2.0L Engine Rebuild Saga

[VWLover77]

It’s been over two years since I embarked on my engine rebuild journey, and it’s still not at an end. I figured I’d share a summary of the joys and sorrows to-date. (’78 Westfalia, 2.0L Type IV, hydraulic lifters, L-Jet fuel injection)

In October 2019, I learned my engine would have to come apart because one of the hydraulic lifters was being eaten by its cam lobe. The valve and lifter kept losing their adjustment, and when I tried to remove the lifter, I found that it had mushroomed and would not come out of its bore. The lifter finally wore down so far that a hole developed on the lifter face into the oil reservoir. It didn’t lift anymore after that. Upon engine disassembly, cracks in the cylinder heads and a fractured #1 main bearing were also found. Wow, time for a fresh start.

My goal was to build a bone-stock replacement engine that would be as smooth, quiet, and powerful as the factory original.
One of the best things I did was to contact the founder of our local VW Bus group “LEAKOIL”. He was able to supply an engine case suitable for rebuilding and provided the connection to George at European Motorworks in Hawthorne, California for the machining services and many of the parts.

The first misadventure was shipment of the engine case from Ohio to California. Although it was very carefully packed, the oil breather section of the case was broken off when it arrived. Luckily, the shipment insurance paid for another align-bored engine case that George had available. (European Motorworks is one of the very few shops that can align-bore a Type IV engine case.)

By the end of January, 2020, I had everything except the cylinder heads available to start assembling the engine, using the Tom Wilson book “How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen Air-Cooled Engine” for guidance. I took my time and was very careful to make sure everything was done correctly during the build (or so I thought!). After much debate about the heads, the decision was made to bite the bullet and go with the “Blueprint Special” stock heads from Len Hoffman in Georgia.

Finally, on May 18, 2020, the rebuilt engine came to life! It was indeed smooth, quiet, and powerful……for the first 200 miles.

Then, a strange intermittent knocking noise started. Thanks to this site, excessive camshaft endplay was quickly identified as the probable cause. I pulled the engine, removed the oil pump, and found the endplay at 0.010” versus the wear limit of 0.006”. Unfortunately, the Wilson book makes no mention of checking camshaft endplay. I then remembered that the camshaft was a snug fit into the thrust bearing during assembly. That snug fit should have been a warning, but I was too much of a “newbie” to know it. Without the proper endplay (and therefore lubrication), the camshaft quickly “ate” the thrust bearing. (There’s more to this story that we’ll get to later.) I bought new cam bearings, split the case open, and reassembled everything– this time making sure that the thrust bearing endplay was correct.


Link


On July 3, 2020, the Bus was back on the road again….. for two days.

On July 4, 2020, I started the Bus, backed out of my driveway, and headed down the street. After no more than a few hundred feet, the engine died and would not restart. Glancing in the side mirrors, I saw smoke billowing from the engine air intakes. I rushed out and opened the engine compartment. FIRE!!! I ran to the passenger side, opened the sliding door, grabbed the fire extinguisher in front of the rear seat, and was luckily able to put the fire out in short order.

Of course, I was happy to have had a fire extinguisher available that did its job, but it was unfortunately a dry chemical unit. That dry chemical is a nightmare. It sticks to everything and immediately begins corroding any bare metal it contacts. I didn’t pull the engine to clean everything up, but I should have. In the end, all the engine tin and almost everything else that bolts to the engine had to come off to clean out the chemical. The replacement fire extinguisher is a Halotron unit that leaves no residue. Never again!

The fire was caused because I missed tightening the fuel line hose clamp on the left side of the cold start valve for the fuel injection. This is located right next to the distributor. Apparently, fuel leaked (or sprayed) out and was ignited by the normal arcing inside the distributor cap. The fact that I was using 5/16” ID fuel injection hoses instead of the correct 7mm ID lines was also to blame. Lesson learned!

The items destroyed by the fire included the fuel injection wiring harness, heater booster fan, distributor cap, rotor, spark plug wires, rubber fuel lines, fan guard, oil pressure sender, various vacuum hoses, and the insulating panels on the “ceiling” of the engine compartment. I made an insurance claim and Chubb Insurance was great to work with. They paid for a brand-new Kyle FI wiring harness, all the other parts, and included a payment for labor hours even though I would be doing the repairs myself. That funded the purchase of 4 new Hankook Vantra tires!

On July 26, 2020, the Bus was back on the road…. for the third time.

The next few hundred miles were mostly uneventful. However, the cold engine sounded somewhat like a diesel when accelerating. Once it warmed up, the noise went away. It seemed that the brand new Mahle pistons were slapping in their brand new Mahle cylinders. Sigh. I wondered whether something should be done about that until the oil was changed on September 26, 2020. That’s when a piece of a piston ring was found in the sump plate. OK, I guess this engine is getting pulled out again! At least this time the case did not need to be split open, only the heads, pistons, and cylinders removed. The piece of piston ring belonged to the wavy center spacer between the two oil control rings on one of the pistons.
Another newbie mistake. Apparently, I broke this piece off when installing the piston in its cylinder and it took this long to escape and find its way to the oil sump.

I also wanted to address the piston slap issue. The brand new Mahle pistons had significantly shorter skirts than the old Mahle pistons they replaced. So, I had the new Mahle cylinders honed, installed new Hastings rings on the old Mahle pistons, and put the engine back together again.

On October 24, 2020, the Bus was back on the road again. The engine had logged around 900 miles since its original installation back in May.

235 miles later, on November 14, 2020, disaster struck. The engine seized after driving less than a mile. While trying to start the seized engine, the solenoid jammed and would not disengage the starter from the flywheel. This ruined the battery and starter.

Yet another newbie mistake. It took several phone calls and email photo exchanges with George at European Motorworks to finally convince me, but yes, when I put the case halves back together after repairing the camshaft bearing issue, the #3 main bearing was not properly seated on its dowel pin. I pinched the bearing. How it survived for 900 miles is a mystery, but it did.

So, out the engine came again, and of course this time it had to be completely disassembled. I measured the bearing seats in the case and found that the #3 bearing seat was distorted, no doubt due to the pinched bearing. George indicated that the case should be align bored again, and since he did not want me to have a case with bearing seats two sizes larger, he provided another case that had only been aligned bored once.

In the end, George cleaned up the #3 crankshaft journal and shipped me a replacement case. My only cost was the shipping to send the damaged case and crank to him.

Since there had been camshaft endplay issues before, it was checked while disassembling the engine, and sure enough, it was starting to open up again. I wasn’t sure why this was happening, but it convinced me to use a double-thrust camshaft bearing setup when the engine went back together.

In January, 2021, the work to reassemble the engine began. But I just couldn’t get the double-thrust cam bearing setup to work. The camshaft would always bind up at some point it its rotation. Further investigation finally determined that there was 0.003” of axial runout on the thrust faces of the aftermarket camshaft. This is nearly all the allowable endplay for the camshaft. This runout, combined with other imperfections in the case and bearings, was causing the binding. I also suspected that this runout was acting like a hammer or cutter when the camshaft was spinning in the running engine, causing the thrust bearing to wear prematurely and opening up the endplay.

For comparison, the thrust face runout on the old OE VW camshaft (with ruined lobes) was checked. It had none. I spoke to George about this and he checked the runout on all of the aftermarket cam blanks he had available at his shop. All showed similar levels of runout.


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I took the aftermarket cam to a local machine shop and asked them to clean up the thrust faces. They were warned that only a small amount of stock could be removed, or the resulting endplay would be too large. They missed that last part apparently, because the cam had 0.010” of endplay after they were finished. WAAAY too much. It’s now sitting on a shelf, waiting for the day that someone decides to make oversized camshaft thrust bearings. I think it will turn to rust before that happens.

The only option left was to go with a reground OE VW camshaft, which George was able to supply, but it didn’t arrive until early May of 2021. A new cam also meant new lifters, so those were ordered as well.

The reground camshaft had virtually no thrust runout, as expected, and rotated freely with the double-thrust bearing setup. The engine was reassembled with all new bearings and lifters, and on June 16, 2021 it was installed in the Bus, along with a new starter and starter bushing, and a new battery.

Unfortunately, after the camshaft break-in run of the engine, I found a large puddle of oil on the garage floor, dripping out between the engine and transmission. Out came the engine again. One of the large threaded oil gallery plugs was not sealing properly, and appeared to be backing itself out. It was resealed and threaded in much more tightly in the hope that this would stem the tide. Back into the Bus the engine went, and there it has stayed since then, logging nearly 3,000 miles as of Dec 6, 2021.

The engine has actually been running very well since then, but not without issues.

Although I used a new gasket and sealant during assembly, there is a minor oil leak from the oil pump at the engine case mating point (not the oil pump cover, surprisingly). There is also still a minor oil leak at the flywheel end. This leak seems to be fouling the clutch as it’s now chattering slightly when starting from rest. Whether the leak is still from that gallery plug or some other source is unknown.

Most concerning is the clacking noise that I’ve been unable to identify. It’s been there from the start of this engine build. It sounds valvetrain related, but also heavier than that. It’s there regardless of engine temperature. Pulling individual spark plug wires makes no difference.

I’m planning to pull the engine again this winter to address the oil leaks. I’m wondering if I need to go deeper to seek out the source of the noise. The oil will be changed soon, and the sump plate and the oil itself will be carefully examined for signs of metal debris, maybe from whatever is making the noise.

The saga continues…..


Link

_________________
Don

1978 Westy
1971 Super Beetle Convertible


"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - J.R.R. Tolkien

[Jetfxr69]

holy shit dude! i would have torched that thing if all of that had happened to me, and shit never goes my way. i applaud your perseverance. you are obviously not prone to road rage or quick fisticuffs. both solid traits. hope things go a bit smoother for you going forward.
_________________
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. Zappa

‘77 westy Seamus
‘76 tintop Crusher
‘77 westy The Judge
‘72 tintop bastard westy Hudson

[RalphWiggam]

[cmonSTART]

It's really hard to tell from a video - so many variables with how sound is captured. It doesn't sound super scary to me - a bit cam/lifter/clattery I guess but honestly mine is a bit too. Have you measured your oil pressure with a gauge?
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'78 Bus 2.0FI
de K1IGS

[timvw7476]

never seen a hydro lifter opened up like that.
nice job bouncing back.
I would start with the noise, seems slight.
I would look into removing the fan belt, then removing the fan itself & listening, just to remove the alternator or something fouling the blower fan as the cause.
Running the engine for a moment or two without cooling will help as far as isolating that sound.

Even pulling the plugs & rotating it through with a ratchet several times would help.

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[VWLover77]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

well, that wipes out theory #1 which was a loose cam gear. i had one once where it sounded like a diesel at idle, bring it off idle and it was whisper quiet.

the rivets were barely loose too.

are the rods and pistons installed in the correct orientation?

how's the side play on the rocker shafts? they can sound like hammers to hell too
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[Abscate]

I gotta give OP Props with a Capital P for Perseverance.
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.ssS!

[TrollFromDownBelow]

Don,

Your tale of woe is what sealed my decision (followed you on FB) to have someone else assemble my engine. I used Richard Sedoris located in Youngstown, OH. to handle machining and assembly of the long block (I disassembled the engine and brought him all of the new parts). He did phenomenal work. Have about 2k miles on the rebuild at this point, really no issues.
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1976 Westy (aka Tripod)
2.0 liter FI solid lifters
212k miles

[SGKent]

https://www.ratwell.com/technical/EngineSounds.html

https://ratwell.com/mirror/Muir/Muir.html
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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

[airschooled]

[VWLover77]

[VWLover77]

I think this saga may finally be over. I lived with the funny knocking noise through last summer (2022), logging only a few thousand miles on the engine.

I tore it down AGAIN over this past winter to figure out what was going on.

Long story short, I came to the conclusion that the counterweighted GEX crankshaft that I've been using (and that was in the engine when I bought the Bus in 2005) is distorted axially, probably when the counterweights were welded on. I was seeing evidence of this on every build with endplay measurements that varied by 0.0015"-0.002" depending on the rotational position of the crank, but I was too stupid to realize how serious a problem this could be - until now.

This crank was reground by European Motorworks back in 2020, and no issues were identified at that time. I think because of the way cranks are chucked on centers for regrind, and because the thrust surfaces are not usually checked or touched, it was never discovered. (I also paid to have it balanced.... Ugh!)

Using a case half and a small segment of a #1 main bearing, I rigged up a way to measure axial runout on the nose of the crank and the thrust surface that rides up against the #1 bearing flange and came to the conclusion that the crank looks something like the drawing below.

Through the generosity of Bill Webner, one of the founders of the LEAKOIL Bus group in the Cleveland, Ohio area, I rebuilt the engine with a stock, never reground, never counterweighted VW crank.

I now have an engine that runs smoothly and quietly, with no funny knocking noises. It's amazing how much quieter and smoother it is running up through the gears. I'm hopeful that I can now enjoy a few years without another engine teardown!

I am curious..... Is there any hope of "fixing" this crank? Seems a shame to junk it.

Link

_________________
Don

1978 Westy
1971 Super Beetle Convertible


"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - J.R.R. Tolkien

[germansupplyscott]

[orwell84]

Wow. That is a saga for sure. If it’s any consolation, it took me 3 tries (so far) to build a decent engine. I have about 5,000 miles on it so far and time will tell if I built it right.

I made a lot of the same mistakes you did. Even good aftermarket cams can be a bitch to fit. Some other dumb mistakes include dropping an eye glass screwdriver down the intake…

These engines are just tough to build. There are so many gotchas that are not in books written decades ago.

Hope this engine brings you many trouble free miles.

[Clatter]

Way to stick to it, my man.

Sometimes your number comes up,
And you gotta pay your dues.

Next time someone at a gas station stops you and says "I want to get me one of those!"
Or
"How much does one cost?"

You can just smile and nod...
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Bus Motor Build

What’s That Noise?!?

[TrollFromDownBelow]

Genuine heart-felt congrats on finally figuring it out...that must have been very satisfying.

Save the crank? After all the grief it gave you? I would literally use it as a boat anchor, and get smug satisfaction every time I threw it overboard into the water.
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1976 Westy (aka Tripod)
2.0 liter FI solid lifters
212k miles

[Abscate]

I’m thinking 0.001” crank runout isn’t enough to cause those issues but am happy it’s running well now
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.ssS!

[orwell84]