Three out of Four

Yesterday I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of engine work. I set about the cylinders with my rubber mallet. The first to yield to my combination of hammering, heating and hernia inducing pulling was good old cylinder number 1. I then moved onto number 3, which looked the worst, but it slipped off with surprising ease (which is why I flew across the garage in a slapstick manner). Here's a picture of me working on cylinder number 4:

This cylinder turned out to be quite sticky. Initially the piston lifted with the cylinder which means the engine has officially turned for the first time in 27 years! A nice side effect of this was that number 2 cylinder also lifted itself out of the case (as pistons 2 & 4 mirror each others movement). Finally, after about 40 mins (careful) hammering number 3 popped off. I spent a short while trying to move cylinder number 2 but it wouldn't shift and my hands were too tired for a concerted effort. So I sprayed loads of penetrant into the cylinder and called it a day. Here is how I left things:

Off With Her Heads!

The weather was appalling on Saturday so I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours continuing the engine strip down. I started by moving the right hand side cylinder head (as John Muir would say "right is right" - it's all relative to when you're sitting in the driving seat). All that this entails is slowly loosening eight nuts in a defined order to prevent distorting the head. Once the nuts are off the cylinder head just slides off leaving the cylinders in place. Here's the cylinder head covering cylinders 2 & 1.

And the same cylinder head from the other side - showing the combustion chambers for cylinders 2 & 1. On initial inspection this head appears crack free which should mean that the addition of hardened exhaust seats and new valves/springs is all that will be needed.

This next picture shows cylinders  2 & 1 after the removal of the head. As you can see there is a lot of carbon in there, but the bores feel quite smooth with no noticable lip. However the state of these is academic and I'll be replacing all the cylinders and pistons during the rebuild.

I then proceeded to remove the other cylinder head. This time some encouragement was needed from a rubber faced mallet before the head started to move. Note: that you shouldn't hit the fins as they are fragile and may simply break off. I directed my blows to the point where the exhaust manifolds attached and also where the pushrod tubes meet the head. Here is a picture of cylinders 3 & 4.

Here is a close up of combustion chamber number 4 - complete with the spark plug I have so far failed to remove.

And finally here is a shot of combustion chamber number 3.

Next time I'll be removing the cylinders/pistons and perhaps even splitting the case...

Engine Work

The first job in this installment was to remove the pulley from the crankshaft. This was reluctant to budge with man power alone. Luckily I had a puller that fitted perfectly so five minutes and the pulley was off. This allowed me to remove the final two screws from the tinware, take it off and place it carefully on the "to be cleaned" pile. I then unbolted the oiler cooler, lifted it off and threw it onto the "to be discarded" pile.

The third job was to remove the cylinder heads. Before I did this I had another go at removing the spark plugs as I think the chance of damaging the actual head is less when everything is bolted together. After applying a frightening about of torque two of the spark plugs yielded but the other two are still stuck fast. I decided to press on regardless. This is one of the rocker covers...

As you can see they are slightly the worse for wear. These parts are astoundingly cheap so I have decided just to add the old ones to the "to be discarded" pile too. Though before adding them to the pile I may have to put a bio-hazard sticker on them first - this is how they look on the inside. More joilly!

And here is what the rocker shaft, etc looked like.

Only two nuts hold the rocker shaft in place. These need to be removed gradually as some of the valve springs are under compression - about a quarter of a turn at a time is fine.

Once the rocker shaft is off the pushrods just lift straight out. Apparently they are all the same and so there is no reason to remember their order (but I did anyway). It's important that they are straight though - I'll check this by rolling them on a suitably flat surface after I've cleaned them.

I then cleaned the bulk of the joilly out of the cylinder heads so I can see the cylinder head bolts (eight for each head). Here's what I was left with - dare I say, "I did a joilly good job".

In the next installment I'll be removing the cylinder heads and perhaps the cylinders/pistons.

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

The final four exhaust manifold nuts yielded to the might of the blow torch. Each nut took about 2 minutes of heating - until it glowed a dull red - then they moved with almost no effort at all. So all nuts removed without a single mangled or broken stud. One less thing to do.

The next task was to remove the heat exchangers and the exhaust. The former items being compression fitted to the latter. Despite spending a couple of hours with a hammer I couldn't split them apart. So last night I decided to sacrifice the the exhaust (as it was the cheapest) and cut through its pipes. Thus freeing the engine from its final ancillaries.

I then set about the engine casing with my tin of gunk. Engine cleaning is a hideously messy business but the first pass was somewhat successful (see below). Getting into the various nooks and crannies is going to be quite hard, but I think it will be worth the effort as it will make finding case damage easier and also reduce the risk of contamination during the strip down.

Nothing to see here, move along

While it's true there is nothing to see, it doesn't mean that I have failed to make progress (apologies for the double negative) - it simply means I've been too lazy to take the camera with me into the garage.

At the time of my last post my tinware removal effort had been hampered by four particularly sticky screws. After much soaking in WD-40 one of these yielded with the help of my mole wrench. The other three still refused to budge and so I dug out the blow lamp. I wish I'd done that earlier as each screw only took about 30 seconds of heat before turning with very little effort.

The next task was to remove the exhaust system. This entails removing four pairs of bolts - one pair per cylinder. Three of the rear bolts (rear is relative to how the engine is mounted in the car)  came out with virtually no effort - once some heat had been applied by my new best friend, the blow torch. The third rear bolt still took very little effort, but it was the stud that unscrewed rather than the bolt.

The four front bolts have proved to be much more problematic. Even with the application of loads of heat the neither the bolts, or the studs to which they are attached, have moved an inch. I don't want to use too much pressure as that could snap the studs. On my next attempt I think I will carefully heat the case instead of the nut in the hope of releasing the studs as they will need to be replaced.

One in the Eye for Gravity.

My brother in law Bob kindly came round tonight to help me lift the engine while Fiona removed the dolly and then pushed in the stand - thirty seconds and it was done. I was delighted that the engine stand doohickey held. Here is the proof:

Last night I removed the inlet manifold (though I sheared two hotspot bolts in the process). This meant that tonight I could attempt to take off the last of the tinware. Using a combination of a large screw driver and a mole wrench I managed to loosen all but four screws. These stubborn individuals are responsible for holding the two halves of tinware together at the front of the engine (i.e. the flywheel end). They have been soaked regularly in WD-40 but to no avail. I did some delving and discovered that in the wonderful world of penetrating oils (probably more of an island than a whole world) that WD-40 is not considered the best. In fact in one test it seems that nothing could a 50/50 mix of acetone and ATF (automatic transmission fluid). I'll make some up and report back later...

Temporarily flummoxed by the tinware I decided to turn my attention to the engine oil. As I said in an earlier post, in the 27 years the car had been sitting the oil had turned to jelly. This jelly - or joilly as I like to call it - was too thick to come out the engine's drain plug. However removing the oil sieve left an orifice large enough for even joilly to flop through. Here it is collecting in a basin. Lovely. When I have collected enough I will see if a spoon will stand up in it or not...
 

Impending Progress

Since my last post there hasn't been much actual progress, but a few small steps have been made in the right direction. In my last post I'd sorted out how to mount the engine to the engine stand mount (officially it's called a yoke but I can't decide how to spell it... yoke, yolk?). However before the engine could be attached it was necessary to remove the flywheel. To do this it was necessary to use a four foot scaffold tube (thanks to Cathie and Bob) as a cheater bar and also use a similarly lengthed piece of angle iron bolted to the flywheel to prevent it rotating. Even with all that leverage it still took a lot of effort to get the gland nut to turn. A few minutes of flywheel jiggling later saw it successfully removed and added to the ever increasing "to be cleaned" pile.

The next task was attaching the mount/yoke/thingummy. This was simply a matter of bolting the arms on to the engine casing (using the washers I'd made earlier) and then tightening everything up. The stand came with four arms but I could only use three due to their length - this should be fine as it seems most people use a two armed doohickey (and in fact I'll drop to two when I need to split the case). Here's the result of all my work:

All I need now are a few helpers to lift the engine onto the stand.

The other outstanding (no pun intended) task was to remove the seized wheel drum. Patience at an end I attacked it with my hack saw. After a couple of hours work I had excised two sections leaving me enough room to dismantle and remove the internals, i.e. brake cylinder, shoes, springs and spacers.

 

The internals have now been thoroughly soaked in WD-40 - though just attacking what's left with the hack saw is looking quite tempting.

An Evening of Metalwork

Today I took delivery of all the high tensile nuts, bolts and washers needed to connect the engine to the engine stand's generic yoke. While on the topic of hardware I'd recommend Parker Tools - they sell nuts bolts etc individually at very reasonable prices.

The aforementioned delivery included four 50mm x 50mm square washers (3mm thick). The idea was to modify these washers to closely fit the circular flange on the engine casing in an attempt to transfer the load to where it is designed to be. Here is one of the modified washers next to the original.

And here is a picture showing all four washers in situ.

This is a low cost attempt to simulate the proprietary VW engine yokes. Time will tell whether or not this plan works. However before I can find out I need to remove the flywheel because the arms of the generic yoke foul its teeth.

I managed to get hold of a 1 metre long bit of angle iron to act as a lever (see the previous posting on my last attempt). Unfortunately, even though the lever and socket were up to the job I was not. I just couldn't get the gland nut to budge. More leverage is required... a bit of scaffold pole perhaps. I feel a phone call to my sister coming on (as her house is currently surrounded by scaffolding).

The Engine Strip Down Begins

I started stripping down the engine yesterday - or more precisely started removing things from the engine in preparation for its strip down.

The first item off was the clutch - six bolts removed evenly to prevent distortion. Next the flywheel. This is held on with a nut tightened to around 220 lb foot so it is necessary to prevent the flywheel turning. Using the nut at the other end of the crankshaft isn't an option as the forces involved would likely damage the crankshaft. I decided to use a big lever between two of the clutch bolts - pictured below.

Unfortunately this lever was not up to the job and bent - and so did all the other levers I had to hand. So this job was shelved until a stronger bit of metal can be found.

The carburettor was next off in preparation for removing the fan housing. The latter has a control rod running from the thermostat on the bottom of the engine. This control rod needs to be disconnected before the fan housing can be lifted. In future I'll know to remove the thermostat when the engine is still in the car because removing it once the engine is out, but still not on a stand, is a bit awkward. This is how engine looked once the fan housing was off (the tower block in the foreground is the oil cooler).

Next the fuel pump and dynamo pedestal were removed. The pedestal is also used as the oil filler and it was completely full of gunk - as can be seen from this picture of the underlying gasket.

Its clear from this picture that I won't be able to avoid splitting the crankcase as the whole case will need to be cleared of such gunk and rebuilt. Of course the easy option would be to continue removing the ancillaries and buy a replacement engine (with lead free heads). I'm in two minds...

Engine Out

Rather than continuing the saga of the seized brake drum I decided to do something more useful, namely remove the engine.

I'd read up on the removal procedure many times, so it didn't take long to do all the preparation:

• Remove the boot (or is it bonnet) and the hinge supports.
• Disconnect engine wiring.
• Remove the tinware from the rear of the engine.
• Remove the air cleaner.
• Detach the throttle cable from the carb.
• Detach the heater pipes running to the cabin.
• No need to detach the heater cables as those had rusted away to nothing.
• Cut and bung the fuel line.

Here is a picture of the engine bay, post preparation:

So all that remained to do was remove the four nuts holding the engine in place and pull it out. And amazingly it was that simple - although there was a slight delay as I didn't have a suitable bit of wood to support the engine during jacking.

A little bit of jiggling and the engine was sitting on the floor. Then I had to embark upon a bit of jacking to lift the car high enough to slide the engine out. The first lift brought the car up high enough to rest on elevated axle stands. Then the jack itself was raised on to wood and bricks so it could get the car high enough. As you can see it needs to be pretty high!

After sliding the engine out, I lowered the car and, with the help of my brother in law, lifted the engine onto a dolly. Now, when the seized drum has defeated me, I have a long list of other jobs I can get on with. It's going to be a busy year...

The Wonders of Soap!

The combination of heat and my new slide hammer failed to yield results on the seized drum. So I applied another load of WD-40 to the offending article and then needed to find something else to do while it soaked in. I decided a bit of cleaning would be just the thing.

Spending 27 years sitting in a unheated brick garage in Scotland had taken its toll on the car's interior (though I'm pretty sure the previous 16 years sitting out in the rain didn't help either). Although mainly complete and intact (only one small hole found so far) the build up of dirt and mildew was quite impressive. However as the door cards, seats and sun visors are covered with vinyl I was quite optimistic they'd scrub up well.

So I set about the least dirty door card with a big bar of Imperial Leather in one hand and a small brush in the other. Several hours later I'd cleaned both door cards plus the sides and backs of the front seats. According to the owners manual the bit you sit on isn't suitable for cleaning with water - a foam cleaner is needed. Here's the before shot of the drivers door card. Yes I agree it should have had a bio-hazard sticker (it tasted terrible).

You should probably put your shades on for the after shot.

I've said it once, but I'm going to say it again, "The Wonders of Soap!".

Slightly Cleaner

My daughter and I gave the car a quick wipe to remove the all the dust from the bodywork. After that I set about removing the seized brake drum (again!). Despite tightening up the puller as far as I could it still didn't move. So I've left the puller on and every day I'm dousing liberally with WD40. Still no progress...

I used this waiting time to run a vacuum cleaner through the interior. There were an astonishing number of cadbury's dairy milk wrappers in there (from the days when they only cost 35p) and the odd cream egg foil. So the previous owner had a sweet tooth.

I then set about the windows with a razor blade removing all the old sellotape. Normally this wouldn't take long, but for some reason this car had had several rolls worth applied over its lifetime - mainly on the front and rear windscreens. As you can see it looks much better.

Of course, cleaning is just busy work. I'll be happier when the drum is off and I can get down to some proper work.

"Dog" Mobile

Thanks to my wife, daughter, sister, brother in law and my parents the beetle has made the short trip from its long term resting place to my garage. This should mean I can nip out to work on her whenever I please - though that is no guarantee of rapid progress.

The plan for moving the car was simple:

1. Remove the boat from above the car - to allow headroom for jacking.
2. Jack the car and insert the dolly under the seized rear wheel.
3. Push/drag the car backwards to allow access to the front of the car.
4. Either keep pushing or jack and insert more dollies - depending on whether the front wheels turn or not.

Amazingly everything went pretty much to plan. The heavy rain didn't help - but at least the car didn't dissolve before our eyes. Cleaning the windows before setting off probably would have helped my sister see where she was going (as she was the driver). The small dolly wheels struggled with any obstacle higher than 1cm, so hardboard was used to smooth the way. But other than that everything went very smoothly! And here she is in her new home:

Wheel Spin

I finally managed to find a couple of hours to work on the beetle. The plan was to put the rear of the car onto the dollies to make it mobile-ish.

The first step was to put the wheels back on. So I popped on the driver's side drum and wheel. It was very nice to see the wheel spinning free for the first time in 27 years! I then put the wheel back onto the, still seized, passenger side drum.

All that remainded was to jack the car a little higher and slide the dollies in. It was at this point I discovered that my aged trolley jack didn't go high enough. So I spent the next thirty minutes putting together a 3" platform for the jack to sit on. However I didn't get a chance to test it out because rain stopped proceedings.

Hello Dolly!

It's a great film (despite Michael Crawford's terrible accent and singing) but it's also a great way of moving an immobile car around. Pictured below is half of my dolly collection:

The Beetle is currently languishing in a garage where there is barely a foot of working space on either side and that just simply isn't enough for the scale of work required. Therefore with the help of the aforementioned dollies I should be able to man handle her into my more spacious garage.

For the record, I'm choosing to ignore the "not for use on sloped surfaces (such as driveways)" warning that is prominent on the instructions. I think the slopes involved are minor enough to ignore. I mean what possible risk can a 840kg shopping trolley pose...