Type IV Beetle In The Works!

Hello All,

I've got my daily driver '73 Std. Beetle. I've got a complete 2.0L type IV engine in the garage and the '76 van it came out of. I've got the Joe Cali book. What I need is a few parts and a little advice...

First, the engine. The van's been parked for about 10 years due to an undiagnosed fuel injection problem. A couple years before that the engine was "rebuilt" by my friend's granddad (now deceased). I've pulled off the 1/2 cylinder head. I am going to clean them up and check for cracks, but judging from how nice they look I think may have been redone as part of the rebuild. There's no reason to think the seats have dropped or anything horrible like that. Before I took it apart I did a compression check and got 115-130 psi, except for cylinder 2 which only made 70 psi. The barrels still show the marks from a home hone job but the rings look clean, so I assume the rebuild consisted of cleaned up cylinders and new rings. If I'm doing it, I want to do things right, which to me means new pistons and cylinders, and if I'm doing that I figure why not go with an oversize 96mm set. The 96's sold by Aircooled.net seem kind of pricey though, on the order of $600 bucks. What is the difference between theirs and the sets you see on eBay for less than half that price?

For cooling, I'm leaning toward the DTM shroud. My only problem with it is that I want a thermostat on the engine, which I understand can be retrofitted if you're mechanically clever. Also the car has a nearly complete A/C system that I do eventually want to get going again. Anybody know about mounting the compressor with a DTM shroud? I believe that The Legendary Shad Laws has a type IV engine and A/ C...any pictures of his setup?

Now, the car. Eventually I'll go with a re-geared overdrive transmission, but thats not in the immediate plans. However, the driver's side C/V joint is pretty worn and I don't imagine it will survive long behind the 2.0L engine. The car isn't going to be a dragster, just a spirited daily driver, so will standard beetle C/V joints be enough or should I plan on upgrading to something stronger?

Obviously this will be a big project and I'm just getting started, but I've got enough time and money to throw at it to get it done in a few months. Any help from the group in this would be greatly appreciated!

Peace, Harry

PS. The deal here is, I'm trading my buddy the complete, running Mexican 1600dp from my Beetle for the complete, non-running 2.0L type IV from his van. We're both happy, but I was just curious if this sounded like a fair trade to you guys.

Reply to
Harry Smith
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Hello All,

I've got my daily driver '73 Std. Beetle. I've got a complete 2.0L type IV engine in the garage and the '76 van it came out of. I've got the Joe Cali book. What I need is a few parts and a little advice...

First, the engine. The van's been parked for about 10 years due to an undiagnosed fuel injection problem. A couple years before that the engine was "rebuilt" by my friend's granddad (now deceased). I've pulled off the 1/2 cylinder head. I am going to clean them up and check for cracks, but judging from how nice they look I think may have been redone as part of the rebuild. There's no reason to think the seats have dropped or anything horrible like that. Before I took it apart I did a compression check and got 115-130 psi, except for cylinder 2 which only made 70 psi. The barrels still show the marks from a home hone job but the rings look clean, so I assume the rebuild consisted of cleaned up cylinders and new rings. If I'm doing it, I want to do things right, which to me means new pistons and cylinders, and if I'm doing that I figure why not go with an oversize 96mm set. The 96's sold by Aircooled.net seem kind of pricey though, on the order of $600 bucks. What is the difference between theirs and the sets you see on eBay for less than half that price?

For cooling, I'm leaning toward the DTM shroud. My only problem with it is that I want a thermostat on the engine, which I understand can be retrofitted if you're mechanically clever. Also the car has a nearly complete A/C system that I do eventually want to get going again. Anybody know about mounting the compressor with a DTM shroud? I believe that The Legendary Shad Laws has a type IV engine and A/ C...any pictures of his setup?

Now, the car. Eventually I'll go with a re-geared overdrive transmission, but thats not in the immediate plans. However, the driver's side C/V joint is pretty worn and I don't imagine it will survive long behind the 2.0L engine. The car isn't going to be a dragster, just a spirited daily driver, so will standard beetle C/V joints be enough or should I plan on upgrading to something stronger?

Obviously this will be a big project and I'm just getting started, but I've got enough time and money to throw at it to get it done in a few months. Any help from the group in this would be greatly appreciated!

Peace, Harry

PS. The deal here is, I'm trading my buddy the complete, running Mexican 1600dp from my Beetle for the complete, non-running 2.0L type IV from his van. We're both happy, but I was just curious if this sounded like a fair trade to you guys.

Reply to
Harry Smith

Hello All,

I've got my daily driver '73 Std. Beetle. I've got a complete 2.0L type IV engine in the garage and the '76 van it came out of. I've got the Joe Cali book. What I need is a few parts and a little advice...

First, the engine. The van's been parked for about 10 years due to an undiagnosed fuel injection problem. A couple years before that the engine was "rebuilt" by my friend's granddad (now deceased). I've pulled off the 1/2 cylinder head. I am going to clean them up and check for cracks, but judging from how nice they look I think may have been redone as part of the rebuild. There's no reason to think the seats have dropped or anything horrible like that. Before I took it apart I did a compression check and got 115-130 psi, except for cylinder 2 which only made 70 psi. The barrels still show the marks from a home hone job but the rings look clean, so I assume the rebuild consisted of cleaned up cylinders and new rings. If I'm doing it, I want to do things right, which to me means new pistons and cylinders, and if I'm doing that I figure why not go with an oversize 96mm set. The 96's sold by Aircooled.net seem kind of pricey though, on the order of $600 bucks. What is the difference between theirs and the sets you see on eBay for less than half that price?

For cooling, I'm leaning toward the DTM shroud. My only problem with it is that I want a thermostat on the engine, which I understand can be retrofitted if you're mechanically clever. Also the car has a nearly complete A/C system that I do eventually want to get going again. Anybody know about mounting the compressor with a DTM shroud? I believe that The Legendary Shad Laws has a type IV engine and A/ C...any pictures of his setup?

Now, the car. Eventually I'll go with a re-geared overdrive transmission, but thats not in the immediate plans. However, the driver's side C/V joint is pretty worn and I don't imagine it will survive long behind the 2.0L engine. The car isn't going to be a dragster, just a spirited daily driver, so will standard beetle C/V joints be enough or should I plan on upgrading to something stronger?

Obviously this will be a big project and I'm just getting started, but I've got enough time and money to throw at it to get it done in a few months. Any help from the group in this would be greatly appreciated!

Peace, Harry

PS. The deal here is, I'm trading my buddy the complete, running Mexican 1600dp from my Beetle for the complete, non-running 2.0L type IV from his van. We're both happy, but I was just curious if this sounded like a fair trade to you guys.

Reply to
Harry Smith

I've done it. The Cali route.

Mine was a carburator model to begin with. Depending on how much power you want out of it, you may want to switch to carbs to keep it simple and easy to tune.

Come back with valve sizes. The 1.8 carb heads had the largest valves of the VW heads. Porsche heads flow even better, but they have a different intake manifold bolt pattern.

My heads seemed fine, but the head pro laughed at the seats and valve guides. I had a complete valvejob done by a wizzard of the trade. He chose to install K-liners in the guides.

I trust AC.Net. Nobody else.

I desingned a thermostat assembly for the DTM when Joe Locicero was still around. As far as I know, the drawings got lost and it never made it to production, due to Joe passing away. I had a couple of different ways of doing it but we finally agreed on one design where you flip the strock thermos around 180 degrees, route the operating cable to a pulley much like the original pulley, where it would make a 90 deg turn upwards behind the shroud... and there it would hook up to a rack mounted shutter system, that would restrict airflow to the fan when cold.

I didn't get far enough to build a working prototype, and neither did Joe I think, so you'd still need to figure out pulley size ( assumed the stock pulley would do, using as many stock parts as possible) and lever lenght and stuff like that, plus source the shutter system from somewhere. (like hardware store).

Nope, no pics of his ride.

There was someone on shoptalkforums from.. umm.. Malaysia? just recently, who had a local source for an AC bracket setup, and then someone asked about a T4 application... measurements were taken and sent t o the guy.. I forget what happened after that. You could maybe order the T4 brackets...

Dunno. Mine was swing.

The transmission input shaft is shorter on the T1 equipped vehicles. So...

If your buddy gets the T1 1600, his shaft will be too long for the T1 engine.

YOUR shaft will be too short... (focus, bro, it's just your engine I'm referring to here) so you have to relocate the T4 input shaft support bearing from the end of the crank recess to the center of the flywheel. The Cali book has excellent details on this.

Just so you know.

Jan

Reply to
Jan

I might have to just go with some carbs to make it simple at first, though I do want to build a custom EFI system around the Microsquirt controller.

Going by the part number and a rough reality check with a ruler, the valves are 37.5 x 33 mm with the sodium-filled exhaust valves.

Yeah, I probably should get my heads checked by a professional...that sounds funny...

and cylinders,

No doubt, they have the best stuff around. However, if I can get essentially the same quality for half the price, I'm too "frugal" to pass it up. Anybody have any experience with the eBay sets?

Mmm. It sounds do-able. Probably not too big of a deal in the Sultry South where I am, but something to think about.

I expect I'll have to get something welded up, though I do have the original T1 brackets to start from. This isn't something that needs doing right away obviously, but as previous owners scrapped the fresh air system and put in one piece windows, the car will be a sweatbox without A/C....

Hmm, I must have overlooked that particular detail. Obviously I didn't do all my reading... Anyway, it sounds like shortening the van's transmission shaft will be required to install the 1600. Once modified in this way, I assume a suitably modified T4 would fit as well?

Thanks, Harry

Reply to
Harry Smith

It should be ok, as long as the T4 has the support bearing mod done to it. OR, you could swap the input shaft... use one from a 1600 van.

Jan

Reply to
Jan

Swapping input shafts would complicate things terribly...in fact we'd like to avoid tearing down the transmission if at all possible. Sounds like I just need to finally seperate the engine and tranny and see if it looks like it can be done without dissassembly.

Peace, Harry

Reply to
Harry Smith

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