Aircooled VW South Africa

The 1981 Autovilla I recently bought has just had the aircooled 2L engine's top end rebuilt due to a dropped valve. The seller has advised that the next 1000km should be done slow and at low revs. Then the tappets must be reset.
The Haynes manual I have indicates that after the innitial setting, no further adjustment is needed.
Any gurus out there with an opionion about whether the slow break in and subsequent tappet resetting is necessary?
Thanks for the advice.

The slow speed is to prevent overheating of the valve seats and proper embedding of the seat.

Type 4 is know for seat failure and dropping out. so rather be save then sorry.

Type 4 have two different types of valves manual and hydraulic, both are set differently.

They need to be set after the engine has settled down and this only happens after a few heating and cooling cycles.

So very important that they are set at 1000km, and regularly after that.

tappet setting is very important for aircooled engines and should be done as per service instructions.

Herman

The 2L engine in a T3 bus is a CU motor and utilises hydraulic lifters which never need setting.

I think I recall the previous owner of this Autovilla asking questions on facebook. It had its air intake vents blocked off and for some reason he didn't sort this out, but the engine was overheating. Can you advise on this if it is the same bus?

Yes, I think it is the same one. The airvents had been very badly sealed off. The previous owner though went to some lengths to prevent further overheating. He installed new vents lower down as well as venta and an additional fan at the rear.





I think this should now be adequite. Any opinions?

I don’t believe those would be sufficient. Look rather small in the pics. Also in the incorrect place. The side ones which are now down below will just be sucking in dust. Restore the original vents immediately.

The rear one will worsen overheating. The hot air from the engine exits at the back underneath, but now with a vent mounted there, the engine is just going to be sucking the hot air back in.

What year model is the autovilla? I see it has a grill mounted upfront indicating it was once water cooled.

It is a 1981 model. I don't know for sure if it was once watercooled, but because the top airvents had been totally sealed off, it would seem to be the case.



The grill up front I believe is standatd though. There is a frame attached at the front that was used to tow the vehicle.



With the original top airvents was there any ducting inside to direct the air down to the engine? Because these were sealed so badly I have covered them up with replacement vents to neaten it up. The damage to the aluminium was too much to install with the backing inside the aluminium siding.

Share the VIN number of your bus, this will determine the year.

An aircooled T3 should only have a nose top vent, not a bottom vent. Bottom vent was either added for a watercooled motor or its not a 1981.

There is a ducting panel for air to go down the side vents into the engine bay.

Posted a pic of this plate on the Autovilla FB page. Someone decoded some of it there and says it us 1981


Here's a better pic of the lower vents. They seem to direct air to the right area better than the top vents.