Aircooled.net has been serving the VW community with a good reputation for quite a long time. Their ad copy for their adjusting screws takes pains to point out that they are not the "cheap quality" ones, but are properly heat-treated. If you were to have problems with screws purchased from them, I'm sure they would put it right.BoltonFTW wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:36 pm
I've been looking online at some options for OEM and comparing prices. Aircooled.net seems to have them for 8$each
https://vwparts.aircooled.net/10mm-Valv ... 09-451.htm
compared to the type4store for ~10$each
https://type4store.com/products/valvetr ... sters.html
Do we think these are actually the same product? Anyone have experience with either of these sites
The TypeIV store was started by Jake Raby, who has a solid reputation for being a perfectionist in his engine building, and undoubtedly would have held teh quality of any parts he sold to his own high standard. He has since sold the store to LN Engineering, who also appear to be dedicated to quality.
Another vendor to consider is German Supply, who offer two levels of quality in the 10mm adjusting screw: aftermarket (sourced from Germany), or Genuine VW.
German Supply has also been around a long time, and are dedicated to providing only high-quality parts to the air-cooled VW community. It is a one-man operation, based in Ontario, Canada (note the prices on the web site are in $CDN), and he sometimes runs a little behind on fulfilling orders. Plenty of whining from some folks over on TheSamba about his inability to meet their Amazon-Prime-driven expectations of two-day customer fulfillment.
The one vendor I would absolutely advise you to avoid, based on bitter (and embarrassingly, repeated) experience is CIP1. Their too-good-to-be-true parts pricing is indeed, too good to be true. Their parts are consistently of low quality, so much so that once you get one in your hands, you'll smack yourself in the forehead and go order the more expensive part from the better vendors.
I would take the shafts and rockers from the two sets of assemblies and cherry-pick the best pieces to build up the four assemblies you need.Additionally-- I also purchased a used rocker assembly that has the original (for hydraulic) solid rocker spacers and wavy-thrust-washers. When I go to replace my spring spacers, should I just swap out the entire rocker assembly? Or should I keep my rocker arms and shaft in tact and just use the solid spacers and washers from the newly purchased setup? Would it matter in this case?
Make note of the differences between the intake and exhaust rocker arms so that you can assemble them back properly. You should end up with two assemblies with intake on the left and exhaust on the right (cylinders 1 and 4) and the other two assemblies with intake on the right and exhaust on the left (cylinders 2 and 3).
Also note that the chamfered side of the bore in the rocker shafts should go towards the head. See discussion of this topic recently elsewhere on IAC: https://www.itinerant-air-cooled.com/vi ... 3540&hilit