Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 07:03:49 -0500
Reply-To: wilden1@JUNO.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stan Wilder <wilden1@JUNO.COM>
Subject: The Misadventures of Vanagon Stan. Long, Long
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The Misadventures of Vanagon Stan.
Early in 1985 I purchased my first Westy. It was an 83 Air Cooled.
An old time friend went with me to take a look at the Westy and give me a
few pointers on VW’s. After some general conversation he warned me
against Waser Boxers and after a quick trip around the block and down the
freeway I purchased the Air Cooled Westy.
I wasn't carrying around a big wad of cash so I left him a check for a
deposit and told him I'd be back in about three days with the balance of
the purchase price.
Right from the get go I'D had problems with valve noise and hard
starting.
I had purchased a Hayes manual and was reading every word with great
interest hoping I'd not see the phrase dropped valve seat in the sentence
I was reading.
Ultimately I gave up on adjusting my troubles away and pulled one of the
heads to find out that most of the seats were loose.
I took the head to a friend in the Aircraft cylinder business and he
welded up the head and restored it to like new condition.
After slaving through about three days of “First Time Big Repair” on the
Westy I cranked it up. Well for sure guys the opposite head just dropped
out a seat.
After pulling the head I went back to my friend that had repaired the
last head and he recommended a new head.
I located sources for the head and got it ordered. Price excepted I was
pleased.
I installed the new head and meticulously followed the Hayes manual to
the “T” to be sure it was installed right in every way.
What Hayes failed to mention was that:
AMCs don't use head gaskets and that you can't run one AMC and one VW
head on opposite sides of the engine. The fact that the deck height
needed to be reset with base shims was also excluded. I sorted through
this by pulling the heads a couple of times.
I'm back on the road again.
Screwed up engine but she’s running pretty decent until about six months
later I'm running 85 miles an hour against a head wind being pushed by a
big dodge duly pickup truck about three feet off my rear bumper.
I know the engine is straining and I know I’m straining just to find a
way to get that fool off my ass so I can slow down to my usual 65 –70
mph.
Too late. I’m looking through the rear view mirror at a Dodge hood
ornament in the center of my rear window and I see a good supply of
engine oil spotting the rear glass. The duly has backed off about this
time (I wet him down real good with 3 quarts of 20/50 wt.) and I pull off
at the next exit ramp that is immediate.
With the engine running I walk around the back of the Westy and view a
well lubricated bumper and rear hatch and notice the smoke of burning oil
coming from the muffler.
By the time I get back to the vehicle central control console the oil
light is flickering and I turn off the engine.
After checking the oil (what oil?) and finding none in the crankcase I
get into my emergency stores and add a quart. Well, I get it to touch the
dipstick and continue adding oil until it is once again to the full mark.
Glad I was carrying enough oil for an oil change.
I restart the engine and it seems to run OK, I drive it about thirty feet
and get out, lay under it to see If I can see any oil drips …………. I sure
can. Its just pouring out the valve covers.
There isn’t much I can do except drive a little more or call a wrecker
and since I’m 250 miles from home I choose to drive a few more miles to
see if I can find a few quarts of engine oil. I get a case of oil and by
chance the Auto Parts store had a set of valve cover gaskets.
I installed the gaskets, gluing both sides of the gaskets and taking a
thirty-minute break to let the Permatex Silicone High Temperature Sealer
do its work.
I’m driving on the service roads at about 35 mph by now and I make it
home by adding a quart of oil every 35 miles.
The engine teardown was a gruesome mess until I just laid everything
aside and cleaned everything I could get to with Gunk engine cleaner and
let it dry before repeating the process again.
With the driver side head off I found #3 piston had two broken rings, a
scored cylinder but the head appeared to be un damaged.
I installed a set of Mahle Cylinders and Pistons on the engine and was
back on the road again.
Since the oil had been self changing for the last 250 miles I opted not
to change the oil with the cylinder installation because I knew it would
need to be changed very soon as the cylinders wore in.
I ran a decent break-in on the engine for about 200 miles and changed the
oil, filter and cleaned the strainer.
I found a True-Arc clip in the strainer so I pulled the engine down again
knowing that one of the wrist pins was eating one of my cylinders. Guess
what guys; it was an old clip that had sprung its way into the crankcase
when I was removing the old pistons.
While into the engine this time I installed a new set of rod bearings and
preloaded the lifters with a hand operated press.
In the last moments of cleaning up the engine and myself before
attempting the first restart I thought to myself; “that was an
interesting 14 hours”.
Several years passed without any events until the engine started back
firing and became very hard to start. I’ll shorten this and just say that
one of the clips that hold the lifters together evaporated and a lifter
disassembled itself causing me about three days of list queries and
frustration. This event caused me to start at the front of the van and
test everything associated with fuel, ignition or mechanical until I
finally decided that I had a dead lifter. Expecting to find a collapsed
lifter I found the disassembled lifter.
To get the dates set, it is now January 2001 and I’m in my sixth year
still running the some old mismatched heads.
After checking the compression on the engine I decided that I had beaten
the old engine enough and I started collecting all of the parts necessary
to rebuild my engine. I had nursed this engine a full 140,000 miles with
my TLC and about eight hundred dollars in parts.
Before I got around to rebuilding my engine I used my parts collection to
build an engine for a friend.
After installing the rebuilt engine in his Vanagon the engine would not
turn over with the starter. I invested several days of queries to the
list before I discovered on my own (after removing the engine) that if
you remove an A/C pulley from behind the fan, you must either put it back
or use a spacer because the fan locks against the fan shroud.
After re-installing the rebuilt engine in his Vanagon I was absolutely
astounded at the performance of the new engine. The whole rebuild process
had cost only about a thousand dollars and taken only three days. I
immediately started acquiring parts to rebuild my engine.
It took about three months of getting the wrong oil pump three times,
getting shorted on gaskets in kits for me to get my engine rebuilt. By
this time I was fairly well educated on rebuilding the Type IV engine and
had acquired several more manuals that are more complete than Hayes but
still have gaping holes in them for trouble shooting and basic tips in
the rebuild process.
What Bentley, Hayes, Muir and Tom Wilson tell you is wonderful but what
they don’t tell you is disastrous.
Stan Wilder
83 Air Cooled Westfalia
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