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Stretched Exhaust Valves

Hi gang,

You might remember me posting about this a few months ago, when I said I probably wouldn't get back to it for a few months... Today I'm glad to say I've gotten back to it. The car in question is a '74 standard Beetle, "customized" by a previous owner, with a generic Mexican replacement 1600. The engine has ran hot and overheated at least once on my watch. Mileage and history unknown. Have noticed shiney circles of wear on the valve retainers, like they have been hitting the rocker arms.

I finally towed the car to my new home and today popped off the valve covers for an adjustment. All exhaust valves except #3 show signs of contact between valve retainer and rocker arm. Retainer #4 shows light wear, #1 shows somewhat more, but neither was tight and could be properly adjusted. However the #2 retainer is hard against the rocker arm, proper lash can not be provided with the adjuster. This retainer is seriously worn.

The car has only been driven once in the past few months. Took it for a short drive around town yesterday but she didn't want to idle properly. I thought it might straighten out once she warmed up and the cobwebs got blown out, but that never seemed to happen.

Sooo....any guesses on how bad it is? My plan is to pull the heads, replace the exhaust valves maybe springs and retainers, do some other maintenance & improvement tasks that I've been putting off, and get a few more miles out of the engine. I've not checked compression yet but it was fine the last time I did it... If the heads are cracked I will probably just finish building my Type 4 engine rather than spending more money on this one... thanks for any suggestions though!

Thanks, Harry

Reply to
"Harry Smith"
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hmmm Get a couple of good cylinder heads and rework them. Not sure how much heat damage has been done to the current heads. Do the valve seats sink on these heads too?

If you are close to Chicago you can pick up some of mine that I have.

later, One out of many daves

Reply to
dave AKA vwdoc1

Thanks for the reply...

I pulled the engine out the other day (yah, my first engine pull) and then yesterday I got the heads off to have a look. Good news about the valve seats, they have not visibly sunk...instead there are cracks. Both cylinder heads have at least one chamber with a crack thru the spark plug hole. Oops...I knew better, but too late now. Sooo I'm trying to decide if I should put a little more money into this engine and get my bug back on the road quicker, or turn this in to an opportunity to motivate myself to get back to work on my Type

  1. Or perhaps both...

I've been looking at used heads on thesamba and have a few questions... My heads have "G01" cast inside the rocker boxes. On thesamba I saw pictures of a head with this same mark advertised as being "040" performance heads. What is the deal with the 040 and 041 that people talk about? The 041's definitely look like aftermarket castings, but the 040 not so much. I know zero about the history or internal composition of my engine. Second, I saw a pair of heads cut for 90.5mm cylinders. Could you use these heads with smaller cylinders? It would be nice to have the room to grow.

Harry

Reply to
"Harry Smith"

Well you have found a problem but how much do you want to spend to get this engine running smoothly again? I thought you were looking for "low-budget" repair on this engine!

I still vote for the low budget repair to the Type 1 and put any extra money to the Type 4 engine project. ;-) That will get you by and allow you to have a spare engine when you install the Type 4.

I have no experience with the 041 heads for the Type 1 engine. hmmm

Thanks for the reply...

I pulled the engine out the other day (yah, my first engine pull) and then yesterday I got the heads off to have a look. Good news about the valve seats, they have not visibly sunk...instead there are cracks. Both cylinder heads have at least one chamber with a crack thru the spark plug hole. Oops...I knew better, but too late now. Sooo I'm trying to decide if I should put a little more money into this engine and get my bug back on the road quicker, or turn this in to an opportunity to motivate myself to get back to work on my Type

  1. Or perhaps both...

I've been looking at used heads on thesamba and have a few questions... My heads have "G01" cast inside the rocker boxes. On thesamba I saw pictures of a head with this same mark advertised as being "040" performance heads. What is the deal with the 040 and 041 that people talk about? The 041's definitely look like aftermarket castings, but the 040 not so much. I know zero about the history or internal composition of my engine. Second, I saw a pair of heads cut for 90.5mm cylinders. Could you use these heads with smaller cylinders? It would be nice to have the room to grow.

Harry

Reply to
dave AKA vwdoc1

Reply to
georgewk

There are so many "041" heads made it would be difficult to generalize. They come in all shapes, sizes and configurations. Made by different manufacturers as well.

J.

Reply to
P.J.Berg

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