The VW Diesel Pickup Project
Why oh Why do I get started on project like this
Well simple actually.... It's fun and when it's done, it's really practical...like 50 mpg and will run on most any fuel I can think of.

A few years a go i did a Suzuki samurai conversion to a diesel VW rabbit engine. It made a great vehicle out this mini SUV. 35 MPG, gobs of torque, lots of diesel noise and so on.

Problem was, it only had two seats, any family couldn't find into it so I sold it on eBay.

I've since had a fascination with these little VW diesels. They are tough, cheap and reliable. Parts are still available for a reasonable price as are complete donor cars. Seeking some type of practical application. I slowly set out though find just the setup that would work for me.

As it is, These trucks, Called a CADDY everywhere but the USA, are getting a bit hard to find. The reason is because most were built in Pennsylvania and most seemed to remain in the Northeastern US, and as such, most are rusted out from the salted roads. Finding a rust free VW diesel pickup was not easy.

I searched high and low and finally found one in Santa Fe New Mexico. It had Air conditioning, no rust and low miles. The truck had spent it's life in Texas and had almost no rust. A bit of surface rust on the lower body parts, and some battery acid damage under the battery tray but that was it. finally a good candidate for re-work.

This car had about 120,000 miles on the working odometer, and was other wise stock. The engine ran well but sounded a little funny. The rare factory A/C system still had some R12 pressure in it but didn't otherwise work. The truck bed was in great shape with only a couple small dents in it. Most of these trucks that have been worked have mangled beds as the sheet metal the bed is made from is too thin and dents easily.

The Trans is a 4 speed, though a 5 speed would be preferable. I've got a 5 speed in my shop for rebuilding and will install it some day as this project goes along. Why, 5 speed? The 5th gear is a overdrive and allows turnpike speed with much less engine rpm and noise. Better mileage as well!

Here is a picture of the Truck engine compartment as it arrive from NM. The first area to rust is the front McPherson Strut  towers. On a badly rusted truck, these towers will be nearly detached from rust perforation. As you can see here...perfect. No rust at all.

The engine was removed and inspected for condition. Sadly, the owner did not change the oil enough and the cylinder bores were worn beyond limits (measured at .0035"...no smoke though) so a rebuild was needed.
In this picture I'm beginning to reassemble the engine. All the brackets and diesel pump will be removed and cleaned/painted. The block has been bored to .020 over size and new expensive ($300) pistons fitted along with new STD size rod and main bearings. Also installed new intermediate shaft bearings. The numbers written on the pistons are the height the pistons stick up above the deck. This is because different thickness head gaskets are available. These numbers call for a 2 notch gasket.

The head looked quite good with no cracks or damage and was easily rebuilt. It got cleaned, new valve guides, stem seals, re-surfaced and valve lash set.





New nozzles for the injectors rebuilds them to new specs for a smooth quiet engine. Needs doing every 75,000 miles.



The engine compartment has been thoroughly cleaned and degreased. Many areas were repainted and the wiring was repaired and cleaner/re-wrapped and ready for install.





The entire front end was totally rebuilt including two new control arms, bushings, with ball joints, new wheel bearings, new brake rotors, rebuilt calipers, and new brake lines. The steering rack was removed, disassembled, cleaned, greased and reassembled and new seals were installed everywhere. New coolant hoses are on hand and a new clutch cable as well.

Still need to remove and paint the A/C condenser. The master cylinder looks cruddy but works well. Looks like I'll be rebuilding it as well!
The battery tray is missing as it was removed due to acid damage. The new tray is being fabricated from stainless steel.

Well the wiring is cleaned up, repaired and ready for the engine.

Engine assembly continues. The block has been painted, all brackets blasted and re-painted. New Water pump etc.

Injector bracket with engine mount. Think the old one is shot??

Injector pump all cleaned up. The drive shaft is tight with no measurable play. It was running fine so no work will be done on the pump now.

Shiny!

So I managed to drop my engine from the stand and bust the cast iron crank and water pump pulleys. Ouch! Found a couple from a guy on the internet and back at the assembly process. Here the pump is being timed and camshaft as well. New rubber engine mounts were installed. it was fun cutting the old mounts out and pressing in new ones!

Fitting up the covers and pulleys. Still a lot of work to do!

The very grimy transmission was cleaned and prepped for re-install. New seals here as well. New linkages for the shifter, engine mounts, clutch, flywheel and throw out bearings to boot! Still looking for decent FF or FN transmission for this truck. Bought a nice 5 speed linkage set from guy. Also bought a trans but it was BAD. Big liar on eBay. Junk trans was totally worn out, leaked everywhere and was locked up...stuck in gear, now it a parts unit.

Clutch parts ready to go.

UPDATE... mileage since rebuild: 2000

I was plagued by fuel leaks. first the injectors I rebuilt all leaked. After numerous attempts to reseal them, I gave up and bought a set of NOW new injectors for $125. Put them in and perfection! No leaks, still starts with a snap, idles evenly...all is well. I will rework the original injectors for spares later. I appears that lapping is needed.

Then the IP started leaking from ULSD. I swapped the pump with another used one I had and now it runs even better with no leaks. it seems these IP have different personalities as they wear and the engines sound and run differently with different pumps. Anyway, the old pump worked well, but had a funny quirk at idles, where it wouldn't idles at just the right speed. It was always a little to fast or a little to slow. The new (used) pump is totally different. Idle is rock sold at any RPM I set. No leaks no smells in the garage overnight.

The four speed trans was successfully installed and ran great. Nice and quiet through all the gears and no leaks. The fours speed is a truck transmission with a .91 ration on the fourth gear. This means lots of rev and noise at highway speed. 3500 rpm at 65 mph and deafening noise. A five speed is a must. So I found a five speed from a guy on the internet. Again, it was used and questionable, but what the heck.... where else can I get a 26 year old trans. The new five speed was delivered for $140 and a new set of seals purchased and installed. I was amazed how easy the re-seal job went, taking about one hour to complete. I repainted the exterior as it came from the north and had some salt corrosion and needed a good cleaning. Some zinc chromate primer, and black enamel had it looking new.

The new trans worked perfectly. The swap was easy, after figuring out which of the four speed shifter parts needed changing and which could stay. The adjustment of the shift rod was critical, but after finding the sweet spot, it now shifts easily and smoothly. It amazes me how these little rabbits are all badly abused in the maintenance department. Simply replacing worn parts like the shift rod bushing had a great effect on shift quality. Even with no care, these little care keep on trucking for years, but WOW...what difference a little proper care makes!

The engine rpm is now much lower. The engine is mostly inaudible at speeds up to 68 mph. I cruises very gently at 55 mph. Top speed exceeds 83 mph as that the highest I seen with a GPS, Air Conditioning on and outside air temp 88 deg F. I suspect 90 mph is possible with the A/C off. This little engine really cooks with new compression and timing set to .038".

Ongoing ride quality includes reducing vibration as felt my the driver.

Done plenty of reading on the subject as mandated by the incredible roar my caddy made when idling. Seems a common problem that even consumer reports complained of when reviewing the pickup 25 years ago.

The common fix has been to bump the idle revs up to 12-1500 rpm to smooth the beast out, but then you get laughed at by your buddies as you pull up sounding like the gas pedal is stuck!

This rebuild project has left me scratching my head about quieting this thing down, using sound absorbing sheets, ear plugs, etc..... but as fat would have it, I actually did figure it out (correctly), and now have an amazingly smooth running truck, with little if any more vibration than a gas motor.

Here is the deal.....

1. First and foremost, replace the passenger side motor mount. Most have collapsed, broken from overload. The others seem to work ok until they physically break, the you must change them.

2. Second and very important! tighten up the steering column. Seriously, this long resonating rod shakes like hell at idle speeds and send the entire dash into noisy, blurring ear deafening convulsions. Who'd a thought, but this is the main culprit. Fix is , per VW, to loosen the clamp under the ignition lock, apply tension to steering wheel towards rear of car, and re-tighten. I didn't do it this way, instead, removed the steering wheel, observed the sloppy bearing under it, made a couple washer like shim, slid them over the steering shaft, and re-torqued the wheel. This bound things up just right, eliminated all the steering wheel radial and axial play, the truck became WAY quieter. If you can feel movement in your steering wheel, in/out or up/down, you can improve things.

Notes: I never hunted down loose thing behind the dash. Sure there are still some occasion minor buzzes, keeping coins and metal out of the ashtray helps, but attention to the two items above removed 98% of the noise in my dash. I now set my idle to spec RPM, and even with A/C compressor cycling, the dash stays pretty darn quiet for a 26 year old vehicle.
Many 1982 and later vehicles were fitted with a resonant weight inside the front bumper, mid point. It looks like a lead diving weight mounted on a short strip of steel string. Its job was to absorb vibration at the idle speed, thus lower perceived vibrations by the occupants. My truck has none, but as soon as I can find one, I'm going to try it. Our Eurocopters and most Bell helicopters are fitted with numerous tuning weights under the floor boards for the same reason. Below are some scans of pages from an old document I used to help deal with vibration issues....

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Adding Cruise Control

Spent two days figuring out a cruise control for my caddy. Here is what happened....

Determined that the audiovox CCS-100 WILL work with a diesel despite the fact Audiovox claims you need an ignition pulse to provide over-rev protection.

Here are the final details...

Grounded the Blue IG sense wire

Installed the servo in the drivers side rain tray.
Used the ball chain with ring to connect the cable to the IP arm.

Set the DIP switches to, 2000 PPM, switch 3 on, Sensitivity to High, Control switch to OPEN, and switch 7 to ON. Presently still have the automatic trans jumper installed...works fine.



Installed 2 magnets to the passenger side inner CV joint and attached coil sensor to engine block.

Initially it would not work. Reason: LED tail lights. These lights do not present the UNIT with enough of a ground so it thinks the brakes are on and would not engage. Putting stock bulbs in fixed this problem.



Cruise works great down to 27 MPH.

Cost was $101 delivered from a guy on EBay.

Finishing the Job

So here it is ready for the paint shop. The car has been filled, primered and sanded a few times. I use and light filler called Icing and PPG fast build primer called  for sanding. The truck  is at the paint shop awaiting masking and paint.

The tail light lenses will be replaced and the bumper polished etc.

Fresh out of the paint shop after spending nearly  $500. The lenses look great eh? They came from England

Shown now with freshly painted grill, new HID lights, new amber turn signal lenses. I used black bumper paint to freshen the black parts like grill, mirrors etc. Now they look new.

Here goes the Herculiner roll on bed liner. Pretty simple job. Easy prep work, about 45 minutes per coat (2 coats needed) and looks great  when done. COST $89
This truck had some small indentations in the bed from heavy items. I was able to press them out by placing a floor jack under the bed in just the right spot and lifting up.

Another view of the finished bed liner. The parts are from the Lister project and documented on the lister pages.

Exterior DONE!

Icom 706 MKIIG and Screwdriver antenna install

What's a 50 mpg diesel truck without outstanding worldwide communication ability? The Icom 706 MKIIG transceiver does it all. From 30 kHz to 500 MHz and all the amateur radio bands in between. The radio features a removable control head, and by using a separation cable, the head can be located  up to 16 feet from the main unit. In the above picture, you can see the head is detached from the main unit. New cost is a bout $849 USD in 2008

It takes a special antenna to do this job so I selected the W6AAQ Don Johnson DK3 Antenna. Don invented this thing and holds the patent on it. The screwdriver antenna gets its' name from the small cordless screwdriver motor buried within that drives the threaded shaft which causes the tuning coil to move. A small switch on the drivers instrument panel controls the movement of the antenna coil. It will extend about 15 inches to reach it's lowest frequency. The band ranges from 148 MHz all the way down to 3.855 MHz. The radiation efficiency is pretty high for a mobile antenna and this makes DX contacts easy. The first day I installed the antenna, I made contact with radio operators in Germany, South America and California. Don Johnson, is a 93 year young World War II veteran. He spent his Navy career as a crewmember on giant Flying Boats and has many great adventures he loves to share. He has hand built 15,000 of these antennas and still going strong. You can find him in Esparto, Ca.

The antenna is bolted to a bracket welded from mild steel and bolted to the trucks bumper. It removes quickly in less than 30 seconds for storage to prevent theft. The top whip is a Radio Shack part with a length of 66 inches. You can see about 1 inch of coil protruding from the top of the 2 inch aluminum housing. The motor and drive mechanism is located inside the tube as well. The $125 USD antenna arrives unpainted and ready to be finished by the end user. I sanded, primered and painted the antenna with a high quality 2 component epoxy urethane called Omni MCV. Made a dazzling shiny tough finish which I added DOT reflector tape to for visibility. Even at 70 mph, the antenna sways very little in the wind. SWR's are typically 1.2:1 after tuning it to resonance.

Here is a the business end of the DK3 Antenna. It is fed via 50 ohm coax. The aluminum tube is machined into an 8 turn coil at its bottom. This serves as an impedance matching coil to match the antennas' natural impedance to the 50 ohm transceiver output. Very Clever Don! Grounding is very important with mobile antennas so the large braided bonding strap is visible. The other end of the strap attaches to the trucks unibody frame. The little black and red wires are the power to the reversible internal drive motor.

Another view of the antenna mounting system

The remote head installed on the dashboard. The cables are buried behind the panel and under the carpet and run back to the main unit which is located behind the drivers seat. The radio also receives broadcast FM and uses a separate antenna for FM and VHF/UHF operation. This second dual band antenna is mounted in place of the original car antenna on the drivers side fender. I used the existing dash speakers driven by the main unit for loud and clear audio while driving. The motor drive switch, a spring loaded center-off DPDT is visible hiding behind the coiled microphone cord. It tunes from one extreme to the other in about a minute.

Main unit mounted on rear panel behind driver seat.

Done!