I’ve been busy with life and haven’t had much time to work on my 1973 Volkswagen Westfalia bus lately. I did have my coil go out on me, so I ended up having to install a new one. During troubleshooting, I went ahead and replaced the points and condenser also. I replaced them when I purchased the bus 7 years ago and really didn’t have very many miles on them, but I replaced them anyway.
The good news was the points weren’t pitted.
Also, I recently was given a timing light, so I decided now would be a great time to give it a shot. I’ve only set the timing statically and tweaked by ear previously, so I was anxious to nail the timing, hoping to eliminate the slight hesitation I’ve had when shifting gears and starting from a standstill.
I was also given a tach/dwell meter, but it didn’t work well, so I picked up a tiny tach to hook up in the engine compartment.
After doing some research and taking the advice of fellow bus owners, the best way to time it would be with the vacuum hose disconnected, running at 2800-3000 RPMs and set around 28 degrees BTDC.
I tried it and was really having some issues with it running. I would set it with the engine warmed up and then, when cold, try to start it, and the timing was off so bad I couldn’t get it to start. So I set it statically to get it started again and then try it again. Then I decided I needed to tweak the carb a little to try and get them both working together.
After further research and more advice, I decided to set it the same way BUT to run it at 3500 RPMs instead. That was the trick. The timing was set at 28 degrees BTDC and ran much more like it should.
I’m running a Weber Progressive Carb and set the idle mixture screw 2 full turns out from the bottom and then set the idle speed screw 1 1/2 turns after the screw touches the stop lever. These were great instructions from the Weber website, and this is what I followed:
I then tweaked the carb just a little per the instructions, and she seemed to be running better than ever. Took her out for a spin, and the hesitation was gone, and she ran smoothly the entire time. Let her cool back down and then went back out to see how she would start when cold and fired right up.
That’s it for now. Until next time…