Are you FV guys allowed to use crankshaft dampeners like the Berg version or is that Taboo? I wondering how effective they might be in taming crankshaft vibrations.
@Stan Galat posted:Tell him how long you waited, Rick.
3 years, 1 month, 22 days. But who's counting!
Todd could not get the castings, the foundry got far behind during the Covid crisis. Availability going forward looks better, as he just got another shipment from the foundry.
Now if Greg can get to my Spyder, I'll be living in high cotton.
You can use any crank pulley you want. But I've seen nothing heavy on any cars at the track. Most are power-pulley size aluminum. My car came with a cut-down steel one, about 2.5" in diameter.
The flywheel is lightened to 12 pounds, the crank lightened to 16 pounds. I don't think there is a need or desire for a heavy Berg pulley. Rods are 130mm(5.1") and pistons are light cast aluminum(and tiny at 77mm).
I'm currently running a 4.5" aluminum sand seal.
There is no belt/gen/fan in FV, a lot are basically degree wheels only. Most have the V-groove cut off.
I'm not sure I can add much to this, as the main men here have said about all you might need to know. Certainly more than I know. However . . . my name was mentioned, and so I'll say what little I do know. My car is down as a 2006 JPS, it is a 2332, and JPS, as possibly indicatated here, does NOT build engines, but subs that work out. So the green coupe (DeWalt car) and mine were built at around the same time, so far as I know, and by the same supplier. Mine was billed to me as fully blue printed, all parts balanced. I'm going to say (as I furiously knock on wood) that it has run well, so far as the engine innards are concerned. It revs smooth and has plenty of oomph. I do not race it, but some hooning has been noted. I think it has seen 6,000 a few times, but rarely over 5,000. My problems with the engine have mostly stemmed from Weber imbalance and clogged idle circuit issues, which finally seem to have been sorted pretty well, after more than a little frustration. I have maybe 22K on the ticker.
Side note: during one of several bouts with the carbs, I think a small part of unknown specification went down the throat and in to the engine. It rattled around in there for a short while, making a high pitched rattle, and I guess either got beat into powder or vomitted out to the muffler. A borescope revealed some dings in the piston head. Otherwise, it seems to have suffered little and has run without further incident for many miles since.
Transmission: 3.88 Freeway Flier, it said, rebuilt last winter after I noticed a huge chunk of ring gear tooth laying on the bottom of the case. Despite this missing segment, the unit was working without a single sign of trouble.
A "stock" 1600 and a super sized 2332 T1 are really very different beasts. My experience and expectation is that a ho-hum 1600 T1 ought to go 100K mi if not abused and given its proper maintenance. For a 2332 experiencing regular spirited driving, I'd guess half that. I have no idea what the actual statistics are over all 2332s ever built. A Pat Downs engine, Rancho Trans, you should be good to go, and go fast. You will probably notice a performance improvement if only due to the lightness now in your wallet.
I'll add one more philosophical observation. What we seem to be doing here is taking old (but sound) engineering design and manufacturing technology speced to support less than 50 hp and modest torque values through the drivetrain, and run the stink out it all at three times (or more) those values. Either something is going to give notably, or it will all just wear out faster. And if I ever get to that point (not looking to do so) I'd be powerfully tempted to get me one of those TF1 cases. As Stan has observed, that my friends, is a proper case.
Hey Kelly,
Since your engine and my engine is from the same engine builder (GEM VW at least that is what John told me) what I am finding out is what we usually think as a clogged idle jet issue might not be all due to the idle jet. I am finding out after I swapped my distributor with the CB Magnaspark with the Blackbox so I can adjust the timing with a laptop, I have a whole lot less of issue with drivability since I can program to have a high advance for low load and more retard on high load for the same RPM since it is reading the load from the vacuum. I am aware that just using the vacuum is not totally accurate to measure the load, but it is still better than having the same advance for a particular RPM regardless of you accelerating or decelerating. Just my 2 cents of observation. And yes, I will going faster because my wallet will be much lighter
95% of all fuel problems are spark.
Worth noting: The Black Box uses a MAP sensor which is (I think) a little more advanced than a vacuum port to a distributor.
I think what you're looking for here is "technologically advanced".
Practically, adjusting advance based on either a MAP(manifold air pressure) sensor or a vacuum pot on a distributor is the same thing. The difference is direct mechanical VS electronic.
Which one is better can be argued with only blue faces the end result. (The ease of changing the curve is NOT debatable, electronic is super easy, mechanical is hit or miss guessing)
The precision of the spark from a crank-trigger or large distributor VS a Bosch 009 or facsimile CANNOT be argued. The CB or Pat Downs(yup he had his own) unit is hands-down better and/or more precise than the other009). A crank trigger is another level better than the wide distributor units.
On a flat 4 VW motor with dual-dual carbs(one barrel per cylinder or ITB), I'd argue the best load control is TPS(throttle position sensor). The MAP sensor does not have a fine enough range to control load effectively.
You can make MAP work for ignition only but don't attempt a fuel curve that way. Trust me, I tried. With injection, you need Alpha-N and NOT MAP. I read it and log it, but don't base load on it at all.
@Karyadi, Yes I think that is the builder. I can provide the engine specs that John provided if anybody needs to hear that. I can only assume that they are accurate. I have alluded to the trying times I had getting my Webers (44 IDF) to behave and I even bought a pair of Delortos to swap out, believing at one point that the situation was hopeless. The idle jets clogging were a true pain in the ass. I found them clogged many times. I also rebuilt the carbs from the ground up twice. I think it took about four things to get things right, to wit: First was a tune session by our resident Weber Whisperer, @DannyP. That helped a lot. Second was getting a really good SS fuel filter with very good filtering. Next, I got a Magnaspark ignition ( dizzy plus electronic coil, but no black box), and lastly I got another weber expert to set the carbs up again, this time adjusting the little vacuum adjuster screws so as to get each throat to draw the same. Up until that point, I could never get all four snail readings to be exactly the same; three were pretty good but one was always a little bit off. After getting all of that (which accumulated over a good time period) the car has been running really well. If you ask me which of these things was "it", I could not say. Certainly a big difference was noted after that final carb tune and installing the magnaspark, which were both done at the same time. So, Stan is correct to observe that most carburetor problems are ignition. That said and understood, I did have some bogus carburetor issues. And I guess I could take this opportunity to observe that the car was delivered to me new from JPS with assurances that it had been driven around and properly sorted. And that was just not the case. There were several items that John had to make right, not least was a cracked carb body that was leaking gas. John was good about sending me a replacement.
I should add one more item: the carb to manifold gasket and the manifold to engine gasket. I had issue with these as well, The engine to manifold gasket is a tough case as the space between the ports is very small and the two nuts that hold it all together can loosen up. One ought to give them an inspection and tightening from time to time. I did find after a while that the thin section of gasket material between the two ports had blown out, and the engine will not work well at all in this condition. So there was fussing about that too, and not a little lore from the fellows here explaining the magic needed to get that gasket to seal properly and stay that way.
Fun stuff, right? It's a hobby ...
Hi Danny, who makes a system that both monitor the TPS and the MAP which again an advancement to just MAP. My car originally came without any vacuum to adjust the advance or retard on the distributor, so having a MAP sensor is again an advancement. I bet that the crank trigger timing will be more accurate than the distributor trigger just for the fact that the crank has a larger diameter than any distributor. The more sensors the better, but it also means the more complicated to tune (ask me how I know), so for the old technology type1 engine, I am happy that I can at least create an ignition map based on the MAP info.
Hi Kelly, your story is pretty close to what I experienced over here, except I don’t really have the support system like you do (like @DannyP). I also went through the intake manifold gasket issues, loose intake manifold bolts which is PITA to tightened and keeping the idle jet clean. I guess that is part of the “charm” of having this old technology cars. I am glad you are still holding on to your car as I feel that yours and mine is a very close cousins.
With the adjustable timing, I can make my engine softly backfire by adjusting the timing to 0 (zero) for a very high vacuum (throttle closed, car going downhill above 40 mph). I am not sure if that accelerate the problem in my engine, I just want to have more engine braking going downhill as the ignition will be very retarded.
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I used to have the usual problems with dirt in the idle jets.
Two liter mild stroker, IDF 40's.
I'd drive until the engine was warm and running with its usual occasional, but persistent miss, shut it down, pull all of the jets, one by one, blow out with carb cleaner, then blow out the channels in the carbs with carb cleaner, replace the jets, synch with the snail, tweak the 'mixture' screws as best I could, and convince myself that I'd gotten the dirt out and that it was running better. Not perfect, but better.
Sometimes, I'd do that twice in a row. The funny thing is that I never saw any dirt in the jets, holding them up to the light, but it must have been in there somewhere, right?
If I really wanted to annoy myself, I'd sit parked in the driveway and slowly get on the gas, taking it up from idle to about 3000 rpm, 100 rpm at a time. At some points along the way there was always what sounded like an intermittent miss that would just never go away no matter how much carb cleaner I blew through the idle circuits.
Of course, real car guys never do that. To prove to themselves that the engine is running strong, they hammer the throttle with a few strong kicks, and revel in the roar of full power.
Then one day, I pulled the fake 009 and put in a MagnaSpark.
Without a single drop of carb cleaner, all of the missing went away. I can slowly climb the revs off of idle, and there's no flat spot and no missing.
A can of carb cleaner lasts me a few years now.
I still tweak the 'mixture' screws, maybe every six months or so. It takes about two minutes to do all of them. But the snail sits in its spot on my bench. I last picked it up about three years ago.
I don't know how that dizzy keeps the jets so clean. It's a miracle.
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As far as clogged idle jets go.
I noticed whenever I removed the air filters on my Webers and then reinstalled them, I'd more than likely get a clogged jet.
I noticed the washers on the two filter wingnuts that hold the filter cover in place had rubber on one side. This rubber would scrub against the threads of the hold down posts and sluff off the tiniest bit of rubber every time I removed them, falling onto the carb's lower plate and eventually making it to an idle jet. This was one of the causes on my issue. I cut the rubber away in the centers and my problem was mostly solved.
Dirt can fall off of the filters when they are removed. It is what it is. If they were side drafts, this wouldn't be a problem, but they're not.
When I rebuilt my carbs last, I installed some Jet Doctors and I haven't had a problem since.
@Karyadi posted:Hi Danny, who makes a system that both monitor the TPS and the MAP which again an advancement to just MAP. My car originally came without any vacuum to adjust the advance or retard on the distributor, so having a MAP sensor is again an advancement. I bet that the crank trigger timing will be more accurate than the distributor trigger just for the fact that the crank has a larger diameter than any distributor. The more sensors the better, but it also means the more complicated to tune (ask me how I know), so for the old technology type1 engine, I am happy that I can at least create an ignition map based on the MAP info.
My first foray away from the 009 was into a Megajolt 3 crankfire system. It uses a Ford EDIS(electronic distributorless ignition system) as its base: trigger wheel, VR sensor, coilpack and EDIS box. This is all gotten at a wrecking yard used. Then you buy or build the Megajolt unit and wire up the whole mess. You have to be VERY precise on clocking the trigger wheel, since it is an OE unit there is no adjustment for spark angle.
It comes with both TPS or MAP installed, you need to choose one when you install it. For me, three wires and a bracket on the throttle shaft made more sense than 4 vacuum hoses and a reservoir.
It is probably not that important which one you choose with carbs and ignition only. As I stated above, don't try to do EFI on an ITB engine with MAP for FUEL CURVES. MAP works great for load on single throttle body plenum manifolds.
TPS is the way for what most guys run on VW flat engines.
Listen to Mitch and Carlos about carbs and jets and dirt. They got it sorted.
I too noticed rock solid stable idle and VERY smooth acceleration on light throttle as Mitch did after improving the ignition. It was a night and day difference.
When I changed to EFI, I didn't need to. The car was running perfectly. I did it for the challenge, and let's face it, more torque and power!
Kelly, 99% of what I did was fix your throttle synch. The linkage was so screwed up that when one throttle was fully open the other was a little over half open.
Whenever I remove the air cleaner elements I clean off the top/bottom mating surfaces then shoot a 3/16" bead of regular grease all along the middle of the rubber surfaces and then put them back together. The grease squishes and forms an even better seal than just the rubber. To run the bead I use a BBQ marinade injector similar to this:
I also use it to run a grease bead along my valve cover gaskets when I install them. Makes them non-stick to the covers, too. This has become a pretty handy tool.
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PS: I forgot to mention that I also added Jet Doctors, which came to light as a benefit of having the SOC brain trust on line and up front with a lot of experience. So in the end it was not just one thing, but maybe at least five identifiable "fixes" applied over the course of a couple of years. One lives and one learns. As mentioned here in a couple of ways, I think the Magnaspark made a very big difference. And so ... I motor on and wait for the next thing to go whacko.
Jet doctors are worth the money and time spent to install. Nice part is that if you suspect a clogged idle jet you may be able to temporarily fix it by blowing down the jet doctors and blow the debris back out of the jet. At least this would get you home , plus tell you that it was the problem..........This Will Not Fix the problem permanently though. That little piece of debris can flow right back into the jet again. I carry a can of compressed air in my car's tool bag just for things like this.............Bruce
About Jet Doctors: They work, and worked for me, but I never had that much of a problem. I only had them on a few years and less than 10K miles before I switched to EFI. As Carlos says, most people introduce more dirt when the air cleaners are removed.
There's another place crud can be introduced, and that's from inside the carb itself. It's well documented that E10 eats rubber. It also eats float material (at least Dellorto floats). Those floats are a black phenolic of some sort. When they start to deteriorate, they will often land in the idle jets. Worse, they can get sucked up into the transition circuit, where they cause all kinds of harm.
The solution is to rebuild the carbs every few years. There are worse fates.
Exactly right. Weber floats are made of some black plastic stuff too. I have the same ones since 2002, so they must be durable.
A lot of times people clean the jets but that doesn't do it. You must clean the WHOLE IDLE CIRCUIT. Remove jet holder, jet, and O-ring. Remove the mixture volume screw, spring, metal washer and O-ring. Blast carb cleaner through the circuit in BOTH directions. Reassemble and reset mixture screw.
I realize this is difficult on a Speedster(believe me I've done it enough times on all youse cars). But it is necessary. If you don't clean the whole circuit, the dirt will just find its way back into the jet again.
You almost never need to clean all 4, although guys do that rather than just clean the dirty one. Often, the same one will plug a few times in a row, so remember which cylinder it is and start there.
There are a couple easy ways to figure out which barrel it is. The easiest is to touch(tap quickly so you don't burn yourself) the exhaust quickly while the engine is idling, the cold pipe is the one. You could drip water on the pipes or spray them if you have sensitive hands. Or if you have the air filter tops off you can cover one barrel at a time with your hand. The barrel with no rpm drop is your huckleberry.
+1 on Jet Doctors. Had an issue once before I installed them (Carlisle 2021?) and never since.
@Karyadi posted:The save way of checking the temp of the exhaust is using the infra red temp gauge, you can get at reasonable price at Harbor Freight
Prime: $10. It's not for everything, but it's plenty good for what you're trying to do here.
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@Stan Galat posted:
This is another one of those products that mystifies me.
Stan is wrong. It’s not $10. It’s $8.98.
Presumably, it does a halfway decent job. If it didn’t, Amazon would be losing money on returns. And Amazon takes great pains to not lose money. (And besides, it does come with Stan’s endorsement - we know how harsh he can be on substandard tools.)
So, this thing measures temperature at a distance, is equipped with a “laser” aiming device, reads out on a backlit digital display, is controlled by some kind of logic circuits which are in turn controlled by three buttons, and batteries are included.
It is shipped 6000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from where it was made, is packaged in durable shrink wrap, is promoted with a video that someone had to produce, and is sold at a profit.
For eight dollars and ninety-eight cents.
And we’re all still scratching our heads and wondering how Sears and Roebuck went belly up.
I forgot about using an IR thermometer, great idea!
The longer time away from carbs, the more I forget.
I also forgot this: Turn the idle mixture screw of the suspected cylinder all the way in. If the idle speed doesn't change that's your plugged jet. BTW, that's what I usually did.
@Sacto Mitch posted:This is another one of those products that mystifies me.
Stan is wrong. It’s not $10. It’s $8.98.
Presumably, it does a halfway decent job. If it didn’t, Amazon would be losing money on returns. And Amazon takes great pains to not lose money. (And besides, it does come with Stan’s endorsement - we know how harsh he can be on substandard tools.)
So, this thing measures temperature at a distance, is equipped with a “laser” aiming device, reads out on a backlit digital display, is controlled by some kind of logic circuits which are in turn controlled by three buttons, and batteries are included.
It is shipped 6000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from where it was made, is packaged in durable shrink wrap, is promoted with a video that someone had to produce, and is sold at a profit.
For eight dollars and ninety-eight cents.
And we’re all still scratching our heads and wondering how Sears and Roebuck went belly up.
I worked at Sears and the insider mantra was "Yesterday's products at tomorrow's prices, today!"
To be clear on the quality of this tool - I have no firsthand experience. But I do have firsthand experience with a nearly identical laser thermometer I got from Amazon last year for 15 bucks. I'm assuming that any laser thermometer that doesn't say "Fluke" on the side comes from the same mud hut in east Asia. They all look suspiciously similar.
Will any of them get you to within 1 deg F from 15 ft away? No, but neither will a $200 Fluke. Will it tell you if one pipe is cool and the other three are hot? Yes. It's perfectly adequate for our application for about the same price as a value meal at a fast-food place, as long as you don't get too fancy.
How this is possible, I have no idea. My son the engineer and I remark about this almost daily. A box of 25 stainless steel wedge anchors (nothing more than threaded sticks of stainless steel) costs about 5x what this highly complicated widget does. A jug of refrigerant gas costs me $500 (+/-), about the same price as a 6 ft flat-screen TV. I bought the Chromebook I'm typing on for $125, but my internet connection is $55/mo.
During the height of The Recent Troubles, I paid $12K for a 14 ft dump trailer. For reference, an entire hybrid Hyundai costs only twice that (and comes with a warranty). As an alternative to that hybrid, I could buy a Raby T4 (the rest of the car does not come with it) or 10% of a GT3 RS.
The world is seriously out of whack.
@Panhandle Bob posted:I worked at Sears and the insider mantra was "Yesterday's products at tomorrow's prices, today!"
Very funny! I worked there too. I got through college and a little further. I stayed there one day a week for a while once I got a REAL job.
Learned a LOT about cars, specifically tire fitment. Also got a bunch of tools for peanuts, incomplete sets and such, then I would fill them in by buying the missing stuff individually. You know, back when Craftsman tools were well-made.
I also have a bunch of my Grandfather's Craftsman stuff from the 1950s. Those tools would survive a nuke!
I agree with Stan above. IR thermometers are WAY better for relative comparison than they are for precision, no matter what brand name is on there. Contact thermometers or thermocouples are for accuracy if you need an actual number.
@DannyP posted:I agree with Stan above. IR thermometers are WAY better for relative comparison than they are for precision, no matter what brand name is on there. Contact thermometers or thermocouples are for accuracy if you need an actual number.
My friend the cabinetmaker used to say, “he measures with a micrometer, marks with a crayon, and cuts with an axe”.
An IR thermometer is an axe. Spending big money on one is just silly.
Danny wrote: "I also forgot this: Turn the idle mixture screw of the suspected cylinder all the way in. If the idle speed doesn't change that's your plugged jet. BTW, that's what I usually did."
Yup, that's what I always do, too. Works as good as a Fluke IR Thermometer and costs... $ ZERO!
And in the course of the past 22 years on the same Dellortos, I have had exactly one confirmed clogged jet and maybe 4 or 5 that turned out to be something else, usually a sucked out gasket between ports at the head (mine are really narrow, there). I have learned that a clogged jet causes the engine to make different noises than a sucked out gasket. Trouble is, it happens so infrequently that I forget the difference!
OK, my list is growing. I forgot to mention in my "sad tale of Weber woe" that I also paid heed to the admonition about ethanol in the gas and its ability to work on rubber and plastic bits. I did research. Found out there is an ASTM spec for ethanol resistant neoprene tubing, whose exact number I forget just now, but I could go find that if anybody needs. I assumed that no such thing was used by JPS in plumbing my fuel circuit, so I replaced all of that JPS OEM hose with the correct resistant spec hose. Did that matter? I have no idea, but I could simply say that if it did once it does not now.
@DannyP posted:I agree with Stan above. IR thermometers are WAY better for relative comparison than they are for precision, no matter what brand name is on there. Contact thermometers or thermocouples are for accuracy if you need an actual number.
@Stan Galat posted:My friend the cabinetmaker used to say, “he measures with a micrometer, marks with a crayon, and cuts with an axe”.
An IR thermometer is an axe. Spending big money on one is just silly.
Ok Stan, that's really funny! And Danny's right- a useful tool for comparisons, but accuracy isn't really it's forté (did I do that right, @IaM-Ray?). THAT said- I do own one...
FWIW, I understand in some detail how IR thermometers work. The entire works, less the cheapo lens, can be put on a rather simple LSI chip which can be produced by the thousands (if not millions) for very cheap per item. Add some plastic and packaging, and there you have it. You will only get in serious trouble if the thing you are trying to gauge is especially shiny, as the reading depends directly of the surface emissivity you are looking at. most diffuse (i.e., matte) surfaces tend to run at the same emissivity value, more or less, in the infrared wavelengths so a single value for emissivity can be assumed in the circuitry. I have a little one of these and it works really well over a wide range of temps. Accuracy? Not sure, but if we're not making rockets, good enough.
@El Frazoo posted:FWIW, I understand in some detail how IR thermometers work.
… You will only get in serious trouble if the thing you are trying to gauge is especially shiny, as the reading depends directly of the surface emissivity you are looking at.
It’s astounding how many people don’t understand this. If I could throw every IR thermometer into the Mariana Trench to get them out of the hands of supermarket managers, I would.
The cellophane wrappers on perishable foods (meat, cheese, berries, etc.) are awfully shiny. The IR thermometers every manager loves do a fabulous job of measuring… the temperature of the light the wrappers are reflecting.
@ALB posted:Ok Stan, that's really funny! And Danny's right- a useful tool for comparisons, but accuracy isn't really it's forté (did I do that right, @IaM-Ray?). THAT said- I do own one...
Well. I can tell you more about rectal thermometers compared to oral if you really desire an education on those 
.