Topic: 72 Käfer (Beetle) build

[SingallZ]

I bought this little guy 3 months ago after looking for a clean rust-free classic beetle for 2+ years (my kijiji addiction runs deep). Its a fun underpowered little car I can spend the long Alberta winters fixing up.






The good:
Its body is in incredible shape, its interior is spotless and smells the like a museum

The bad:
It pisses oil on my drive way, it refuses to stop, steering feels like it's pieced together with string, duct tape, and hope.

But as with anything that hasn't seen maintenance since the 70's I need to replace A itshay TON of things

Steering tie rods, ball joints, control arms


Converting it to disk brakes


New 2" wider rims 15X6 (stock is 15X4)


And some fun aesthetic stuff I'll make permanent at some point when it runs


But today and over the next few months I'm going to be building a new engine (the old block is cracked) so now I get try something I've always wanted to do: Build something cool from scratch!!!





Its a 2.0L 78.8mm stroker engine with forged 90.2mm mahle pistons, forged crank, forged connecting rods, forged lifters, slightly aggressive cam, ported heads, and ITBs!!! The stock motor was 1.6L and 60hp, this should top out at 120hp if I've calculated all the parts correctly (still need to figure out compression and some other things). My goal is wheelies!! 





I'm not sure if you guys want to see this, it's a boxer motor so it's kind of subie content, but maybe a little to old-school. If you guys like this stuff I'll post up most of my progress of the engine build (the machine shop has some work to do first though).

[Zac]

Looks great! Which machine shop is doing work on it? My "rebuilt" 1600 seems to have some knock

[SingallZ]

Looks great! Which machine shop is doing work on it? My "rebuilt" 1600 seems to have some knock

D&W Custom Engine, after I do a pre-assimble to check clearances I'm going to have them balance the rotating assembly and then I'll build the complete long block.

[Perfect Dark]

I'm not sure if you guys want to see this

Damn right I do.

[Canuckrz]

I approve of anything with ITB's.

[diamondedge]

Holy itshay this thing is cool.

The noise it'll make, can't wait to hear it in living color one of these days!!

[Ambystom01]

No Porsche motor? Cool project.

[jellynuts]

Wow, that's in amazing shape.  Looking forward to more! 

What cars do you have in your stable these days? 

Are you serious about doing wheelies? 

[SubieRoo]

Yes, now that wheelies have come into the equation, they are required.

Why not STi swap it? Seriously - check out @sti_69bug on instagram, it's awesome!

[RedndWhite]

I'm with PD, on this:

Damn right I do.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

I'm in love.

[SingallZ]

Wow, that's in amazing shape.  Looking forward to more! 

What cars do you have in your stable these days? 

Are you serious about doing wheelies?

4 cars (I’m going to sell the civic after ice racing this season) and yup I’m serious about wheelies. With some sticky wider rubber and eventually an LSD I think I can hook that up.

Yes, now that wheelies have come into the equation, they are required.

Why not STi swap it? Seriously - check out @sti_69bug on instagram, it's awesome!

I thought about an STI swap and also thought about converting it to an EV, but in the end this will make X2 more horsepower than stock and I’ve always wanted to blueprint a motor.

[jellynuts]

You can always blueprint an EJ 

[seat safety switch]

Holy itshay, that's a beefy engine build. I always wanted to do an ACVW, but I was more along the lines of "running Baja Bug."

Surprised how clean it is. Good buy.

[Dr Beans]

This is awesome - how is finding parts for this?

[JohnnyCanuck]

Very nice, I see it has the gas heater, too.  They pump out a lot of heat.

[SingallZ]

Very nice, I see it has the gas heater, too.  They pump out a lot of heat.

Yup it practically burns your legs, but everything in charge of containing fuel or vapor leaked so it felt/smelt like it was just a matter of time before it burned more than my legs. I put it back together today but I'm leaving its fuel feed line safely detached (for now).

This is awesome - how is finding parts for this?

Finding parts is easier than Subie with varying quality. I'm lucky it's a simple car they made virtually unchanged from 1946 till 2003 so theres tons of suppliers/spare-parts. I've been going to a place here in Calgary (pretty good guys) concept1 and cip1 in Vancouver. In the US theres tons too with Wolfsburgwest, CBPerformance, and Scat with the best'ish quality. Prices range from the expensive high quality German parts to the bargain bin Brazilian, Mexican, and Chinese parts.

Also made some progress today, I need to finish the general repairs before I can make room for the engine stand and work space. So I put in the new gas tank, rubberized the bottom of it, and then put the heater back together:




I've started to work out my compression ratio. After measuring the volume of the CNC'd Scat "Super D" heads it turns out I have 64cc in each chamber which is way more than I wanted. With 90.5mm pistons, 78.8mm crank, and about a 0.045inch deck height I'll be at 8.0:1 with 2023.4cc's of displacement. Which means the cam I'm running might not be all that happy and I might need to move to a different setup.



Also my ported manifolds came in, they're slightly larger than the stock opening, there will be wheelies!!!

[SingallZ]

Finally got the engine case on the stand. I got a yoke from an air-cooled Porsche and surprise it fits, it looks like complete overkill for that ittybitty little vw case.

[seat safety switch]

How does the cooling system change with an engine this furious for one of these cars? Will the OEM cooling tin still make it work or are you going to add auxiliary oil coolers and stuff like that?

[SingallZ]

How does the cooling system change with an engine this furious for one of these cars? Will the OEM cooling tin still make it work or are you going to add auxiliary oil coolers and stuff like that?

With the newer 1968+ 1600cc motors VW improved the cooling system with a "Dog house" cooler in a newly designed fan shroud. Which just really means VW slapped a bigger cooler in the fan shroud and ducted more air into it. Supposedly you can get up to 2.0L and it'll still be okay. Its crazy but VW cools itself through a fan attached to the alternator, a 10cm X 30cm oil cooler, and no factory oil filter (just a "strainer").  So when I bought the new case I got one that came "tapped for full flow". Which is a common modification that lets you plug in an external oil cooler and filter setup directly onto the oil pump and have it return through the "full-flow" case tap. I'm going to toss on a slightly beefier oil pump, filter kit, and external cooler (just in case).

[SingallZ]

I've gotta take the heads in to the machinists to get about 20 cc worth of volume removed from each them of them. If this was a turbo setup I'd be super happy with 7.5:1 or 8:1 compression, but I need 9:1 for the cam so off to the shop they go. But before I take it in everything needs to come out, so it's valve day!

Checked valve travel/spring bind (I need 0.488 and I've got 0.612, so that's good)


Disassembled the heads


Ground/seated the valves



The head (before bottom, after top):


The valves, I'm okay with this, on the intake I'd like the band to be closer to the end of the valve seat. (before left, after right)


And a shot of the Porsche 356 style exhaust (inspiration to keep going, oohhh that rattle pop)

[JohnnyCanuck]

Very nice muffler!  Looking forward to hear how it sounds.

[SingallZ]

I got a bunch of stuff back from the machinist so on to the build:

Testing the oil pump and cam gear clearance:



Bocking the oil feed line for the full flow pump since it'll go through the oil cover now (don't want any of that oil spilling back into the case):

If you're tapping something like this you got to buy a good tap. $15 more is the difference between wrecking a block or cutting like butter.



Setup the cam and thrust bearings (0.0035inch):



checking lifter clearance (needs 0.5inch and has tons of room)



Also needed to clearance the main bearing oil galley slightly, it would only get 1/2 the oil it needed (apparently on the samba forms this is normal issue on these new cases, no one can figure out why they haven't fixed it...)

[SingallZ]

Finally forward momentum! Crank assembled

Needed a place to assemble the crank so I welded an old crap gland nut to the engine stand, yah yah I know my welds are hideous




Assembled the crank timing gears, you have to get them almost glowing hot then drop them on the crank as fast as you can

fun fact these are so sharp it cut through my welding gloves, also fun fact glowing hot copper cauterizes wounds



Got the rods back from machine shop (one was off round)

you sir cost me weeks of time, a-hole!


Had to check the stretch of each bolt after torquing (0.058 for ARP with their assembly lube)



Finally assembled short block ready to be sealed (I'm going to use Loctite 547 and Curl-T)

Side play was between 0.10mm and 0.40mm

And the rods clear the cams, yay!

[RedndWhite]

I've made wheel bearings fit like that; burn the heck out of the spindle, freeze the bearing, drop in. Never thought it'd be used to fit timing gears, figured they would have been machined in.

Look at all that crank and cam clearance!