ’86 Syncro. Cleaning out the Syncro, the rear seats removed (boy they are heavy) and having a gander at just how much work it will be to put in the Westy stuff…
A few notes:
-the Syncro’s ECU looks like it was installed yesterday
– the rear heater had a bit of dried up coolant at one of the hose connections. I pulled the core just in case it was leaking too. The core had a date stamp of “00” so I am assuming it was replaced 10 years ago. Closer examination showed that the core was sound, but I swapped in a fresh one – an Iltis front heater core, same part number as Vanagon rear heater core – that I got at a govt. auction. The “old” core has a better construction method, the end cap opposite the valve covers return tubes, where as the “new” core I put in has the end cap being part of the return path… so if that end cap fails we get leakage.
– leaking rear window washer reservoir had caused rust severe rust… Was like that when I got the van. To be precise, it was the pump that was leaking, I spent 5 minutes mucking around trying to seal the bugger, but hen found out they are pretty cheap and available.
– rust on drivers side inner lower seam worse than I thought. Again, I know, I know.
– the rear bench sits in ok, and I measured the holes in the Westy were the hinge brackets attach to the rear deck and drilled in the Syncro deck (after cutting out a bit of the asphalt based sound deadening stuff). I tapped for a 6 X 1.0 mm thread (not much threading meat available on the deck, there must have been a backing plate on the Westy, I’ll see about doing same on syncro) and I screwed down the brackets. Well, it turns out that now the bench sits away from the pass. side wall more than it should. I remeasured the holes and found that on the old Westy the hole is 5 mm further inboard than on the Syncro. Funny eh? Both sets of holes are centred in the “same valley” . Something must have changed over the years. I have noticed that some Westys have a trim plate on the side of the bench, this might have been Westfalia’s answer to some body change VW made. I have one of those trim plates, I may use it.
-I tried the wardrobe fitment, and it looks like it will fit with no modification, even though I don’t have the Westy modified ceiling. The headliner might need cutting though.
-I tried a panel from Westy… I recovered most of the interior panels on my old Westy about 10 years ago, its held up well and I may re-use them.
Many other little details to iron out, but nothing difficult
shooftie 