Itinerant Air-Cooled

https://plus.google.com/photos?pid=5990 ... 1456876336

I have been corresponding with Colin about the difficulty of finding thicker flywheel end play shims for our aging fleet of bus engines. I'm about to purchase some tooling in order to fabricate these shims in the thickness of .38mm or .39mm (or .40 or .41mm - ed). Before I go to the expense of doing this, I'd like to know if there is any source for these shims that I might have missed. Raby, Bus Depot, Bus Boys and German Supply have all informed me that there are no more .38mm shims to be had. I would appreciate feedback on this. Second, since I'm going to need to try to recoup my investment, do you all feel that there is a market for these, if I can get them out at a reasonable price? Once I get the tooling, I can make them pretty easily in different thicknesses. Thank you.

I have ordered them directly from classic parts VW in Germany without any issues.

http://de.vw-classicparts.com/bestand/b ... pl?lang=en

the .38mm spacer is part number 021105289 (enter it here without spaces or dashes)
021105287 - .36mm
021105285 - .34mm
021105283 - .32mm

It's a little over $5 for just 1 in .38mm, the rest are cheaper than that.

If you can make the .38mm ones for less than $5 a pop (not to mention international shipping) - go for it. It would probably take a while to recoup the costs, but if they were high enough quality you could probably sell them in bulk to all of the US and Canada based vendors and engine builders.

Thank you. I've requested info from them. If it's that available, and cheap, I'll place on order with them instead of messing around making them.

I can't vouch for them, but http://vanagain.com seems to have them. You have to search yourself for AC Van parts, I used "shim" as my keyword and selected "80-84 Air Cooled" as my parameters. They have all of them, it looks like.

(1972 Type 4 bus all the way to 1983-1/2 Vanagon are the same - ed)

last shims I got via Porsche, or Worldpac.

airkooledchris wrote:

Jivermo wrote:Thanks. I'm wondering is that shim listed will work for the '78-'79 bays also, as well as the '80-84 Vanagons.

It's the same engine.

Yes, I'm not a T4 owner (yet…) but when I help friends with them, I often ask parts houses for 1980 Van parts when looking for T4 engine parts. Many lackeys at several well-known shops around here just want to sell you T1 engine parts "cause don't you know they have a bug engine, dood?"

airkooledchris wrote:I have ordered them directly from classic parts VW in Germany without any issues.

It's a little over $5 for just 1 in .38mm, the rest are cheaper than that.

If you can make the .38mm ones for less than $5 a pop (not to mention international shipping) - go for it.

Our discussion actually veered from this ^ known arena to our potential future needs.
Over time, my shim stock has been slowly migrating to thinner from what used to be thicker, because you all seem to need thicker and thicker shims to get that lovely and important minimal endplay, meaning that our old engines, most particularly the flywheels, are slowly eroding at the shim contact area.

I asked Jivermo if he could possibly see about going beyond the Known Shim Stock Sizes up to
.39mm
.40mm
and beyond.
Sorry I did not make myself clearer.
Colin
(p.s. who came up with $5.00? I would pay the full $10.00 or $12.00 for a .40mm/.41mm shim)

that's a really good point, it would be nice to have some larger sizes than the usual offerings.

We still need shims. =)

searching, it would be great to get some made in .40!

airkooledchris wrote:We still need shims. =)

searching, it would be great to get some made in .40!

You looking for what size for what engine? I have one .40 waiting for use in the BobD, and maybe a .37 or .38 with me, haven't even checked this NaranjaDoesLA engine yet.
Colin

I tried buying two .40's from Vanagain last year, and they emailed saying they were low on stock at the moment. Now their website says the shims are not available… Van-Cafe seems to have them for $12-ish.

Gotta find out if Vanagain charged me or not……
Robbie