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My First Engine build - 1500
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BIGMIKEY
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Joined: September 24, 2007
Posts: 1102
Location: North East Pennsylvania
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 1:31 pm    Post subject: My First Engine build - 1500 Reply with quote

It was late summer of 1971. I was 19 years old. I had a 1967 1500 that I had been using in my 1963 Beetle daily driver. I decided to rebuild it into a mild performance engine. I had just gotten a copy of Bill Fisher's "How to Hotrod Volkswagen Engines" and decided to add some performance to my 1500.

Now I am working from memory here and some sketchy entries from a very old notebook but here are the specifications of the engine that I built.

-1500cc. I kept the 83mm pistons and cylinders. Just honed them and new rings on the pistons.
-New main, rod and cam bearings bought from JC Whitney. As I recall the -bearings were Clevite 77 and the rings were from Grant.
-I don't remember getting a line bore.
-Cam was from Crower. I remember talking to them on the phone and buying the cam they recommended. About .350" lift and 268° duration.
-Holley 200cfm Bugspray carb
-Edelelbrock 1 1/4" tube single port intake manifold. Maybe EICO(?)
-I had the single port heads rebuilt by a local garage that worked on VW's. Nothing special.
-Distributor was centrifugal advance from an early bus engine.
-The exhaust was 4 into 1 I think a Thunderbird with a glasspack muffler.
-The flywheel was a 6 volt 200mm from a Bus.
-Some sort of HD oil pump. Probably again from JC Whitney.

I wish I could say there was a happy ending to this build but during assembly I made a mistake. I missed the dowel on a main bearing. The engine lasted maybe 1000 miles, started hard, overheated and finally spun a bearing. I don't really remember how it ran.

Looking at the parts that I used, was I way off base on the build? All these years later I still wonder how it would have run.

I would appreciate a critique.

Mike T
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BIGMIKEY

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1973 Beetle Driver, Marina Blue.
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Rome
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Joined: June 02, 2004
Posts: 9603
Location: Pearl River, NY
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:32 pm    Post subject: Re: My First Engine build - 1500 Reply with quote

Quote:
Maybe EICO(?)

That would've been IECO, Sonny Balcaen's shop in Santa Monica, CA.

Rest of the engine looks like a doable combination based on what was available at that time "from what I've read". The Bugspray was a very common first-stage upgrade.
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