Finally pulled the engine in my 1303!

You're most welcome, Howard :D

(Piston wrist pin, for those unfortunate few who live in the US...)

Nice. A missing clip does something similar, but even deeper. When the pin wears against the cylinder wall :) Not that I would know anything about it first hand.

clean them up real good and look for hairline cracks between valve seats, as well as seats and plug holes. Small cracke between seats are acceptable, but you really don't want any going from the seat to the plug hole. Unfortunately, these are common. Very faint ones will hold out for a long time in a stock engine, but they will eventually grow, causing stripped plug holes.

Measure the valves, they should all be equally long. If there's anything wrong with any valves, replace them all.

Check the guides, the valve should not wobble sideways much at all.

To piggy back on Jan's reply...

Have the heads checked out at a machine shop...new valves and valve guides is always good, especially if rebuilding a motor. It can reduce the chance of things going bad in a recently rebuilt motor. if a valve guide slips out of the head.... well, it gets shoved back in and shattering it, ruining the piston and cylinder... I know. been there had it happen.

quoted text -

Thanks for the replies :-)

What should I use to clean the valves and combustion chambers?

I would take them to a machine shop, however due to a new job (hooray!) I am going to be moving to London in two weeks... so I need the car back together ASAP! The valves don't have any detectable movement and the heads have less than 10K miles on them. Hopefully I'll just be able to clean them up, check for cracks and bolt them on...

I also bought a big box-o-parts today, new 1584 barrels and pistons, oil pump, pushrod tubes, engine gasket set and a new engine bay seal. Over the last few days I have also repainted most of the tinware.

Is it worth giving the finned area on the barrels a quick spray of high-temperature paint? They always seem to rust quite quickly.

Carb cleaner will clean up the loose stuff with the aid of an old toothbrush. However, I wouldn't worry too much about it, having seen the picture they look pretty good to me. Just make sure the outer edge that mates up against the edge of the cylinder is clean.

Make sure you torque them correctly. After you check the deck height with your new pistons/cylinders, of course. And you can't do that until you take the piston/cylinder sets apart and clean them.....

I don't know if the spray will get down into the grooves between the cooling fins all that well. It would probably be better to use a brush so you can hit the edges of the fins a little better. You can paint the pushrod tubes as well, just tape off the end where the seal goes. Make sure you use the white german pushrod tube seals upon reassembly if you want to keep the leaks away. The red seals don't, at least in my experience. Every engine I've had with the red seals leaked from the pushrod tubes. All 8 tubes, on both ends. You could try putting the red ones on with a thin layer of sealant if you have to use them, it will certainly be better than using no sealant. You'll want to clean up the sealing surface on the block and the head a bit to ensure a leak-free fit.

If your gasket set came with the paper gasket that goes between the block and the base of the cylinder, throw them away. They don't work. Personally, I use ultra black RTV around the base of the cylinder to seal the junction between the case and the cylinder. Put a bead of sealer at the base of the bottom fin and when you install the cylinders it will seal up that junction just fine. Don't forget to install the air deflector between the two cylinders.

Also, since you have the engine out, I would suggest checking the crankshaft endplay. If it is out of spec now is the time to fix it.

Good luck with it.

Chris

Never seen that one. :)

Helping my dad rebuild one I told him to replace both heads after one "sucked a valve".

He gave me the 73 squareback, finally believing me, old air cooled VWs are for air cooled VW fanatics. ;) When I sold it ~5 years later, got lots of calls, single gals with kids even, wouldn't sell it until an other dumb-ol' air-cooled guy called. :) Never was a time when everything on that car worked, all at the same time. :)

The speedometer cable went to buzzing on the trip to town to deliever it, had to stop and disconnect it. He bought it and explained to -me-how to drill an oil hole etc. :) That's why I waited for "his" call. :)

Jan's "wobbly" valve guides can be found on the "rebuilt" heads too. Went through a whole stack of them at Chirco one time (~10 years ago) and never found a single head that had all four valve guides renewed.

I worked with a guy that had done that type of work. Fuel pumps. :)

The first thing they did was test them... if they worked and didn't leak, they went through a cleaning process and got boxed up. Cool huh? :)

Alvin in AZ

I caught one just in time, it had loosened up and fallen through into the intake port. Nothing broke yet as far as I can remember, but the valve would have snapped soon I'm sure.

jan