LEAKOIL Forum

Sean's decided to join the real world and ditch the 40hp in favor of a 1600SP. He'll now be able to get on the highway...….

It starts with a new Brazilian case, I've used these before and they're well worth the money. You don't have to line bore/thrust cut/lifter sleeve/deck cut/soda blast/clean and otherwise mess with a German case and they have upgrades like shuffle pins, case savers and an added oil drain for the flywheel seal, so now I don't have to drill a drain hole. I have this same case in the 2180 in Bus 1. Bus 2 has a NOS German case in it.They are thicker aluminum vs thinner magnesium which adds about 16lbs but that's no big deal.

A fully trimmed engine is about 240 lbs. The reason I have a scale like this is for my cutaway diesel engines with a 3000lb limit, I know it's accurate because if I hang on the cable it shows my weight, 220lbs.
Sean provided low mileage crank/rods/pistons/jugs/heads so I'll check each of those closely before it goes together. The crank mikes out really well, #4 journal is .0005" undersize but that's not going to concern me. No out of round, also. I don't have a lathe so I used a drill to spin the crank and polish it with 1000 grit, it looks really nice. I cleaned it thoroughly with solvent and a galley brush. The new case mikes out dead on both in size and out of round on all bores. After polishing and cleaning, the gears and bearings go on. I heat the gears with a lamp to about 250 or so on a halogen lamp. These things are so dangerous (because of heat) I can't believe we used them for so long. This is the only reason I keep it around, the gears slide right on when heated. Everything else I use these days is LED. It's getting the same cheater cam I run in my busses, the CB 2280. Oddly the specs are "almost" the same as mine. I polished the journals well on it too, because my 2180 showed wear on the cam bearings after only a few thousand miles with a new cam. You could see/feel the difference after polishing.

Everything went pretty smoothly for the first mockup, the crank set in, cam gear backlash was spot on, and I checked clearance to the CB Maxi Pump because usually there's a clearance problem there. In previous engines the cam bolts hit the pump body, on this one they did not but clearance was under .010". I ground the heads of the bolts slightly for clearance and torqued them with red Loctite. This is just mockup, not final assembly, I bolt the cam and crank in to make sure everything spins freely. I only use motor oil for lube on the bearings as that's how I was taught as a kid and that's what many mfrs state. Thicker lube can actually work against you on assembly, plus if you have a snug bearing you won't feel it with a heavy lube. I'll pre-lube the engine thoroughly through the filter flange before it's started. With oil the assembly spins as free as a bird, several revolutions when I spin it. Now it will come apart, rods and lifters will go in and seal up the case flanges. Oddly in the hardware kit I got doubles of a lot of things but no cam plug or bearing dowels. I have plenty of those. Earlier Brazilian cases used a straight cam plug, now they're cutting them for an OEG style plug.

OK, the dry run went great, let's do the real deal. I miked everything and it was great but Plastigage tells the real tale. It's a thin plastic thread that's bolted in between the bearing and the crank and how much it "squishes" out tells what the clearance is. The rods were all right on target, between .0015 and .002" Short block went together perfect and spun as free as a bird. Sean's pistons were shit so I dug up a set of matching slugs that weighed less than one gram apart. Spec is 10 grams. Soda blasted and looked great. The jugs were perfect- no measurable out of round, a quick ball hone and good to go. Wall clearance was within spec and end gap was right on at .015" The heads came and looked good, chambers measured 53cc. It's not often you see something made in USA. C/R came out to 7.44 which is right on target.

Together and air checked all four, and it spins free.

A true thing of beauty.

I didn't even know there was a thread on this!

Can you imagine if I put this together?

Can I put a 28 PCI carb on this engine?

Looking great!

Picked up the longblock from Bruce on Friday. I really can't say enough about Bruce's attention to detail on this little project. He exceeded my expectations. Bruce kept my costs down, but still managed to do those little detail things that make an engine build right. He even sourced (at low cost) a few parts I didn't have. I'll get to "dressing" it up over the next month, then get it back to Bruces's shop for a hot start.

Disclaimer- those are his old valve covers and gaskets just used to keep dust and critters out. I do not goop red RTV on VC gaskets like that!

And I'll offer my own disclaimer. Those weren't covers I used. They were from an old motor I picked up to grab parts off of. But this gives me a chance to post my favorite disclaimer cartoon.

Been cleaning up old original tin for a doghouse set up, but thought I'd post this up about the oil filler set up. I'm going alternator, so I got the kit to go to an alternator stand. I've got an old set up with breather pipe (for lack of a better term) but I've got to remove it from the old stand. I remember Josh did a McGiver move with some old copper pipe (I think it was copper) once to get this style mount off. I think some of the later set ups came with a socket type set up for install and removal. This looks like it needs something like a giant screwdriver. Maybe a scraper, putty knife or chisel would work.

It looks like the alternator stand is a lot thinner so I'm going to assume there are some clearance issues that won't let me just bolt on the old set up. Did VW make a specific tool for this? Not a lot on the samba on the specific tool.

Kind of hard to see in the last pic, but the alt stand is certainly a lot thinner.