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Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:04 am

I posted up my recently acquired '72 bay window a couple of weeks back. Well I took it for a drive the other day and it drove really well. I got it home and parked it. Later that day my wife and I went to get some supplies in it...and I get about a mile from my house and it starts knocking and it shut off when I came to a stop sign. We canceled that supply trip and headed back home...barely.

Once I got home there was oil specks all over the back. I checked the oil and there was a tiny drop at the end of the stick (Oil was good the day before) come to find out there was a major oil leak, obviously. The next day I took the valve covers off and lo and behold the head nut is laying in the case and the other nut is finger tight...mystery solved. Either the PO didn't torque the head bolts down correctly....or they just came undone? Just glad I didn't end up with a blown engine :oops:

Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:24 am

SkyDawgVW wrote: Just glad I didn't end up with a blown engine :oops:

Yes, let's hope!

Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:03 pm

Sounds like your PO just threw a bunch of parts together and called it an engine. Don't be surprised to find that a whole lot more stupid things have been done to it. The nuts for the case halves on my first bus engine had been tightened with a chisel leaving the bearings loose in the case, they moved around and beat up the case and I was looking for a new engine within a few thousand miles.

Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:43 pm

Wildthings wrote: Sounds like your PO just threw a bunch of parts together and called it an engine. Don't be surprised to find that a whole lot more stupid things have been done to it. The nuts for the case halves on my first bus engine had been tightened with a chisel leaving the bearings loose in the case, they moved around and beat up the case and I was looking for a new engine within a few thousand miles.

What? Did the PO eat their breakfast with a hammer or something?

The motor on my beetle was the ultimate Franken-VW monster. Its case halves were mismatched. i mean totally. One half had the drillings for a moustache bar. The stud sizes were different on both sides, it had a smaller carb fitted with an adapter and a type 3 distributor. The heat risers had also been cut off with a hacksaw, oh and the rusty set of T'birds had been welded to the heat exchangers. I still got ...oh I don't know probably 100,000+km out of that engine. It was my daily driver for a couple of years so that seems a fair estimate.

Thu Apr 19, 2012 7:26 pm

Quote: Sounds like your PO just threw a bunch of parts together and called it an engine. Don't be surprised to find that a whole lot more stupid things have been done to it. The nuts for the case halves on my first bus engine had been tightened with a chisel leaving the bearings loose in the case, they moved around and beat up the case and I was looking for a new engine within a few thousand miles.
:roll:
That may or may not be case......just glad it wasn't a blown seal or gasket somewhere...or even an entire blown engine....still have to take the type1 engine that is in it out to torque them down the correct way :cry:

Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:12 pm

SkyDawgVW wrote: .just glad it wasn't a blown seal or gasket somewhere...
You might wish it was that simple.

So now we find out you don't have the engine your bus came with but rather a T-1 (bug) engine. What is the engine case number? A good chance you have pulled case/cylinder studs. that can happen from overheating. And particularly if your case has 10mm studs. they pull from the case. later t-1's had 8mm which just stretch and give without damage when the engines expands.
I'd assume you have a bigger deal to work with than just tightening a couple nuts. Minimum might be an engine pull since that's needed to do the top row of head nuts. Get your service manual out to see the process of torquing the head nuts. And you can't just throw a wrench on the top ones since they are crudded or rusted up. They need to come apart, get loosened up to be able to torque them again.

Oil issue doesn't sound good. If you have a couple pulled studs there will probably be more than an oil loss problem. Sealing surfaces between cylinders and head might be damaged if it was run loose. A guess might be a top end rebuild is in order.

Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:27 pm

post a photo of your engine.

Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:16 pm

I am the PO of this 1972 Bay Window Bus. That being said this bus (Larry) was my daily driver for 2 ½ years. SkyDawg and I spoke extensively about the trade, sending emails, pictures AND several videos of both vehicles. As far as Larry goes, the engine that came with the bus when I got it was reinstalled correctly by me, (as I had installed a bigger displacement T1 engine that was not to be part of the trade). Larry was test driven under normal driving conditions for 70-100 miles over the course of several days. There were no indications requiring the head to be re-torqued, or engine being overhauled, i.e.
•deep popping sound at initial startup (or as John Muir describes as “Thor hammering around in your engine”)
•Low compression readings
•Lack of power under load while driving
•severe oil leaks/oil consumption

The comments about the PO (me) sound somewhat sideways. Is that the case? Because, I can deal with my mechanical ability being challenged to some extent. However, it is troubling to think that my integrity is perhaps being questioned

Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:29 pm

shanester wrote: The comments about the PO (me) sound somewhat sideways. Is that the case? Because, I can deal with my mechanical ability being challenged to some extent. However, it is troubling to think that my integrity is perhaps being questioned

Many a PO has done something stupid to their bus, and it is easy to talk in generalities about a PO. Don't take it personally.

Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:17 pm

Gotta ask did you build the motor, shanester ?

Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:51 pm

Tcash wrote: Gotta ask did you build the motor, shanester ?

No, I did not build the engine. I purchased the bus with it and did a "new to me" inspection and tune up then, replaced intake, carb, dizzy and exhaust. Drove the bus for 2 1/2 years doing normal maintanance. When i put it in the for the trade it had been out for about three months on my work bench, and i never did anything else to it. the only reason I pulled it was to run a built 2054cc. I wanted to see the difference in the bus with a performance engine and then decided to do the trade, so put the stockie back in and gave it a basic tune up.(oil,plugs,points,valve adjustment, cap and rotor).

Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:03 pm

Hi again shanester, so the PO of the engine did not torque the heads correctly. That's not on you. Those PO's

Sat Apr 21, 2012 11:11 pm

Tcash wrote: Hi again shanester, so the PO of the engine did not torque the heads correctly. That's not on you. Those PO's

In this big ol' world, the buyer is the now the responsible agent. As such, when a weird symptom like this comes up, consider it only as an opportunity to go in deep so you can build your own basic trust of the engine. I bought a used bus in October with an engine that was "restored" by "professionals" that I did not trust in the slightest just as a matter of personal skepticism. Good thing too. My mood was not ruined by the three engine pulls in two weeks to get to know the engine a lot better than I thought I was going to have to. So you had head nuts falling off, that tells me you pull the engine and check as much as you can lay your hands on. I had a perfect engine, running perfectly, real shiny too, and I did not even know that it was killing itself. The exhaust valves were too small, an oversight that I will never ever never understand.
. . . but I trust this engine a lot more now that I have been in it. So, get there, get in, do good work, build trust.
Colin

Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:55 am

This post was not to point fingers at who to blame for the head bolts coming undone. I just wanted to get an idea of how it happened and what I should do about it. I drove the bus almost every day for 2 weeks before this happened...so it's all a mystery to me of how it happened and why it happened then :?

Yes, it is a upright engine. First letters on it are "AE" indicating it is a 72/73 dual port. Here is a picture of it as requested.

Wed Apr 25, 2012 1:13 pm

SkyDawgVW wrote: Yes, it is a upright engine. First letters on it are "AE" indicating it is a 72/73 dual port.
An AE/bus engine was '71 only. An AE/bug engine was '71 and '72. After all these years the only thing AE identifies is the engine case. The bus case has the 3 bus mounting holes at the rear of the engine. The bug AE doesn't.
What that means to you is the AE has the 10 mm head studs. It's the 10's that pull out of the case. Good possibility that's what has happened to yours. Over heating and countless cycles of hot cool expand contract will do that. AE's didn't use case savers but thats a retrofit that all rebuilds should have. It slows down the pulled stud problem.

Sun Jun 24, 2012 9:23 pm

UPDATE: Finally got around to dropping the engine. Bad news..engine was poorly put together (by whoever put it together)..after dropping the engine I discovered that the fan shroud wasn't even lying on the engine correctly...more like one side was down and the other was sitting up around an inch. A/C aluminum tape was used to keep the vent on the rear of fan shroud intact...which it wasn't intact and of course like I said a head bolt was found finger tight and another was found lying in the case.

So...thankfully I have another upright engine that is correctly built that will be put in.

Sun Jun 24, 2012 9:34 pm

SkyDawgVW wrote: So...thankfully I have another upright engine that is correctly built that will be put in.

Please listen to me whether you like ole Steve or not. If you will be driving VW buses any distance and ENJOY the experience - you must learn how to build an engine right yourself. Trusting others to build your engine is a disaster waiting to happen these days. We are here when you decide to redo those engines correctly in which case when you are done you will KNOW they are together correctly and not "thankfully" it is built right.

Sun Jun 24, 2012 10:06 pm

SGKent wrote: SkyDawgVW wrote: So...thankfully I have another upright engine that is correctly built that will be put in.

Please listen to me whether you like ole Steve or not. If you will be driving VW buses any distance and ENJOY the experience - you must learn how to build an engine right yourself. Trusting others to build your engine is a disaster waiting to happen these days. We are here when you decide to redo those engines correctly in which case when you are done you will KNOW they are together correctly and not "thankfully" it is built right.

x2

im still waiting to get mine back

Mon Jun 25, 2012 12:06 am

SGKent wrote: SkyDawgVW wrote: So...thankfully I have another upright engine that is correctly built that will be put in.

Please listen to me whether you like ole Steve or not. If you will be driving VW buses any distance and ENJOY the experience - you must learn how to build an engine right yourself. Trusting others to build your engine is a disaster waiting to happen these days. We are here when you decide to redo those engines correctly in which case when you are done you will KNOW they are together correctly and not "thankfully" it is built right.

Unless of course your completely new to Air-Cooled engines... then building your first could be just as disasterous. One would be best spending time hanging around with someone who knows what they're doing before trying to tackle the job on their own with no experience whatsoever.