Well, that's something...

So, after spending my hour mea culpa to the automotive gods (otherwise known as stripping sticky tar like gasket material from the case halves), I decided to rethink my strategy.  I've opted with the "slowly forward" mentality.  I'll follow the sage advice of those who have gone before me and assemble and re-assemble multiple times.  It turns out that this isn't a bad idea...

I decide to remove everything but the crank and re-assemble the case. That way I'm sure of what is causing the binding.  I assemble and torque.  Crank won't spin.  Disassemble, re-seat the crank. Re-assemble. (You are getting the idea).  Crank spins!  Minor success.  Then I realize something that I've been secretly dreading.  Because I opted for a longer than stock throw crank (74mm vs 69mm), the connecting rods aren't clearing in the case.  To be precise, the rod nuts are hitting on the edge of the cylinder spigot holes.  Just barely catching. Ugh.  Well, off to add to my collection of tools.  Must buy a die grinder.

Disassemble.  Remove crank.  With a new die grinder in hand, I remove just a little bit of the case where the nuts are hitting.  Clean the case and, you guessed it, reassemble.  This time, much to my surprise, the crank spins freely AND the rods are no longer hitting.  Success!

Next step is to dry fit (again, heed the word of the good book), the cylinders and measure the deck height.  To the less fortunate - rather, those of us not insane enough to embark on such a stupid thing as rebuilding a VW engine - the deck height is the distance from the top of the piston at top-dead-center, and the top of the cylinder. This distance, and the cylindrical volume it creates, combined with the volume of the cylinder head combustion chamber, are needed to accurately calculate the compression ratio.  The more volume, the lower the compression ratio; the lower the compression ratio, the cheaper the gas you can drive.  But there is a trade off: namely, power.  Lower compression ratios have lower power.  So there is a balancing point to achieve here.  I'm shooting for something along the lines of 8:1 or 8.5:1.  Ian will just have to suck it up and buy decent gas.  At least he won't need high test.


OK, back to the deck height.  What I find is that I have a negative deck height.  This isn't unexpected.  With an increased throw of 74mm, combined with stock length connecting rods, one would expect to result in a negative deck height.  Which it did.  I take a quick measurement, do some rough calculations, and go buy some spacers for under the cylinder.  This yields roughly the right deck height to give me an 8.5:1 compression ratio.  Yay! The small victories.  Anyway, here are a couple of photos of the cylinders dry fitted.  I have to take another photo of my deck height measuring tool which I stole from the Muir book.  Those will be posted later.

Assemble, disassemble, repeat...

Assemble, disassemble, assemble, disassemble, assemble, disassemble...

That's the mantra right now. Desperate to make progress, I started making a final assembly run on the block.  Bad idea.  We placed the crank into the block, and after a dozen or so maddening attempts at making sure the bearings dropped on to the bearing pins correctly (they finally did with some foul language and tense moments between me and the boy), we dropped in the cam shaft and lined up the dots.  Crank in. Check. Cam in check.  OK, let's drop in the distributor drive shaft - supposedly easier to do it now. Check (After a run to the auto store for white lithium grease).  Book says we should do some dry runs on assembly...nah...what do they know!  Full steam ahead.  Apply gasket goo. Place rubber gaskets around the bearing crush bolts.  Lower case half, and start to tighten bolts, being dutiful to follow the book's advise (not sure why I chose to listen now, but I did).  Tighten to 25 lbs/ft.  Go to rotate crank.  Nothing. Nada.  Stiff.  I quickly realize a number of things:

1. I'm an idiot for even contemplating rebuilding an engine.
2. That's not entirely true.   I can do this, just need patience.
3. The guys who write these books do indeed know what they are saying. I should heed their advice.
4. I'm going to have to take this case apart, and spend an hour hunched over this freakin' thing cleaning that damn gasket goo because I was impatient.
5. I really, really hope I didn't screw up that brass gear on the crank shaft.  Forcing this with the distributor drive shaft in place may have screwed me.

Anyway, some pictures from the war:

All parts in, ready to go? Right...

Ian leaning in to take a look.

Crank it up!

After a failed attempt to mate the fly wheel and a crank, and being told by a VW mechanic to put some oomph behind it, Ian and I finally started assembly the "tower of power," a 74 mm counter balanced crank shaft and a lightened flywheel.

The crank assembly, just after the #4 bearing has been added.

For the uninitiated, the stock setup is adequate for low revving people movers, but when you intend to build something with a bit more kick, you need to lighten the flywheel and counterbalance the crank.  The counterbalancing allows the crank to spin faster and more efficiently. Plus, you can extend the throw of the crank, to allow for a larger capacity engine. 

In a typical stock configuration, the crank is mated to the flywheel by way of 4 8mm dowel pins, and a 1.5" gland nut (aka B.A.N or big ass nut). In the non-stock conversion, the components are mated by way of 8 dowel pins and a chromoly gland nut (that you can torque the heck out of).  In every damn video I've seen, the stock flywheel mates easily with the crank shaft, not requiring much strength at all.  But with this 8 dowel configuration, Ian and I couldn't seem to get things, to well, go in.  Not wanting to destroy things, I visited my friendly local air cooled shop (where I believe they secretly laugh every time I come in), and consulted the experts.  Turns out, that you just need to apply some oomph.  Which we did.  And did.  And did.  

Ian's about 140 lbs wet, so we had a heck of a time getting the crank shaft to sit still while I applied enough pressure to my socket to bring them together. I'm not convinced that it's all the way in, but I don't have to torque for a little while.  

Anyway, once that happened, things started to click.  Ian enjoyed his first attempt at setting the garage on fire, er, I mean using a propane torch, to heat up the crank shaft gears (cam shaft and distributor gears).

Ian heating the distributor gear with the torch.

Patience is a virtue, especially trying to get these gears on the crank.  You have to spend the time heating them up, then hope they fit, else heat it up some more.  Repeat.

Slipping on the distributor gear.

But as the parts come together, it looks pretty cool. Finally we are making progress toward something that resembles an engine!  Gears!  Cool!

The final touch, adding the oil slinger.

D'oh - First Setback!

Well, that didn't take long.  Our first set back.  The magnesium case that came out of the car is unusable.  Turns out that the align bore is at the point where it can no longer be machined.  That sucks.  It means that a "new" case is being worked on at Fischer Buggy.  Well that's $450 I didn't want to spend, plus lost hours cleaning that damn case.  Oh well, Ian did get to learn how to use a home made media blaster, along with the value of clean engine.

Hurricanes, the Venturi Effect, and Baking Soda

Well, Hurricane Isaac is coasting by, so Ian and I decided to return to cleaning the block. A week ago, we spent time at the local car wash armed with Simple Green and a stuff brush. We removed lots of crud from the block. We ended up with a pretty clean block. However, it wasn't as nice as we wanted.

I had read about soda blasting and thought this would be a good option for us. Soda (think Arm and Hammer Baking Soda) is a soft media that won't damage the block. However, i can be expensive to have done. I stumbled across this cool article:

http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/

and really wanted to give it a try. So, Ian and I made our pilgrimage to Harbor Freight (how awesome is that place) and bought a blaster attachment for my air compressor. That, connected with a tube stuck in a baking soda box, creates a Venturi effect and blasts the soda out of the gun. Cleaning power and learning physics all in one! Very sweet!

All in all, the experiment was pretty good. It did an ok job, got more gunk off, and was fun! However, the humidity in the air tank caused the tip to clog, and that was a pain in the butt. Plus I'm not sure my air tank was powerful enough. Maybe next time I'll. also invest in a bigger tank.

Down To The Bare Bones

After a month and a half hiatus (summer schedules, vacations, hockey) Ian and I spent Sunday finishing up the tear down of the engine.  Again, Mark joined us for some moral support and mechanical labor when we needed it.  After a visit to our friendly local auto parts store to purchase a cheap(!) $8 pulley puller, we managed to take off the fan, remove the remaining portion of the fan shroud and the engine mount hanger bar.  This left us with the cylinders.  They seemed stuck, but with some judicious but gentle tapping with our rubber mallet, they came free and slid out. 

Now it's time to remove the pins from the pistons and (gently) tap out the wrist pins that holds the piston to the connecting rod.

Ian using a hammer and a screw drive to gently remove the wrist pins 

Once we removed the pistons, we rotated the engine counter clockwise to see if we could use gravity to help us separate the case halves.

I love my engine stand

Without a special tool to split the case, we relied on some good whacks with a rubber mallet on a couple areas on the case that were "tab" like.  We were pretty stoked to see the case start to separate.  Once apart...

How cool is that?

Ian said "this looks like a replica model!" I had to laugh and agree because to this point, none of us had ever seen this far into an engine except for the old "Visible Engine" model (that we never completed - hope that's not a harbinger of things to come with this engine!)  We had successfully gotten to the heart of the engine!  It's amazing how small the engine actually is.

Nope, don't need the mallet any more!

And with the case halves separated, we had a chance for some photo ops.

Split case

And finally, there are always some parts left over..

Boy, I hope we can put this back together. 

Next, we are going to have to de-grease the case something fierce.  It's really grimy. Then it's off to the machine shop to machine for bigger cylinders, full flow oil, inspect for any cracks, and quite probably align bore the main bearing saddles.

I should say, the best part of today was this: Ian and I were quietly standing over the empty engine case, when he turned to me and simply said, "I love you Dad".  Makes this whole descent into madness worth every second.

Working our way to a short block

Ian and I started breaking down the engine today. We removed all the sheet metal (messy, can't wait to degrease and powder code that!), and removed the heads. I have to go to my friendly neighborhood discount tool center and pick up an impact wrench to remove the pulley (breaker bar ain't cutting it!) Ian got a glimpse of the pistons and we decided that one or two will make nice desk accessories once we are done. Any way, things look ok so far, a lot of carbon build up. We also had two head studs come out while removing the heads. I'm a bit worried that they pulled out of the case, but I figured that's not a huge deal since we'll probably be installing case savers when I get the machine work done for larger cylinders. We shall see...

Engine out

On Father's Day, Ian and I decided to drop the engine with the help of my good friend Mark. None of us ha any experience removing and engine, so it was interesting to say the least!

We jacked the car onto jack stands, jacked a wooden trolly under the engine, supported the tranny with another jack, removed the bell housing bolts (at least we thought we did), remove the horizontal bolts on the engine support and voila, a loose engine. Surprisingly easy.

Unfortunately, when we pulled forward and dropped the engine, we didn't realize that the lower studs on the bell housing, while the nuts where removed, were not cleared. This resulted in bent studs. Add that to the list of replacements. I didn't see any case damage, so that is a relief.

Oh yeah, after feeling quite manly removing an engine, we decided to test out my new smoker and smoke a chicken.  Good Father's Day all around! :)

Engine is out and on the trolley

Ian power!

On the engine stand

Another view on the engine stand

And So It Begins...

Today was our first official day working on the type 3. The previous owner had installed a single carb conversion. The height of the carb body and air cleaner where going to pose some problems when we drop engine. So, they had to come off. Originally, I was planning on removing the body from the intake pipes, but couldn't pry those loose. So, we removed the pipes from the heads and took it out in one piece.

Quote of the evening: after seeing how dirty his hands were, Ian said "Dad, you know we have mechanics gloves?" Well, I figured it would do him well to get his hands dirty for the first time!

Ian telling Julian, "See, the engine really is in the back!"

My hands are clean, so far

Looks like it's going fast, just standing still! :)

Waiting, waiting and waiting.

Well, the car has been sitting in it's garage cocoon.  We've removed all of the interior "stuff" that was piled inside.  The passenger side floor board needs replaced (ordered, still waiting for it to arrive via Greyhound Bus).

Hopefully, Ian and I will have the opportunity to drop the engine over Father's Day weekend.  We've been so busy these last few weeks with birthdays and graduations, not to mention that Ian's only with me about 1/2 time. Hopefully the summer yields plenty of time in the garage.  Time to get down to brass tacks and get working! :)

Welcome!

Welcome to what I hope will be a history of an awesome father-son project: restoring a 1971 VW Type 3 Squareback. I am betting this is going to be a learning experience for both me and my son, Ian. Hopefully, we'll learn a lot and not bludgeon each other with heavy tools along the way.

Judging by Ian's smile, I'd say we are off to a good start!

The Squareback

Love the stance of the Squareback. This specimen came pre-lowered, which was something we planned to do anyway. Body-wise, she's pretty solid. Some damage to the drivers door and rear quarter panel. Floors are pretty OK. Typical air-cooled rust (battery area, spotty passenger side floor). To my surprise, the heater channels look to be in good shape as does the frame head (a problem area for type 3s).