New York Heads Day Two/Three

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Amskeptic
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New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:48 am

(sorry I have been so tardy! life ebbs and flows like ripples in a still pond, then bam! tsunami)

I remember Heads Day Two Total Visit Day 3 at the wdollie6 Volkswagen Jack Test Facility starting with a welcome visit to the kitchen for a blast of coffee. Wdollie6 and spouse were so hospitable at the hospital for headless Volkswagens. We yakked at the kitchen table about "business". Wdollie6 is a real businessman, I am a punk little proprietor punk, but it was fun to find our common ground, quality! promptness! ... it really matters!

So look at these head sealing rings. They are fine! They were just beginning to get a little blow-by as the engine relaxed its clamping force after countless heat-cool cycles. Eventually they might have leaked and burned through, but we are supposed to take the heads off after 100,000 miles anyway. You know why I like head sealing rings? They save the heads from barrel wear. They act like washers. Yes, you delete them in the 2.0 engines, but not because they are failure prone, but rather the engineers had to deal with an engineering mistake in their clearances for the new 94mm pistons. If your head sealing rings fail prematurely, it is because the engine overheated. I still use them when called-for:

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Four hours later, I am still just staring at the heads. Not really, this shot is after I pre-lubricated the valve stems and keepers, applied anti-seize to the exhaust studs and spark plug threads, installed the intake studs to a specific depth and applied Ultracopper to the exhaust ports and stuck in the copper sealing rings:

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This photograph is a gratuitous and unnecessary photograph highlighting "textures", that is a word used in wine-tasting, literature, mashed potatoes, and of course, "high art":

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Intake pipes painted with my patented "fillable primer grey" plus 500* satin clear coat engine enamel:

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Ian came over from Pennsylvania rarin', rarin' I tell ya, to jump in and help me process all the rusty tins so they could be painted sort of like how JR and Kit snuck in an entire tin painting process under my nose when we put new Len Hoffman heads on their engine in February. I still don't know how they did it all. See the ghost of Santa shimmering in the background? :

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I think wdollie6 asked me about the clock showing up in all the photographs. "What's with that clock showing up in all the photographs?" :

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5:10PM Day Two, the heads are installed with a final wipe of oil on the cylinder walls and pistons. The head nuts were torqued in three stages and re-checked four times in half-hour intervals and they kept relaxing as the tension dispersed through the case, the sealing rings, and the brand-new heads. It is a little unsettling to keep cranking on the torque wrench, shades of stripped exhaust studs for me, but finally, they held their 23 ft/lbs:

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A portrait for our personal injury lawyers so they can see just how traumatized we really are:

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A portrait showing just how uptight I was getting at Time Organization Procedure Declining Craftsmanship:

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Still trying to smile, but all of my mental notes were crashing in my head, "file not found":

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Wdollie6 and I did a weird tai-chi yoga isometric tension dance with breaker bars in the manifold pipes to spread them just enough to go over the NEW! exhaust studs in the NEW heads without damage. Then Jivermo bastard filed the mating surfaces back to flush. They mated up very nicely to the exhaust ports, thankfully.
New copper sealing rings cured in place with Ultra-Copper:

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Jivermo plugged along with tin sanding and washing and pushrod tube sanding and washing, and here is the engine just before exhaust system installation. Look at those push rod tubes, HAAH??

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At 12:45AM on Day Two, I am still working all of the thread holes with a tap and repairing this broken screw in the left intermediate rear tin:

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Washed it and painted it by 2:30AM, when I asked myself without irony or philosophy, "who am I and what am I doing?" So I went to bed:

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Day Three, I got to drive wdollie6's beautiful original 1966 Deluxe Sunroof bug.

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What a spirit pick-me-up, such a lovely precise and lively little car. Adjusted the mixture at the end of the road a tad leaner and gave it a spirited little romp back to the house:

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A Volkswagen:

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Somewhere around 4:00PM, NaranjaWesty started for the first time with the new heads, drama-free and tick-free:

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99,570 miles on the odometer, three feet on the new Len Hoffman heads ...

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Snagged my very own wdollie6 mom Rhubarb Cobbler (can you believe it?), bid these wonderful people a grateful thankful good-bye, and launched for upper upstate New York to visit my folks. Sure, it was running poorly and the head temps hit 425* on a mild uphill, little backfires at a restless chuffing idle, and yes, I tore into the AFM on the side of the road as the rain began to spatter ...
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by Jivermo » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:27 am

The presence of The Clock underscored the urgency of the work to be done (tick, tock, tick, tock...the old Chambers Brother’s song, Time Has Come Today...) I got there mid morning on the two days I assisted, well aware that our man Colin had been working far into the nights, all the time he was there. Continued small problems beset us at every turn...tin alignment, a stubborn distributor fit, tin obscuring the hole for the temp sensor, now buttoned all up and darn near inaccessible, the flaps, the flaps. The Clock ticked, the night came on, and finally my overwrought friend, circles under his eyes, caffeine coursing through his Being, turned to me and said, “Enough. Enough for tonight.” He was through. I bid Wayne and Colin good night, and headed back to Pennsylvania, blowing out a tire on a fog shrouded lonely road, full of potholes, in one of the heaviest taxed states in the country. A day of odious behavior from machine and now macadam, and my wife did not see me until the next day. The upside...and there is always an upside, is that Naraja’s engine LOOKS a damn sight better, and the opportunity of meeting Wayne, and his wife Debbie, sons, daughters, and his Mom, and grandkids and nephews and who all...95 year old dad out mowing the yard and the north 40 for all I know, and probably tending to the hops plants, too (did you know that before prohibition, the area around Delhi, NY, was the country’s largest producer of hops? No? Me, neither), this terrific family who kept the coffee hot, and fresh, and sandwich fixings, and huge cheeseburgers and warm hospitality and humor, and, Debbie’s awesome and stylish new haircut, well, that all was the upside. The venue had it all. Thank you, Wayne and Debbie! As usual, I learned much. 4 different tin screws? That bastard file!

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tommu
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Re: New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by tommu » Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:56 am

I’m wondering why the tin fit so unhelpfully? Had someone been there before and disturbed everything?

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Amskeptic
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Re: New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:54 pm

tommu wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:56 am
I’m wondering why the tin fit so unhelpfully? Had someone been there before and disturbed everything?
Heh ... WE been there and disturbed everything. :cyclopsani:
Colin
(the tins all fit just fine except for one little friggen problem that threw the whole dang puzzle into disarray.
A) See, when I was fitting the left rear intermediate tin, it is supposed to NOT go into the deflector tin underneath. It is supposed to slide down behind the deflector tin. Therefore it was a little high. Proffering the fan housing to the sandwiched intermediate tin and left upper cover shoved down the intermediate tin which then is under tension and it pulled the upper cylinder cover down which misaligned, I don't know, eighty or so other tin screws and made the intake manifolds fight for room to slip on their studs which caused the upper cover to buckle slightly where the front tin has to sandwich the front intermediate tin and the front tin and the heater pipe bracket so those pesky screws can go down through all four, wait, I'm not done, it is not all our fault, the car was hit hard in its youth, and the crumpled-but-straightened right rear tin where the oil filler pipe comes through, rides the oil filler pipe hard left, which misaligns the alternator face plate which screws to the right upper cover which has to screw to the right rear intermediate tin and the screws were not aligning there and the upper cover thus annoyed the front tin screw hole which, I shit you not, misaligned the front right exhaust bracket that I painfully fabricated last February to fit the original engine/heat exchanger perfectly, but the Len Hoffman heads + our Tai chi exhaust manifold file job made the exchanger point slightly upwards at the rear, really. The last perfectly fitted engine is the BobD. It was never hit in the rear, and the tins FALL into place with perfect screw hole alignment)

Screw Types:
a) 64 million billion self-tapping screws for the captive square steel nuts welded to the tins
b) 2 short self-tapping screws, one for the right upper cylinder cover where the valve cover must clear it underneath, and the alternator face plate to right rear tin where the screw points up into the fan belt
c) 5 non-self-tapping screws, two for the lower tins where they screw into the case - important! and three with especially large washers to hold the upper cylinder covers to the heads at the intake manifolds ( temp sensor 2 takes care of the fourth)
d) 1 long non-self-tapping screw for the left rear tin and heat shield where they attach to the fan housing magnesium (everybody seems to miss this one and the fan housing gets stripped out)
e) 2 washer-less self-tapping screws for the fan housing duct plates that sandwich the exhangers to the fan housing
Oy ...
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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vwlover77
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Re: New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by vwlover77 » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:06 pm

Wow. No other words.
Don

---------------------------
78 Westy
71 Super Beetle Convertible Autostick

"When we let our compassion go, we let go of whatever claim we have to the divine." - Bruce Springsteen

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Amskeptic
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Re: New York Heads Day Two/Three

Post by Amskeptic » Tue Jun 18, 2019 9:38 pm

vwlover77 wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:06 pm
Wow. No other words.
Here's some. June 19th, and we are at 1,200 miles on these heads. The engine is running close to flawlessly. Very smooth on the open highway, there was a purr that is now more of a hum. Pretty decent power with a better pull further up than the original heads, maybe that Len Hoffman port-smoothing at work? I am at 16 mpg average so far. Head temps range from 380* to 407* at 65-70 mph, but temps have been cool so we'll see what happens when temps rebound. I did some more flap work this morning and finally can look around the engine compartment and note things like, "hey, the intake plenum is painted," and "wow, all the intake and egr pipes are a nice grey now."
The brake booster is gonegonegone done. Used one getting sent to locoqueso from the Bus Co. I will rebuild the original one when I find a nice empty vista to look out over ...
Colin :geek:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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