new member and new to me 87 quantum wagon

[tinworm]

Oh heck... I dont wanna hijack tinworms thread here... Ill see if I can get up my motivation to make a thread and I will post the link up here.

definitely need to start another thread, this forum is sluggish, more quantum owners need to post!

Would love to see what you have done, and definitely how it turns out lowered.


Follow up on the brake issue-

Pretty convinced its related to the master cylinder.
Took the passenger caliper apart, reassembled, it appears to be working properly, removed the line from the master and checked for blockages or pinches in the line between the caliper and master, no problems there.
new master came in the mail, need to bleed it and install

[TheWolfsburg]

Bah, I guess i will toss a thread up... for now this is it stock hieght, and then with a 2" drop... going to have to do some welding fabrication on a new set of coilovers to get them to work on this car and to get as low as I want to go... Mind you this thing started out looking exactly like your Q... color and all

Before drop and tint:


Quality tint job 5%, 18%, 35% and a 2" drop:




Let me know how it acts after the new master... Mine still drags eeeeeevery once in a while but lets go with a good hard pump on the pedal

[applen]

i'm liking the pain job

what did you use?

[TheWolfsburg]

a fine grit truck bed liner

[tinworm]

looks pretty good lowered! First pic looks almost like a synchro, not the 2wd version. The tires on mine were much bigger, so I didn't have that lifted look.

how is the ride lowered? Did you just cut a coil or two out of the spring? or use a different spring?

[tinworm]

Let me know how it acts after the new master... Mine still drags eeeeeevery once in a while but lets go with a good hard pump on the pedal

new master installed, the brake problem is FINALLY resolved. Put the first real miles on the car today which were great!

I also put a pair of new tires on the front to resolve a slight vibration from the original pair, which had some uneven wear.

2nd improvement is I also ordered some new hatch struts that came with the master, I think thats been one of the greatest improvements so far.

Heres a pic of how I bled the master, I had a couple of those premade brake lines kicking around that fit, so I cut them in half, fully installed the master, and routed them back into the reservoir. Worked pretty well, I thought less messy than a standard bench bleed. Took about 150 pumps of the brake pedal to bleed it.

[gravityjunkie]

i have a 87 quantum syncro qsw, just hit 506,k on the 2.2 inline 5 5speed, it has been great for me. keep up the work, not many of these cars left

[TheWolfsburg]

Took about 150 pumps of the brake pedal to bleed it.

LMAO

Glad to hear your up and cruising again... I might go ahead do the master too... good trick too

[tinworm]

LMAO

Glad to hear your up and cruising again... I might go ahead do the master too... good trick too

haha, this is an ideal chore for a helper. In this circumstance I told my friend to just start pumping the brake pedal, then went across the street and ordered us a pizza.

Ive decided that this car is too high. This is the last thing you would ever hear from a guy like me, who loves high ground clearance, but the tires I have on this car are oversize, and I think it looks goofy. Ill take a pic, might have to do with the bent up front bumper and lack of rear bumper, looks like a boat.

[tinworm]

i have a 87 quantum syncro qsw, just hit 506,k on the 2.2 inline 5 5speed, it has been great for me. keep up the work, not many of these cars left

506K ?

Wow, how does the timing work on the 2.2? is it a chain or belt? have you ever had to change it?

[TheWolfsburg]

timing is a belt drive, right up front and easy to work on... even has a little peeking hole to light the timing belt when setting it, just drop the front bumper and good to go.

And Im glad to hear the too high comment... I was hoping to inspire a little low around here

(and I think somebody asked, but I used bolt on spring clamps to compress three coils on each spring... no cutting... drives like a ferrari)

[applen]

what exactly do these clamps look like???

This: http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/de...e&apwidN7nWg1H

or something a bit simpler?

[tinworm]

what exactly do these clamps look like???

This: http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/de...e&apwidN7nWg1H

or something a bit simpler?

x2. Id be interested in knowing what he is using for compressing the coils permanently.

Im thinking if I go this route ill either cut or replace with shorter springs. The bolt on spring clamp sounds potentially dangerous if it ever lets go

[tinworm]

Bumpers should be here monday!!

Shipped all the way from the west coast, whats the secret to the side tab clip things? do you pull the bumper out straight and the clips slide out? How is it set up so I can remove it without destroying everything

[TheWolfsburg]

using these...


except I used my spring compressor to compress everything, and then I fit three coils in there instead of the two... and no worries about the safe thing... if they evergave way, all they would do is expand in place... effective raising the car. Being wrapped around the strut, they aint going anywhere. And you can change the height to your taste, all revesable too, as opposed to cutting springs.

[tinworm]

using these...


except I used my spring compressor to compress everything, and then I fit three coils in there instead of the two... and no worries about the safe thing... if they evergave way, all they would do is expand in place... effective raising the car. Being wrapped around the strut, they aint going anywhere. And you can change the height to your taste, all revesable too, as opposed to cutting springs.

Those are pretty interesting, would be a great way to test different compressions even if you were intending to eventually cut, I might try em! where did you get those?

update on a few issues that the car has-

So today, the lack of a working radio was really becoming annoying, so I took a CD deck out of my parts car and started to move it into the quantum. I was unable to find a working 12v key on source, so I started to pull the knee panel to access some other wiring, and this is some of what I found-

this is a bad picture unfortunately-

EDIT- they won't let me put it up cause I labelled the pic Mouse$hit.jpg, and the vortex forum edits it out!

So while ive been driving the car, there has been a low grade mousy smell, well the knee panel was full of mouse **** and nesting materials, and the lower foam/chipboard panel above the pedals was totally soaked in mouse piss. That had to be thrown out, but I was able to clean and trim all the nastiness, including a petrified mouse body out of the knee panel.

However, this might be an indication as to whats going on with defrost. Ive been thinking about how its possible that its a manual cable operated redirect to the defrost vent, and how could it be broken? Far more likely its blocked with more mouse nesting crap. That should be fun to dig out.

Also, here is the current ride height, bumpers should be here on monday so it should be less pronounced, but its super high. I have it on a set of 4 185/70 R14s. Needs to come down some, maybe in the spring. I love the above highway pic of the black quantum, that might be just about right

[hussdog426]

[TheWolfsburg]

got those spring compressors... im sorry to say.... at Autozone. I am sure they are at other parts stores, they just werent when I was looking for them and im not too terribly patient to wait for an internet order. I typically wouldnt set foot in the there, but....

[tinworm]

got those spring compressors... im sorry to say.... at Autozone. I am sure they are at other parts stores, they just werent when I was looking for them and im not too terribly patient to wait for an internet order. I typically wouldnt set foot in the there, but....

hahaha I personally prefer advance auto. My biggest complaint about autozone is that its a rare day that they arent total a-holes to me in there. Unfortunately for me, autozone is closest to my shop. I actually had a guy in there tell me that they didn't sell pre-flared brake line in there, you know the super common lengths of generic brake line with fittings in different lengths that ALL auto parts stores sell?
Guy was too lazy to even check, so he decided to tell me a preposterous lie.

[tinworm]

YES they are finally here! get to install today.

[tinworm]

well, pulling off that front bumper was like opening the lid of pandora's box.

I uncovered some pretty hard to easily repair body damage. First, it turns out that the external bumper is actually already a replacement bumper that was hacked on. Once I had it removed, it popped back straight, so I can probably put that right back on at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, the square tunnel that the bumper mounts into is totally torqued out of shape. This car must have fallen off something directly onto the bumper, or have been jerked up by the front bumper, not absolutely sure how this could have happened. There is above external damage on the hood, the tunnel is bent on the inside up, and the interior panel is pushed in about 1-2 inches.

here is how it looked from the front-



once I got the bumper off, here is the inner damage-



close up of the damaged side, and below of the good side to give you an idea of how its supposed to look-




im not going to be able to afford to repair this properly at this time, but I would also like it to look correct from the outside until I can, so my plan is to drill lower holes in the tunnel, and trim the driver side bumper bracket to fit, so that the driver side sits level on the bent section. I might be able to pull out the big inner dent with a slide hammer though, ill give it a try.

I also need to replace the grill, and plastic trim under the headlights. Anyone know where I can get this stuff aftermarket? the grill has no remaining tabs, when I got the bumper off, it was wedged between the bumper and headlight all this time, and just fell off. The other trim piece is just shattered

[tinworm]

moving to the rear of the car, the bumper installation is proceeding without too many horrible surprises!

For some reason, the body shop guy had cut off the old bumper with a torch instead of simply unbolting it. I think he underquoted me, and was cutting some corners on speed to get it done for cheap, because it took me all of 10 minutes to unbolt those bracket ends that were left, which were pretty irreplaceable. Irritated by that, he does a nice paint job, but from now on, Im not going to let him install any body parts, just paint and sand what ive put in. Easier for both of us.

There is some rust damage around the rear, here it is wire wheeled-



and PORed.



once the anti-rust epoxy dries, the entire area will receive several coats of heavy undercoated, then the bumper will go on.
The bumper itself will take a little work, some of the tabs that hold the skin on the steel have pulled out on the driver side, and the tabs will have to be trimmed to get it to sit properly

[tinworm]

heres how far in the damage to the driver side goes, its buckled right in front of the A/C condenser. hahha, I was wondering why the receiver dryer was contacting the condenser, now I know, it was bashed into it.

The new holes will have to be lower, and further forward from the original holes, im going to make a template and try and duplicate the good side.

[tinworm]

im not going to be able to afford to repair this properly at this time, but I would also like it to look correct from the outside until I can, so my plan is to drill lower holes in the tunnel, and trim the driver side bumper bracket to fit, so that the driver side sits level on the bent section. I might be able to pull out the big inner dent with a slide hammer though, ill give it a try.

Well, I am happy to say that this scheme worked perfectly!
here is a before and after-




So from the center over to the passenger side is fairly un-twisted, and the driver side fender is unaffected, so I made a cardboard template of the passenger side shape, and flipped it over to the driver side. I also made a small template of the bolt holes in relation to the first template, and marked them in the damaged frame tunnel. They were way off.

here are the holes that had to be drilled-



and I had to modify the bumper bracket so it could sit in this lower position-



From the side, looks totally correct, once I get another grill and that between bumper and light trim piece, should not even be noticable except for the dent in the hood




Im pretty pleased that this worked out so far, I also undercoated all regions behind these bumpers

[tinworm]

rear bumper installed, now for paint later




question-

is this the fuel pump underneath? I have found no wires going to this component, so I don't know how it could be the fuel pump unless it was some kind of regulator. If the pump is in the tank, what is this?

[TheWolfsburg]

I also need to replace the grill, and plastic trim under the headlights. Anyone know where I can get this stuff aftermarket? the grill has no remaining tabs, when I got the bumper off, it was wedged between the bumper and headlight all this time, and just fell off. The other trim piece is just shattered

sorry bud... your not gonna have too much luck there... buy on off someone else used basically... I had to sow up several broken slats in the back, fab on some new tabs, attach w some zip ties, and respray the whole thing in plasti dip. came out great and durable. if you notice, I have a Type 1 Volkswagen badge next to the VW emblem on mine... that was placed in there mostly to cover up a broken slat area.

[TheWolfsburg]

Ill have to double ck, but I am pretty positive this is the fuel set up:

• In tank fuel pump (main pump) to-
• Helper pump (secondary pump used to push, and is loceted underneath where you are pointing) to-
• Fuel filter to-
• Engine

[TheWolfsburg]

oh, and damn good progress man, let me know when your ready to cruise it over to TX

[tinworm]

sorry bud... your not gonna have too much luck there... buy on off someone else used basically... I had to sow up several broken slats in the back, fab on some new tabs, attach w some zip ties, and respray the whole thing in plasti dip. came out great and durable. if you notice, I have a Type 1 Volkswagen badge next to the VW emblem on mine... that was placed in there mostly to cover up a broken slat area.

the front clip on this car is so jacked, im not sure I want to put the stock grill back now.

heres a downward look that displays more of the problem-



The problem is one of centering, the new bumper is not centered on the car, and needs to be tweaked over to the driver side a hair, which means I have to bend or more likely cut and weld both brackets out of stock position if I want to get it in just the right place, but in the meantime, the VW emblem and license plate do not line up centered. There are also fog lights holes in this new bumper, which means Im gonna have to throw some fogs off my old rabbit caddy diesel in there since I have them , but that only makes the centering problem on the front worse in appearance.

If I redrill the fog holes, and put in an emblemless grill, its not immediately obvious, so thats what I might do. I might be able to make something out of a truck grill or something.

Also finished my heat gun trim work! What a gratifying thing to do, does this also work on the bumper plastic?



I have a ripple problem in the rear bumper plastic, which was preventing me from opening the rear hatch, so for now I screwed down a piece of house sliding door floor roller trim, which I think actually does not look too bad. Im going to see if I can find something in the yard that would do the same thing and not be so blocky looking, but it does totally get rid of that annoying ripple




Lastly, heres what im going to do with the rims, this is a test paint, but im going to get it done properly for all 4. Should look pretty cool, especially now that I think these rims look appropriate on the car with the wider look of the bumpers

[tinworm]

latest improvement project to the car was to try and do something about the exhaust manifold leak, which was getting worse.

This is turning into the biggest PITA i have yet experienced with the quantum, its been stuck for a week because of rusted, corroded fastners. The manifold is missing 3 lower studs, causing the leak, but another 5 are unidentifiable rusted nubbins, and so are the 3 nuts holding the manifold to the downpipe.

Most of the fastners will have to be torched off. Just wasted a couple hours trying to carefully cut a nut off the downpipe. any idea of where I can get new studs? or would it be a common VW exhaust manifold stud?

[tinworm]

latest improvement project to the car was to try and do something about the exhaust manifold leak, which was getting worse.

This is turning into the biggest PITA i have yet experienced with the quantum, its been stuck for a week because of rusted, corroded fastners. The manifold is missing 3 lower studs, causing the leak, but another 5 are unidentifiable rusted nubbins, and so are the 3 nuts holding the manifold to the downpipe.

Most of the fastners will have to be torched off. Just wasted a couple hours trying to carefully cut a nut off the downpipe. any idea of where I can get new studs? or would it be a common VW exhaust manifold stud?

Well, ive got big problems now. FINALLY got the exhaust manifold off, this required torching two of the studs out of the downpipe. (I melted a sensor down there, pic later, not sure what it does, its not CO2)

After struggling forever, source of the exhaust leak is all but one of the 5 lower exhaust manifold nuts was missing, and the top only had 4. Of those 5 remaining fastners, two broke off in the head when I tried to loosen them (did not apply lots of force, they were so weak they snapped off with light pressure), and combined with the 3 already broken off. So now, I have no less than FIVE manifold studs broken off in the head.

Cylinder 1 and 5 both studs are snapped off, and cylinder 2 the top stud is broken off.

This is kind of a huge disaster, not sure what direction im going to follow trying to repair this. I suppose I could helicoil all 5, but potentially it could be easier to pull the head and do all 5 on a bench.

opinions?

[TheWolfsburg]

Well, ive got big problems now. FINALLY got the exhaust manifold off, this required torching two of the studs out of the downpipe. (I melted a sensor down there, pic later, not sure what it does, its not CO2)

After struggling forever, source of the exhaust leak is all but one of the 5 lower exhaust manifold nuts was missing, and the top only had 4. Of those 5 remaining fastners, two broke off in the head when I tried to loosen them (did not apply lots of force, they were so weak they snapped off with light pressure), and combined with the 3 already broken off. So now, I have no less than FIVE manifold studs broken off in the head.

Cylinder 1 and 5 both studs are snapped off, and cylinder 2 the top stud is broken off.

This is kind of a huge disaster, not sure what direction im going to follow trying to repair this. I suppose I could helicoil all 5, but potentially it could be easier to pull the head and do all 5 on a bench.

opinions?

If it will make you feel better... everything but the melting of the sensor is absolutely normal and to be expected. Thats why I have fixed my leak... or why most dont unless they pull the motor. Your doing well, just hang in there. Thats just what has to be done to fix it. PERFECTLY NORMAL

[TheWolfsburg]

oh, and my front bumper is in the same shape... just did some ghetto rigging and hid everything rather well if I do say so myself... lol

[tinworm]

If it will make you feel better... everything but the melting of the sensor is absolutely normal and to be expected. Thats why I have fixed my leak... or why most dont unless they pull the motor. Your doing well, just hang in there. Thats just what has to be done to fix it. PERFECTLY NORMAL

lol, this quantum more than any other VW I have ever owned has way more of those "well why the **** would they do it that way?" moments, mixed with a lot of "hey, thats clever" moments as well.
For instance, it couldn't be easier to replace a lower ball joint, but for some reason, maybe to offset that, it couldn't be more involved to replace the wheel bearing.

I guess it doesn't help that I have a late 80s chevy van for work, where most repairs are under an hour, 99% of it is logical from a simplicity maintenance standpoint, easy to work on, parts are everywhere and cheap, and its more reliable than all my euro toys, though less glamorous.

I have been moving forward fixing this though, the head is repaired, and now im just waiting for my manual that will help me install it properly. Thing is taking forever to get here. Ordered all the parts a week after, and some of them will get here before than manual.

Your bumper was twisted as well? was there any inner damage?

[TheWolfsburg]

.

Your bumper was twisted as well? was there any inner damage?

yes and minor.

Hows it coming?