The Holy Hand Grenade - a Rabbit Pickup Build

[punkvideo81]

I bought this 1981 Diesel Rabbit in 2003 from a Pennsylvania farmer. It was a simple 4 Speed n/a Diesel that I wanted to convert to run on grease.

The day I brought it home




Then about a year later I added the Greasecar kit and a Rhino Liner.






In dash controls for switching from Diesel to grease






I always regretted putting those holes in the bed...




It ran well on grease. I took a lot of long distance trips in it where I barely touched the diesel. Around the same time I looked into buying a furnace for the house that burned veg as well. The idea of heating the house and hot water off grease was enticing. Later that year I found a legit one. Like this truck, it has been a long (as yet incomplete) project, but will ultimately mean I will heat the house for free

Then came the Corrado steelies


In 2007, I decided I needed more power, so in went a 1.6 turbo diesel from an 85 Jetta, an intercooler, and an injection pump modified by Giles as well as a Techtonics Tuning stainless 2.25 in downpipe (thanks Collin!) & exhaust.





...Before we ran the IC hoses


Shortly after all these mods, the engine died. I never got to see the potential of the Giles pump with the boost cranked up, combined with the fresh engine and exhaust/ic. It was a major bummer. The project got sidelined repeated times as cash was tight until this summer when my friend Jeremy stepped in and offered to help me r&r the engine and have it rebuilt...

Day one. That table would never be that clean again...


These are some sorry glow plugs.


Almost ready to come out


Let it begin

[Baron VonZeppelin]

Let the good times Roll man.

Your Truck looks like it was extremely well cared for coming out of Pennsylvania.

I've never seen/noticed anyone running the coolant hoses through the interior, and deleting the HVAC box. That was hardcore going for the grease right there. Cool stuff.

Keep us posted.

I have an 82 with the exact same color combo.

[RustyCaddy]

Very nice build up.

How did the cylinders and valves look...do you thing the veg oil system took pout the glow plugs?

Did Giles build the pump to work with the veg oil...he seems to be able to tune a pump for every need

[punkvideo81]

Around the same time as the start of this build, I sold my 77 Rabbit project to a local guy, which helped pay for the engine build. I hope to see this built nice someday.

[Baron VonZeppelin]

I've never seen/noticed anyone running the coolant hoses through the interior, and deleting the HVAC box.

I goofed on the HVAC box delete ... i didn't know the non-a/c boxes were so much smaller.
Plenty of room for a speaker box under there !

[punkvideo81]

Head off







Cleaning engine bay

Before:



After:

[gnavs]

I'm pretty jealous, I love Caddy's

[punkvideo81]

While the engine was at the shop getting rebuilt, I decided to look at the carpet and see if it could be cleaned.



The mice were storing something here, looks like sesame seeds.



Pretty trashed. I decided that even if I did pressure wash this, it was never going to look as nice as I wanted, so I decided to order new carpet in black. I might eventually make the entire interior black as well. Not sure if I want to bother with that yet. I forgot to take pics of the carpet removal/rustproofing of the floor. We also spent a decent bit of time cleaning the shifter boot and getting it to sit proper in the console again. Here is the finished product (still needs to be vacuumed):

[theman53]

Now what do you count to for the Holy Hand Grenade? Not 1, not 2, not 2.5, and *6* is way out of the question right?

[zukgod1]

where did you get the carpet?
 

[punkvideo81]

Now what do you count to for the Holy Hand Grenade? Not 1, not 2, not 2.5, and 4 is way out of the question right?

Aha! Someone finally got it! Thanks 

where did you get the carpet?
 

http://www.varkmotors.com/ Good price and they sent it quick

[theman53]

I thought about it at first and thought you were going to put some sort of reference to it. You didn't so I figured I would My favorite scene and I think I messed up the quote.
Too many in that movie to list, but other favs
"I fart in your general direction"
"None shall pass... come back it is only a flesh wound."
"Bring out your dead."

BTW, Truck looks good too.

[RustyCaddy]

The cylinders and head look pretty good after running veg oil that long...unless steam cleaning #3  washed away something major.

i have had a lot more deposits around the valves from running 20% veg and diesel mixed in the hot part of the summer...the glow plugs looked better though (are those slow glow plugs?)

Nice carpet...are you going to lay the hose-in-hose setup back over the top of it?

[punkvideo81]

The cylinders and head look pretty good after running veg oil that long...unless steam cleaning #3  washed away something major.

i have had a lot more deposits around the valves from running 20% veg and diesel mixed in the hot part of the summer...the glow plugs looked better though (are those slow glow plugs?)

Nice carpet...are you going to lay the hose-in-hose setup back over the top of it?

I didn't steam clean anything...? Yeah, I guess grease isn't so bad after all. I always used clean or filtered oil.

I am not sure if they were fast or slow glow plugs. As for the grease setup, I am not putting any of it back in just yet. I want to get everything up and running properly and address any bugs before adding extra things to the setup.

[punkvideo81]

Starting to reassemble rebuilt engine. We were hoping to get the engine assembled and installed in time to make it to H20 2010,  but time was running out...















This is where the project changes direction...we didn't make it H20, so the rush to get it assembled as is has passed. Just before the show, a friend hooked me up with a vnt15 turbo, which we thought would be a great upgrade to the engine. As much as we wanted to get it running and have some fun, the thought of swapping the stock triple k turbo out for a vnt while the engine was still out was too good to pass up. At this point, the ip is going back to Giles for a small mod to mate up to a vnt once we make sure said vnt is in xlnt running shape. We're gonna need to do some actuator mods, so the research begins...