While checking the valve lash soon, I'll be changing out the valve cover gaskets ( not knowing what's in there now ), but I'm seeing different types for 1600 cc up to 2000 cc engines and non specifically for 2332. I have the standard VW bail type covers and hear that the OEM cork gaskets are the way to go. Any recommends appreciated...Stan, please...anyone ? Thanks.
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Unless you have something really wild (you don’t), use the standard cork gaskets available everywhere.
Stan Galat posted:Unless you have something really wild (you don’t), use the standard cork gaskets available everywhere.
Thanks, Stan. Ron nor Henry could share no light on my engine's build other than knowing Darren Krewenchuck built it. You seem to be familiar with it though. Can you shed any light on the innards of my engine as built ? I think Henry told me .002" and .003" cold on the tappet adjustment. Sound right ? Thanks.
Others will have to share with you David but On the IM web site there are some ACooled docs on my 2110cc from CB is was like
001” and a .002”
I think in the end CB recommends like 0.000 which was like the feeler moves if you can find it...
Here is from the docs.
" For all 1600 cc motors and 2000 cc as well as 2100 cc motors equipped with aluminum push rods you will need a .004” and a .005” feeler gauge. For recent 2000 cc 2100 cc motors equipped with chrome molly steel push rods you will need .001” and a .002” feeler gauge. Check the specifications sheet on your specific vehicle for proper clearance. If not available, remove rocker assembly and establish push rod material prior to adjusting.
Check the pushrods with a magnet to see if they’re chromoly or aluminum. If they’re chromoly set them to loose zero.
David,
I know very little about your particular engine, other than Darren K. built it, and Ron later converted it to dry sump.
The reason I was able to answer your query right away is because every Type 1 head, except for REALLY wild drag-race only stuff uses the same rocker box (and therefore valvecover gasket).
You don’t have CE heads, so you’re fine with the standard cork gaskets. And Lane is right—if you have steel pushrods (and I’d bet you do), they get set to loose zero. It’s really ridiculously easy to do, if that’s the case.
I have CB Performance heavy duty aluminum push rods and Pat D told me to set them to loose zero. Not quite trusting myself that much I set them to .0015 which he said was fine.
And on my 2110 cc motor I use the standard cork gaskets on the standard VW valve covers and bales.
I have never seen loose zero for aluminum push rods.
Haven't heard of "Heavy Duty Aluminum Push Rods" either.
Would like some more detailed info on them.
The only rods getting loose zero clearance are steel.
I have heard of "Heavy Duty Aluminum Push Rods" but no aluminum set to loose zero.
Gordon Nichols posted:Haven't heard of "Heavy Duty Aluminum Push Rods" either.
Would like some more detailed info on them.
aircooled.net has them.
I’ve got an unused set in my stash, and I’m not surprised Pat uses them and recommends setting them to loose zero. Valve lash is a calibrated safety factor, meant as a “best guess” how much the engine will grow vs. grow much the pushrods will grow at operating temperature.
I have no experience with them, but my guess is that he knows they grow less than the engine.
aircooled says set them cold at .006?
The experience I have with the motor so far is that it runs EXTREMELY cooler than my previous motor. I even changed the thermal switch in my cooler to a 190 degree thermal switch so the oil would get just a little warmer before the fan comes on.
Pat is the man.
I have the fancy schmancy CB Performance valve covers with the "life time" silicone gaskets. They are a bit fiddly to be sure you don't pinch the gasket or tighten one side of the cover more than the other and create a leak. Knowing what I know now , I would stay with the bails and the cork.
Also, I have the HD aluminum push rods and was told to use .004 and .005 "snug". Most important that they are the same.
This is why it's madness.
To para-phrase Stan, I are a lineman.
For the county, Al?
@AL GALLO PM sent
Robert M posted:The experience I have with the motor so far is that it runs EXTREMELY cooler than my previous motor. I even changed the thermal switch in my cooler to a 190 degree thermal switch so the oil would get just a little warmer before the fan comes on.
Can you refresh our memories as to what the current engine combo consists of, Robert? Thanks in advance. Al
205° after a long spirited run sounds just about perfect.
On valve cover gaskets, I’ve used both the cork and the cork with some sort of black composite rubbery stuff.
Both have worked fine for me.
Same old caution - make sure they don’t buckle somewhere during installation and leak at that point and you’ll be fine.
I've found that OE VW valve covers work really well. Make sure they are flat, use gorilla snot and glue the cork gasket to the valve cover. Apply a thin film of oil to the exposed cork surface and carefully install. I've adjusted the valves numerous times and just reinstalled the cover without changing the gaskets without issue.
Got my new Bosch cap and rotor and valve cover gaskets yesterday from the supplier in Welland and they are the cork /rubbery stuff. Likely just fine.
Rick - I've done that in the past. Used aircraft sealer at first. Worked great but you needed dynamite to get the damn stuff off.
Found that good old Permatex or something like Black RTV worked just as well and I could get the old gasket out, if need be, with minimal effort. Shot the cover with Carb cleaner and wiped well with a clean rag then applied the gasket and goop.
Alternatively, I've been thoroughly greasing the gasket (both sides), let it sit for 30 minutes or so then slap everything together. That works well, too, and I have CB bolt-on aluminum covers (which are notorious for leaking, but these seem OK).
Whatever the heck seems to work!
Gordon Nichols posted:205° after a long spirited run sounds just about perfect.
On valve cover gaskets, I’ve used both the cork and the cork with some sort of black composite rubbery stuff.
Both have worked fine for me.
Same old caution - make sure they don’t buckle somewhere during installation and leak at that point and you’ll be fine.
I’m going to order a thermometer oil dipstick from Precision Matters just to be sure.
@Robert M I carry a “long-stemmed candy thermometer” in my car. I’ve been sticking that down the dip stick on various intervals to see where I’m at.
I have a 1915cc engine in my VS, with a CB Performance 2 qt wide glide oil sump. As long as traffic is moving I’m fine (temps at or below 205-210). I’ve noticed when traffic comes to a halt, my oil temps rise (to the point where I need to immediately exit and drive around-in the opposite direction) when it’s 85 degrees or more outside.
This is why I now check traffic reports religiously on my trips. Plus being stuck in traffic is no fun anyway.
Is there a “solid” long term solution to relieving anxiety about my oil temps when stuck in obnoxious CA traffic on 85+ degree days with an AC engine? Or is the solution just to avoid those situations altogether?
If your oil is getting over 230F or so during normal operation (and, yeah, sitting in traffic on a 90-degree day is considered normal operation) than the engine has a problem somewhere.
Start with the simple stuff: check to make sure your fan is working correctly, nothing blocking air flow. Make sure your engine tin is tight, and the whole underside of the motor is sealed from the top side—all the way around and front to back. If there are gaps anywhere, plug them, bend the metal to close the gap, or/and get new metal and rubber seals to make the gap history.
Sitting in traffic like that, ambient heat from your exhaust and the road below could be fining its way back into your fan shroud and recirculating.
Make sure your oil cooler isn't clogged or blocked off.
Once that's all done, if it doesn't solve it, take your heads' temperature during operation.
Also: Check your valve lash. An unlikely culprit here, but a tight exhaust valve can make a serious hot spot on that head, and if they're all too tight you might see oil temps come up.
Check the carbs to make sure you don't have a lean condition at idle. Super rare on a VW hot rod but it could happen.
The men who actually know something about these engines will chime in presently to correct and augment this advice.
Ed brings up a bunch of great ideas to check, more or less in order of probability.
I don't know a lot about engines, but I do cook a lot and have over/undercooked my share of meals......
How do you know that the reading on your "Candy thermometer" is accurate?
Some are adjustable, but many, many are not and five different ones bought at "Bed, Bath & Beyond" will probably give five different readings (even the electronic ones).
Calibrate it with a cup of boiling water to see if it reads 212º.
Some of them have a locknut at the underside of the pointer housing - loosen that, rotate the housing to show 212º and re-tighten. If it's not adjustable, consider getting one that is.
Also, I've found, to my chagrin, that using a laser-pointer thermometer can really be ambiguous because of the reflectivity of the surface being probed. For example, I used mine (an expensive Fluke) on the ducts of my gas heater and found that the difference in indicated temp between a painted steel housing and the raw aluminum duct 2" downstream was about 20ºF !!
Temperature robustum caveWhat next, tire pressure gauges, congress, the UN? Must we challenge everything?
Just for you, my Panhandle friend:
Gordon Nichols posted:Also, I've found, to my chagrin, that using a laser-pointer thermometer can really be ambiguous because of the reflectivity of the surface being probed. For example, I used mine (an expensive Fluke) on the ducts of my gas heater and found that the difference in indicated temp between a painted steel housing and the raw aluminum duct 2" downstream was about 20ºF !!
Panhandle Bob posted:What next, tire pressure gauges, congress, the UN? Must we challenge everything?
I hate to be the guy who tells everybody Santa Clause isn't real, but laser-pointed infrared thermometers are the bane of my work existence. They look so very high-tech and idiot-proof, and everybody loves them. But they are horribly unreliable for everything but a few specific tasks, and are at best a rough measurement of everything else.
Every supermarket in America has somebody wandering around with one, shooting product wrapped in cellophane from 4+ ft away, generally when a case is in defrost. 3 times out of 4, somebody will call in for service when there's nothing wrong. In my world, internal product temperature is what matters, and the gun measures the surface only (and does a really poor job of that due to the reflectivity, etc.). I hate them all, and wish they would be banished forever in supermarkets.
However-- I carry one in my on-board kit. Why? Because there is no quicker way to determine a lot of things than to lay on your back and shoot each exhaust pipe coming off the heads. This isn't for me, as I monitor all 4 cylinders, but it is for everybody else, who generally have no idea which idle jet is plugged. As a rough diagnostic tool, they're really cheap at about 20 bucks on Amazon.
Gordon Nichols posted:Ed brings up a bunch of great ideas to check, more or less in order of probability.
I'd check most of what Ed has offered, but you may find that nothing he suggested helps, @Kevin - Bay Area. I've had many, many different combinations of engines in my speedster(s) since 2000, and here's what I know: the standard 1776- 1914 put in CA-built cars for many, many years run hot. What you are experiencing is running hot. I'm pretty sure it's the combination of an Engle 110 cam, stock heads, and a non-extractor exhaust. Jim Ignacio doesn't have this problem with his Kirk-supplied 1914 because he's got an A1 sidewinder. The inexpensive exhausts are often the equivalent of having a potato shoved in your tailpipe. I would recommend the installation of a good exhaust, and I'd bet your problem goes away.
Put a remote thermometer in the engine compartment. If the air in the engine compartment (which the engine is ingesting through the carbs and fan) is substantially hotter than ambient when in stop and go traffic then figure out a way to move it out and bring fresh air in. Re-ingesting pre-heated air is a recipe for disaster.
The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of oil — and heat — and sealed-off space —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why your cooler's where it is —
And whether pigs have wings.
Well, it's spring in the central valley and time for my annual rant about where VS used to mount their oil coolers. I don't know if the new, improved operation in Hawaiian Gardens is still doing this, but I hope not.
Some VS owners with 1915 motors, both with the external oil cooler and without, have had no problems with overheating. But many of us have had problems very similar to what you're seeing, Kevin.
Everything's cool until we get stuck in traffic on a 90-degree day (which is pretty much every summer day here in California's central valley).
The problem is often where VS chose to mount their external oil cooler. It's in that tight space up above the transaxle - basically a box that's closed off on the top and the sides. From an engineering perspective, it's just about the worst place for a cooler that's designed to work by passing cool air over its coils.
There's very little air flow in that space, and the cooler just keeps getting hotter and hotter, until it's probably not doing much cooling at all.
But wait, there's more!
One of the few places all the hot air that builds up around the cooler has to go is through that 8" cutout in the firewall that's open to the engine compartment - right in front of the engine's cooling fan. So once things start getting nice and toasty around the cooler, this arrangement ends up pre-heating the air that the engine is using to cool the cylinder heads. What's wrong with this picture?
For centuries, philosophers have debated why VS put the cooler where they did, but so far, none of them has come up with a good reason.
My own theory is that it's the easiest place to mount a bulky thing like an oil cooler and fan while you're building the car and before the engine and transaxle have been installed. Once the tranny's in and the build is done and the hapless owner has sent in his final check, it's a royal pain to access.
So, what's a VS owner with perpetual cooling issues to do?
Well, what many of us have done is move the cooler to someplace where it gets good airflow and the heated air doesn't do any harm - like the driver side rear wheel well.
This isn't something you can do in 15 minutes with a screw driver and a Snickers Bar. It's best left to someone who has done it before. There are mounting brackets to fabricate, oil lines to make up, and care must be taken to protect the cooler from road debris kicked up by the wheel.
But I've never heard of anyone who moved the cooler having any more cooling issues.
And one more thing - if you're bothering to do this at all, you may want to consider upgrading to a better cooler at the same time, although the simple and cheap cooler that VS used is probably up to the job.
It just needs a better home.
Your Mitchness:
Where, pray tell, didst thou relocate said cooler? One is required to provide a solution whenst identifying a problem.
Bob, I know it was a long post, but there's the answer in Paragraph 11, subsection 1:
"...Well, what many of us have done is move the cooler to someplace where it gets good airflow and the heated air doesn't do any harm - like the driver side rear wheel well..."
Got it. That's where I thought you were headed. Thank you. I will read more closely in the future.
Here's a link to a previous thread regarding oil cooler placement. Scroll down and you can see where I installed mine. I have had zero issues with oil temperatures since:
And if you want to upgrade to something cooler-er, here you go, Bob:
Pretty much what I'm running in the Driver's rear wheel well.
Gordon: How much fabrication of brackets etc. did you end up doing?
Using that kit (from Summit and others), none.
I had to make a "L" bracket to mount my oil filter, but the mount for the cooler is included, keeping the cooler about 1" off the mounting surface so the fan can draw air through. The Summit page shows everything you need; hoses, fittings, thermostat switch, etc.
Looks like this installed:
