where do i go from here?

Jerry! Wow. My first suggestion, since we don't know what you're asking, is to put that huge monster on the back of the blue kayak!
That is a gorgeous engine.

Am I missing something???....

Hi everyone. I find that i am fed up with the whole speedster experience. After getting a bad motor from vintage. I thought that i would solicite opinions from various forums about an engine builder. and anibol chico's name came up. so after sending $6500.00 for a new motor. i thought that my troubles would be over. But i guess that these days no one really cares about giving you your monies worth. after spending alot of money on webber jets i find that the builder did not even take the time to make sure the floats where properly set. and of course webbers will never jet correctly without proper float levels. ( thank you john at aircooled ). i am still getting alot of huge poping out the tail pipe. and the motor just will not run evenly from side to side. sync is fine at idle but just off idle and trailing throttle the motor just kind of stutters and pops. upon closer inspection i see that the idle screws are nowhere near the same. the right side is about 2 turns out. the left side is about 10 or more. and at full throttle the butterflies are not even close. so what now? i suppose another grand to spring for a new set of webbers? you would think that these would be basic things to look at when a PROFESSIONAL builder builds a motor. but i guess that a customer in south dakota is not likely to show up in L.A. to get things ironed out. this sucks. i just want my car to run good enough to enjoy it. but since buying the car in 2004 this has not happend yet. any and all advice is welcome.

Jerry, there wasn't any text to go with your post, so I had looked at your pictures and assumed you were in good spirits having gotten a new motor.
I jumped the gun with the kayak comment. Sorry 'bout that.
All is not lost. There's got to be someone near you willing to have a look, or someone on this site you can call for an adjustment step-by-step on a telephone.
Let me ask my mechanic friend Jim to have a look at your carbs, and I'll let you know what he says within a day or two. If you can't find anyone close, send them out here, and we'll make something work for you pretty quickly, even if we balance them using my engine.
If not me and Jim, there are countless others here with HUGE amounts of skill who can help.

Jim, go to thesamba.com or shoptalkforums.com
post your issue and put a request out for local vw (or at least a "sharp") mechanic. I'm sure you'll be surprised with the response. It sounds like you carbs/eng. were set up by the one
armed, blind, forgetful guy on Friday afternoon after a liquid lunch. There is no excuse for the condition of your engine. They can't blame their way out on shipping, weather or
poor after market junk. They just didn't care. Sorry after spending such a chunk your
left in no better shape than if you did it yourself. That sucks. If you have no experience
syncing carbs spend your time finding a qualified person. Once set up correctly
you'll be thrilled.---It's a big country, lots of talent out there. You'll find someone.
Good luck.

Jerry from Rapid City,
I followed your the carb discussion between you and John at aircooled.net.
Im still screwing with my webers, trying to get dialed in too. I'm close now but not perfect. Keep going, you'll get there!
Don't give up.
If you have a Weber technical book it'll explain how to sync. the carbs and adjust idle mixture and Throttle linkage.
Or go to the technical pages at Aircooled.net.
http://www.aircooled.net/gnrlsite/resource/articles.htm
read all the stuff posted about setting up carbs, before you start changing stuff too much.
The articles are complete and if you follow the proceedures step by step, you'll end up getting the carbs working properly, or, at least be able to figure out what's going on.
I though after talking to John at Aircooled.net, you ordered jets and re-set up the carbs and everything was OK?
Have you discussed any of this with the engine builder where you bought this? It may be worth while letting him help you become one of his Satisfied Customers.

Greg B

From: http://www.roadhaus.com/shops.html#South%20Dakota

Import Service
3280 W Chicago St
Rapid City, South Dakota 57702
605.342.3003
800. 893.3003
ImportServiceLLC@aoldotcom

Owner

Anyone know of a good Type VW mechanic in the Houston Area? I checked the Roadhaus listing that Gordan sent but both shops no longer exist.

Michael

Michael; have you checked the Shops tab here? Jerry, by all means get the Weber technical guide from CB Performance (it's about $9.95 and well worth it; I got their one on Dellortos and it's great).

Jerry; your engine is definitely high quality; the Chicos are well known for their good work. With respect to carburetor tuning I bought a set of dual Dellorto 40's and I always thought those carburetors were a total mystery; after I got the book from CB Performance everything cleared up. They have a great step by step guide on how to dial them up. These two books are by the same author, Bob Tomlinson. This is the link; you've got nothing to lose for $9.95 plus shipping:

http://www.cbperformance.com/catalog.asp?ProductID=4

Boy would I like to get my hands on a set of complete Dells!

with your settings so different side to side have you tried the easy stuff? Sounds like you have a vacuum leak. put a vacuum guage on and see if you don't have a difference side to side, spray some starter fluid,or carb cleaner around the carb bases, manifold connections. Often times it's the simple stuff that gets us into trouble. Just a thought, good luck.

Alan- Art Thaeron at ACE in Slat Lake City has Dellorto sets for sale, with new CB manifold, a/c and linkage kits. I've got a set of his prepped 40s (which, as you know, flow similarly to 44 IDFs) on my 2110. They came completely set up.

Jerry- I feel your pain. After taking the recommendation of many on this forum (most of whom are instant "experts" who haven't used him, but only looked at his site), I originally went with AJ Sims' Kadrons (...and heads... and distributor) on my motor. They were highly modified, with the big (46mm) throttle plates, big venturis, and all the accessories. I spent over $2K with Lowbugget.com. They never worked- they flooded horribly. I sent them back to Sims three times before I finally gave up and contacted Art at ACE to discuss my options. Art sold me the aforementioned Dels, and I've been completely satisfied since I bolted them on. The nice part is, if you tell him what you've got (displacement, heads, cam, valves), and send him your carbs (IDFs, I assume), he'll jet and completely blueprint them, and send them back... in a timely manner (something AJ Sims has no concept of). No hype, no outlandish promises, just good parts and service.

Good luck.

Ricardo: Yes i do agree that CPR does do a good job on the internal bits. It's the lack of detail on the carb setup that i don't like. The jetting does not worry me either. The idf's are not hard to jet. It was the fact that the one thing he did not check. (float level) was a very important item that effects every area of jetting on a webber. after i adjusted the floats and leaned out the jetting i went from 13 MPG to 23 MPG and the transition to the various circuits was very smooth. And the idle screws being so diff. leads me to believe that they came from webber with the linkage that mounts to the throttle shaft is mismounted. and i wonder if that would cause them to be unsync'd at part throttle as the rods from the hex bar are starting at diff. points on the throttle shaft. But then i'm not a geometry expert. so i could be wrong. my main point all along was that CPR being experts at building type 1's, should have seen this and also known that you should double check everything. esp. outsourced parts. because ultimately CPR's name is on this motor.

"Jerry- I feel your pain."

Stan,

I just read your post regarding AJ and feel terrible about it.

I've had good dealings with him, but also went through all of your headaches as well. From what I hear, it was mostly caused by his employee (since fired), but I think that it was simple disregard for anything coming out of the East. The tales of rudeness and false promises and total disregard are too common to think otherwise.

Evil Ed and I along with Biff, just never gave up on calling and demanding and questioning until the goods got here. We've also gotten tech advice, have ordered other parts since and are soon sending some heads out soon for porting and enlarging to 94mm chamber diameter.

If you still have the parts from him, maybe I could buy them from you to make you feel a little better about things. Lemme know the cost and the specifics and maybe I can get the guys to pitch in a grab them up.

OR, if you really don't want them and wanna make some $ from them, they would sell VERY quickly on TheSamba. The West Coast gang still considers him golden, and the rest of the folks, who are aware of his "reputation" would LOVE to get HIS parts from YOU, rather than go through all the crap that you did to get them.

Sorry for what you went through, possibly on my recomendation!

TC

TC-

I'd love to sell the carbs and distributor. Email me if you are really interested.

Just sent you an email. Send the info, maybe a pic and I'll let everyone know. Include what you need to get for the stuff, OK?

Thanks!

Floats "self-adjust" during shipping. Guaranteed. No matter who provides the engine/carbs. Even from reputable builders, check the float levels when the engine arrives. Especially if the carbs are shipped seperately.

Carbs tend to get blamed for everything in the world that goes wrong with these engines. Not really fair to carbs. Blame them when they're bad, but if you don't know what's wrong, start with the basics.

1. Check/Adjust floats. No point in skipping this.
2. Check fuel pressure
3. Verify carbs are opening/closing simultaneously. No tuning can be done until this is FIXED.
4. Find and correct every vacuum leak.
5. Ignition system - check top to bottom.

When all that is done then start adjusting the carbs. Along this route, you may fix nothing or half a dozen things. But what you will do is eliminate all the other possibilities before you start spending money on carbs. Always fix what is cheap $$ before you commit to buying parts.

Also, check Bieker Engineering for weber overhauls/repairs. He is flat out AWESOME. Does weber, zenith etc., 2 and 3 barrel. 541-955-9777.

angela

The best of us have had issues with float heights and fuel issues.

This is primarily because miost of the time the engine is not tested with the same fuel delivery system (pump and lines) as what will be utilized in the car. I ensure that customers understand that the same fuel pressure that I test the engine with is also used in the vehicle, or there WILL be differences in performance and mixture, these can be worsened by the customers operating climate.

The best engine can be ruined in the hands of the wrong installer.It has been bad enough before that I have actually demanded some vehicles be shipped to certain installers that I knew were capable of the job before I would even sell an engine to a potential customer.
Part of the install process is verification of settings and attaining directives from the builder.

Angela's item #3, syncing the carbs and keeping them in sync, can be a re-occuring problem. Many of us have hex bar linkages, some of which are not very good, and some of which wear quickly and move from poor to worse. There is a thread on spyderclub.com on the subject with a couple of good ideas involving using Heim joints for pivot points for the hex bar. While that may well be a solution for some I suggest there are worse problems with some hex bar linkages than just wear in the pivots....specifically, some will not open the carbs the same amount side to side at all points. Some will do just fine at idle and will be off ten's of thousanths of an inch at half throttle or more. So, you can sync the carbs at idle and they are way out of sync at say 3000 or 4000 rpm....because the linkages are not symetrical, a longer piece here, a shorter piece there. Different angles on the connectors etc..... you can check out your linkage for this issue by leaving the engine off, having another party depress the acellerator slightly and slide an appropriate size drill by the butterfly....the same size should slide down the other carb.....no difference in clearance....advance the throttle more and check with a larger drill.....at full throttle both butterflys should be standing straight up and down.....you can check this with a very small right angle square if you happen to have one, or eyeball it reasonably well.

I have had at least 7 hexbar assemblies on 3 different cars, 2 Speedsters, and one Spyder, made by at least 3 different manfacturers over the last 25 years. All of them have had one problem or another and all of them tended to wear slightly and go out of sync in just a very few thouaand miles, like 2000 or 3000. After rebushing and using 2 sets, one by CB and the other by Empi in the last couple of years, and making a bunch of custom parts to get the advancement rates the same on both sides, I decided to use a bellcrank linkage from CSP instead of the hex bar set ups. While the jury is still out on the bellcrank, I have had it on the car for at least 2500 miles with no need for adjustments yet....staying well sync'ed so far.....just food for thought.....the hexbar works fine when you get everything set up correctly, and you may not get the correct parts from the maker to set it up correctly, but in fairly short order wear sets in and sync goes away....at least that has been my experience. After the pivot points wear holding adjustment is out of the question....after 3000 miles one of hexbars by XYZ had over .070" up and down movement on one end and none (less than .005")on the other. Makes no sense from an engineering standpoint, just offering observations. Must be substantially heavier loading on one end.

Jim makes some excellent points concerning opening rates and linkages.... and they are all true. No matter how good your carbs are- the linkage is still a weak link.

Angela's post is also true- but one point requires some clarification. Fuel pressure is often overlooked, but needs to be the the starting point to get everything else operational- fuel pressure that is too high will overwhelm the needle and seat and flood the carbs and foul the plugs... right now. A new mechanical fuel pump and a new fuel pump rod will produce something on the order of 6 psi or better- you'll need to grind down the pushrod, or get fat gaskets, or both... or the next tuning step will be driving your injected beater (which BTW, probably has 100K on the original plugs) to Auto-Zone to buy 4 new NGKs. High fuel pressure is relative- my Kadrons could not be made to stop flooding because the needle valves (of the needle and seat) have no neoprene on them (it's just brass on brass), and as a result will tolerate no more than 1.5 psi of fuel pressure (...in theory. The reality was they wouldn't stop leaking no matter what- 4 sets later).

Another thing to check is the accelerator pump- if it's dribbling, you'll never get the carbs to set up. A high float level (or leaking needle and seat) will cause this too (but, it's not the only thing.... no matter what AJ Sims says).

I swam upstream here for a LONG time, because I really liked (I still do) the idea of dual 1 barrel carbs for ease of set-up- but the reality is that the quality of a new Kadron is so much lower than a Italian Dellorto, that any advantage is lost in a sea of slop.

Someday, somebody will come up with a nice EFI set-up that will bring us all into the 1980s. Until then, get used to compromises.

i suspect that it may be my linkage to a degree. i have around 1500-2000 miles on the new motor. the carbs are sync'd at idle. i use a syncrometer. i am not sure if the link that bolts to the throttle shaft being diff from the other might be the culprit. if i understand when the link rod pushes down from a diff position from one side to the other it requires a diff amount of force. and that may be how the hex bars are wearing at differing rates side to side.

but there is still the issue with the link coming off of the throttle shafts being diff. from one carb to the other. i have no idea how to correct this, or that it even makes a diff. all i know is that at part throttle and full throttle the carbs are opening at diff rates. if i adjust the link rod at full throttle to even out the butterflies. i can't get the idle right.

and the local vw specialist. rocky at import service. has shut down operations. some time ago rocky told me that he wanted to sell and be rehired as the head mech. he liked working on cars but hated the paper work side. and also putting up with politicians who think that the small buss. owner is a bottomless source of tax money for them to buy votes with.

Jerry,

Read this: https://www.speedsterowners.com/knowledge/article.asp?id=131&subid=1