Cylinder Heads and Tyres

After another (very long) gap I have spent a few evenings working on the Beetle. In my last post I was cleaning the valves and considering getting the cylinder heads blasted to remove the carbon build up. In the end I used paint stripper to soften the carbon and then scraped it out. I had to repeat this process many times to remove the bulk of the carbon build up from the inlet ports. The following image shows the result. It's not perfect but it is definitely servicable.

I spent some time measuring the valves for wear - they seemed fine. The same cannot be said for the valve guides. The exhaust guides are well past their best and will need to be replaced. I'll do this by drilling the guide with an 8.5mm drill bit before tapping an M10 thread into them. Then I should be able to use a home grown puller to remove them - though that will be another post.

This evening I made I tyre bead breaker from three pieces of wood. This home spun tool worked fine on a wheel/tyre that had been joined since at least 1986. A couple of tyre levers ensured they finally parted company; see the following photographs.

The centre of the wheel above is supposed to be black, but the rim should be L680 Cumulus White (Kumulusweiss). There are also a few dings that need to be removed. That can wait for a future posting. However I cleaned the wheel and there was a lot more paint left than I thought.