My 68' bug started to lose compression on me almost two years ago and got garaged. I recently dismantled it and had the case align-bored and thrust cut (and reassembled by a trusted mechanic). I have spent the evenings of the past few weeks putting it all back together and last night, the engine went in.
I had a ton of silly problems. Like, wrestling the thing back onto tranny. Never have I had so much trouble getting it lined up. Must have been getting late. ;-) Once in, and with everything reconnected, I was having trouble starting. I would crank it, and after four or five rotations I would hear a click or a pop from the battery area - and then I would have no lights on the dash and a dead ignition. Ended up being a bonehead mistake. Some time back I had put some good rubber compound over my ground cable to keep the rust out - and I had bolted the cable down on top of that goop in the dark. Duh. Once my ground was solid, I had good cranking.
Then it just rotated. A lot. But no bang. It seemed like I wasn't getting fuel, so I had a friend hit the gas while I stuck my head into the carb bowl and sniffed around. Dry as a bone. I had put in a new fuel filter (little metal canister style) which may have been too much for the old mechanical style fuel pump. So I scrapped it, and siphoned some gas to get the line going. Then back to cranking. Still - no boom.
After a LOT of cranking, and not a single sign of starting I noticed a big puddle of oil forming underneath which told me that something wasn't right. Seemed to be coming from the top, which I can only guess was from the oil cooler. I'm sure something didn't set right up there and so that engine is going to have to come back out.
Any how, anyone have any first guesses on why it wouldn't fire up? I don't have a timing gun, so I suppose it could be that. I made my best attempt to "eyeball" the distributer line up with the marks in the crank pulley. I made some slight adjustments there. First mark is "TDC" and the second is the fire, right?
I stayed up way too late for a work night. :-( Any advice is appreciated!
-Steve Ballantyne