Cracking open my waterboxer.

[klucz]

Congrats on completing the rebuild and getting your rig back on the road. And thanks for sharing your pics and info. Hope you get out on the road lots with your Westy.
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84 Westy 4spd sold

[psych-illogical]

I kinda got busy and never did finish this thread up. I find that working for a living gets me the money to do the things I want to do but denies me the time to do those things. Life's conundrum.

So this whole project ended up taking me a little over two months to complete. And it wasn't that big of a project. In reality I only replaced the bearings. Pistons, liners, rings, crank, cam, heads all had less the 50K on them and were in great shape so I just cleaned everything up and put it all back together again. I learned a bit about tolerances on these motors (thanks a million tencent and others) and got familiar with some of the nuances (each motor has a few things that are unique to their design even though the basic principles are all the same).

So, it's a beautiful thing;

I promised somebody early in this thread that I'd show a little detail of the oil cooler installation on this van. Here's the adapter plate;

Note that on the 1.9L engine this particular orientation is the only way I could make it work. It's the only clear path for the hoses to get out which leads to the following condition;

Notice how close they come to the exhaust header. This is what caused this whole teardown. The hose shifted and got right up ON the header and burned a hole in the hose, consequently dumping all of my oil in just a couple of minutes. The hoses are now well secured and I can get maybe two fingers between them and the header.

Anyway, I've now got a couple of hundred miles on it. It fired right up on the first crank, idles well and runs well. So far, no leaks.

I have noticed on the first tank that my mileage is waaaay off. I only got 12 mpg on the first tank and usually I get around 17 in town. I've got something buggered up with the FI system so I'm gonna run through the Bentley diagnostics and see where I end up. If it gets to be another 'project' I'll start another thread (if a search doesn't turn anything useful up).

Thanks again for all the support and info. This one has been fun.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[mm289]

Cool thread guys, I have documented the tear down on my 2.1 over on the club 80-90 forum in the UK - unfortunately mine is beyond economic repair though

Parts prices for these engines are crazy, i also run a '66 Mustang and I can get parts for that cheaper in the UK than I can get parts for the WBX - bizarre given one is made in Europe and the other over there!

Just bought a used 2.1 which is in good condition but has a water leak - pulled the heads and the rubber seal around the head is totally shot but pistons and liners look really good (also performed well on leak down test) so hopefully will be a solid engine.

Doesn't look like it has ever been opened up before.

A quick question - any tips for seperating the liners from the head, they are stuck solid. Used a rubber mallet to try and tap them loose but no joy.

Cheers,

MM

[Summers420us]

I rebuilding a 2.1 with manual trans.

I watched Boston Bob's video, and he says to use a 10mm seal with the manual trans and a 12mm seal with an automatic trans.

The OEM one I pulled out is 10mm

The Sabo I have (and I think it is the only one they make) is 12mm. I am now leary of using my 12mm Sabo seal.

What say the masses? Is it ok to use 12mm seal with a manual trans?

[klucz]

There is a little o-ring that goes in the groove on the flywheel and the felt washer protects the pilot bearing. You got a better main seal (fw side) like a Sabo, right?
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84 Westy 4spd sold

[psych-illogical]

Time for a quick question. I'm stalled for a little bit simply due to my otherwise busy life.

I was looking in the Bentley, I believe p. 13-37. It shows an o-ring and a felt ring associated with the flywheel. I don't remember taking either of these off when I disassembled the motor (the downside of taking a long time between disassembly and reassembly).

Where the heck do these go?

It looks like there's a really small groove inside the flywheel where it slides on the crank. Not room for anything in there but the thinnest of o-rings. Is that where it goes. I still haven't opened my nifty, vacuum packed gasket set to see if there is a really skinny little o-ring in there.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[?Waldo?]

I got a nice set up to 6" from Enco on sale for a very reasonable price. I believe they were $80 or so if memory serves. Worth checking or getting on their mailing list.

[tencentlife]

Right, each full turn is .025".

It can take awhile to get the hang of reading the scale, so keep the instructions around and use it a lot so it becomes second nature.

Check it against the standard supplied, and adjust the witness mark with the little pin wrench provided so it's at zero, then check that occasionally, always with mic and standard at same temp.
_________________
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https://intrepidoverland.com/vanistan/
also available at VanCafe.com!

Please don't PM here, I will not reply.

Experience is death to doctrine.

[stevey88]

Yes, a misprint. Here is a picture of the micrometer set to 0.1111 inch. ( Correct me if I am wrong ). Each complete turn is 0.025 inch.

Thank you phych and 10c. I have learned a lot.

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Steve

87 Westfalia full camper 4 speed

[tencentlife]

I think that's a misprint, it looks like the set I have that does .0001". Mics that only do .001" wouldn't be much use to anyone, a vernier can do better than that.
_________________
Shop for unique and useful Vanagon accessories at the Vanistan shop:
https://intrepidoverland.com/vanistan/
also available at VanCafe.com!

Please don't PM here, I will not reply.

Experience is death to doctrine.

[klucz]

Regarding journal mics. I did a little poking around and noticed that the 3 piece set at HF (1", 2", & 3") for $45 ($30 on sale right now) only does 0.001" increments. They have a 1" mic that does 0.0001 increments but it doesn't look like 2" or 3" mics are available. Unless I'm missing something?
http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?category=&q=micrometer
I'm looking to pick up a set and thought it would be worth noting just in case anyone else is too. Seems there are plenty of similar sets to choose from online in the $40-100 price range.
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84 Westy 4spd sold

[mark tucker]

ever thought about having counter weights added to the crank to reduce flexing and a smoother running engine?and a lot less crank flex. did you check the runout on the center main?or rather on all of the mains?those bearings should of looked like new with that few miles on them. just something to think about.trying to make it last longer and work easyer.as the bus is kinda heavy & always loaded. all vw cranks need to be fully counterweighted. and it helps to save the linebore from getting trashed.

[psych-illogical]

BTW, with a slight grimace I took tencent's advice on that bearing. Logic told me what he confirmed anyway but I tend to be a little more anal retentive than that. I fitted everything up in the case last night and spun it through a couple of revs by hand. Everything is nice and smooth.

Today I plan to do a hundred mile run on the bike to go visit my daughter and the bike's been running a bit on the ragged side. I've got to sync the throttle bodies before I go so no engine work today.

Tomorrow I'll set up the end play then it's time to seal it up and torque the case together.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[psych-illogical]

My makeshift crank holder is pretty flimsy, 1/8", but it works. I would have preferred a 1/4" or 3/8" piece of plate but this is what I had laying around the garage. If I was gonna do this more than once I'd go out and buy a piece of heavier plate.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[klucz]

Thanks again for the pics, psych! Much appreciated. That's neat how you put your crank in the vice, too. And I gotta say, 10c is really hookin' it up here. PM'd ya btw, Chris.
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84 Westy 4spd sold

[mark tucker]

2-6" dialbore gauges are cheep !! look at ebay and oick witch one you want.mic's all that stuff is cheep and as good as the high dollar stuff when you just want a good set at home.I checked all of mine at work and no defrence in reading. but the $43.00 dial bore gauge can hit the floor and you can laugh. but when the $600. sunnen gauge hits the flooe you want to die after you puke your guts up. ans the china mics are great, and cheep.and when your checking the clearance it dosent matter if the # is right (witch they are if you check and zero them if needed) you yse the mic set at the crank size that you just checked and set the dialbore gauge with that mic.it,s the clearance you want. dont buy old used unless if is almost free.it could be effed up. no I am not chineese but they do make some good stuff.and for home or small shop use you cant beat it.

[tencentlife]

Take the sharp edge of a file tang, use it as a scraper to just go over the area from barely inboard of the embedment and pull gently to the end of the shell. That'll knock down any lead that got raised, and you'll be good to go. I wouldn't waste a second worrying about that. The ends of the shells are not where load is being borne anyway, and that little scrape job won't cause any loss of OP or anything to worry about.

Back in the day, you had to scrape bearings by hand to get the clearances you wanted. Of course back then you were casting your own bearings out of lead anyway (and no, I haven't been doing this that long, just some historical trivia).

To use that bore mic and make the job faster, what I would do is first use your journal mic on the OD of your full circle bearings. Measure in vert and horiz axes, and if they differ, average the dimensions and dial your caliper to that size. Lock that in and use it to transfer that dimension to the bore mic, then make it .001" smaller. Feel the bearing saddles with that, if you can't get it to fit in any of them (which would be a good thing), dial it down a couple tenths, try it again, and so on, until you can fit the bore mic in on a diameter. Then use that to see if the bore is round and/or tapered. Spec. on something like this is probably like .001" oval, but that's pretty gross, I doubt you'd ever find one that out of round. Taper across something so narrow would want to be much closer than that, 2 or 3 tenths at most.

Then if you think the saddle bores are good, fit the bearings and torque up the case, mic your crank journals and transfer that to your bore mic. Use that to check the bearing ID's, but of course in this case you're goiing to be increasing the bore mic's size bit by bit until it fits the bearing, and the difference is the oil clearance.

Yes, a dial bore gauge, or whatever you want to call it, makes this far easier and more accurate as well.
_________________
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https://intrepidoverland.com/vanistan/
also available at VanCafe.com!

Please don't PM here, I will not reply.

Experience is death to doctrine.

[psych-illogical]

Well, a little more progress today but I'm stuck in a holding pattern again. More on that in a minute.

First, Klucz wanted to see just how I measured the case bore.

I just measure the inside of the bore with my inside mic. I do it horizontally and vertically to check for out of round. As tencent said in an earlier post the dial bore gauges are much easier to use and have a long enough reach to get down inside the case for the other bores. The inside mic is very accurate but you have to adjust the barrel till you're close and the start tweaking it in tiny little adjustments until you can feel that it will just slip through the largest part of the opening with just a teeny bit of drag. It's a bit time consuming.

To measure the bores deeper in the case I had to reach in through the cylinder bores like so:

I found an old camp pan to use for heating up the timing gear. I used vegi oil for heating. A guy who rebuilt one of my BMW transmissions said he uses vegi oil for heating pressed on bearings because it can take higher temperatures. It's used for deep frying stuff at 400 deg. whereas motor oil starts breaking down at, I dunno, maybe 275 or so? For this application it probably doesn't make a bit of difference other than my kitchen now smells like I've been making french fries. I used my wifes digital meat thermometer to keep an eye on the temp. I let it get up to about 350.
This picture shows the distributer drive gear but I did this with both gears.

Dropped right on with a solid 'thunk.'

A beautiful thing. Gears, spacer and snap ring all in place.

Then I started hanging the rods.

3 out of 4 hung here which leads me to my current holding pattern.

As I was doing the initial tightening of the #4 rod it bound up tight. I stopped and carefully took it off and found a piece of whoknowswhat buried in the bearing surface.

Here it is after I flicked the offending piece of crud out of there with my pocket knife. It left a little bit of the soft bearing raised.
I was very careful wiping down the journals and blowing out the oil passages in the crank and I wiped down the bearing surface before coating with lubriplate. But, I know exactly when this happened. As I was putting the rod on the journal one of the bearings dropped out of the rod and hit the floor. I picked it up and looked at it for bent corners but I didn't wipe it down and reapply lubriplate. The offending piece of crap was probably hidden in the grease. GRRRRR.

Since it's such a small area it's tempting to just polish it up and use it but at less than $20 for a new set of bearings I'm just going to order a set and use one of the bearing shells out of it. I'm the sort of guy that would just worry about that one little nick every damn time I drive the thing. Anybody wanna buy a 7/8 set of of rod bearings?
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[mark tucker]

thanks it looked kinda funny the way it was worded. but wasent sure.

[tencentlife]

No, that's not what you read.
_________________
Shop for unique and useful Vanagon accessories at the Vanistan shop:
https://intrepidoverland.com/vanistan/
also available at VanCafe.com!

Please don't PM here, I will not reply.

Experience is death to doctrine.