Post by PICTUP on Dec 4, 2014 19:51:01 GMT -8
A couple of years ago my wife spotted a Westy in the parking lot at Volksfest in Victoria. One thing led to the next and next thing I knew she was shelling out cash for a purchase. I guess I did promise to be the "mechanic" of sorts. Didn't seem like a big deal at the time. Boy, was I in for a surprise! This was on the old site, so it might have a few weird bits…just ignore them and read on :
Here it is last year just after purchase
Enjoying the amenities at Horne Lake:
After some TLC to the paint:
Now the test, can I really understand the type 4 engine? Gotta seal the oil leaks…
Here is the underside. It is hard to tell, but all the droplets you see are oil. It is everywhere, UGH!
I was very lucky to have someone telling me what to do and lend a hand when I was inept as I enlisted the participation of Volktales. I am sure I probably would have stumbled along, but made far more errors in the process. As it was gas only made it up to just below my armpit, but it was all my fault for not clamping the gas line first. It was even the return line and I was doing it second(keep focused!)! :evil:
Going down....For those of you that don't know, my garage was just supposed to be a one car, but the "room" behind the wall had a solid concrete floor so I made it a 2 car garage by changing the location of the wall to be a barrier wall between the woodshop section and the auto shop section(my designations). The 12+ inch lift up to the concrete floor has come in very handy for rear engine air cooled vehicles. No jack stands even needed here!
Now the clean up begins
The horror, the horror! :lol:
What would Dairyland say?
Stripped and looking a little cleaner.
The muck in the fan shroud was disgusting. The photo really doesn't show the extent of it and it took a long time to clean!
I have never had one of these pancakes apart before. What a lot of pieces! All looking cleaner too...
It helps to have a stylish workbench. Single Cabs are great to have on hand to help out their younger cousins:
I have a pretty elaborate paint "booth"
Looking better:
I am now in a similar position to HTR and my engine has lost its dirty heads. There is a joke in there somewhere, I just hope it isn't on me, cause I ain't no mechanic and it will be wasted :lol:
Sorry about the blurriness, but you get the picture so to speak...
Never did post a pic of the cleaned up engine. It was determined by someone with more knowledge than I(Volktales), to have a cam that needs replacing Looks purdy though
Oh man, I can't believe how long it has been since I have been trying to heed Russ' words to split the case :oops: I finally got to it! It took a while even after I committed to do it, as I missed two pesky case holders at the start even after checking and double, then triple checking. The bolt with the copper washer between the lifters on the left side was still covered in muck and revealed only after some reading on thesamba. The nut below the bell housing was finally discovered also, duh!
Here are some pics to prove it
Here is what started it all, the cam wear that needed a closer inspection…
Russ says
Those cam lobes should be smooth and shiny. When they are pitted like that it means the hardening of the surface has been worn away.... Now Don has to check the +/- numbers on the cam gear and get another cam with this number, otherwise backlash problems with crank gear to cam gear WILL be an issue. Will explain this in greater detail if anyone is interested…
Turns out the engine will be needing more than that
Here is one of the cam bearings. Take note of the chunks missing near the top and bottom. Ugh!
Here's another, but this one has lots of wear evidenced by the copper colour:
But here is the real troublesome bit…Look at the bearing surface for the bearing just behind the flywheel. The locator pin was down to less than a third of its size and ready to break off entirely.
This is the outside surface of the bearing with the ragged hole from the pin slowly breaking down. The flattened bits by my finger are from tapping the useless bearing off the crankshaft. One theory for the pin's destruction is that the pieces of metal from the cam bearings got in there and slowed oil flow and the bearing started to get caught by the crank and try to turn. If anyone has any other theories I'd be interested to hear them Anyhow, looks like align boring is in order and crank grinding(if possible) and a new cam and new bearings and….crap! Oh well, at least the bearing didn't spin and leave Laurie stranded on the hwy to Tofino before we stopped driving it
Finally made it down and back to Seattle with my engine. Here is some photo representation of what happened
First was the steam bath cleaning process. I got it as clean as I could, but this got it sparkly inside.
A new cam was in order so Jerry drilled out the fasteners securing the gear to the actual camshaft. Then he threaded the holes to install the gear(with the existing backlash) onto the new camshaft. The bolts are too long to begin with(shorter ones of the right grade cannot yet be sourced) so he has to nip them off with a lathe. The -5 is the backlash of the cam gear
Bearings being measured for "crush". This is an experience thing and it was touch and go as to whether my case could actually be used. Jerry pushed the bearings into the case and they have to "stick" a certain amount before deemed good-to-go. I don't quite understand why this was done before align boring, perhaps someone could chime in here….
Look how shiny the case is
Okay here is my flywheel before
Surfacing to the proper spec
Ta-da! No squealing clutch(not that it did before, but I certainly don't want to do this again any time soon!)
I was thinking the exact same thing at the time Tony! I felt as though it wasn't my place to say, but looking back I probably should have. Especially considering the recent incident of the woman getting choked to death by her scarf caught in a seemingly innocent escalator in Montreal(yikes!). That lathe was spinning FAST! I shudder the thought…
Next step was the align bore. Here is Jerry setting up the bar. He said after I posted these pics some will say, "hey, that's a bug boring bar!". To that he agrees, but it has been modified to do T4 engines(or 411s as they are called in his shop).
Here it is set up. The green head unit is hydraulic and when an ordinary drill turns the bar thru it, the bar is moved along at a measured pace by the hydraulics, all one has to do is regulate speed with the drill. It needs to be sent thru a couple of times to get a clean accurate cut.
The results
The bearing saddles needed a deburring with a bearing scraper and a final scrub with a red 3M scrubby. The case has then washed again, and finally blown out a couple of times. It was on to prepping the rods and bearings next….
Jerry had a look at the crank, and deemed it "iffy" due to gouges from the sticking bearing, so it was put in a line up of cranks to be re-ground. Bye crank you done good :cry: :wink:
Hello new crank, rods, and bearings.
A test fit of the main thrust bearing was shown to be problematic, so it needed a bit of honing. Thankfully you can't see the hoodie's draw strings, eh Tony The cutting fluid is pumped up into a fountain that washes away the minute waste particles
There we go
As to the fit of the thrust bearing in the case, the only bearing set Jerry had on hand was a double thrust, which means the shoulders on either side of the surface were double thickness. For this application that would not do. Good thing I had him assemble to short block!
Nice shiny case ready to accept bearings etc
Paring down the shoulders
Ahhh, as the German's say when you sneeze…goodantight, well the "right" tightness anyway. Something only an experienced VW machinist/engine builder knows as soon as it it "there"
Okay, the case is shiny and clean
The shop distributor is installed with my drive. Notice there is no mistaking where #1 fires as it is marked with a nice black line. This is important because it allows the builder to place the crank in with the timing marks in the correct location and then the cam with its corresponding marks following.
But first one has to put the timing gear and the distributor drive gear on the crank. Russ has covered this in his Ghia engine rebuild, but Jerry has a different method for heating up the gears so that they slide on. The magic of propane. First round and round with the torch on the timing gear. It is sitting on the drive gear so it doesn't roll around .
Ouch, ouch, ouch, hot, hot, hot, so handle with a rag and drop it onto the crank. Sorry bad photo...
The drive gear is next. Note the piece of pipe used as a drift if the gears don't want to go into place(i.e. you haven't got them hot enough because of your impatience)
Ta-Da!
Next step is to put on the rods. Now time was running short here so Jerry was rushing. I was trying to get if there is any order to this particular step, i.e. which way do the rods face, and there is in a T1, but with these T4 rods there didn't seem to be. I asked and he gave a brief explanation as to the history behind that, but I failed to catch it first and only time around. Oh well, I am sure I could look it up somewhere. Sorry for the blurry pics. I hate rushing.
And here it all is after the crank then cam are lowered into place, with marks aligned.
Next comes the other case half. Jerry uses black silicone lightly smeared on the mating faces. The oil pickup gave endless amounts of trouble as it would not stay put very well as it sat in the top half of the case as it was lowered down. So when you are doing this, be sure to check what it looks like from the bottom of the engine once the case halves are together! You might have to do it three times like we did here otherwise, CRAP :lol:
Don't forget to put in the bearings and oil them up.
And there's the short of it(pun intended).
Well this is going rather slowly, but it is my fault for having too many other things on the go…
Okay, I don't have pic of the heads after I thought I had them clean, but I can say that they looked okay and thus rebuildable. So, I shipped them off to Jerry at NW Conn Rod. I got a call the day after they arrived there with the bad news…CRACKS!!!! Now to me, newbie at all of this, it seemed to me that these little cracks wouldn't be that huge a deal, until I started to think about what happens in that chamber that is formed between the head and the piston in its cylinder. KA-BOOM! With that in mind I can see how little cracks can lead to something worse.
First, here is what the exhaust valve cracks generally looked like after a steam bath and bead blasting at NWCR:
Seems rather innocuous(look between the black marks):
However the back side looks a bit more than a tad iffy. So it is thru the seat and the head itself:
Here is what can happen with such cracks(not mine, but rather one of a guy I met while on a quest for heater boxes that are more solid than the rusty pieces of crap I have):
And here is a semi related problem when the head has the seat drop(same aforementioned guy with a bit of bad luck):
So that led to these shiny new heads. Jerry reworks these from the stock supplied units to make as sure as he can that they won't detonate for as long as possible. Don't ask me exactly what he does, but if I trust someone to do the right thing, it's him:
Here it is last year just after purchase
Enjoying the amenities at Horne Lake:
After some TLC to the paint:
Now the test, can I really understand the type 4 engine? Gotta seal the oil leaks…
Here is the underside. It is hard to tell, but all the droplets you see are oil. It is everywhere, UGH!
I was very lucky to have someone telling me what to do and lend a hand when I was inept as I enlisted the participation of Volktales. I am sure I probably would have stumbled along, but made far more errors in the process. As it was gas only made it up to just below my armpit, but it was all my fault for not clamping the gas line first. It was even the return line and I was doing it second(keep focused!)! :evil:
Going down....For those of you that don't know, my garage was just supposed to be a one car, but the "room" behind the wall had a solid concrete floor so I made it a 2 car garage by changing the location of the wall to be a barrier wall between the woodshop section and the auto shop section(my designations). The 12+ inch lift up to the concrete floor has come in very handy for rear engine air cooled vehicles. No jack stands even needed here!
Now the clean up begins
The horror, the horror! :lol:
What would Dairyland say?
Stripped and looking a little cleaner.
The muck in the fan shroud was disgusting. The photo really doesn't show the extent of it and it took a long time to clean!
I have never had one of these pancakes apart before. What a lot of pieces! All looking cleaner too...
It helps to have a stylish workbench. Single Cabs are great to have on hand to help out their younger cousins:
I have a pretty elaborate paint "booth"
Looking better:
I am now in a similar position to HTR and my engine has lost its dirty heads. There is a joke in there somewhere, I just hope it isn't on me, cause I ain't no mechanic and it will be wasted :lol:
Sorry about the blurriness, but you get the picture so to speak...
Never did post a pic of the cleaned up engine. It was determined by someone with more knowledge than I(Volktales), to have a cam that needs replacing Looks purdy though
Oh man, I can't believe how long it has been since I have been trying to heed Russ' words to split the case :oops: I finally got to it! It took a while even after I committed to do it, as I missed two pesky case holders at the start even after checking and double, then triple checking. The bolt with the copper washer between the lifters on the left side was still covered in muck and revealed only after some reading on thesamba. The nut below the bell housing was finally discovered also, duh!
Here are some pics to prove it
Here is what started it all, the cam wear that needed a closer inspection…
Russ says
Those cam lobes should be smooth and shiny. When they are pitted like that it means the hardening of the surface has been worn away.... Now Don has to check the +/- numbers on the cam gear and get another cam with this number, otherwise backlash problems with crank gear to cam gear WILL be an issue. Will explain this in greater detail if anyone is interested…
Turns out the engine will be needing more than that
Here is one of the cam bearings. Take note of the chunks missing near the top and bottom. Ugh!
Here's another, but this one has lots of wear evidenced by the copper colour:
But here is the real troublesome bit…Look at the bearing surface for the bearing just behind the flywheel. The locator pin was down to less than a third of its size and ready to break off entirely.
This is the outside surface of the bearing with the ragged hole from the pin slowly breaking down. The flattened bits by my finger are from tapping the useless bearing off the crankshaft. One theory for the pin's destruction is that the pieces of metal from the cam bearings got in there and slowed oil flow and the bearing started to get caught by the crank and try to turn. If anyone has any other theories I'd be interested to hear them Anyhow, looks like align boring is in order and crank grinding(if possible) and a new cam and new bearings and….crap! Oh well, at least the bearing didn't spin and leave Laurie stranded on the hwy to Tofino before we stopped driving it
Finally made it down and back to Seattle with my engine. Here is some photo representation of what happened
First was the steam bath cleaning process. I got it as clean as I could, but this got it sparkly inside.
A new cam was in order so Jerry drilled out the fasteners securing the gear to the actual camshaft. Then he threaded the holes to install the gear(with the existing backlash) onto the new camshaft. The bolts are too long to begin with(shorter ones of the right grade cannot yet be sourced) so he has to nip them off with a lathe. The -5 is the backlash of the cam gear
Bearings being measured for "crush". This is an experience thing and it was touch and go as to whether my case could actually be used. Jerry pushed the bearings into the case and they have to "stick" a certain amount before deemed good-to-go. I don't quite understand why this was done before align boring, perhaps someone could chime in here….
Look how shiny the case is
Okay here is my flywheel before
Surfacing to the proper spec
Ta-da! No squealing clutch(not that it did before, but I certainly don't want to do this again any time soon!)
the lathemans hoodie strings scare me
I was thinking the exact same thing at the time Tony! I felt as though it wasn't my place to say, but looking back I probably should have. Especially considering the recent incident of the woman getting choked to death by her scarf caught in a seemingly innocent escalator in Montreal(yikes!). That lathe was spinning FAST! I shudder the thought…
Next step was the align bore. Here is Jerry setting up the bar. He said after I posted these pics some will say, "hey, that's a bug boring bar!". To that he agrees, but it has been modified to do T4 engines(or 411s as they are called in his shop).
Here it is set up. The green head unit is hydraulic and when an ordinary drill turns the bar thru it, the bar is moved along at a measured pace by the hydraulics, all one has to do is regulate speed with the drill. It needs to be sent thru a couple of times to get a clean accurate cut.
The results
The bearing saddles needed a deburring with a bearing scraper and a final scrub with a red 3M scrubby. The case has then washed again, and finally blown out a couple of times. It was on to prepping the rods and bearings next….
Jerry had a look at the crank, and deemed it "iffy" due to gouges from the sticking bearing, so it was put in a line up of cranks to be re-ground. Bye crank you done good :cry: :wink:
Hello new crank, rods, and bearings.
A test fit of the main thrust bearing was shown to be problematic, so it needed a bit of honing. Thankfully you can't see the hoodie's draw strings, eh Tony The cutting fluid is pumped up into a fountain that washes away the minute waste particles
There we go
As to the fit of the thrust bearing in the case, the only bearing set Jerry had on hand was a double thrust, which means the shoulders on either side of the surface were double thickness. For this application that would not do. Good thing I had him assemble to short block!
Nice shiny case ready to accept bearings etc
Paring down the shoulders
Ahhh, as the German's say when you sneeze…goodantight, well the "right" tightness anyway. Something only an experienced VW machinist/engine builder knows as soon as it it "there"
Okay, the case is shiny and clean
The shop distributor is installed with my drive. Notice there is no mistaking where #1 fires as it is marked with a nice black line. This is important because it allows the builder to place the crank in with the timing marks in the correct location and then the cam with its corresponding marks following.
But first one has to put the timing gear and the distributor drive gear on the crank. Russ has covered this in his Ghia engine rebuild, but Jerry has a different method for heating up the gears so that they slide on. The magic of propane. First round and round with the torch on the timing gear. It is sitting on the drive gear so it doesn't roll around .
Ouch, ouch, ouch, hot, hot, hot, so handle with a rag and drop it onto the crank. Sorry bad photo...
The drive gear is next. Note the piece of pipe used as a drift if the gears don't want to go into place(i.e. you haven't got them hot enough because of your impatience)
Ta-Da!
Next step is to put on the rods. Now time was running short here so Jerry was rushing. I was trying to get if there is any order to this particular step, i.e. which way do the rods face, and there is in a T1, but with these T4 rods there didn't seem to be. I asked and he gave a brief explanation as to the history behind that, but I failed to catch it first and only time around. Oh well, I am sure I could look it up somewhere. Sorry for the blurry pics. I hate rushing.
And here it all is after the crank then cam are lowered into place, with marks aligned.
Next comes the other case half. Jerry uses black silicone lightly smeared on the mating faces. The oil pickup gave endless amounts of trouble as it would not stay put very well as it sat in the top half of the case as it was lowered down. So when you are doing this, be sure to check what it looks like from the bottom of the engine once the case halves are together! You might have to do it three times like we did here otherwise, CRAP :lol:
Don't forget to put in the bearings and oil them up.
And there's the short of it(pun intended).
Well this is going rather slowly, but it is my fault for having too many other things on the go…
Okay, I don't have pic of the heads after I thought I had them clean, but I can say that they looked okay and thus rebuildable. So, I shipped them off to Jerry at NW Conn Rod. I got a call the day after they arrived there with the bad news…CRACKS!!!! Now to me, newbie at all of this, it seemed to me that these little cracks wouldn't be that huge a deal, until I started to think about what happens in that chamber that is formed between the head and the piston in its cylinder. KA-BOOM! With that in mind I can see how little cracks can lead to something worse.
First, here is what the exhaust valve cracks generally looked like after a steam bath and bead blasting at NWCR:
Seems rather innocuous(look between the black marks):
However the back side looks a bit more than a tad iffy. So it is thru the seat and the head itself:
Here is what can happen with such cracks(not mine, but rather one of a guy I met while on a quest for heater boxes that are more solid than the rusty pieces of crap I have):
And here is a semi related problem when the head has the seat drop(same aforementioned guy with a bit of bad luck):
So that led to these shiny new heads. Jerry reworks these from the stock supplied units to make as sure as he can that they won't detonate for as long as possible. Don't ask me exactly what he does, but if I trust someone to do the right thing, it's him: