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Boogs was gassy
2 3 4

Reserved for initial top end refresh (if I can find pictures)

Reserved for epic engine fire

So it started the night of VWs in the vineyard. On the highway the bus started losing power, down to 50, then 30, then down couldn't even keep it at rpm in 2nd. Pull off to shoulder, and it stalls.

Give it a minute and it starts back up, get back up to speed, travel on down the hiway. About 5 miles later, same symptoms. Decide not to push it. Turn around. On way home. Same thing. Try to limp it home on shoulder doing 20. Kaput. Dies. Cannot get it to start. Thinking timing, try to do a little roadside diagnosis. It's hot out. Dog is in bus. Decide I need to get dog taken care of before bus. Call wife to pick up dog, no answer, and AAA to pick up bus.

While waiting a westlake cop shows up, sees dog, gets water for dog, and offers us a ride home. Just as we get in cruiser, Kristen shows up. Ride home with her. Thank cop for offering to take us home. Blue Lives Matter. Not all cops are bad.

Next day I go out try to start it. Nothing. Swap distributors. Fires up. Needs to be timed and full tune up. Still 90 degrees out, too hot (for me) to work on it. 90 degree temps just won't go away, and Oktoberfest is coming up fast. Decide to take it to Uncle Chucky's Shop of Sorrows. On the way there I hear this "POP" and the next thing I know it sounds like an imdustrial sewing machine coming from the back end. TICK TICK TICK TICK. loud. Bad. Uh oh.

Limp it to the Shop of Sorrow. Do a full inspection. Everything is looking good, valves adjusted correctly, remove lifter, they look fine. Go to the other side, valves on the #4 piston are a little loose in the guides and the adjusters have this serious groove down the center of them, like the valve may have been stuck, and ground a groove in adjuster. Cool. Figured out problem right? Replace head.

Drop engine, after trying to remove head in Van. Don't do that. It's just dumb. Props to Mark for getting it done, but for the 45 minutes it takes to drop the engine, just do it out of the vehicle.

Engines out, but cannot put it on stand because we are still in the middle of the 3 month type 1 engine rebuild. Won't mention any names, but he has a nice oil priming video on the YouTubes. Go to option B. Put the motor on a pallet and pick it up on forklift to work on it at a comfortable height. Spend and hour looking for some kind of Nikki yakamura (or some such) 1.8 liter head. Finally find it.

Pull head off. Oops. It's a 1.7. WTH, who refreshes the top end and doesn't mic the piston? This Guy. Off to the Art Brow pile, hopefully there is a 1.7 head in there. Jackpot. A nice looking head with tight guides. Don't have a spring compressor for type 4 heads to verify seat condition. Will have to go with blind faith.

Get the head back on, and engine back in. Start it up. 0 improvement. Sounds exactly the same. Gutted. Set timing.

It's like 8pm Friday night of Oktoberfest. Chuck, Brandon, Matty, Riccardo et al. all gave up their free time to help me get the bus ready for Oktoberfest. I will not have be all for naught. If the engine blows up I have 90% of the parts for my 2.0 liter rebuild.

Chuck spray paints 1.7 on the back of my van, lest I forget.

Leave Chuck's shop. This thing has no power. Can't even get out of its own way. Spin the distributor, "dial it in" to where I like it, and head on home to pack.

Obviously the bus is in no shape to make it to KI this year. Chuck wants to build the 2.0 liter before KI, but I still have NASA wind tunnel testing, balancing and a few other things Dr. Chuckyl Mr. Hyde deems to be pointless. I don't acquiesce. I decide to rebuild what I have. Chuck disagrees, and vocalizes his discontent. I push on.

Now I have a very special "Jean Burg" [sic] high performance 1.7 type 4 engine. Aside from the center mount carb that I removed, the first go around, this bad boy is equipped with a high flow oil pump, hydraulic lifters and high performance (?) push rods, just to list a few of the stellar upgrades.

Decide to debastardize my engine, and go back to the way VW designed it in 72. Order new solid lifters and matching cam from Bill. Order new seals, bearings and gaskets from Mick at Euclid Foreign. For future reference do not buy a 1.7 liter gasket rebuild kit, get the 2.0 liter kit. The 1.7 kit is missing some vital pieces.

Get everything tore down. Do not find anything glaringly wrong. Lifters are fine, cam looks brand new, pistons, jugs, rod and crank all check out. I do not know what was causing noise, and that is worrisome. Hopefully going fully stock will resolve mystery noise. As long as it works I don't care if I ever know.

Some things we did find, a little piece of plastic in oil strainer, a flange on heater box had come loose, a small hole in J tube in heater box, and a loose valve adjusting screw. Nothing that screams Eureka!
Time for reassembly. Chucky knows I want this thing running for the Brews Cruise on Saturday, and I think he is doing everything he can to secretly sabotage me, so it won't happen. Spend the next few days sweeping up SoS, moving pallets, machines, cars and whatever else he has. Get kicked off of raw properties with my cohorts. Get placed on double secret probation. Riccardo assumes favorite minion position.

Finally get to start engine assembly on Thursday, will be close to making Saturday deadline, but achievable. Start assembling crank. Chuck shows up, in keeping with sabotage theme, informs me we are having "engine build party". These words should never be used in conjunction. There goes any hope of this thing being done on Saturday.

Cam bearings don't fit. This is like the 5th time this has happened lately. Kobleschmidt. Get silver lines. Get the bottom end all together and crank won't spin. Ufck. Call it a night. Most likely cause...thread sealant on through bolts.

Come in next day and crack case. Front (front is front) main bearing got spun somehow. Index mark is still on it, just not lined up on case have. Dowel pin is recessed so far in hole it is as if the pin and case are one. Chuck to the rescue. Applying some 3rd grade science, some 8th grade machine shop tech, and some man sized hammer blows, the pin is successfully extricated from case, without damage to the case. Get everything cleaned back up, and reprep everything. Install new bearings from my stash at home, and get bottom end assembled
Since I won't make Saturday goal, and Chuck has a cruise to navigate, we decide some quality alone time is needed, and I take the weekend off.

Monday brings with it the start of a new week, and the promise of possibly getting my engine in this week. Taking it a little slower since I missed first goal, but I still need it in and tested before KI. Start off by getting the jugs prepped. Decided against using cylinder gaskets at bottom, and head shims at top. Should see a slight increase in compression, and there are no interference issues. We shall see. The Pistons and cylinders looked fine, were Kobleschmidts, and were reused as is. No reringing, or honing. Just a thourough cleaning, thanks Will, and some assembly lube. Got the top end done, and called it a night.

Started the next day, by adjusting valves. I'm going to miss my hydraulic lifters. After valves it was on to all the little bits and pieces. They always take up so much time. Fan is on (I painted shroud as that is the sign of a quality rebuild) as well as the majority of tin. Next up is manifolds, exhaust, air cleaner stand offs, main seal and end play. Then this bone stock puppy will be ready to go back in, after I do some prep work in engine bay.

You guys need a run stand or run adapter to run it on the stand........

Dual Port wrote:You guys need a run stand or run adapter to run it on the stand........

I mostly agree, and do want one for my type 1 endeavors at home. The problem is the Shop of Sorrows churns out mostly Type 4 and wasser boxers.

Sure we could install carbs in lieu of the fuel injection, and that would work for leak test, and break in, but you really, couldn't get the FI set up, unless you built an intricate rig, which could be done.

It's even worse with the vanagons, as you would need to add some sort of coolant recirc system, that would then have to be opened up after break in. Messy. In conjunction with a FI set up

All that being said, I would like to run it before it goes in, and it would make break in infinitely easier, but hey, the oranger booger makes a fine run stand.

The 20lb propane tank from a BBQ grill completely eliminates the need for a fuel system. You don't even need a carb, just a system to distribute the gas evenly. (A hose with holes punched into it works fine) When I had the shop we ran many engines without fuel systems like this, it's especially effective on cars towed in with bad fuel pumps and dropped in the parking lot, stick a propane hose in the air cleaner and drive the car into the bay under its own power. Total cost, zero. In the spirit of being a true cheapskate you could run a flexible natural gas line from the wall to the engine and run it on NG which would be cheaper than propane or gasoline. Both NG and propane are very high octane and engines love them.

I used to run them on the red cabinet cart, but I beefed up my engine stand so the vibration of an engine running wouldn't cause stress cracks and now run them on that. Chuckie's stand is beefy enough not to worry, all he needs is the starter setup and a propane tank. I've been using a 2.5 gallon outboard boat fuel tank but recently bought a 6 gallon tank for more extended run time. Commonly when I'm comfortable with the engine's performance I'll push it outside and let it run a long time while I'm working inside the bay.

I don't know how many wasserboxers he's doing, but there are simple ways around a cooling system too. Either a water tank or a garden hose properly set up would take the place of a complete radiator system. A garbage can filled with water would run the engine an hour. Chuckie's smart enough to set something up in a few minutes, I'm sure.

It obviously makes it nice to warm up the engine, get some hours on it, reset the valves, set the timing, adj the carb/choke if it has one, fix nuisance leaks, listen for funky knocking noises and such. It makes it nice- when you plug the motor in the bus you know you're done.

This thread is a pile of bad choices, 2nd hand parts, and a large pile of beer bottles. I also absolutely love it

Bruce,

So you can break in the engine using propane on a stand? Or is that to just test the engine?

Kooper271 wrote:Bruce,

So you can break in the engine using propane on a stand? Or is that to just test the engine?

You can run it as long as you want on propane or NG- hours, days, months. I've worked on big backup generators that run regular spark engines on NG tapped from the wall to provide electricity in case of power failures to plants. Both propane and NG are very good fuels for spark engines- like I said, high octane, low emission, very clean burning. Gasoline is a very dirty fuel because it is liquid in its normal state and must be vaporized to burn. It has only a zillionth of a second to vaporize from the instant it leaves the tip of the fuel injector until the piston comes up and fires it. This is not enough time to properly vaporize gasoline hence the poor burn that equals high hydrocarbons (pollution). Then you need air injection, catalytic convertors and all kinds of added BS hung on the engine to burn the HC (unburned fuel) that wasn't properly vaporized because it didn't have enough time to vaporize. Obviously both propane and NG are already vapor (or vaporize instantly in atmospheric pressure) so the whole vaporization thing is virtually a moot point when dealing with propane/NG.

Yes, both propane and NG are great fuels for spark engines with little adjustment needed to run properly on a stand. Now if you want to drive it you'll need a propane/NG carburetor with load control (O2 feedback or vac signal) and things get very complicated very quickly. Also in a vehicle the safety thing gets out of hand because you're dealing with a pressurized gas and the gummint goes crazy with safety regulations because of lawyers. On an engine run stand you turn the valve while it's running to find too rich and too lean, and find a happy spot in between. They can run forever like that.

I ran out of gasoline one time years ago when I was doing mobile truck repair. I grabbed my acetylene torch, stuck the hose in the air cleaner of my slant six van and drove it to the gas station on acetylene. I've also run engines on ether, carb cleaner, brake cleaner, and probably other things I can't think of to move them around in the shop. If you're working on a F700 dump with a gas engine, there's no pushing it around. If you want to be a real hillbilly, you can remove the carburetor, put a kitchen sponge on top of the intake manifold, soak it with gasoline, and run the engine that way too. I've done it.