Aircooled VW South Africa

Assembled and EMPI manifold sorted for the DCD..
now to fit final tin's etc and pop her back in sometime in the next days

Good stuff, hope all works 100%, tks for sharing

Carb split cleaned , reassembled and test fitted..
now when this freezing weather goes back to Cape Town .. we can begin installation of the motor...

LOL... you can have the cold...

Your breather filter will drip oil onto your tinware at some point, make another plan if you can. Remember, its oily fumes that come out of there, the oil will get stuck in the filter.
You only really need a filter to keep the engine from sucking in dirt when you take your foot off the throttle and coast in gear. If you drive in clean areas (not offroad), then you dont really need a filter. I dont use one on my bus or Angrrr

Hi Tony
I am planning on running a braided hose into a glass oil catcher which i picked up
looks like it came out an older 1950's truck ..prob used for brake fluid
i will fit the filter onto the bottle and a drain plug under it..

Got the motor in tins sorted , exhaust on..
now the accelerator cable is too short , so will need to sort this,
and the air cleaner doesn't fit with deck lid closed, ... need to find a smaller flatter filter.....

Got air filter sorted , did a temp join on the acc cable .........
got her fired up.. started first time .. idled and ran for about.10min
... sounded great...
While we were setting the carb ..
SHE @##$$&&^(=£........... Seized...
no idea why ...
waiting for motor to cool and tomorrow we will try see if we can turn her by hand,
maybe take plugs out and hope it's a hydro lock or something small,
Having to take the motor out again and split it .... is not on my fun list....

That is really sad news...
I highly doubt its hydraulic lock, the engine was running...
Were there any funny sounds when it seized? Did you set your end-play correctly?

Caution
Do not attempt to turn a seized engine by force you will ruing something If it is seized it is seized and something is wrong.
1 You failed to clean all the oil galleries The gallery closest to the fan belt pully is notorious for blocking up through sludge formation. this makes the engine seize within minutes.
2 you failed to check that oil plungers are working as designed no oil to bearings
3 you fitted the wrong oil pump and the pump drive didn't engage
4 the end play was too tight
5 a bearing was pinched on the dowel and the bearing was distorted
Conrods not re machined on big ends poor bearing makes (there are quite a few substandard makes and even the good ones quality has dropped of in recent years.
6 there was water in the oil (from cleaning the cooler etc and rust formed on the crank prior to start up seizing the engine
7 something fell into the intakes
8 wrong piston rings
9 wrong bearings
10 line bore done incorrectly

If it is a main that seized trying to turn the engine will destroy the casing be warned

This is why it costs money to have one of these built, there are twice as many things to check as compared to a modern engine and even experienced mechanics are treading carefully when it comes to a beetle enge don't let its apparent simplicity fool you.
Check out some of the threads on engine building on this forum there is lots of good info here.

Hi,
We did clean out all the oil galleries etc...
This is the one time we took our time and made sure all the bits fitted, the engine turned nicley while being assembled,
we suspect the rear main, we think the line bore was not done to proper tolerance, the rear main bearing that the engineers cut to fit the casing .. I believe was
not done with the correct tolerances, it is the only thing we did not check....
it siezed with no noise, while idling and it sounded good ... just needed to fine tune the carb, and as we were doing this she froze.......... solid
Today I stripped it down and Monday we will split her open (Again..) ... I have got quite good at stripping and dropping a motor, 15 min. .. and she's out
another ten and all tins are off along with exhaust ...
I bought the bug looking for a challenge and to keep me busy ... man this ¥@##&** bugs got the curse of Hitler .....
will let you know what we find Monday..

My money is on the small one
Armand

As a Old VW Ballie once told me......

Get your tolerances right and keep spinning it around as you assemble each bolt, with lots of oil.

It will seize if you and the engine are oil free when you done assembling it.

Herman

retrovan wrote:As a Old VW Ballie once told me......

Get your tolerances right and keep spinning it around as you assemble each bolt, with lots of oil.

It will seize if you and the engine are oil free when you done assembling it.

Herman

Hmmm, and I have a motor that I need to put together as well.

Will keep this in mind and also check all tolerances again. I did get a special tool to set the "End Play" and will make double sure about the deck high as well.

and then comes into the equation, where not to get oil when assembling the engine...
You cannot simply dunk your bearings into oil and then put them into the case. Oil takes up space and if its between the bearing and the case, then the clearance between the bearing and the crank might be too small, even though it was perfect when mocked up dry...
There is a fair bit more to assembling an engine that just bolting it all together

Will be measuring every thing and then again, this time..
might decide to go bigger since I will prob, need to get the engine to engineering again...... maybe even do a kit car...
will wait to see what shows up when we do the split ......

ANYONE KNOW where I can find a decent Puma ... with or without engine?