Crankcase Split

A couple of posts ago I'd removed the oil pump from the crankcase. This was the last step before splitting the crankcase. I removed all the fasteners - there were many...

The bottom of this picture is the back of the engine (pulley) and the top is the front (flywheel). The small fasteners around the edge make the case oil tight and the six bolts in the middle ensure the crankshaft is secure.

I had the engine attached to my stand with three bolts - two in the left hand side and one in the right hand side. Before splitting the case the right hand side bolt was removed. I was pleased that the whole engine didn't fall on the ground at this point.

Next I worked round the case lightly hammering on a piece of wood to try and get the right hand case moving. Initially the only gap that appeared was at the old cooler. There was no sign of movement at the flywheel end at all. I noticed went round the seam removing any signs of sealant and sprayed liberally with WD40. I repeated the this hammering and spraying cycle a couple of times a few days apart - by which time the flywheel seam had opened about 0.5mm. Today I did the same again and the WD40 had clearly done its job as the right hand case came off almost immediately. The following photographs show each half.

The crankshaft and camshaft should simply lift out of the left hand case. Then I need to remove the oil pressure relief value and start the cleaning process. The plan is to start on the right hand side by scraping out the bulk of the joilly before bathing the case in solvent (probably white spirit as it's reasonably cheap). I'll then repeat as often as necessary and blow compressed air through the oil channels. Then repeat on the other side. In my future I see many trips to the dump with cans full of an unpleasant smelling black liquid.

Carburettor Rebuild

The carburettor rebuild was pretty straight forward. I didn't remove either throttle as they both moved easily. However I did spend a lot of time withe carburettor cleaner removing all the black deposits that had built up over the years - as shown on the following images.

The final photograph shows all the rust and sediment that had collected in the float chamber. This was actually quite difficult to shift, I had to resort to scraping it off with a screwdriver. Another area that was particularly cruddy was the chamber the accelerator diaphragm covers. It looked like some sort of reaction had taken place but after a bit of scraping it turned out to be much worse than it looked. Importantly the sealing surface was smooth and so I don't think it will leak fuel (though only time will tell). 

After thoroughly cleaning everything I checked that all the channels and tubes were clear using compressed air. Then I put everything back together with new diaphragms, gaskets etc. The following shots show the final result - not gleaming but quite acceptable.

Carburettor Cleaning and More Joilly

Due to my summer holiday and the Glasgow Fair I have not got round to taking the axle shaft in for machining. Instead I have busied myself with some of the loose ends (of which there are many). The Solex 30 PICT-2 carburettor has been sitting in a sealed black back since it was removed from the engine. Last night I decided to clean the gunk that had accumulated on it over the past 45 years. The shots below show before and after the first pass of cleaning (using a toothbrush and some solvent).

Before 

After first clean

I was surprised at how easily the bulk of the grim came off. There are, of course, many pockets of dirt remaining but I'll probably deal with those during the strip-down.

Tonight I decided to return to dismantling the engine. It has been sitting under a blue sheet for many months and I was pleased to see it was still under there when I looked (and without any resident mice). The oil pump had been the stumbling block when I last worked on the engine. I had failed to prise it out of the case due to the lack of leverage (due to an absence of lugs or overhangs on the pump itself).

Although the case cannot be split with the oil pump in place (as the pump forms a bridge between four studs - two in one half of the case and two in the other half) I decided to loosen all the case fasteners to reduce the clamping effect on the pump. There are a large number of fasteners - though I didn't count them. They come in two sizes. There are small nuts (on a combination of studs and bolts) around the edge of the cases - presumably to keep everything oil tight. On the right side there are six large nuts on long studs - I assume these deal with the engine forces. Once I had loosened all these fasteners the oil pump did show some signs of movement and after 5 minutes jiggling with my bare hands the pump was free. The image below shows the rather unpleasant site inside the case.

Jolly Joilly

The pump doesn't look too bad, but I will need to read up on how to test its serviceability. Here's a picture of it and its sheen of joilly - clearly all that shines is not gold...

Back of the oil pump

The Right Tool

At the end of my last post all that was standing between me an the removal of the axle shaft was a rather large circlip. I had probably wasted about 45 minutes trying to extract it using a cheap set of circlip pliers. I am now the proud owner of  a better pair of circlip pliers - namely the Knipex 44 11 J3 (pictured below).

 It turns out these were the right tool for the job. Extracting the problematic circlip took all of fifteen seconds (and ten of those were spent getting myself into the correct position). Here is the the proof...

Next time I'll be reporting on whether or not the axle shaft could be machined for a reasonable amount of money or whether I needed to splash out for a new one.

Hitting Rewind

After many months of sitting on my thumbs I finally did some more work on the Beetle. At the time of the last posting I had failed to fit the brake drum and had decided to either replace the axle shaft (or have the existing one machined).

So axle shaft removal was the order of the day. My worry was that the wheel bearing I had previously hammered into place would be impossible to remove. I also wanted to avoid damaging the new wheel bearing (see Doing the Unstuck). Therefore the plan was to use the puller on the axle tube to remove the bearing.

The first task was to remove the three bolts that held the axle tube to the spring plate. The top two bolts came off relatively easily. However the lower bolt would not move at all. In the end I had to resort to the hack saw.

Next there are six bolts which hold the suspension tube to the gearbox. All six loosened with ease but three of them were taking their stud with them. Of course "sods law" applied and so the lowest bolt was one of these and the stud fouled the lower chassis leg which meant it could not be removed. The fix for this was to put the jack under the gearbox, remove the two massive bolts that held it in place and carefully raise the gearbox by about 1cm. Once this had been done the lowest stud had just enough room to be removed. I then spend 15 mins removing the three problematic bolts from their studs (this is done by tightening two bolts together on the stud and then using that and a couple of spanners to loosen the offending bolt) before cleaning the studs and screwing them back into the gearbox.

Next, the bearing housing and brake back plate were removed - leaving the outer spacer and bearing visible. The puller was then used (behind the bearing housing) to draw the suspension tube away from the gearbox complete with bearing and both inner and outer spacers. Once it had been drawn a few inches everything was loose enough to remove by hand.

The image above shows the suspension tube in situ after the bearing and spacers had been removed. Here's a shot of the removed suspension tube:

This is how things look after the suspension tube had been removed - only the axle shaft remains:

The final task was to remove the axle shaft which was "only" held in place by a large circlip. It can be seen more clearly in the next picture. It's a bit of a monster and I did not have a pair of pliers that were up to the job. I purchased a cheap 10" circlip plier set (Clarke CHT686) but they were not strong enough and warped under the load (they did bounce back to the correct shape though - so they may well come in handy for other, less strenuous, jobs later). Anyway, here's a picture of my current nemesis...

Back Pedalling

In my last post I said the next task was fitting the brake shoes and drums. This is a simple matter of attaching the handbrake level to the rear shoe and then joining it to the front shoe with a spacer and spring. Here's what you're left with:

This is then attached to the backplate by sliding it onto the brake cylinder (from below), and placing the bottom into the adjusters. The shoes are then secured using the retaining springs. Finally the lower return spring is attached before hooking the handbrake cable to the handbrake level. Once this has been done, your brakes should look like this:

The drum can then be offered up to the shaft and bolted in place (though the bolt cannot be tightened fully until the wheels are fitted and back on terra firma). Looks nice doesn't it:

So that's the drivers side finished. Unfortunately the passenger side didn't go quite so smoothly... The drum only went this far on using my rubber mallet.

At this point I had two choices. The first was to spend the next twenty minutes hammer the drum home with the certain knowledge that future access to the brake shoes etc was going to be very hard/impossible (see my earlier posts). My second option was to remove the offending axle shaft and either have it machined to the correct diameter or to replace it with a new one (which presumably would have the correct diameter). Being naturally cautious I have gone for the second option.

Rear Brakes (Almost) On

It has rained a lot in Scotland this year. In fact I think it has been raining more or less permanently since my last post. I know it is no excuse for not working on a garaged Beetle project... but it is the excuse I have decided to use and I will stick to it. However I am immediately going to contradict my chosen excuse when I point out that today, despite the rain, I headed out to the garage to fit the rear brakes.

On the passenger side the brake cylinder was bolted to the backplate as was the handbrake cable. Then on both sides the brake "star" adjusters were fitted. These where a much tighter fit than I expected - however with a bit of jiggling and tapping they seated correctly and still turned without the need for excessive force. The bolts were then coated with copper ease before being screwed all the way into the "star" adjusters. This is what I was left with:

I spent the rest of my two hour stint cleaning up the old spacers and handbrake arm in preparation for fitting to the new brake shoes. The next job will be to fit the new shoes and the new brake drums! The final job on the rear axle will then be to fit the new rubber gaiters and replace the oil.