Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:56:12 PDT
Reply-To: Sean Bartnik <bartnik@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Sean Bartnik <bartnik@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Heads installed...
Content-Type: text/plain
Hey all,
Another update on my low compression situation. You may recall that I
discovered major cracking in both heads on my '81 Vanagon with
air-cooled engine.
I wound up ordering rebuilt heads from AVP, through Bus Depot. The
heads were $179 each, with a $50 core charge each, and $30 shipping.
The total was close to $500, $100 of which will hopefully be speedily
returned when I send the cores back to AVP.
The heads came sooner than expected. I was expecting them today or
tomorrow, but they actually arrived on Friday the 24th. I went out of
town for the weekend and after getting back home yesterday, today I got
into putting the engine back together.
The heads look great, all clean with nice new valves :-)
After witnessing Steve's experience with the exhaust on his AVP heads, I
decided to trial fit the exhaust to my heads before installing. I'm
happy to say that one side immediately dropped into place and the other
side did the same with a little wiggling. So it should be pretty easy
to re-install the exhaust after engine installation.
So today I put the heads on, being careful to follow the proper
tightening sequence for the head nuts and using a torque wrench. Got
them on, then installed the air deflector tin under each set of
cylinders. After that I put the pushrod tubes in, with new Viton seals
from Ron @ Bus Depot. After that, of course, came the pushrods, then
the rocker arms and the goofy pushrod tube retainer springs. Once I got
all that good stuff in, I adjusted the valves, and found only one spongy
lifter. Hopefully I have adjusted the valves correctly. We shall see
when I try to start the engine :-) -- And I will likely adjust them
again once I let it run briefly to pump up the spongy lifter.
After that, I put the valve covers on. Then it was time to start adding
tin. I put on the over-cylinder tin on both sides, the front lower tin,
the front upper tin, and the tin that goes at the rear of the cylinder
heads. Then installed the fan housing, fan, cylinder head temp sensor
(should have done this before installing the front upper tin!), intake
manifolds, FI wiring harness (noticed that no labeling is needed, all
the harness plugs are color-coded -- green = injectors, blue = cold
start valve, brown = thermo-time switch, black = auxiliary air
regulator), cleaned up the ground connections for the FI under the air
distribution box, put on the distributor, vacuum hoses, fuel lines,
alternator, timing scale and fan grille, EGR pipe, etc etc.
So now the engine sits on the floor completely assembled and ready to
install. Not bad for 6 hours' work.
I'll keep the list posted on how it runs and compression readings.
Sean Bartnik
Fairfax, Virginia
============================
'81 Vanagon L Westfalia
'74 Karmann Ghia convertible
http://www.type2.com/bartnik/tech.htm
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