What did you do to your volkswagen today?

Today, i started taking apart an old 40 horse i bought a few months ago. the PO told me that it had some valve chatter, but otherwise ran good. i got the intake, all the tins, and started cleaning it up a bit. when i took off the drivers side valve cover, i noticed one of the intake valve pushrods was off of the rocker arm. well, i unbolted the rocker shaft, and put the pushrod back, and bolted the rocker shaft back on, and sure enough, the rocker arm was extremely loose. when i looked at all the valve adjusters, they were all out of wack. looks like a chimpanze adjusted the valves. either that or whoever did it was drunk. didn't see too much wear on the pushrods, or rocker arms, but i won't know if anything else is messed up till i dig deeper, lol

Back on the road!

Finishing up some electrical details this morning, and hitting the road this afternoon....Woo-hoo! Hopefully have time to give it a good bath too.


(I know.....you'd think in all the time since BAP-11, I would have finished the paintwork........ LOL )


UPDATE!!!!!!!
Just wanted to confirm it- IT'S ALIVE! Just enough time to give myself a bath- cars gonna haveta wait....

Apologized to the Jolly Rancher for the dent today after he got pissed and broke a clutch cable on the way to work. Spent 30 minutes on a break swapping the cable out and making promises to fix the dent as soon as possible. Damage pics comming soon.

still workin on the 40 horse motor. did some more cleaning, and got the 3-4 side head off, and all looks well. almost looks as if the motor was running a few days ago, versus 5 years ago . hope the other side is in as good condition. just stopped for a luch break, gonna tackle the rest, hopefully have the case split by the end of the day, if not then by 2morrow. wish me luck :Hippy:

been putting my '74 back together after painting.one of the things on the list to do was pull the oil pan
cover and screen to check out a tapping noise i was hearing down there.i was suspicious that the nut on
the top of the stud that holds the pickup tube was missing.it was.that will allow the pick up to vibrate
against the oil pan and make a little racket.(another thing that i will blame on the local,supposed,vw shop the p/o
used for maintenance and so forth).anyway,after copious modifications to a 10mm wrench and breaking about 6
fingers in several places,i was able to install a nut and lock washer.precisly torqued to between 4 and 180 ftlbs.

goatfarmer67 wrote:been putting my '74 back together after painting.one of the things on the list to do was pull the oil pan
cover and screen to check out a tapping noise i was hearing down there.i was suspicious that the nut on
the top of the stud that holds the pickup tube was missing.it was.that will allow the pick up to vibrate
against the oil pan and make a little racket.(another thing that i will blame on the local,supposed,vw shop the p/o
used for maintenance and so forth).anyway,after copious modifications to a 10mm wrench and breaking about 6
fingers in several places,i was able to install a nut and lock washer.precisly torqued to between 4 and 180 ftlbs.

Oh wow. what did the tapping noise sound like exactly? did it seem to get worse, when you rev'd it? because i have a strange rattling/ jingling sound comming from my bug, and i cant figure out where its comming from. it doesn't seem to get worse with higher RPM's, and just seems to come and go randomly. i thought it was the turbo blowing up again, but turns out it wasn't (on my old turbo, i had the nut on the impeller back off, and it destroyed the turbo, but made the same jingling/ rattling noise). then thought it might be from the exhaust. maybe something fell in there, or something broke off the turbo or some thing, but that wasn't it either. guess i better get under the car with my mechanics stethescope, and see if its comming from the drain plate area

i dont really know how to describe the noise exactly,just that it is out of the ordinary.and down there
by the oil plug.kinda like a mechanical fuel pump.but in the wrong place.

i would love to see that turbo bug,BTW.

Are you going to the flowery branch show this saturday? I should be going. the airheads are going to meet up at morland avenue and 285 (check out the topic under "aircooled air heads" on the homepage). hope to see ya there

no,cant make it.i'm still re-assembling my bug.wish i could though.

Got my rear bumper straightend out and fitted back to the bug!
A few years ago a school bus twisted it up like a curly fry. All it took was a B(enough).F.H.!
My car looks legal again!

still working on the 40 horse. spent most of my time cleaning, and sanding down the tin. how can such a small motor have so much dirt !!!! then it started raining on me. luckily i got the tarp over the motor before any of the freshly sanded bare metal tins got wet, lol.

Finally got around to repairing the top fasteners on my vent windows. The PO had them attached with a small nut/bolt combination! I got the correct rivits and the fiber washers from WW. The trick to getting them crimped was to put a small ball bearing against the end so it would flare out as you compressed it. Here are a few pics of the finished product. I didn't think to take any before or during shots, but I can say it is now correct and looks alot cleaner!
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still workin on the 40 horse. gonna have to do a complete rebuild on it (bad cylinders), and figure i might as well go all the way (69mm crank (might go with 74 is it will fit), 83 big bore pistons/ cylinders, and possibly a turbo , that should give me 1601cc's).

What did you use to compress it digger?

Well the weather outside is frightful.......so while I'm still trying to dry my nice carpet job I found the problem with my horn. Now I can HONK at some Vdubs that pass me by. My wife thinks it's sooo cooot........

Drove the hell out of it, hahaha. Did a little off roading on some pipeline clearings (like those long clearings you see for powerlines, cept for underground gas lines) before i went back home from bugs at the branch. i guess tomorrow i'll be cleaning all the mud of it. Hard to believe street 165's can handle so well in the mud

bumblebuggy wrote:What did you use to compress it digger?

I compressed it in a small vice to get the initial crimp started. You have to be careful tho that you don't flare it too much where it won't fit thru the bracket. Then I used a small C - clamp to flare it flush. I saw on the samba where some people used a set of vice grips with the jaws smoothed out to crimp them. I tried this but either the WW rivits are alot tougher than what they were using or I just didn't have enough ass to make the crimp. The c -clamp seem to work the best once the flare was started with the vice tho.

I've had those rivets for about a year now...think it's about time I installed them.

Did the inagural trip in the gon this week, 5 lovely days of rain in the woods surrounded by about 40 other v-dubs!!!!

where did you go ^

Picked this car up today in a trade....I have no clue what I am going to do with it.....

NICE!!! hope to see that one at the next sonic meet

Wow, what happened to the front seat??

today..... err...yesterday, i worked on tha 40 horse some more. Still can't get the front (pulley side) two cylinders off of the pistons. does anybody know of a good way to get the piston unstuck from the cylinder? i've tried using a 3 arm puller, in a way, so that the 3 arms were on the lip of the cylinders, and the center was ontop of the piston (i had the center part on a big socket, so it won't punch a hole thru the top of the piston, lol). but that didn't work either. it kept slipping off the cylinder, because the inside of the lip isnt straight, its at an angle, and causes the arms of the puller to slip off. I've had it soaking in in penetrating oil (giggity) for a week now, and still no luck. i really don't want to break the cylinders off with a hammer, but i might just have to end up doing just that. Any ideas?

-Mike