Itinerant Air-Cooled

I checked the weather report nearly every day for a week leading up to our visit and every one of them predicted sunshine.

lo and behold the Colin Curse strikes again and it's as gray and dreary as one could imagine, with a list mist here and there.

No pictures, again, which I blame everyone else for. There's usually a shutterbug of a family member or friend around, but im that guy in my circle and when im busy working it never becomes enough of a priority.

My lofty goals for this visit was to address some small oil leaks that are making a mess of everything over time, and adjust the sliding door latch.

I removed the engine to prepare for our visit on Saturday, and my primary thought at the end of the day was - if it takes me nearly all day to get it OUT, how in the hell are we going to do all of the work needed and THEN get it back in besides? I feared a half torn apart engine on my garage floor come Monday and me without a clue on how to get it back in working condition. It was running fine, why mess with it when it's just a little leak?

How about some seriously F'd up crankshaft endplay? Yes, that would be a GOOD reason to do this now.
At 11 I had to rob Colin blind of every large endplay shim in his public AND private stash (if I can track down an original VW 36, I'll pay it back, promise.)
That got us to the wear limit of 6, but thankfully my parts stash had a different flywheel that gave us another 2, which got us in the comfort zone of 4.

Oil cooler seals didn't seem to be to blame, despite my assumptions. Apparently gravity makes oil move down, so unless you tracked the starting point, everything below it could be incidental oily mess. I had thought to check the oil pressure sender, and the breather, and then moved on to items under the tin as a culprit. The distributor can leak oil? DOH. There was this crappy oval profiled seal around the distributor shaft that was likely allowing a good amount of oil out and then down the side of the oil cooler, into the fan and then blown all over hells half acre.

The main seal, prior to removing the engine, also appeared to be leaking. It was hard and somewhat petrified, but it didn't seem to be actually leaking yet. It was replaced anyway.

We (colin) installed the cooling flaps in the fan housing, which would have been a LOT easier if I had removed the heater boxes prior to dropping the engine onto a motorcycle jack.

We got to the point where at 6ish we hadn't yet started to put the engine back into the bus, but we took a short break for some smoked porky goodness (thanks Jay) and got to it.

Colin took a quick fix to the sliding door issues, of which there are many, and we found a way to make it work for now, though this will need to be addressed further pending other repairs.

So the motor is installed, and most of the wiring is hooked back up.

I still need to:
1. Install the exhaust
2. Hook up the battery
3. Fill it with oil (important step)
4. Reconnect and repair wiring for the tach, oil temp sender and CHT gauges
5. Hook up heater hoses and dump tubes
6. Mount and connect thermostat to the cooling flaps
7. Connect charcoal canister


My body hurts and my mind feels like pudding, so ill take my time tackling this over the next few days.

Once this is done, I can crank it up and start checking for oil leaks.

A handful of the lessons learned, in absolutely no particular order and most certainly incomplete:

1. Oil leaks from the top down, you have to find the source before making any assumptions. (not that I didn't know it, but I gave up and made assumptions when I didn't think it was possible to pinpoint my entirely unique problem. )
2. Do NOT remove the decel valve and heater blower just to take out the engine, which would be obvious if you weren't just blindly following other peoples blogs/writeups without thinking about why
3. If your taking off the fan housing, take the heater boxes off before dropping the engine.
4. My valves are cleaner than yours, but my driveway is covered in Diet Coke

IiiiiiibuuuuuuuProooooohhhhFeeeeeehhhnn....(sung to the tune of Ohhhhhhm....)

Nice writeup. Now rest and get er done when you are ready...

airkooledchris wrote: lo and behold the Colin Curse strikes again and it's as gray and dreary as one could imagine,

Can I use this in my brochure in the "testimonials"?

It was quite the 168 miles of hairpins upon hairpins drive to your house from Redding, and even more quite the drive away from your house to Red Bluff. I took CA36 for 159.6 miles of hairpins upon hairpins plus land slide heaves that nailed the suspension stops. The Stopped Counting At Twenty Deer On The Roadway interactions kept me razor-alert, and the beauty of the night was additionally helpful as I pulled over to adjust AFM settings with the cooling scoops glowing eery white from the side marker lamps below. Found myself scarce of gasoline as I passed Platina at 1:30AM or so. Finally gave in to the leering "R" on the fuel gauge at a nice ranch driveway under the most gorgeous starlit sky imagineable and waited for morning so I could run out of gas in the sunshine. Made it to Red Bluff at 8:30 or so, and the stupid gas gauge was just being paranoid. Shipped in only 10.5 gallons for a solid 17mpg through those 2nd gear hill climbs. Could not believe !!! that I was only 33 miles down I-5 from the Redding exit I took to get to you. You know, I was proud that only every third sentence was a whine about the misty cold precipitation as we ministrated to your engine. I will need tires for the BobD now. Poor thing musta got dizzy with those insane corners. I need to shoot a downhill video on 36 and set it to some Doobie Brothers.
Colin

I can testify!!! Colin does not carry this curse. Just happenstance.

We had one brief day of "Wow, warm enough to think about swimming in the icy cold waterways!" shortly after Colin left for the chilly coastal community of Eureka, but uhmm, well, morning thunderstorms to the south, and grey overcast with a penetratingly fine definitely not fog, a healthy mist maybe, just short of actual drops, wafting down and dripping from things essentially for the day today.

Maybe by Thursday the pattern will shift they say if you put any faith in the forecasts.

Still, tonight was clear with brilliant stars hanging cosmic.



neal

Thanks for the reminder. I need a new distributor O-ring as well.

Now, where can we find a stash of thick endplay shims?

only manly men take the 36 all the way from the 101 to the 5, not that the 299 is much more forgiving.


Im CLOSE to getting things back in order again. I at least have everything hooked up now, though I have some troubleshooting to do now.
Only getting an hour after work before it's dark out hasn't allowed me much progress, but I did manage to get it to fire today, but it won't keep running where I can even adjust the timing. Im guessing there is a spark plug wire out of order, or maybe a wire disconnected - or something...

I took a short video of where im at currently:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/F ... directlink

In the video I first crank it over a bit without the ignition switch enabled, just to give it a little oil first.
Next I turn the key on and crank it again, it fires up, idles pretty high, nearly 2000 rpm's, pops a few times and then just kills.

I loosened the distributor so it would be easier to hunt for a happy place and then set the timing, but in either direction of the distributor it does the same thing, just runs for a few seconds and then dies.

Since everything has been disconnected and reconnected since it last ran properly, ill just start going through the list bit by bit for now, but if there's anything obvious I should start with - im all ears.

my current list will be:
check firing order
look for disconnected wires going to/from the coil, double relay, and fuel injection.
collect underpants
?
profit

sounds like its running on 3 cyls.....or maybe the zundfolge is out of order

Yes, check your zundfolge first. I mucked that up when I did some work on the Beetle and had 2 & 4 reversed. Whoopsie.

Sounds like a vacuum leak to me....

RSorak 71Westy wrote:Sounds like a vacuum leak to me....

I ain't gonna speculate. I am not there.
But I know you double-checked the brake booster line and decel valve line to the black rubber wye at the intake plenum, tightened the s-boot clamps top and bottom, made room for the stupid-tight fingernail-polish-garnished wires to the ECU and AFM, plugged in the temp sensor II to the correct wire on the harness, made sure all grounds were secure, and checked to see if I remembered to plug in the thermo-time switch now under the intake plenum where it belongs and the AAR plug is nearby too. Other than that ....

ok, im getting closer.

I re-confirmed all electrical wiring was routed and connected properly, and repaired any that showed little breaks or damage.
Reconnected all spark plug wires, and reconfirmed all vacuum wiring was routed properly. Disconnected the AFM and ECU, then worked the harness around to give it plenty of slack where it was needed. Once all wiring and vacuum lines were cleaned up and reconnected I gave it a shot to see where I was at.

It fired right up, and this time it ran and just idled really high, like around 2,000 RPM's.

I checked the timing which was way off of course and started working it to where it needed to be, retarding the timing and bringing the idle back up to keep it running. It seemed like it was getting close, so I turned it off, went in to clean up and got my working area as clean as possible.

Once everything cooled down and I was able to come back and hopefully finish things up and dial in the timing properly, it fired up and started to squeal like crazy, idled really low and killed. and this is where im at now. It won't run at all unless it's idling really high (as a result of the timing being far too advanced) and it just squeals like crazy.

Im almost positive that it's coming from the distributor. Here's the catch, I don't have points, it's factory electronic ignition. No lubrication for the points block needed. There is that same little wick at the top of the distributor, so I gave that a few drops of oil, but it squeals all the same.

I took a quick video of the behavior. It's running with the timing way off, and when you try to adjust it back to where it needs to be the idle drops (of course) but the distributor sounds like it catches or drags and halts:
http://youtu.be/tTTgP5-34tI?hd=1

We didn't really do MUCH with the distributor, other than to install a different seal around the body of it.

Am I way off thinking this is the source of the sound/problems?

make sure the rotor is pushed all the way down inside the dizzy. That's quite a squeal you have....
Time the engine to 28 degrees BTDC at 3500rpms and then see where the idle is. If its still at 2000 rpms then you have a vacuum leak and look for it to solve the idle issue.

I did ensure the rotor was nice and snug under the cap, and tried also pulling out the little dust cap and running it to be sure that wasn't somehow causing issues. Next ill see what happens after timing it to 28* BTDC at 3500... i don't forsee that effecting the noise though, so I may as well try and track the vacuum leak right away while it's idling high.


Thanks for the tops Geoff, ill try this after work today.

I hate vacuum leaks. Good luck Chris.


neal

Thanks Neal.

and a Vacuum leak was all it was. I had only hand tightened the intake runners to the head on the 3/4 side (I swapped out the tin, so my Federal heater box could connect to the blower fan.)

I had it running perfectly within 15 minutes after hunting for a vacuum source tonight. Now to tackle that leaky passenger side rear wheel cylinder. The fun never ceases!