Todays progress

Stopped by Car Quest (Lakeville) today and ordered my paint and supplies. They will have it mixed up and reay for pickup on Tuesday afternoon. Dave at Car Quest has been a huge help in getting all of the needed items together for me.

When I got home today, there was a package from jBugs for me ... my carb rebuild kit. I spent a few minutes this evening and pulled the 34 PICT 3 carb off the car. I'm hoping to start the rebuild Tuesday evening. I need to get it re-built and back into the car by the end of the week so that I can drive it on the trailer this weekend. I'll also need to look at the timing again, I think that I've got it messed up good! I'm a little worried about the carb because there are a few things rusted on carb and I don't think that is a good thing. I hope that I can get through this season with this carb and maybe look at something better next year.

A couple of days ago I started pulling the dash out, and tonight I finished it. I'm really glad that I took it out. Not only will it make it easier to paint, but it had all kinds of crap behind it. Stuff like little peices of glass and pine needles and deteriorated gaskets and hoses. The glass makes me think that at some point the windshield has been broken.

I also took out the winshield wiper assembly. Originally I took it our to make it easier to prep and paint, but now I'm glad that I took it out. Inside the wiper housing, there was dirt, leaves, pine needles, small twigs ... It was a mess and the drain pipe was almost clogged. The blower fan was also only hanging on with one rubber mount and the hose from the fan to the vents was falling apart. Looks like I have a few more things that are going to need fixing ... later.

Right now I'm just looking to getting the car painted, fenders, doors and hoods on. That will be huge progress.

Carb gaskets ...

I had a little time tonight the other night to look at the carb some more, I'm still having the problem of not wanting to idle once its warmed up. A few people have told me to look at the gasket between the carb and intake.


The gasket was sticking out the side, and didn't look real good so I thought that it would be a perfect place to start. When I took the carb off this is what I found...

Nice! They are rubber and look like they where cut out of a bike intertube using a butter knife. I made a new gasket using actual gasket material, but I still get the same results, won't idle when its warmed up enough for the choke to be off.

I think that I'm done with the carb for a little while, I need to start working on the body so that I can get it painted this year.

Engine timing and carb adjustments

I want to get the carb and timing setup correctly since I don't think anything has been adjusted since the re-build. It starts great, and runs nice, until the engine warms up and the choke kicks off.
The carb is a Solex 34 PICT 3.

I have a 009 distributor, and with the rotor cap off I was able to see that it has a Pertronix electronic ignition. This is nice.

I picked up a timing light from my buddy Mike Cummings last week and hooked it up tonight ... guess what ... the timing is set to 0 degrees. Looks like I'll set the timing and adjust the carb tomorrow.

First oil change

I did the first oil change and valve adustment on the Volkswagen bug tonight. Ran it for 15 minutes at 2,000 to 3,000 RPM. Drained the oil and pulled out the screen while it was still nice and hot. The oil had a few small metal shavings as to be expected for the first change.

Tools used for the oil change. 10 mm socket for the 6 plate nuts. 13/16 in. socket for the main oil plug. (I have a 19 mm socket, but that didn't quite fit)

While the oil was draining, I noticed that the plate had been painted. I think its from the engine heat and oil, but the new paint was starting to flake off in little peices. Not liking this, I used a scraper and some 200 grit sand paper and removed all of the new paint from the inside surface of the plate before I put it back together.

Before adding the new oil I adjusted the rockers tippets to .006 in. They where all real close, but I tweeked them to have a better fit. (My buddy Mike reminded me to do this while the engine is cold, even the slightest bit of warmth may alter the valve clearances.)

Tools used for the valve adustment. Regular screw driver to pop the valve cover holder and for the tippet adjustment. 13 mm box wrench for the retaining nuts. 13/16 in. socket for the generator pully nut to turn over the motor so the appropriate cylinder was at TDC when adusting the valves. I made sure to clean out any oil, shavings or other gunk from the heads while I did my adjustments.

With everything back together I added 2.5 quarts of 10w-40 oil. Ran it for about a minute, checked and added another .25 of a quart. All together I put in 2.75 quarts of oil. No leaks yet ...

Notes: Need to pull the distrubitor cap off to tell which cylinder is at TDC and firing. Also, don't leave your tools under the rear of your air cooled VW when getting the engine warmed up! The cooling air blows out the bottom, everything gets toasty.

Engine break-in

I talked to a few of the guys at the Twin Cities VW Club this week about engine break-in. Since this car has a newly re-built engine, I want to make sure I treat it right in the beginning so that it give me a nice long life. Not knowing if the engine has been broken-in, I'm going to be cautious and treat it like its new and break it in.

Picked up some 10w-40 oil and new drain cover gaskets.

I'll run the engine at about 3000 RPM for 15 minutes and then drain the oil when its still warm. Fill it back up and adjust the valves. Then for the first 300 or so miles I'll do stop-and-go driving mostly. Then drain the oil again. After that I should be good to go for regular oil changes.

Engine displacement

When you talk to bug guys for a while they frequently throw our engine sizes in CC's. You hear numbers like 1585, 1776, 2110 ... So I wanted to figure out how to calculate the size of an engine. Here is what I found out.

Engine displacement is a measure of the volume of air displaced by an engine. The measure of the distance between piston's top dead center (TDC) and bottom dead center (BDC) is known as the stroke. The measure of the cylinder diameter is known as its bore. Knowing the bore and stroke of an engine and the number of cylinders we can calculate the amount of air/fuel the motor displaces or its' displacement.

The formulas for a cylinder is given as:
Displacement = PI * BoreRadius^2 * Stroke * NumberOfCylinders

For my stock 1600 DP engine, this is what we end up with;

PI = 3.1428
Bore = 85.5 mm
Bore radius = 42.75 mm (85.5 / 2)
Stroke = 69 mm

Now for the math for my stock 1600!
3.1428 * (42.75 * 42.75) * 69 * 4 = 1585.25 CCs

Here are the common air cooled VW engine sizes (bore * stroke)
85.5 mm * 69 mm = 1585 (called the 1600)
87 mm * 69 mm = 1641
90.5 mm * 69 mm = 1776
92 mm * 69 mm = 1835
94 mm * 69 mm = 1914

A stoker motor has a crank shaft that has a larger diameter, which means the piston travels farther with each up and down stroke.
Stroker engine sizes :
90.5 mm * 74 mm = 1904
90.5 mm * 82 mm = 2110
92 mm * 82 mm = 2180
94 mm * 82 mm = 2275
94 mm * 84 mm = 2332