LEAKOIL Forum

Bruce, you are a rock star. Keep those videos coming

Very Good Stuff. Pretty soon we can throw away our Bentley manuals (or at least leave them on the shelf more)!

Bruce, I enjoyed your videos. Hope you don't mind if I offer a suggestion: while watching the TDC vid, I was expecting to see some footage of the piston stop tool moving/stopping; for a newbie, seeing the tool in action would clarify the method. Either that, or attach a link in the video description to your COVVC Tech writeup.

ohiowesty wrote: Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:34 am while watching the TDC vid, I was expecting to see some footage of the piston stop tool moving/stopping; for a newbie, seeing the tool in action would clarify the method. Either that, or attach a link in the video description to your COVVC Tech writeup.

Will:

I'm not quite sure what your question is. Once the piston stop tool is screwed into the cylinder head, it does not move, so there would be no moving/stopping of the tool. You saw the tool in as much action as it gets, which is being screwed into the head. A still photograph would be the same from there until it is unscrewed from the head. I did do a COVVC article on this several years ago, it's linked here under "Timing is Everything, Part 1":

http://www.covvc.org/technical.htm

The only thing I forgot to mention is to make sure the piston is down when screwing the tool into the head, but virtually all the time the piston will be down as engines rarely (if ever) come to a rest near TDC because compression won't let them.

HTH,

My bad. For some reason I thought that the bolt starts lifting when the piston reaches it, and the moment the bolt moves is when you mark the pulley. I can see now that it's simpler and more accurate if the bolt is snug in the spark plug shell.

Man, this 1904 has given me a giant PITA with nuisance oil leaks. Repeated replacement of pushrod seals, fittings that didn't want to seal, head studs (like this) that leaked repeatedly, ugh. I don't think it's a crankcase pressure problem, the blowby is comparable with the 1600SP in the bus. It's just bad f'ing luck. I have dozens of hours sealing, resealing, replacing, and bitching at these leaks. That's half the reason I run it so long on the run stand, so I can work the bugs out. Usually I have 6-8 hours on the run stand, this one must have 15-20. The (desirable 36hp Beetle cast iron Bosch VJR 4 BR8) distributor was junk, too, with wicked spark scatter so I had to change that out after putting $40 worth of points/cond etc in it. The service manual says you don't have to seal the head studs (but I always have) and on this one I had to do it twice. For some reason the High Tack I've always used didn't stick to the aluminum (WTF?) and I had to redo it again with Permatex #2 which is like toothpaste. It took three times with the pushrod tubes, too, the oil pump had to come back out because it leaked, and there was an oil galley plug that took about 5 times to seal. I have NEVER had a VW (or any engine!) give me this much grief. I've been chasing oil leaks since April 12. Here the big head stud leak is circled but the center studs are also leaking and dripping onto the PRTs, almost impossible to see, and this is after using High Tack on the stud washers and nuts, and replacing the PRT seals three times. Ugh..........


I'm using a VDO oil temp gauge and sender, but compared to a Fluke it reads about 25° higher than the Fluke. The Fluke seems dead on at room temp/body temps.

Here the Fluke reads 196,
And the VDO reads 220ish with both tips of the senders in the sump about 3" apart.

The carb seemed too rich and the float level was a bit high.

A thicker gasket under the needle/seat fixed that.

Yesterday it was finally out with the 1600SP. I thought I'd have to remove the bumper, but it was not in the way at all.


In with the 1904. Thunk! I love that sound.


Here it is, all done, about 3 hours after pulling the bus in. Yes, I know I need to dust, that's not my strong suit.


I put about 80 miles on it between yesterday and today, mostly on the highway at 65-70mph. It runs great and not a drop of leakage, not even seepage!

Looks great, even with the dust.

I was looking forward to seeing this in Vermilion last nite.

Yes, it's running well and I planned to be there but we got a late dinner invitation tied to Pat's birthday that changed my plans.

And the weather looked great......

Exhaust is mostly stock- gutted muffler, stock resonator pipe but not the tiny tailpipe.
For that I clamped an Ammurrican chromie to it. It's no louder than stock,
but breathes well! You can hear it, but it's not loud or throaty at all. I temporarily mounted an oil temp gauge in the hole where the clock was. Has over 300 miles on it, runs great! I think the carb is dripping on a hot soak so that has to be addressed, no biggie. Displacement is 20% larger than stock but feels like 40-50% more power with the cam. On a stock engine if you give it 10% throttle or 100% throttle there's very little difference. On this one there's a big difference.