Noises and idle issues after head replacement

[pdlrofdrms]

Taking post plunge.

So I had my first visit with Colin last summer. Acquired a 1978 FI bus with hydraulic lifters two years ago.
I wont say it was love at first sight.

I wanted a late 60s early 70s bus. I was at the local VW shop told them to keep an eye out for me. They had a rusted 78 available for 500.00

Apparently PO was over it. He just paid two years prior for a engine rebuild. But he let it sit outside. Side door off. I live in Northern California so you can imagine the smell of mold, rats, and cat pee.

I wasn't deterred by the appearance. But I was by the mechanical. I asked how much to get it road worthy. I have driven Vintage VW all my life so I knew enough to have fuel lines checked , brake lines, etc...

But not enough to do it myself.

2600 dollars later I was the owner of a rusted smelly green bus.

(Once I figure out how to get them off my phone I will post pics.)
I named her Olive.

Olive just never seemed healthy. I took her to San Diego and back two times.
On a couple road trips.
No guts up hill and just always had problems.

Taking it to the mechanics over and over hundreds ( sometimes thousands) of dollars here and there. Still not right.
I finally was desperate took it to Berkley Buslab.
The news.
It needed a new motor or at least what they called a top end job.
Sigh....

And lesson kinda learned. I say kinda because well the truth is I just am not a mechanic. Lover of old VW and willing to dive in.
I have done my fair share of things with the premise well shit its already broken. I might as well.
I fixed the power steering in a 85 Lincoln continental. I fixed both my washer and Dryer.

But man this Bus that is a whole other bag of worms.
Thats like big kid stuff to me.

I am writing because after Colin's visit and about 8,000 dollars later of others tales of woe. Something about him coming made me feel like well shit its already broken I am gonna try it!

What I did was go back to the shop I bought it ( this is the lesson I needed to learn) and said look you lied, maybe not intentionally but here we are. You need to help me rebuild this motor. I want to do it and I want to learn.

This and Colin's VW buddaisms somehow gave me the guts to remove the damn engine and tackle it.

Colin's suggestion that it needed just heads. That often people over repair.

So low and behold a friend of mine knew Adrian down in Vista. I got new heads pretty fast.

The mechanics in Arcata actually flaked out on me. And here I was Engine out and committed an on my own.

I would gather they helped me about 8 hours worth of a 6 month job.

BUT I did it. Lots of tears, joy, and frustrations. Feelings of what the heck have I gotten myself into!

I learned so much and many lessons .

SO why am I here after all that. Well It runs, and I have driven it around town to the tune of about 300 miles or so.
I want to take it to Eugene in a week.

Ever since I have had the engine back in it hasn't been running great.
SOOOOO....
I took it to the shop as I have not learned enough to know what the heck it is.
I know its not right but I don't know why its not right.

The shops diagnosis.
Its all normal.

My diagnosis. Lesson finally learned. They are *&%$ heads and I need to move on and get some real help.
I sought out a local guy and with in 15 min he gave me a bag of tools to go home and tinker with.

He showed me how to find vacuum leaks and how to check my cam shaft gear?

So this AM I changed the oil and while it was drained I peeked up that port under the oil plate.
Hand cranked the motor and all the gears look good.

We found that the EEC valve had no vacuum.

I unplugged it for now and re-timed it.
It seems to idle a bit slow.
But sounds better.

There is a lag in the idle still. Its almost like a miss?
And it randomly backfires. (all though since I removed the EEC valve vacuum line and retimed not as much)
Another Local VW friend took a glove and pulled all the plug wires one at a time. All were participating.

Going to go get the tool I need to check all the areas that vacuum leaks can happen.
and do a compression check.

I screened the oil for metal shavings. no big metal chunks but a metal powder was at the bottom.
I collected it on q-tips see if I can find someone to deduct where they are coming from.

Someone suggested it might be the camshaft bearings? ( i need to read I think that is uber bad)

When I had the engine out I replaced things like the clutch, seals, pushrod tubes, o-rings, scrubbed , painted, put in electric points, ummm what else.

Lots it feels like.

Also since its been back in the engine is making a not so lovely knocking noise.
( like I said local shop said totally normal)



So here is a link to a video of it starting and running.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Y4ZJMPbCogI[/youtube]

Please ask me questions. I would love help. I found the tutorial on the EEC valve fix gonna try that soon.

I will do my best to awnser your questions with my recent newbie skills.

Jenn

[pdlrofdrms]

and I should add that through my homework and trying to figure this out I think its something in the Cam?
Bearings maybe?
the metal dust was silver and bronze. Not magnetic.


Which means another pull out and tear down.

Any thoughts on running it like this for a bit until I have the time. Or do I have to park her for the summer if I am right?

[airkooledchris]

Hi Jenn!

Can you double check your video settings at YouTube? It comes up saying it's private when I try to view it.

Ive heard this motor run btw, and it does sound like it's missing. When I pulled the plug wires one by one there didn't appear to be any that weren't pulling their weight though. (minor differences in how effected the motor was when they were removed, compared to each other.)

It has a ticking lifter sound initially, like one of them isn't pumping up all the way, but maybe not.

I'll note it here as Jenn mentioned this to me already - that all the valves were adjusted more than once since assembly to be sure proper pre-load was given (though there's a nice brand new writeup on this process from Colin here, it might be worth visiting that thread and doing it once more using that data.)

[pdlrofdrms]

K video fixed.

Thanks I will check the thread and see if I need to do something different.

Two folks have told me they feel its not lifters because of the fast idle of the sound?
But again. I only know what I know which isn't much as my only experience is what I have gotten in the last 6 months.

[pdlrofdrms]

yep adjusted them as per the thread. Mostly cause my first lesson was with Colin last summer so its all I knew how to do. Luckily that one can be checked off.
Oh and each valve adjustment. It backed back out to 0 lash at two full turns.
two of them at 2 and 1/8th ish but that probably was people error. So I made note and was overly cautious this last time to make sure only two turns.

[pdlrofdrms]

[Amskeptic]

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You and Olive have clearly walked through the Valley of Doubts and Challenges, and it is time to drive through the next one.

Expect grey residue in the strainer plate *after an engine overhaul*, but do not expect it if you only went down as far as the heads.

Put the engine at TDC for any cylinder, we don't care which one. Remove the alternator belt. That requires also removing the fan guard and timing scale.

Get a large screwdriver and pry the crankshaft pulley backwards towards you and your back bumper. Set screwdriver down. With both palms, do a flathanded shove against the pulley as though you want to push it towards the front bumper. Repeat this test until your kinesthetics get a grasp of what we are doing here. We are trying to feel only a .006" of an inch, so don't expect too noticeable of a motion forward and backwards. The screwdriver pry is just to reset it, but try to get a sense of the crankshaft's movement as you pry it backwards ( I use the fan housing as a fulcrum, but careful not to scratch). If you can *feel* a kakunk as you do this fore and aft, it means you have excessive endplay. That can lead to some to deep noises down in the engine. If you never get a sense of the crankshaft moving back and forth, that's good, probably very little end play.

Get everything back together. You have 10-40 or 20-50 oil in it? I keep running into people who grab the most convenient 5-30 from WalMart, so not correct . . . . . Get engine warm if these are not scary noises. You want to listen for a rod knock. Rev engine while you are in the back by pushing the throttle lever forward (the accelerator cable pulls this very same lever). Get it up to 3,000 rpm and hold it there a couple of seconds, then release. At the very instant of release, listen for a short transitional d-d-d-drck, just a split second's worth. Repeat and try to play with it to make it more noticeable, just easy 3,000 rpm up down up down. If the engine does not make any transitional d-d-d-d-rcks and especially no Td-Td-TdOCKITYDOCKAPACKADAPACKATOCKITYCLOCITYTACKABACKABOOM, I am going to guess that you can drive it and just monitor any *changes* in sounds over the next many to several miles. Airkooledchris, you comfortable with your essential diagnostic skills to separate stupid noises from expensive noises? Stock exhaust? There are aftermarket exhausts that can give you a fairly good imitation of expensive internal sounds, but it just crap baffles in the tinny muffler.

Finally, with a warm engine at idle, lower the idle speed temporarily with the big brass screw on the throttle body down to 600 rpm. Slowly rev the engine to only 800 then let it fall back. Make it a quicker transition but keep speeds within these two ranges. Do you hear a lousy bunch of intermittent rattles seemingly on the other side of the fan at low speed, but goes away at high speed? That is likely a camshaft gear. If it is a sharp bunch of rattles that came up quickly on you, you might have a loose gear on the camshaft. If it has been a slowly developing noise, it may be just an issue with a sloppy mesh between the camshaft and crankshaft. Actually not a biggadeal, but get your idling speed up to 1,000 rpm! Low idle speed is tough on the camshaft gear. Oil pump drive lugs can sometimes raise a ruckus. We can tear down the engine far enough to look at your camshaft-to-gear fit and get an idea of the mesh and get the engine back together before pizza at 7:00PM.

Congratulations on your perseverance, I want to drive it and I'd like to give the engine a clean bill of health too when I get out there.
Colin

[Amskeptic]

I should add that through my homework and trying to figure this out I think its something in the Cam?

Bearings maybe?

the metal dust was silver and bronze. Not magnetic.
Which means another pull out and tear down.

Any thoughts on running it like this for a bit until I have the time. Or do I have to park her (UNTIL COLIN GETS HERE-ed) if I am right?

You did just heads, right?
I could not figure out what you were saying about the heads. New heads. Are they OK? What was this:
"They are *&%$ heads and I need to move on and get some real help."

How many miles to you guess are on the lower end, the crank, rods, camshaft, etc?
Colin

[pdlrofdrms]

yes just heads Colin.

This moment feels like you think you have a deadly disease and you turn to anyone to get answers. Friday I ran into a mechanic and he about bit my head off for just doing heads.
Said that now the compression was too strong for the rods and now the bearings are going to blow and then....
Well pretty much the end of the world scenarios.

I will follow your instructions tomorrow after Derby practice.
and report back.

The Heads were done by Adrian at headflow masters.

They were so pretty. I think they were magical compared to the old ones and no gaskets. Straight to the case.

Very specific instructions from Adrian not to use head gaskets.

Okay so the place I bought the bus from. Once I was done with the build I took it there to double check everything.

I have taken it there twice because they did give me a good bill of health but I was Leary.
So I took it back and said you sure...you sure this is right?

Yep they said. All good.
I have driven "old" vw's and they don't run bad if they are healthy.

And when I reached out to a community member and he figured out at least one thing in less than 15 minutes. That the EEC was bad.

I finally had to accept that they were _____heads.
and if I listened to them my car was going to fall apart.
I had to trust my gut.

I did get some help though, from some of them.
they did my fuel to air mixture.
and ran a smoke machine to find vacuum leaks.

They found two.
One at the intake manifold: I replaced that with a vanagon grommet as the old one was a hard plastic and was not available anymore.
The other at the Brake Booster. : Had to replace check valve and used an adhesive that starts with an E? EU2000 or something like that.

I still hear a hissing in the engine compartment.
Hubbards is a local shop and said they would run a smoke test for me if I swing by.

I sprayed brake cleaner on the intake throttle body connection, all the hoses, and the manifold gaskets, No change in idle.
But there is a leak somewhere in there. Its pretty loud.

Gonna drive the dodge tomorrow sadly.

Okay so what else.
I've always used 10 40 in my vws.
Sometimes 20 50.

I used Napa brand 10 40

OMIGOD I never checked the end play before I put it in!
What a dork.
I am excited to check this out.
By the way I have acquired tools now.

Not super fancy ones but at least I have a decent size screw driver next time you come.

Thanks for the next step
I will report tomorrow evening!

[pdlrofdrms]

okay I just got back from practice and a run. Going out now to check! Wish me luck.

[airkooledchris]

practice IS a run. best of luck sorting out the sounds.

[pdlrofdrms]

okay so is there a trick on where to put the screw driver? I see no space around the edge and in the dead center it seems it hits the fan edge so the very thing you are trying to budge is the same part your leveraging.

Cause I stuck the larges screwdriver I had in the center tried to get it to budge and nothing. not even a noticeable budge

a couple of other weird things.

Now that I changed my oil which is a straight 10/40 and no additive.

The Arcata shop put in an additive thinking the knock was a sticky lifter.

Now the bus runs wayyyy worse.
I can get it to start but now it takes a few turns.

I will record upload to youtube tomorrow.
Maybe now I can double check my timing again?
Seems weird to have to re-time every week.
Another weird thing. Is FINALLY my molded hoses came ( three month back order)
And the one that connects to the Intake boot to oil breather full of mayonnaise. I have notice too that my oil lid has a lot of moisture in it too. AND my oil pan cover had Mayonnaise in the bottom.

Is that normal?
Seemed weird.
And where is all this moisture coming from?

Also you can hear in the earlier video the hissing I can hear. Any tips beside the hoses I can look.
Is there a place to spray carb cleaner or use propane to find a leak on my own?

I can hear a weird internal noise now too.
Different from the recent noise.
I will do my best to isolate and describe tomorrow. Calling a time out.


mmmm...next step?

[Bleyseng]

How are the valves? Have you adjusted them since the rebuild? Are they staying in adjustment or do you have to tighten them? Are all the valve tips in alignment?
Use 20/50wt oil
The mayonnaise is water vapor as the engine oil isn't get hot enough to burn off the water vapor.

[pdlrofdrms]

yep valves have been adjusted 3 times in the last month.

Always two full turns back to 0 lash.

Well last time it was like 2 1/8 but I think that was my error and I was uber careful this time.

I will check again Sunday.

[pdlrofdrms]

Okay so last night I pulled on the pulley. It moves but barely. Not even enough to pull and it stays pulled I have to pull back and forth with a lot of strength to get it to barely move.
I am assuming that is good?


I have not had a chance to do a compression check. Going to do that after work today.

Still idles rough.

Thinking of taking the suggestion here and changing the oil again to 20/50.

I drove it to work today.

One thing I noticed its kinda hard to shift.

Not terrible.

But not normal either.

I adjusted the clutch. Feels great. MMMM...

I will try and upload a high RPM video tonight too.