Hi all,

Well, I finished painting my engine compartment yesterday.  I had hoped to
do it Friday or Saturday but it was very windy in Tucson both days.  I also
painted the area behind the little gas-filler door on the right side of
the vehicle.  The engine compartment looks 100% better now all clean and
shiny.  (Titian red in nice, but dark, I'll have to install some lights
in the engine compartment.) Next I'll put the cleaned and painted gas tank
back in with new felt padding where the steel hold-down straps go around it.
I also bought a new rubber seal that goes around the gas tank neck up near
the filler cap.

I have my doghouse fan shroud, the center section of my intake manifold,
and my heat exchangers getting hot tanked today.  I have a lot of other
parts to order and/or buy this week.

I spent some time cleaning out the interior of the bus on Saturday.  I had
been using it for storage but now that I'm getting the engine together I
felt it was time to clean out the interior.  I also wanted to try fitting
the middle seat from a '73 I bought a while ago.  The seat fits with a 
little fiddling, the spacing of the bottom steel rails is a little different
but I am able to make it work.  I plan to use large wing nuts on this to
make it easy to install/remove.  The back seat folds out into a bed but only
with the middle seat out.  The rubber mats are in fair shape and the seat
covers, interior panels, and head-liner are OK for now although the
head-liner has some holes and will eventually have to be replaced.

I have found that regular polishing compound cleans dirty windows up 
quite nicely and I spent some time cleaning the windshields and front
door windows.  Most of the rubber and felt in the front door windows
as well as most of the rubber around the other windows is dried up
and will have to be replaced before I drive this bus in the rain!

Now a question about timing.  My engine will be a 1600 dual-port with
doghouse cooling and the stock '66 distributor.  I notice that the
timing specs for the '66,'67,...,'71 engines vary from 5 degrees
before top-dead-center to 5 degrees *after* top-dead-center.  Does
the stock timing depend *only* on the distributor?  If so, I'll time
this engine like a '66.  Are there any other considerations for home
built engine timing?  I know I shouldn't allow the *total* advance to
exceed 28-30 degrees BTDC at 2500-3000 RPM.

Thats all for now,

 -Dyer

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Dyer Lytle              
dlytle@as.arizona.edu   
http://as.arizona.edu/~dlytle
HST NICMOS Project      
Steward Observatory     
University of Arizona   
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