Engines that miraculously still ran, but shouldn't have

[subhuman]

[jbbugs]

I saw a GEX engine that was running.
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Drag bus! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2MOVmKdhX4

69 OG paint Transporter
73' Super Beetle Champcar Endurance Roadracer
Patina my ass, that's a Rust Bucket!

[Emeraldlion]

[jpaull]

Bought a "Rebuilt" 1600. Engine had very low oil pressure and some light knocking. My only car and needed to get to work till the weekend so I Put straight 60 weight oil in it and ran it. When i pulled it that weekend found it had a crank that was .20 under but the "rebuilder" put in standard bearings.
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[email protected] MPH 1/4 Mile & 8.1 @ 83.7MPH in 1/8 Mile with Mild Type 1 VW Mag Case 2234cc commuter engine in stock weight bug w/only .491 total lift(CB2292 Cam), 42x37 heads, 48idf's, Street tires, Belt on, Mufflers, Pump gas, video of the run here: https://youtu.be/M3SPqMOKAOg

Transmission by MCMScott:
Rhino case, Klinkenberg 4.12, Superdiff, 002 mainshaft with 091 first idler. Weddle 1.48 Third & 1.14 Fourth.

[fivelugshortaxle]

1835 I built in college. Bought all the parts. Assemblem without measuring anything..just bolted it all together. Stuck on the kads and synced and tuned by ear....set timing by ear....motor ran strong and never leaked a drop of oil.....sold it after about 50,000 miles and it was still going strong. Miraculous because I could barely change oil jn a car let alone build a motor for the first time.
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Good things come to those who wait.
2332 with lots of goodies....
Rotating assembly balanced by Brothers VW
4340 84mm crank
AA 94mm p&c' s
Total seal 2nd ring, rest are Grants
5.5 h beams
Magnum straight cuts
Steve Long XR310 on a 106
CB 1.4 rockers
CB Magnaspark 2 distributor
NGK D7ea plugs
A1 lowdown 1 3/4 with single muffler
Dellorto 48's with 40 venturies
Kennedy Stage 2 with Daiken disc

[consvws]

still ran, but wasn't going to last much longer

[eashc]

I live in a apartment building and once seen a bug engine no deck lid on without the cylinder tins on it. When I asked how does it run, he gives me a dirty look and says none of my business. Probably why I never seen it running

[Florida73SB]

[Vanapplebomb]

[I Ride Sand]

I bought an engine for my very first sandrail, it was a 1659 dual port. Yes, a 1659 because it had two 88's and two 87's and the best part was the two 88's had been cut down .050 while the 87's were stock length. the guy who threw it together had one of each cylinder on either side of the engine, so both heads were not sealing on any cylinders. I threw the thing on my first rail and couldnt figure out why it ran like crap, until i saw the smoke coming from under the cylinders. so i pulled it apart, found the cylinder issue, and took hem to our family machine shop. i cut the short ones down another .005 to clean them up and cut down the others to match. i threw the thing back together and tried to turn it over by hand, and had a very solid clunk stopping the engine 180 degrees apart. pulled it back apart to find pistons had a negative deck, and were hitting the heads. so i just bought some .040 spacers and threw them under the cylinders. now the oil rings were riding over a very bad ridge on the bottom of the cylinder, and every time they went across them it pushed a little oil past the compression rings. so i ran it. THEN after all of this, i took it out to the west desert, threw a fan belt and by the time i noticed, the engine was so hot you could hear the oil boiling in the heads. so we made a fan belt out of a piece of spair fuel line i forgot to take off the rail, used a rusty coat hanger we found to hook the ends of the line together, and then ran it all the way home. after that i bought a set of AA 87 pistons and cylinders, and ran the same heads without even pulling a valve. no idea what happened to that engine after i sold it, but it still ran pretty darn good!

[Vanapplebomb]

I'm amazed the engine even sealed well enough to be able to run at all. Seams like that would put a ton of stress on the heads when torqued if the sealing surfaces were out by 0.050in. I'm surprised it sealed well the second time around once the cylinders were evened out.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[BIGMIKEY]

It was the summer of 1971. I was 18. I had a 1963 VW Beetle that I got cheap because it had been rolled and the engine knocked. Probably from being run upside down? Don't know. Anyway I was not knowledgeable enough to save it and it spun a bearing fairly quickly. There was a local guy that had a lot of VW's and I bought a used 40 horse engine from him. It came out of a bug that had been rear ended. I was able to replace the smashed parts with parts from my blown engine and ended up with a running 40 horse motor. The only issue was one of the oil cooler ears was broken off so the cooler was held on with only 2 bolts. Somehow through imaginative use of epoxy and sealant and ,honest to god, a short section of a McDonalds drinking straw, I ended up with a usable engine that didn't leak excessively. Shouldn't have worked but it did. I whaled the heck out of that engine all summer pulling it and re sealing as needed when it started to leak too much. Later that summer that same VW guy came up with a 1500 from a 1967 bug that had an engine fire. It burned bad enough to melt the fuel pump and carburetor right off the engine. I bought it brought it home. I swapped all the parts it was missing from the leaky 40 horse and got it to run. It leaked oil like a sieve and wouldn't rev past 2000 rpm. It was suggested to me by a knowledgeable friend that the valve springs might have gotten hot enough to lose their temper. So I swapped in the 40 horse springs. That fixed that problem and it ran better. During that work I discovered all the case bolts were loose. So I torqued them down and the massive oil leaks mostly stopped. I remember tearing that engine down every day after work in my parents driveway to fix the latest issues. After a while, and with the advice of a lot of people I had it running well enough. I recall it lasted me for the rest of the summer and fall and was reasonably reliable.
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BIGMIKEY

Deserter Series 1 project.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=787047&highlight=

1973 Beetle Driver, Marina Blue.

[LivinInnaVWBus]

In my VW knowledge infancy, I had a 73' thing, 67' beetle and a heavy foot. Both my girlfriend at the time and I drove them as fast as they would go with no concern to temperatures, or oil weight at that. 20w50 VR-1 in both.
If I recall, the thing would go around 92mph and I had the 67's speedo pegged on a daily basis 60 miles to work.
One time the gf ran the thing clean out of oil, literally, no oil driving home from dropping me off at work. Luckily the thick oil caused so much of an oil leak, I carried a case with me at all times. She filled the engine, started it up and drove home.
There were a few times when we got off the highway and the engine just shut down from overheating, we both chalked it up to the infamous vapor lock