Aircooled VW South Africa

Thanks Mr Ed Makes Sense. Now to find someone in Joburg....



Keep up the great work.

No Probs always keen to help out a fellow aircooled enthusiast

You could try a place called Crankweld Industries in JHB but I think it would be best to get one from Dave Rowley here in CT he has lots of experience with counterweighted cranks.

I should hopefully start assembly of the engine next weekend gotta pick up my cylinder heads from Dave Rowley this saturday along with a s/h doghouse fan shroud

I finally got the ball ends for the throttle linkage just waiting for the heads to come back from flycutting

The heads and fan shroud arrived today now just gotta give the intake ports a cleanup and smooth the exhaust ports and then the heads are done.
I haven't had time to start assembly yet been too busy with other stuff

I finally got some time to work on the engine, I wanted to preset the crank endplay with the crank on the bench but I cant get the flywheel to seat on the crank dowels it goes about halfway and wont go any more I have tried to suck it down using the gland nut is there a trick to this, I had the crank and flywheel 8 dowelled by Dave Rowley who also installed all 8 dowels in the crank I did line up the flywheel properly on the dowels taking careful note of the offset pattern

I paid Volksie World a visit today and got some decent s/h cylinder head tin gonna get it powder coated when I go back to work, also went to Beetle Bits and got a set of genuine VW "forget me nots" cylinder air deflectors wanted to get a set of coloured plug wires but they had no stock

I picked up a few more parts recentely a decent s/h genuine vw fuel pump, a genny stand and a s/h oil cooler im just short of a generator with a wide late fan as well as a oil filter adapter and the full flow oil hoses and the plug wires of course
I've also got to get a distributor and genny clamp from Dave Rowley
Still haven't assembled the engine yet I did fix the crank flywheel problem the gland nut was too big where it fits into the crank so just polished the piece right under the gland nut head now it fights perfect just got to get a 0.30mm flywheel shim to set the end play right

Are you Doing anything to your pots? Give them a light spray with heat resistant black or the likes? I'm still pondering what to do with my tin as well, powder coating doesn't conduct as much heat as a thin coat of paint if a recall reading somewhere. and the heads? Sprayed or are you leaving them as is? Sorry about the questions but most of my parts have arrived so i really need to start getting serious. My plan so far is spray everything with the heat resistant black that i use on the exhaust manifolds. Case, heads, pots, tin and all. or maybe gunmetal grey as well, so its not so monotone...

I think im gonna leave the pots as they are Ive read on thesamba that heat resistant paint doesn't conduct the heat as well as leaving them rusty so thats how they gonna stay.
Im gonna leave the heads as they are natural aluminium I like that look.
Im gonna get all the tin powdercoated it lasts much longer than paint and is easier to clean than paint also looks good
The motor is going be black and silver with a few chrome bits to accent it
I've already given the casing 2 coats of silver heat resistant paint I like the silver look

The engine block, pots and CHeads should not be painted. The items in their 'natural state' conduct heat more efficiently than painted.

Use it, dont use it.....

I painted the engine casing mainly to stop and hide some mild corrosion on it

Hey Edmond if you dont mind me asking what did that counterweight crank cost?

Still using the std crank but am getting a counterweight crank from that guy that daniel found the parts stash at maybe there is one still available send him a pm he also had a 82mm stroker crank for R500 absolute bargain
Dave Rowley here in CT can countereight your stock crank I think it was R750 for the counterweighting and R650 to get the crank and other bits balanced

Thanks

Engine is still all in pieces on my workbench life has just been too busy lately to get any work done on the engine but I really need to start putting it together as I want it in my baja in a few months time.

I've got other plans for the tired engine in my baja