Today was a good day.

[MrWhoopee]

I've regained interest in the long abandoned heater system upgrade for my VW Double-cab. Those of you with real-world VW bus experience will understand why. As part of that project, I am including some carburetor type butterfly valves. I drilled and tapped four (count 'em, four) 4-40 holes thru the butterfly shaft. It went off without a hitch, despite the fact that I only have one tap. I realize that some of you routinely tap smaller threads, but it's been over 30 years since I tapped anything smaller than 6-32 and I was a little uneasy. Today was a good day.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

you are a better man than i, good sir.
i break 6-32 taps as if they were straw, i don't usually attempt assured failure with anything smaller.
i fear my hands are too heavy for very light work
i appreciate the skill and discipline involved working with small, delicate things- i wish i wasn't as Cro-Magnon

 

[DavidR8]

Us VW fans need pics of your double-cab!

 

[MrWhoopee]

Us VW fans need pics of your double-cab!

Rosie the Rocket-Sled.
Named for the Jackson Browne song.

 

[mmcmdl]

Now that's cool !

 

[C-Bag]

What a beauty. And very rare. ‘66/‘67? You working on the butterfly valves on the heater boxes? Never got into that but did do quite few carb butterfly redo’s as part of putting in bushings in worn out carburetors. Then morphed into installing bushings on Rochester QuadraJets. Did a bunch of those. Had a jig I’d made for doing Solex or Quadra’s. The scary part was retapping for slightly larger brass screws. Don’t remember, it’s been 40yrs now, but tiny.

 

[vtcnc]

That is about as cool as it gets.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Martin W]

Wow! That is really cool. Scarce as hen's teeth too.
Cheers
Martin

 

[bill stupak]

Nice ride, I had a single cab in my youth, really fun to drive. Here are a couple shots of a double I spotted at the Cabin Fever Expo years go.

 

[projectnut]

I've regained interest in the long abandoned heater system upgrade for my VW Double-cab. Those of you with real-world VW bus experience will understand why. As part of that project, I am including some carburetor type butterfly valves. I drilled and tapped four (count 'em, four) 4-40 holes thru the butterfly shaft. It went off without a hitch, despite the fact that I only have one tap. I realize that some of you routinely tap smaller threads, but it's been over 30 years since I tapped anything smaller than 6-32 and I was a little uneasy. Today was a good day.

There was a time when the spoken words 4-40 could bring fear to a grown mans heart. Back in the 1980's and 90's our company built a series of packaging machines that sealed the product between 2 sheets of proprietary film. The film was oversize of the package and was held to the machine with a series of vacuum channels in each product "platter". As the finished product neared the end of the machine 4 rotary knives cut off the excess film.

The "product "platters" were made of 6061 aluminum and required a hardened insert under the knives as a backing plate, and to eliminate damage platters. Each machine had 230 platters with 4 inserts on each platter. Each insert was held in place with 4 stainless socket head machine screws. That required drilling and tapping 3,680 4-40 holes in the platters, and drilling and counterboring another 3,680 through holes in the hardened inserts.

In total we made nearly 2 dozen of these machines. Fortunately our prototype shop only had to build 1 to prove the concept. The only CNC machines in the company at the time were a Tree Journeyman 325, and 425 in the main repair shop. All the holes were drilled and tapped on Tree 2UVR's, 2UVR-C's, or 2VG manual machines.