Need advice

PS: What is the record for thread length on SOC?  We are at four pages and counting . . .

And Lane: you better get this all sealed up proper, and have a glowing report about how great the engine runs.  I don't think anybody here (least of all you) could stand to hear that all this was done and the problem persisted.  I'm betting you got this sucker . . .

You sure as hell got that right.  If it still runs badly you will probably hear the screams way up in Maryland.

... make that five pages!!

Yeah, and if the new gasket doesn't fix it you can count on reaching 6 or more.

Ok, I have had the gaskets from Stan (thanks, Mr. President-for-life!) coated in grease overnight.  Today I will reassemble.  I'm sure I'll need to retune the carbs, but I haven't messed with the settings, so I don't expect it to be too far off.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, Stan, I didn't need to enlarge the ports at all, in fact the ports on the gaskets are very slightly larger than the ports on the heads.  I did have the trim the outsides so that they would fit, but that was easy, if not particularly pretty.  Thanks again for the freebie.

Well F**K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes folks, that means it still isn't solved.  It will now idle and you can drive it below about 50 MPH, but the chuffing is still there and it still runs like s**t most of the time.  It is possible that I broke the gasket on the 3/4 side installing it, so I am going to order some more and try again...  sometime.  If that's not it, I am completely out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas, as a former pilot friend of mine once said.

I'm open to ideas up to and including explosive devices.

Lane--Tom is right----no one admires your persistence and ability more than I do.  I have sen you do some amazing repairs that most of us wouldn't even think about attempting BUT-----it's time to locats someone who is a wizard on aircooled engines and let him fix it.  remark about  They are out there and as big as Charleston is surely there's someone around you could trust, who could do the work. Or Columbia, or Savannah.

I found a guy here in Hot Springs that I know can fix anything on my engine and also an old timer who knows how to align the bront end of my car.  (He's so good that he knew to make the front toe 1/32 " rather than the book's 1/8"-1/16" to nciompensate for steel belted radials!)

Get help!  You are a damned great wrench but it's time to GET HELP! 

Sending it back to Bremen would cost well over a thousand just for shipping both ways, probably twice that.  Not an option.

I may have to get to flat bedded up to Summerville (30 miles north) to the closest decent local shop that'll work on it.  I'm going to give the gasket one more try before I do that.

I see an Aubrey's VW in Orangeville, SC...looking somewhat close to you...maybe that's where you might be heading?

Nope.  Too far north, but I'll keep it in mind if the new gasket doesn't do the trick and neither of the two semi-local shops are suitable.

I see a Jack Daniel's in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

With problems like the one you're having, their products have served me well.

Mitch, I usually alternate between Maker's Mark and Tullamore Dew.  I've been going through a lot of it lately.

Tullamore Dew, yum

Lane, maybe that's what you should be soaking the gaskets in.

If I knew you had that squirreled away, but all you were offering was white molybdenum grease, I'd be chuffing, too.

Lane, I thouhgt about you this weekend when I saw the Tullamore Dew at a party we attended.

We  have a bottle that my Irish friend brought over for us last year.  I'll have to start dipping into now that the cold weather is on its way.  It really is a nice tasting drink.

Well, you probably did it right, and the gasket is fine, but since you have a smidgen of doubt, better go check it.  I found the re-install to be pretty easy: put the gasket on the engine, put the manifold on the gasket (w/ or without carb attached -- mine was attached), tighten gradually, and all should be good as far as the gasket is concerned.  While the carb is out and in your hand, go through the idle jet cleaning thing and spray the ever-loving' crap out of the passages in the body. After back together, and if it will drive, take it to the gas station and get fresh petrol. As reported, my car went together OK, and ran much better, but was still having trouble w/ mild missing, and the chuffing you mention.  After about 1/2 a tank of gas spent in that condition, went to Sunoco and filled up w/ their uber-premium.  Everything was good after that. I can't say exactly why, but favorite theory is that there was still a blockage of some sort in one or another idle jet passage (there are several), and it finally was freed up.  One might/could say it fixed itself.  Funky business here. Exactly what goes hinky when yopu have "bad gas" I don't know, and my experience may well be just a confounding coincidence, but there it was.

Gordon is probably going to say check that the manifold is perfectly flat, and if not, make it so.  I suppose one assumes the engine side is flat.  Not sure I'd know how to check that w/ engine in-situ.  Maybe somebody here does.  And Danny is going to say: use the freekin' Loctite stuff, and only do this one more time, and never again.  My feeling is that the fiber gaskets can take up a certain amount of non-flat-ness; how much is too much?  I dunno . . .

And I thought I heard a vague sound the other day, seemed to come from a southerly direction.  Could not make it out, precisely, but it seemed almost human, and was filled with angst.  Just sayin' . . .

Kelly

Nope, nothing from me.  If it worked well once then the head and manifold are reasonably flat or within normal tolerances and I would mess with them.  

I have no quarrel with using Permatex Blue on intake gaskets.  The only thing I don't like is cleaning everything up after you have to take them apart for any reason - the gaskets usually break into several pieces and those stick like crazy but, usually, when you smear an even coat of Blue RTV onto the gasket, wait a few minutes for it to skin than then put everything together they seal....period.

Good luck....

Yeah, Lane, before you take the damn thing apart again squirt some friggin' carb cleaner around the base! No sense in breaking it down if it's okay. 

Did you check your valves?  I sucked a valve right after similar symptoms. Cracks in the head.

Valve clearance is perfect.  I felt the gasket on the bad side give as I was putting it on, hence my concern about breaking it.  If it's broken in the middle (my suspicion), the spray test won't show anything.  I've gotten so adept at removing carbs and manifolds now that it's probably the easiest thing to do.  I haven't yet checked the timing, as yesterday was the first time the car ran well enough to do so, but by then I was tired of it.  These are the last two things I know to do.

Ok, so if it's neither of these, I could have a badly surfaced manifold or head.  The manifold had an oddity that makes me think the former could be an issue.  When I pulled it off, I noticed that the (not sure how to describe this so bear with me) edges of the port on the bottom of #3 were pulled down a bit into a lip or ridge.  Thinking that it would potentially prevent the manifold from fully seating against the head I used a dremel to carefully level out the lip, and then completed surfacing with fine grit sandpaper.  That may well be related to the continued problem as it is unlikely that the surface is as perfect as it was when the manifold was made.

If that ain't it, how do I determine a head or valve problem?

Do a leak down test.

Which is done how?

With a leak-down tool (it's a link, click it).

$40, less 20% with the coupon that is everywhere. You'll be out the door, on your way for $40 total-- tax, title, and license included.

Alternately, you could do a compression text (with a compression tester). It won't tell you as much, but it's $22 (plus the discount, etc.) and you don't need an air compressor, if that's an issue.

Buy some tools. Then you'll know. 

Looks like a relative bargain, but I don't have a compressor.  However, I do know a couple of folks within short enough distance to drive it (and let it cool down) who DO have compressors.  It's time that I don't have much of.

What do you think about what I said regarding the mating surface of the manifold?  Is that a red herring?

This is a long thread and I haven't gone back thru all of it Lane but you noted that the manifold may not be flat. Have you run a straight edge across the head (s)  to check that too ? Others with ideas....could the manifold be flattened with sandpaper of varying grits on something flat like a piece of glass ?

Man..this is a tough one, Lane but you'll get 'er done and teach us something to boot.

Are you leaking at the head or carb side of the manifold? 

Home depot rents compressors.

Every do it yourselfer should own a compressor!

I'll second that!

Bill: It was leaking at the head side.  Now I am not sure.

Regarding the compressor: Yeah I'd love to have one, but our garage is already too full to work in without piling stuff on top of stuff.

Get rid of the stuff you haven't looked at in years...

Small pancake compressor is as big as a tire.

Lane,

Please take this as I intend it. You're a good guy, but you seem to be of two minds here.

Whether you want to admit it or not, you like working on your own car-- or you at least find yourself in the position of needing to. You need tools to work on cars. Period. Even guys that have decent shops within striking distance need a fairly basic shop to do stuff. A compressor is a very, very basic shop tool-- along with a vice and a floor-jack and a grinder of some sort. Welders, torches, battery charges, A:F meters, etc. are all nice, but you can probably get it done without. You just need a compressor.

I tend to go overboard on stuff like this, but I've got an 80 gal upright, pressure lube compressor, piped all over the garage. It's not fancy-- it cost less than $400 when I watched the sales. I've got hose reels from Harbor Freight in all the corners. I've worked my way up the food-chain to get to this point, but I had a standard compressor when I made $10/hr, so it can't be about money.

What I have is extreme, but it allows me to do lots of stuff. An air-compressor is not just about putting air in your bike tires-- getting something big enough allows you to take your shop to a completely different level. I can run air-tools, including an impact gun big enough to hammer on the axle nut to 450 lb/ft. I can paint with an HVLP gun. I can powder-coat. I have a blast cabinet that allows me to media blast parts, etc.

... and I can buy and use a leak-down tool for less than $40, without wondering about how I'm going to get it done. Accumulating some tools keeps stuff like this issue with your engine from becoming a protracted nightmare. Tools allow you to find out what is wrong and fix it. Along with opposable thumbs, tools separate us from the apes.

You are a smart guy, and you want to know what is wrong with your car. I can tell you with some certainty that at this point in history-- you may be able to hire somebody to work on your cart who has better tools, but not somebody with more native intelligence.

... but you need tools to figure this out.

OK man but apes also use tools and have thumbs.

Yeah, apes have thumbs-- but they aren't truly opposable. And I would postulate that using a stick to poke an ant hole is not quite the same thing as building a computer that fits in my shirt pocket.

"Almost" opposable thumbs and tools get you foraging in a rain forest, not building a V12 with EFI.

We really are unique.

As far as we know...

What I'd like to know is…if man evolved from apes…how come there are still apes? 

Thread drift in full warp drive…..

"Almost opposable thumbs and tools..."

Sounds like the first shop I brought my Speedster to.

I had compression gauges but also needed a leak down tester last year so I bought this from Harbor Freight. The second picture is a bit blurry but the metal spaghetti to the right is the tread cut which was buried in the adapter.

Gotta love Harbor Freight, right MikeIB?

Stan, you are correct about the tools and about me being of two minds about the car. I won't go into that here other than to say I am considering additional investments in it very carefully.  Anyway, I have friends with considerably more resources and am picking up both a compression tester and a leak-down tester today.  Given the car collection quality of their owner, I am not worried about the tool quality (no HF!).  As for the compressor,  I may look for a small one, but for this weekend I can limp the car over to another friend's house nearby that has a nice garage and a good compressor.

And I really enjoy thread drift.