Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 17:31:54 -0600
Reply-To: Al and Sue Brase <albeeee@MCHSI.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Al and Sue Brase <albeeee@MCHSI.COM>
Subject: Re: OEM heads are useless?
In-Reply-To: <003d01c60e5e$aa934250$2f01a8c0@FirstLaptop>
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I rebuilt my 87 engine in January of 1998 at 88,000 miles. The heads
had pretty bad pitting. I just glass beaded the pits and filled them
with JB Weld. I made a couple of mistakes in the engine:
1. I don't know why, but the cam bearing has severe wear on the flanges,
resulting in lots of end play on the cam and a rattling noise. It has
been doing this a long time. I don't know how bad it can get before the
oil pump has problems. That would be a bad surprise!
2. I didn't use much or any (I can't remember) gasket sealer on the head
gaskets. I DID use the yellow stuff on the head nuts.
Immediately after this it had slight gas bubbles in the expansion tank.
I retorqued the heads 3 times in the first year. And ultimately it
stopped leaking combustion gas.
In 2000, I took it on a couple of real long trips. 4500 miles in 5 days
on one. It pulled the mountains in Tennesee really well. On one trip I
had the speedo needle at 100. Many times it has been at 95. (Still crazy
after all these years.)
In short, it has been used hard and put away wet.
The other day, I decided to replace it with another engine I have. The
clutch was slipping (tranny seal leaking), and the heads were beginning
to drip quite a bit of anti freeze.. And besides, I had this non-leaking
engine, just sitting around.!
So, this makes nearly 8 years and 65,000 miles for my patch job. If it
weren't for the cam bearing problem, the engien would still be in there.
I agree, the AMC heads are better stuff. BUT, the valves are worse.
Better would be AMC heads with OE VW valves, sodium colled exhausts.
IMHO, best would be a Subaru EJ22 or EJ25 (or 33 if you crave speed).
Doing a patch job worked quite well for me. Material fatigue? Not mine,
but I never overheated it badly or repeatedly.
If you do get AMC's, I'd recommend you get them from Bob Donalds or some
other automotive machinist who can get the valve thing right. It is a
small price to pay considering all the work it is to put new heads on!
Al Brase
Zoltan wrote:
>Hi guys,
>The other day I spoke to a respectable source and was told that the original OEM heads are practically useless, because they crack when installed again more often than not and thus effectively makes one to avoid them for reuse. They reached their life span and now they have material fatigue. AMC is the way to go, I was told.
>I was wondering if my little bubbles or the steam out of the exhaust is not caused by the badly sealing cylinder gasket and a retightening would just fix it.
>Now, as a discussion, I am throwing this into the fire here and would like to know what the other knowledgables would say of this problem.
>I was also thinking if I would be able to fix the surface where the gasket goes, by remachining it and this way fixing the suspected leak.
>Please write down your thoughts on this if you have any.
>Regards and Happy New Year for all from Zoltan
>
>
>
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