Cracking open my waterboxer.

[psych-illogical]

I’m starting a little ‘overhaul’ of my engine and thought I’d start a thread to document the progess, document any learnings that come my way and very likely ask for some help along the way. Here are some specifics about the motor.

It’s a 2.2L GoWesty motor based on the 1.9L platform that’s about 5 yrs old and has about 45K miles on it. I’ve added an oil cooler and it’s still running the stock DJ fuel injection.

Why, you might ask, would I be going through a 45K mile engine? Well, to make a short story long, about a year and a half ago I was driving late at night through a fairly remote section of the Navajo reservation and due to some not-so-careful routing of the oil cooler hoses one of them shifted and got up against the exhaust header. The hose burned through and in a matter of a few seconds all of the oil got pumped out of the engine. I figured this out through the following series of events. I noticed the headlights of the car behind looked very dim through the cloud of smoke as the oil was being pumped out directly onto the hot exhaust header. Hmmm, I thought, it’s foggy behind me but not in front? Then in a moment of panic I looked down at the OP gauge and noticed it was hanging just a fraction of a needles width above zero and then the oil light blinked on. I pulled over and shut off the ignition switch as my heart sank deeply. Being a narrow, dark highway where people typically drive 75 or 80 mph and having a reputation for lots of DUI fatalities (the highway, not me) I had pulled well off the shoulder for safety’s sake. Fortunately there was a weak cell signal and my wife called a friend who was able to look up the number for a tow service located about half an hours drive away. Unfortunately, the way I had pulled off the shoulder the tow truck driver said he couldn’t get backed up to me where I was and ‘could I move it back onto the road?’ I told him I was out of oil but the look on his face said, ‘I don’t care.’ I figured WTF, I’ve already trashed my engine and started it up and immediately buried the back tires in the very soft sand. I shut it off, dug a little and tried again. This time, with enough engine revving to make the most heartless SOB grimace, I got it on the road. My gut was wrenching. A hundred miles and $700 (OUCH!!) later my Westy was back in my driveway. I filled the crankcase with oil, fired it up and saw a stream of oil the size of a pencil pumping out from the hole that got burned into the hose. I replaced the hose, filled it with oil and somehow have managed to drive it another 6,000 miles including a couple of trips to Colorado. Simply amazing! I have, however, spent most of that 6,000 miles with my eyes on the OP gauge more than on the road and I’ve seen a slow, steady drop in pressure. Still doesn’t seem like it’s dropped to critical levels but I figured I needed a winter project so, here goes.

I’ve built probably a dozen engines in my life from Fords and Chevy’s to Subaru’s with the vast majority of them being air cooled VWs. I made my living as a machinist (industrial) for about 10 years some long time ago so I’ve got a pretty good collection of bore gauges, micrometers and dial gauges in my garage and a pretty good collection of hand tools so I think I’m pretty well equipped for the job. This may take a couple of weeks since I’ve still gotta work for a living and we have the Christmas and New Years weekends coming up along with all the requisite family commitments so I’ll work on it when I can. This will be my first foray into the internal workings of the wasserboxer so I’m sure I’ll have a few questions as I go along. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[Californio]

Sorry to hear about your difficulties and looking forward to hearing about progress.

I've always had questions about whether external oil coolers are worth it, given the hose problem, and this post goes a long way toward making up my mind.

Does anyone route external oil coolers using steel or aluminum tubing and threaded or flare connections that simply won't melt, come disconnected, get puncture holes, and the like?

Once your rebuild is complete, do you plan on reinstalling the oil cooler as is or going to something else?

[psych-illogical]

I'm definitely going to reinstall it. I really believe these things benefit hugely from additional cooling. The hose routing options are little trickier on the 1.9 vs. the 2.1 so keeping them away from the exhaust header isn't exactly easy but, as I found out the hard way, essential. I'm either going to fabricate a heat sheild when I reinstall it or get a custom made hard line plumbed past the hot parts and then use the rubber hose from there to the cooler.

Pulling long, slow grades in the summer time I'd see my pressure drop to a little bit south of 20 psi pulling 3000 rpm in 3rd gear. Scarey. After I put the cooler on the pressure would stay above 30 in the same circumstances.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[Californio]

Sounds like the subject for another thread, but I'd love to see pics of what you end up doing. Big issue here.

[Captain Pike]

cooler photo? mounting location?
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LEARN TO SELF RESCUE
59 Panel bus, 1966 Single cab. 73' 181. 73 Westy. 91' H6 Vanagon 3.3L.
....Bad Sneakers....

[psych-illogical]

When I started this thread I already had the engine out of the van and on the ground so any photos of the complete oil cooler setup will come when I'm putting back together. I was able to get the pistons/cylinders out and the case split last night. The first thing I noticed was that the cross-hatching in the cylinders looked like new.

All 4 of them look this good all the way around.

Given that I never did see any oil consumption issues and the compression was fine after 'the incident,' I'm thinking I'll leave these alone. I had a friend who was a profesional motorcycle mechanic who once told me that you should never 'break the seal' of the rings against the cylinder unless you have to. I've pulled them apart in years past without any noticeable ill affects but, just in case, I was very careful to pull the cylinders out just far enough to get the pin out and removed them as a unit. Anybody else have an opinion on this?

Well, I've gotta run to work right now. I do have some pix of the oil cooler location that I'll post up in a little bit.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[wenholzm]

I am looking forward to your comments and experiences. I also lost oil recently on my '85 Camper WBX rebuild, but I do not think it was as serious as yours. About a quart or a bit more went out my dipstick tube connection, but I was able to get off the road and repair quickly, without too much damage ( I hope). I changed to straight Pennzoil 40W with Lucas treatment to maybe give a bit more protection, I live in a warm climate.
I am planning a long and hot summer 2011 trip, I appreciate your comments about the oil cooler, and hope this can help me later when I install one. I am sorry to hear of your misfortune with the rubber hosing, but appreciate the information.
Thank you.

[purplegodzilla]

Sorry to hear about the mishap. Thats why I try to carry a spare quart of oil everywhere I go. I will follow this thread because my engine is coming up to the 150k and would like to rebuild it one day.
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1995 Eurovan Camper (SOLD)
1971 Westfalia (SOLD)
1991 Westfalia (SOLD)
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o292/purpleGORILLA/P1020720.jpg
1985 Westfalia

[JPrato]

I don't think that if the pistons came out and you put them back in the same cylinder and same orientation it would matter. I mean, tell me the specific reason it could cause a problem??? Physically breaking/ damaging a component on reassemble? That is possible.

That said, I would do the same thing you did, remove them,label them and carefully store them in a clean place until you are ready to reassemble them. Why add more variability/chance for screwing it up than you have to?
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Joe

87 Syncro Tin Top project
84 Westy, 2.5L Subaru power
06 Subaru 2.5 turbo in waiting
46 Cessna 140

[psych-illogical]

[D Clymer]

[Summers420us]

[Ahwahnee]

Isn't there a stainless steel braided hose available for these coolers? Given the problems mentioned this would seem like a good idea.

[wenholzm]

[psych-illogical]

I'm glad the oil cooler photos have been helpful.

Yesterday I got a call from the machine shop saying my crankcase was out of the hot tank. Less than 24 hours. Woohoo!

Nice and clean.

About 20 or 30 minutes with a little kerosene and a soft brass brush can work wonders.

So here's the really amazing thing to me.

As I said before, these bearings look more like 150k mile bearings than 45k but really not bad considering what I did to the motor. Definitely worn but not trashed.

Next I miked the crank journals.

I wrote down all the measurements but haven't gotten out my calculator and converted them to metric yet to see what I've really got. Visually though, it looks good.

Here's my current problem. The Bentley shows removing the crank gears using a special plate and a hydraulic press, neither of which I have access to. Does anybody here have any experience getting these off? I thought about heating the hell out of the gears with a heat gun and using my 2 jaw pull like this:

But there's not much contact area with the jaws and I'm afraid I'll just damage a few of the teeth. I'm open for suggestions.

Well, I'm off travelling for a few days for the Christmas holiday but I'll be back to it soon enough.

Happy holidays to all.
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83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS

[stormforge]

I just went through the same thing -- I used a big 4-jaw puller and just a little bit of gentle heat (propane torch) was enough for the crank gears to slide off easily. I was a little scared because the puller jaws have to pull on the gear teeth but with a little heat I didn't have to crank very hard to get things moving.

I think if gentle heat won't do it you might want to fab up a simple gizmo/plate to get a better grip on the backs of the gears before you pull really hard. I don't think I'd get it very hot.

Cheers,
-Bill
'89 Syncro

[Zeitgeist 13]

IIRC, when I built the 2.0L in my old '80 van, I used a large three-jaw puller, and then a Krups coffee hot-plate to heat the gear for installation.
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH
'01 Weekender --> full camper
NEAT, no ICE.

[D Clymer]

That's kind of what I expected. You obviously shut down the engine before the low oil pressure really allowed the crank journals to do much damage to the bearings. I'm sure the crank journals will be within spec also. I don't see any signs of scoring with those. It'll be interesting to see if that is a standard crank or a .010" under crank that GoWesty used. Actually you can probably tell by looking at the markings on the back of the bearings.

As far as removing the gears goes, you can buy a fairly inexpensive puller from CIP1 or CB Performance that is made specifically for removing Type 1 gears, but it works well for the WBX too. http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ACC%2DC10%2D7065

If you go this route, be sure to clean up/deburr the retaining ring groove area before trying to remove the gear. Yours will probably be clean, but I had great difficulty removing the gear this way on a high mileage wbx, and it actually scored the inner bore of the cam gear by the time it came off. Alternately, you could just pay a machine shop to press the gears off., although that probably won't be much cheaper than buying the puller.

The heads look good. I'm glad to see there are no signs of pitting or corrosion after 5 years and 45K. What kind of oil pump did they install in the engine and what condition is it in? Is there any sign of scoring between the cover plate and the gears?

David

[psych-illogical]

[psych-illogical]

Well I've spent several days in the garage cleaning and sorting parts and waiting for my bearings, gaskets, etc. to show up. Now I'm twiddling my thumbs and whistling a silly song still waiting for my parts to show up. I'm way too cheap to pay for expedited shipping. While I'm waiting I've got a question about the rod bolts.

I've heard time and time again that the 1.9 rod bolts are much less prone to failure than the 2.1. Since my Gowesty engine is based on the 1.9 block I'm forging ahead under the assumption that it's got the 1.9 rods and bolts. Is there any way to tell by looking? The Bentley isn't real clear about this.
_________________
83 1/2 Westy waterboxer
'57 Beetle-sold
Coupla '81 BMW motorcycles (R80G/S; R100RS)
'96 BMW R1100GS