Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Burbank

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Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Burbank

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:59 pm

. . . Beautiful Downtown Burbank.

Burbank has changed. Sleepy little Magnolia Blvd up from San Fernando Road is now some Big City Shopping District with actual pedestrian malls and neon lights. Not the way it was when I rented a motel room on San Fernando Road for four days back in 2002 and rebuilt the engine in the Road Warrior because it seemed like the right thing to do (it wasn't). Perhaps I shall drive by Martik's Metric Motors and see if his son is now the big guy.

I arrived here from Palm Springs about an hour ago. The chill is killing me. It is barely 64* here at 9:00PM, and the temperatures are to plummet to 57* by 6:00AM, then climb agonizingly slowly to a high of 75*. Worse yet, the next day is supposed to only hit 72*. Worser still, if I visit Elwood, the low is 42* and the high is 61*. Intolerable! But then . . . it all goes to heck. If I head east (I am supposed to), lows drop into the low 40's and rain makes its return. Even in Van Horn, TX, the HIGH is 49* and the low is 39* on October 15th. Some polishing of the heater ducts and a little sealing here and there look to be in my future.

OK, this space shall be filled with how tommu and I did with getting his engine in the car and driving down the road THIS TIME.
. . . (to be cont)

LAST TIME
viewtopic.php?f=77&t=13631#p229596

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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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BusBassist
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by BusBassist » Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:02 am

Well - if it’s any consolation, Colin, it’s currently 83* and sunny with a clear blue sky here in Rochester.

A great day to be driving a VW bus!
Late 73 Bay w/a transplanted 914 Engine.

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airkooledchris
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by airkooledchris » Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:44 am

That is a beautifully prepped engine sitting there awaiting it's return to service. The colors of the heater boxes and tinware/etc all look incredible.

Nice work!
1979 California Transporter

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SlowLane
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by SlowLane » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:47 pm

That does look like a beautiful engine, and to my eyes one of the beautifuller parts on it is the apparently new catalytic converter which mates up perfectly between the crossover pipe and the muffler.

Is that one of the long-promised Magnalflow converters?
'81 Canadian Westfalia (2.0L, manual), now Californiated

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by tommu » Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:06 pm

That CAT is a shell of a CAT. The honeycomb came loose with the, tired, old and now removed engine so I pulled it out. I am patiently waiting for the new Magnaflows to be released and desperately hoping they get released before I need to pass SMOG again.

We had a good day yesterday which culminated in a straightforward mating of the engine. Today was fun. We discovered that, somehow, the IAC certified valve adjustment procedure missed out on number 2 valves so we had an early run-in scare. After this was remedied I'm pleased to say the engine ran quite well - with a seemingly smooth nature. Unfortunately it's leaking badly from the bell housing. I'm hoping that I didn't torque a gallery plug enough or even that the main seal is leaking. But we shall see. Before Colin left we added some UV dye and ran the engine enough to (hopefully) let it escape from wherever it wanted to.

We did take a drive and Gary did drive well. I can't wait to finish this trilogy!

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Bleyseng
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by Bleyseng » Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:00 am

What main seal did you use? Hopefully the Sabo seal as those don't leak vs the orange seals with their weak springs.
Geoff
77 Sage Green Westy- CS 2.0L-160,000 miles
70 Ghia vert, black, stock 1600SP,- 139,000 miles,
76 914 2.1L-Nepal Orange- 160,000+ miles
http://bleysengaway.blogspot.com/

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by tommu » Fri Oct 12, 2018 12:38 pm

It's a Sabo and it was a really tight fit. I'm preparing to drop the engine again to see. I need to drive this bus again!

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:09 pm

The journey to Burbank went through Palm Springs where I have never been. Palm Springs is the center of the Hollywood Get-Away Universe circa 1950's, and the architecture shows it in a weird aggressive "modern" but not really, sort of way. I had only ever seen signs for Palm Springs from I-10 as it approaches Beaumont/Banning's Experiments In Wind Energy. Here are the first little wind mills atop spindly little derricks spinning rapidly. The two blade models which were subsequently found to have too much acceleration/deceleration, were superceded by the three blade models which were subsequently discovered to wear themselves out (see all the oil grime?):

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Then the latest windmills (to your left with the white supports) with those monstrous blades rotating nice and slow but with plenty of torque filled in the valley:

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But this isn't about windmills, it is about weird aggressive architecture in Palm Springs:

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The Rat Pack hung out here and drank a lot and treated the help poorly and slapped women ... sorry, "broads":

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For example, what is this?

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Well, this is a novel way to make sure that the eastern sun exposure has its way with you. I have a guess of what they were trying to evoke, but I will wait for other opinions:

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... and my favorite:

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OK, bye, Palm Springs:

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We're not here, after all, to talk about weird architecture, we're here to install and break-in an engine that has been carefully re-rebuilt in Burbank, so I steeled my nerves and dived into the raging current that is Los Angeles traffic. Arrived in Burbank late, and camped at an industrial park that specialized in 5:00AM trash pick-up and 6:00AM loud greetings at the furniture delivery warehouse. Showed up at tommu's house so very ready for the best coffee in the country. I was not disappointed. The first order of the day was to countersink the rocker arms for swivelfoot adjusters. Your expert mobile machinist at work:

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Your expert mobile machinist's Quality Control Supervisor does not let one tenth of a millimeter get by him, not one tenth:

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So yeah, haha, right? This is what it looks like eight hours later. That is my back talking to you through my facial expression:

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The next morning, after a delightfully frightful night's flight up the 5 freeway (where I crashed out long before my chosen campsite) (and was awoken by the first flight out of Burbank's airport seeing as I was awfully close to the end of the runway), we installed the engine (and transaxle, my back wants to remind you):

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Ran it for two or three minutes, shut it down and re-adjusted the valves after giving tommu a nice scare ("number one is dead, shut it off"), started it and watched that beautiful (but unsettling for the neophyte) first acquaintance of all of these parts. That is the way it goes, it does not run all that well until the valves seat into their seats and the air gets driven from the injectors, and the rings develop an air-tight seal, and the engine slowly runs more smoothly and by the time we were ready to drive it (!), the exhaust was building a steady strong even note.

I needed this engine to be perfect out of the gate. Tommu has been subjected to trial by fire, and it was past time for the fruits of his labor to start laboring for him. Our test drive gave me great hope. A smooth smooth engine with good responsiveness for a fifteen minute old engine still breaking in (it will only get peppier as bearings and rings seat and internal friction diminishes). We strafed the elementary school loading zone during kid loading time on a few laps around the neighborhood. Did a few acceleration runs to help load the rings and this engine sounded so good at high rpm, smooth high rpm.

Alas, the engine is not yet perfect. It has a "slight" leak.

Post Oil Leak Portrait
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Oil Leak Eradication Supervisor Portrait:
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Your Burbank homies say, "hey":

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Seriously, look at this work of art. There is no way that it is going to be anything but exquisite after we stanch the bleeding:

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I do not think a main seal can dump this much oil out unless it managed to escape the crankcase bore (not likely). It may be a gallery plug, and we all will not speculate uselessly until the Update!
Excellent as always, tommu.
Colin
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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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by tommu » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:35 pm

I took a photo through the UV glasses, you can pretty much make out the dye track. It's clear in person. The cam plug has some Curil on it which shows up in the black light.

When I installed this plug I was concerned about cutting off supply to the gallery leading up to the bearings. I'm guessing I did not torque it enough. I'll check tomorrow.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Oct 13, 2018 9:52 am

tommu wrote:
Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:35 pm
I took a photo through the UV glasses, you can pretty much make out the dye track. It's clear in person. The cam plug has some Curil on it which shows up in the black light.

When I installed this plug I was concerned about cutting off supply to the gallery leading up to the bearings. I'm guessing I did not torque it enough. I'll check tomorrow.
[/img]
Holy holy, you get just get in there, don't you? This would be most-excellent if it is just a gallery plug snug.
So yeah, about that "cutting off supply to the gallery leading up to the bearings" there is no gallery leading up to the bearings here. This is the end of the left lifter gallery. The gallery itself is bisected by the lifter bores at the lifters. The gallery plug slightly to the left and up from the circled one does go to main bearings.

So, if you have a 1.25 thread pitch, each full turn of a bolt or screw would move the bolt or screw .062". The difference between a leaky mess and a secure plug might be what, a quarter turn? .015" ? You could grind the backside of a gallery plug .010" and send it in firmly, but you don't even have to do that here. :cyclopsani:


1. Torque the gallery plug to a minimum of 14 ft/lbs with a good sealant if you have:
a) at least four full threads to work with
b) a shoulder at the bottom of the bore
or
c) taper threads that you can feel wedging

2. If the gallery plug just spools down the bore with no resistance, let's do the full:
a) acetone cleaning
b) JB Weld on gallery plug threads save for the least two facing the bore
c) allow to set for 24 hours
d) roughen the surface of the case and end of gallery plug with a file
e) slather JB Weld over entire area, or even do all of the plugs like I did with Chloe's engine below:
Looking forward to an update.
Colin

(see note below photo)
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(note: yes! the Type 1 engine photographed here has a drilling from the main gallery down to the left lifter gallery and to the camshaft bearings. That gallery plug cannot be allowed to hamper oil flow. But the Type 4 engine does a completely different circuit. Recall who threatened you with dire warnings of nonsense . . . and add this to your mental notes file)


edit: just found a 2009 photograph of the Road Warrior with its mangled *right side* lifter gallery plug that had fallen out in 2002 (!) and was JB Welded to get me home . . . then left alone for next 169,000 miles:

Image
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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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by tommu » Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:00 am

Odd that I can see a passage leading off to the left as a look in that hole. I’ve looked without success for a diagram of these galleries. I just can’t visualize them..

Torque was just too low. 9 or so ft lb. I’m grinding the plug down and will seal and torque it up.

Cannot wait to drive Gary again!

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:28 am

tommu wrote:
Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:00 am
Odd that I can see a passage leading off to the left as I look in that hole. I’ve looked without success for a diagram of these galleries. I just can’t visualize them..

Torque was just too low. 9 or so ft lb. I’m grinding the plug down and will seal and torque it up.

Cannot wait to drive Gary again!

I have been looking all over the place, and the diagrams are all stylized and mostly Type 1 with notations for the Type 4. I will update this thread if I am so very wrong. See here, for example, the gif misses the left lifter gallery plug on the Type 1 engines:

Image
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: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From . . .

Post by SlowLane » Sat Oct 13, 2018 12:07 pm

tommu wrote:
Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:00 am
Odd that I can see a passage leading off to the left as a look in that hole. I’ve looked without success for a diagram of these galleries. I just can’t visualize them..
Wish I still had my spare engine case to check, but alas, it was discarded along with a whole lot of other useful parts in my recent storage-unit purge. :pale:

In order to avoid possible repeats of the engine pull (which you must be getting quite good at by now), you might want to make use of an engine pre-oiler to introduce pressurized oil into the engine galleries while the engine is still out. Then hopefully you'll be able to spot whether your fix is holding.

A pre-oiler can be easily cobbled up using a plastic garden sprayer of the hand-pumped variety (new, obviously), plumbed into the oil-pressure switch port on the engine with some fittings from the hardware store. I used one such to pre-oil my engine when I rebuilt it years ago. Whether it made any difference to the engine break-in is debatable, but it seemed worthwhile at the time.

When hand-pumping oil into the galleries, the pressure doesn't last for very long, so you may or may not get enough in there to have a visible effect at your leak site. The flywheel would need to be mounted with its shims in place to help present enough resistance to the oil flow.

There's also the downside of introducing an uncontrolled extra amount of oil into the engine that would need to be drained, but you'll probably be draining the oil with the UV dye anyways.

Good luck. Top marks for perseverance.
'81 Canadian Westfalia (2.0L, manual), now Californiated

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."
- Terry Pratchett

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tommu
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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Burbank

Post by tommu » Mon Oct 15, 2018 7:39 pm

I should have listened to you Mr Slowlane. Wondering whether I should build myself a run stand now. I installed the engine again, ran it for 5 mins and found another leak from the same place. Much slower - but not good.

Video:
https://i.imgur.com/p5OUGDb.mp4

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Wondering if this was an existing issue for the previous owner of this engine:

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Colin - I'm guessing it's JB Weld time? Will it work if the threads have been poorly tapped?

On the positive side, I'm getting quicker at pulling this lump.

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Burbank

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Oct 15, 2018 10:47 pm

tommu wrote:
Mon Oct 15, 2018 7:39 pm
Colin - I'm guessing it's JB Weld time? Will it work if the threads have been poorly tapped?

It was JB Weld time a few replies ago. It IS also time to slow down! be deliberate! scientific! forget the pre-oiler! It cannot give you the requisite pressure at the requisite viscosity under the requisite dynamics like spinning flywheel! Just settle down and get the damn leak stopped!

Aluminum gallery plugs!

Are the threads are damaged? You have to tell US if the threads are damaged. Are the threads damaged? Are there less than four good threads? Is there a seat at the bottom of the gallery plug bore? Did you feel a taper to the plugs? What was the initial torque value you found on the leaker? What was the subsequent torque value you got to upon re-tightening? Did you use sealant? What kind?
These questions have already been asked. Was it a private message where I went on and on?

So, we have another hemorrhage here AGAIN but I have no new information from you to tell me what the hell is going on, but we HAVE to do the suggested steps or we are just dashing into the storm again with absolutely no new effective strategies, AND we are making things more and more "sore". At this point, new flywheel bolts and new pressure plate bolts are called-for, and soon, the threads in the gallery plug bores will just up and fail if we are chewing into them again and again.

Let's wrap this up.

Good gallery plugs and case threads, cleaned in acetone, JB Welded, then roughed up external surfaces, you got the pictures up there.

Your video and photograph strike me each time I look at the left lifter gallery plug, is that thing sitting *recessed* in the hole? They should be close to final tighten at flush.
Colin
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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