A Funny Thing Happened On the Way Home From the Ca

[riffraff]

So the two litre starts puking oil out the crank pulley cause I'm too dense to ventilate the crankcase properly. This happens on the road to EOS to boot!
Joe had to carry on solo.
Anyhow, I take the bus to the carwash on Saturday morning to clean off the engine and engine compartment from puked oil. The dial at the wandwash has a setting for engine wash, so I click on that and soak the engine with it and the bottomside of the engine and maybe the wheels a little. Then I do a regular wash of the engine and compartment and wheels and back of the bus.
I come back home and park in the garage, shut off the bus and put the park brake on like I always do. I proceed to rig in a secondary crankcase ventilation. All good so far.
Tonight, Zach thought he spotted a double cab, so we were going to go check it out. I fire up the bus, let off the brake, release the clutch and ...... the bus won't move. WTF??
I try reverse, no go, try first again - stalls out - WTF?
So we all trundle into the Explorer and off we go. false alarm on the DC, but now I have a bus that won't move.
I jack it up to see if one wheel is seized, and neither of them will budge. It seems like the brakes are seized, so I back off the starwheels on both. Now I can move the wheels a couple of degrees, but I can see through the inspection hole that the shoes are moving with the drum - WTF??
Anyhow, I take the wheels off and undo the axle nuts and the drums still won't budge.
I fired up the bus, put it in first and let out the clutch. The whole axle moves up, but no wheel turning.
I try first and reverse a couple times and finally - BANG - the drivers side drum breaks free.
I pulled off the drum and it seems like the chemical in the engine wash turned my brake shoes into glue. They are hardened back up now, but when wet, they stuck to the brake drum like a Liberal to the public trough!!!
The passenger side was even harder to break free, but it finally succumbed.
I think I will change out the shoes as I don't know that this won't happen again next time the brakes get a little wet.

Has anyone else had anything remotely close to this happen to them?

[dpeters81westy]

I've NEVER heard of that Keith... sorry to hear about all the trouble you've been having.

We missed you at EOS. Thanks for the heads-up about what the chemical might do to our brakes. No more engine wash chemicals for me...just water.

- DP

[riffraff]

Yeah, it's a strange one. I'm sure my brake shoes are of Chinese or Brazilian origin, but I wonder if they are even made anywhere else?? The only thing I can think of is that some chemical in the soap reacted with a compound in the brake shoes to create glue.
Apart from these little mishaps, the bus has been performing very well and I'm looking forward to a short highway run to assess the effectiveness of my additional crankcase ventilation.
I am hoping that oil puking is a thing of the past

[bullyboy]

Its amazing how much oil can spray out from behind the pulley. You could have kept going, we only used up a litre when we went to Calgary.
What did you do for ventilation?
I have had my pads freeze to the drums in the winter before, but nothing like you described.

[commercialair]

How much water/chemical got in there? Was it both shoes in each drum? That's really strange. I wonder what the old Muir idea of soaking them in lighter fluid and setting them on fire would do to them.

I'm suprised that the heat from braking on the way home didn't dry them out.

[riffraff]

Yeah, i could have kept going I think now. When I got back to Calgary, I was only 1/2 litre low, but I hate seeing the smoke show out the back!
My ventilation problem stems from using the aftermarket alternator stand and the filler spout that goes with it. The nipple that threads into the filler is less than 3/8" ID, so not only is it pathetically small for strokers, it is less than 1/3 of the flow area that the stock breather allows!
I would like to put a stock breather on mine, but I don't have the proper "tool" to loosen the ring that holds the stock breathers/fillers onto the alternator cradle. I have a couple spare breathers on generator cradles, but can't get them off
In the meantime, I drilled a 3/4" hole in the aftermarket filler cap and threaded a barbed brass fitting onto it. 1/2" heater hose onto the barb and run it out the preheat hose hole in the rear pulley tin. It's not the ideal solution, but it increases my ventillation by about 2.5 times.
I will put a stock breather on when I get one of those rings loose (I even have a chrome one ), and if that is still not enough, I will modify a set of valve covers with spouts like Chris did for his old speed 36.
As far as the brakes go, very little spray could have got into the brakes. I have driven the bus through horrendous thunderstorms and had no trace of locked brakes the next day. It was both shoes on both sides.
The only thing different about this trip was
1) I used a wand wash near the back brakes
2) It is very short drive home, so the brakes probably would not have got warm enough to dry out fully.

[Milkman]

That is weird. I wash around the rear drums on my beetle all the time with no issues. I would mention that to the car wash you were at, soft brake shoes could really be a safety issue!

We did miss you at EOS though, I was looking forward to seeing your bus. BTW, I have the tool to remove the filler/breather from the gen stand. I'll be back in Edmonton this weekend, would you like me to mail it up to you? When you are done you could either mail it back to me or just drop it off at Peter VanGreiken's place. Let me know.

Greg

[riffraff]

mielke said:

That is weird. I wash around the rear drums on my beetle all the time with no issues. I would mention that to the car wash you were at, soft brake shoes could really be a safety issue!

We did miss you at EOS though, I was looking forward to seeing your bus. BTW, I have the tool to remove the filler/breather from the gen stand. I'll be back in Edmonton this weekend, would you like me to mail it up to you? When you are done you could either mail it back to me or just drop it off at Peter VanGreiken's place. Let me know.

Greg

Greg
That would be great if you could mail me the tool!
I tried to build a tool out of a large washer and needle nose Vise Grips^©, but the washer had too much flex and did not fit the insert as well as it should have. I was going to round off the machined surfaces and render the whole piece useless.
I'll PM you my address.