69 Bay Engine tear-down after overheating.

[CaptainKingsmill]

Thank you for the information on the asbestos looking material, most appreciated. I think i'm going to pull it out.
Now i know that it's for sound insulation, I think I can replace that with something a little more appealing to look at.

[SGKent]

that is pretty normal . Use the wiring diagram(s) in the technical section to check each connection one at a time. If the connector is corroded replace it with the correct style brass ones. It will take a couple hours and you can dress the wires when you are done. Use a volt meter on higher amperage things to find any bad grounds etc and you be dollars and time ahead.
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“Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” - George Carlin

[busdaddy]

That has to be a new record for use of oversized fuses
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[Xevin]

[CaptainKingsmill]

PLEA FOR HELP!

Hey all.

I've got a fairly big update on this to come, HOWEVER I have a bit of a desperate plea if anyone can help!
It seems I've sent the oil cooler mounting block back with the old block.

we are in the process of rebuilding the engine as i type this, however this obviously has stopped us!
Does anyone know of someone, in the west midlands in the UK that would have this part TODAY?!
They would be an absolute life saver.

Obviously, I know this is a super long shot!!! but its worth a try!!

Thanks!

[CaptainKingsmill]

As promised, a big update!

Betty the bus is back!

Okay, it's been a long couple of weeks.
As anyone who reads the last post can see, we hit a bit of a snag when we initially started the rebuild last weekend.

I got in touch with the company who exchanged my old block, and they very kindly sent me my mounting bracket back, They even shot blasted and refurbished it for me!

We were delayed by a week while the part was returned to me, but that did give me some opportunity to tackle some other problems.

Sexy new engine!

New heat exchangers - Not having heat exchangers (as well as not blocking the air outlets) was highlighted as a possible cause of the over heating!

Task 1. Wiring.

Being an electrician, it wasn't too much of an issue to get hold of the right sort of wires, and crimps.

You can see from my previous photo just how much of a mess the wiring was.

I ended up removing a lot of the cables because they simply didn't seem to be doing anything, either not connected to anything, or seemed to be doubled up
I was quite nervous that I was missing something.
I also discovered why my interior lights didn't work...the cables had been cut. (obviously)

One of the issues was poor cable management. cables twisting and looping around each other, cables unnecessarily long. and surplus ground wires EVERYWHERE!!

The biggest issue was poor joints, almost certainly the reason the ignition was popping a 25A fuse, there were 3 cuts just between the ignition switch and the fuses, plus badly corroded connections on the starter motor.

As you can see, I've rationalised the cables where possible (please ignore that 1 black cable running across, I've rerouted that too now ), renewed all cables from the back of the bus including the cables to the starter.

Quite the task replacing the loom under the bus, I can tell you!

However, with the wiring complete, Betty showed her first sign of life again as I hooked up the battery to test her, it seemed that the cabled i removed were indeed redundant

Next task was cleaning out the engine bay.
First a before and after!
Before

After!

You can see in the above photo, there is a gap between the wheel arch and the body work.
I'm not sure how this gap exists, but it was allowing grime and water into the engine bay from the road, which was less than ideal, I've filled this gap, and sealed it from the under side so the bay is now sealed properly.

A fair few hours work went into the engine bay. 50 or so years of grime built up on the walls took a lot of de-greaser and some elbow grease to get rid of.
Where needed it was sanded back and a rust inhibitor added.

Rust inhibitor

the entire bay was then primed, painted and a clear lacquer added to long term protection.

Next, the warped and unsightly sound deadening shown at the top of this photo

a double layer of insulating foam was put in instead.

After searching around this forum for a few finishing options for the top of the engine bay i stumbled across this post, by VWBUS998
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=288082&start=0

I loved it, thought it looked great, so i set about recreating my own.

Measuring up, possibly the most difficult aspect was deciding the hole size and the distance between them..

I'm lieing.... by far the most difficult and time consuming was drilling 600 pilot holes followed by drilling all 600 again at full size!
Pilot holes

Full size holes - drilled outside on a rare sunny day in england

Finished central panel

The engine tray looks as though it has had a tough life.

Like new!

Finally around to this weekend just gone, My friend once again made the 1.5hr drive to come help me.
We were on the home straight,
We replaced the accelerator cable, and the 2 heater control cables.
For some unknown reason, someone at some point decided when they removed the heat exchangers, rather than just leave the control cables alone, they cut them!!
The accelerator cable was also held together with an electrical block connector which was a disaster waiting to happen!!

Finally with all ancillaries ready, we set about getting Betty's new heart installed.
This is where we hit our final (serious) problem...The heat exchangers don't fit!
It took us a while to realise that we had but them on backwards...
This sounds like a silly mistake, however the bug exhaust that has been put on means that the heat exchangers do not fit on the correct side, but do coincidentally fit on backwards.
Since this was the only way they fit, we installed them wrong.

For now, I've put the J-tubes back on to get her up and runnning, however I have a stock exhaust on order!

We did encounter one slightly more embarrassing problem, for about an hour after everything was finished, we couldn't start the bus and couldn't figure out why.
The van was turning over perfectly, but refused to start!
We checked the dizzy, the tuning, the sparks.... All working fine.
We came to the conclusion that it must be a mixture problem
When we removed the carb, we plugged it with rubber gloves to help try and prevent it from drying out.
however, when we reinstalled the air filter on top of the carb.... we forgot to remove the gloves! absolutely no air would have been getting into the carb

After removing the blockage, she started first time and is purring.
To be honest, she sounds a lot better than she ever did, which leads me to believe the last engine had problems for a while.
There is a significant reduction in sound, part of which would be down to my new sound deadening, but I suspect the engine is running much smoother in general.
it also sounds far less 'rattley' than it did before, which is good!

A Final shot of the new engine in its sparkly new home!

Just the heat exchangers to finish when the parts come!

Thanks for reading!
Happy to answer any questions

[Westfalia73]

No questions, just wanted to say great job, it looks very well done and extremely tidy.
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1973 tintop westfalia weekender.
1973 beetle.
1981 Brazilian baywindow kombi.

[wcfvw69]

Wow, you did a nice job cleaning up that engine bay. What a tremendous improvement in the appearance!

Now, just some thoughts here. Your nice new engine is wearing lots of "economy" third world made parts. The fan shroud, carb, distributor, fuel pump, etc. I'd imagine the rest of the engine tin, etc.

You'd be well off to source original German VW made engine tin and install it over that aftermarket tin. The original cylinder tin has air diverters in it to direct the air to the right spots on the heads. The original fan shroud has diverters in it as well. Are your running the flaps inside the fan shroud and the thermostat? They are also important. The flaps direct the airflow when the thermostat opens up. The thermostat also helps the engine warm up correctly.

You have a big miss match of carb and distributor. I'd imagine it has some off idle hesitations or flat spots when you drive it. Sourcing a restored German Solex 34-3 and matching German Bosch vacuum assisted distributor would make it run and drive SO much better.

I'm not trying to be critical but rather, offering advice so you can get maximum life from your new engine and more pleasure in driving it.
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[GBear29]

[Spike0180]

[CaptainKingsmill]

[wcfvw69]

[Abscate]

[TDCTDI]

The engine bay looks great! One question, in one of the pics, it looks as if you used an additional piece of board to fill out the corners of the engine bay, make sure that you haven’t blocked fresh air flow from the vents & also make sure that there isn’t enough overhang so that rain entering the fresh air intakes can’t saturate the boards.

And, where is your spare tire well? Never mind, I guess yours isn’t a walkthrough.
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Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[CaptainKingsmill]

[CaptainKingsmill]

[wcfvw69]