65 Split upgrade

[Cleverchap]

[Kai]

Totally true but it's sooo worth it for the boost. It's highly addictive and completely inappropriate for these old wagons. I find I drive on boost everywhere so I'm 2nd gear all the way baby!! I can easily get through a tank of fuel which is only like 35/40litres very quickly.

But I know what you mean. I've watched the summer fly by this year and not used my car for any of it. No doubt as per the previous years I'll have it up and running just in time for Christmas then break it in time for summer.

I managed to swap a cylinder head on mine with the engine in place. Not sure what your engine bay is like but I've got tonnes of room around mine. Costs loads dollars though as there so many gaskets on each head lol.
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Think......

Don't sleep and drive!!!

[Cleverchap]

Engine was coming out for a tidy up and a bit of detailing this winter anyway so this is just a bit more work. No biggy.

[Cleverchap]

Its been a while since I posted but things have been moving forward.

back in October i used my kombi for the last time of 2016 to stay over at a mates place for his halloween party. There were bays, splits, T3's, T4's and T5's all over the place!! Luckily he has understanding neighbours

With that cold but enjoyable evening over and done with its was time to drop the engine and strip it down ready for new head gaskets.

After the heads had been machined (and valves recut) I fitted the new head gaskets and then refitted the heads. Then it was time to mask up and paint the long block




I had all the bolt on parts blasted and powdercoated




Now here it is all back together




The sump half way through cleaning off all the old oil and road grime




The engine is now back in the kombi and running but the hydraulic lifters on one side are noisy, because I forgot to bleed them when refitting the rocker assemblies. I'll have to whip them out and bleed them up before the ticking drives me insane

As well as the top end rebuild I am fitting a remote brake servo so I'm half way through installing that at the moment. I need to make some brake lines but should be able to get it sorted before the end of January. I want this on the road asap so I can start to enjoy it!!!

Thats all for now

[Cleverchap]

Just before Christmas I got the engine refitted (I wanted to hear it run) and it was all ready to fire up but I noticed some of the fuel hose was damaged so decided to be better safe than sorry and order some new stuff. Before the new hose arrived I had to leave the UK as I was working in China but was scheduled to be back on Christmas eve.
One thing led to another and I ended up having to stay an extra week so didnt arrive back in the UK until New Years Eve.
Having some serious jet lag issues I decided to round the year out on a good note by starting the engine. With the fuel hose in hand I buggered off down the unit and fired the engine up and as previously mentioned I got the tick of lifter death. No biggy I thought. but better check compression just to be on the safe side. Oh dear.......
A quick compression check later and I decided the motor had to came back out as I had a serious lack on compression on cylinders 2 and 4, and I was buggered if I knew what was going on.
In my jet lagged state I spent HOURS checking and rechecking everything I could but to no avail.
I even took the cam belt off and re set/ re checked the timing just to make doubly certain that everything was ok. And it was. So why no compression??




It was then that I noticed as I was checking the timing and turning the engine over by hand there was air rushing out of the spark plug holes. How could this be happening if there was zero compression??

So I attached the hose of the compression tester and put my thumb over the end and once again turned the engine over by hand. Well that produced a lot of air in a nice stream that was difficult to compress. So what was going on?


I then took a closer look at the compression tester gauge and noticed this....



The end of the compression tester gauge has a screw adaptor fitted and it had come unscrewed ever so slightly. When placing the gauge on top of the engine whilst testing cylinder 2 and cylinder 4 the gauge had come unscrewed just enough to give zero reading and I had the radio playing in the unit quite loudly so couldn't hear the air escaping. Agghhhh!!!!!
So there was NOTHING wrong at all. It was just me dobuting my own ability and probably not helped by lack of sleep.

The good thing about removing the engine (always look on the bright side) was that I could tidy up a few pipe routes and fit some sound deadening in the engine compartment.

The bleed return from the top of the radiator was a cause of issues last year with air being trapped so I took time to properly p clip it as high as I could so it is now always above the radiator.




I also decided to fit non return valves in the water breather pipes from the engine block and the radiator to hopefully aid bleeding the cooling system.




So with that all done the engine went back in and the cooling system was fully bled, which was a lot easier this time round. I started the engine and instantly remembered that I had forgotten to change the hydraulic lift adjusters. Bah!!! Time to go and sleep.

[jp]

Sounds like you're having a bit of mare fella.. But guess you'd settle for tester at fault.

I was compression testing a engine I got off eBay for my mk1 Gti a couple of weeks ago and had very little on 2 of the cylinders. But did notice it was going up ever so slightly the more I span it over... I whipped the rocker off and blasted some wd down the valves whilst spinning it over and they all came upto a reasonable level. Fingers crossed it runs ok when I get it in the car.

Keep the updates coming back on the road soon I hope
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1971 Devon Bay with 1800 Ford Turbo Diesel Engine (wip)
1983 VW Golf GTI Campaign
1979 Mini 1275 GT
2013 Scirocco TDI GT

[Cleverchap]

[Cleverchap]

Along with the engine rebuild that was scheduled for this winter, back in September/October time I was surfing eBay and came across a lovely new remote dual circuit brake servo going cheap which someone had bought and no longer needed.
Over the last week or so I have been able to get this all plumbed in.




For people who have fitted these units previously and are thinking it doesnt look quite right, thats because it is mounted backwards. It was the only way I could mount it and get it to clear everything under the kombi!!

I bought a roll of Goodridge AN-3 hose and replaced all the hoses for the entire brake system. I also replaced the previous bodge of two bits of hose that made up the hydraulic clutch line. The hose is cheap, but I had forgotten how expensive AN-3 hose fittings are!!




I spent a little time getting all the hose routes nice and tidy, and drilling and fitting rivnuts so all the p-clips could be bolted in place.




In order to mount the brake servo (space is VERY tight under the front) I had to drop the power steering rack and whilst doing so I noticed it was leaking quite badly. I initially thought this was because of a not very tight jubilee clamp on the return pressure side but it turned out to be one of the main rack seals. As it was already out I have sent it off to be refurbished, so thats another job I didnt expect would need doing! As soon as its back I'll get it fitted and then that should be the front end upgrades/mods complete for this winter

[Wilfred]

Nice progress!!! good job.
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1973 BayWindow running 1.9 110 bhp TDI with flipped gearbox.

[trev]

fantastic progress

[Cleverchap]

Thanks for the replies gents.

I've just collected the steering rack following refurb so I'll see about getting that fitted at the weekend.

[Cleverchap]

I snook in to the unit on the way home from work this evening and got the rack fitted up.






You can see how tight things are under there now that the rack and radiator scoops are back in, which is why I had to mount the servo backwards.
I need to buy some power steering fluid and top up the system and then it's all systems go