Itinerant Air-Cooled

Engine bay is starting to look a little more presentable. Replaced the plug wires and all fuel lines, new dizzy cap too. Swapped the voltage regulator for my 'new' spare and now I've got 14.3v at the battery, so that's nice (was only 13.5). Starting to know my way around this thing which certainly helps the confidence. Swapped the AAR valve too, it wasn't opening very far cold. Getting that throttle positioning switch set properly is key!



My engine does not seem to appreciate being set to the factory 5* ATDC at idle. It runs 'ok' there but bogs in the low rpms. I verified that the advance and retard sides of the distributor are working properly and the idle stabilizer also pulls the advance up if the rpms drop too low. I'm not sure if maybe the mechanical advance is a little sticky and coming in a little late? Anyway it runs great advanced 5* so the idle is around 0* and all-in I'm at about 40* total.



Still have plenty of little things on the to-do list but I think I feel good enough to hit the road with the family in this thing now.

...cool Vanagon, looks really nice!

Thanks!

Coming from the land of aircooleds, I'm used to the little felt wick under the distributor rotor that takes a couple drops of oil... it does not look the same under there on the van. Does the distributor require periodic lubrication, and if so, how/where?

sped372 wrote:Thanks!

Coming from the land of aircooleds, I'm used to the little felt wick under the distributor rotor that takes a couple drops of oil... it does not look the same under there on the van. Does the distributor require periodic lubrication, and if so, how/where?

...interesting... hoping to find out that lubricating the distributor rotor is a Type 1 engine thing...otherwise, I probably should've been lubricating my distributor rotor all this time...?

The type IV distributor does indeed need that drop of oil. In fact, the distributor is one of the very few pieces that is common to the type 1 and the type IV engines.

As to the 1.9L WBX, I'm not so sure. For the later Vanagons I believe that the advance curve was controlled by the ECU, so there was no actual mechanical advance mechanism. But on the earlier 1.9L engines, I think that they still had a mechanical advance in the distributor. Quick way to to tell: grasp the rotor and try to turn it. If you can turn it (against the spring pressure) then it has an advance mechanism that needs oiling. If it's immobile, then either it has no mechanism, or the mechanism is frozen (the engine would run pretty crappy if that were the case).

If you're missing the little felt bit, I suspect that they would be available from our friendly vendors.

SlowLane wrote: If you're missing the little felt bit, I suspect that they would be available from our friendly vendors.

Seriously doubt that. But it looks easy enough to find a replacement piece of dense felt. Try a little chunk off the dryer drum seal.
HTH,
Colin

So there should be a wick under there, then? Hmm, interesting. Maybe that correlates with my semi-stumble (especially when cold) condition. It just feels like the advance isn't kicking in as smoothly as it should. I shall explore further.

sped372 wrote:So there should be a wick under there, then? Hmm, interesting. Maybe that correlates with my semi-stumble (especially when cold) condition. It just feels like the advance isn't kicking in as smoothly as it should. I shall explore further.

Thou Shalt Not Blame Lack Of Felt Or Lubrication for "just feels like the advance isn't kicking in as smoothly as it should".

You do have a timing light, yes?
Colin

I do, I do! And as mentioned I have verified that the advance[s] and retard cause the proper timing shifts at their end points (as near as I can tell). What I don't have enough experience to judge is how 'smoothly' the advance should work it's way forward from idle to all-in. The engine does not rev-up smoothly with the vac advance disconnected (to watch only the mech advance action via timing light). In this state (and with the idle stabilizer module also disconnected), the engine sort of 'jumps up' from no advance at idle to 'full mech advance' at high revs in a few jumps, not a smooth sweeping advance of the timing mark.

I have to assume that with slow/gradual enough modulation of the throttle I should be able to watch the mechanical advance smoothly vary the timing mark from it's starting to ending positions... right? I am guessing my distributor is in need of some lubrication.

sped372 wrote:I do, I do! And as mentioned I have verified that the advance[s] and retard cause the proper timing shifts at their end points (as near as I can tell). What I don't have enough experience to judge is how 'smoothly' the advance should work it's way forward from idle to all-in. The engine does not rev-up smoothly with the vac advance disconnected (to watch only the mech advance action via timing light). In this state (and with the idle stabilizer module also disconnected), the engine sort of 'jumps up' from no advance at idle to 'full mech advance' at high revs in a few jumps, not a smooth sweeping advance of the timing mark.

I have to assume that with slow/gradual enough modulation of the throttle I should be able to watch the mechanical advance smoothly vary the timing mark from it's starting to ending positions... right? I am guessing my distributor is in need of some lubrication.

There are actually two shelves of advance, the 1,100 -2,200 rpm shelf of approximately 16*, then a quantum jump to 22* that then moves up to full in at 28*. Remember that water-cooled Vanagons have a different curve and can take a bit more advance safely, I think 37* without vacuum?
Colin