Engine Rebuild: 2

Phase two of my engine rebuild took me from a short block to a long block in an afternoon.  Essentially this meant adding the cylinders, pistons and heads.

Flywheel shims are first

The very first thing to go onto the short block were the shims.  Before the flywheel or the main oil seal could be fully installed--torqued down--I had to check the crankshaft endplay.

Crankshaft endplay is perfect

Endplay is the distance that the crankshaft moves from one end to the other --front to back--now that it is seated on the main bearings inside the freshly sealed case.  Too much endplay and the crankshaft will chatter and tear up the insides of the engine.  Too little endplay and the crankshaft will bind in its bearings will and freeze up the engine.

Just like Goldilocks would have wanted, the endplay has to be just right.

In goes the main oil seal

No more leaks here

It takes a set of three shims, which yield a total of no more than 7mm and no less than 3mm of crankshaft endplay.  I bought a set of six shims in varying thicknesses and a micrometer for measuring the endplay.  I chose a set that matched what came out of the car, figuring this would be a good place to start.  The shims go on under the flywheel, which is then torqued down and measured.   It was good sign for the previous state of the engine that the three shims I chose were perfect.  The endplay was just over 5mm.

The 'Torque Dude' in action

Flywheel lock is simple

Once the shims were in place, the next piece was the main oil seal.  This rubber ring is reinforced with a steel spring, and it fits tightly into the gap between the crankshaft oil slinger washer and the edge of the case, keeping oil from leaking and spinning all over the back of the flywheel, which goes on next.  The oil seal went in straight and easily, with just a  few taps.

Case studs ready to go back

Ready for some pistons

Next came the flywheel.  Using the two miracle tools that helped me get it off, I had no trouble installing and torquing down the flywheel.  The simple little flywheel lock and the ingenious 'Torque Dude' made this task like the proverbial piece of cake.  In a few minutes I had the flywheel on and torqued down to 270 ft lbs with just a torque wrench.  Tasty.

First piston is in

Cylinders are in place

Now it was time to put the 'long' in the long block, adding the bits that make it an engine.  This process began with the re-installation of the case studs, which hold the cylinders, heads and pushrod tubes in place.  These sixteen rods went back into the very holes that they came out of months ago.

Cooling tin between cylinders

Head test fit

With these in place, the pistons could be mounted on the connecting rods, and the cylinders could be mounted over the pistons, all of which took place in fairly rapid order.  Since this was at least the third (possibly the fourth) time to do this, it went rather smoothly.

Now for torquing

Pushrod tubes are tight

Pushrods tubes and heads were next, allowing for the shims at the base of the cylinders and the spacers on the top, next to the heads.  Bolting on the heads takes some patience and care, circling round the bolts to tighten it evenly.  The pushrod tube seals fit perfectly, as did the little cooling tins that fit between the cylinders before the heads went on.

Next is the rocker arm

Finally, some bling!

After the heads were toques down, I slid in the pushrods and bolted the rocker arms back into the heads.  It's too soon to check the valve clearances, but it looks good so far.  Nothing is binding or too loose, and everything is lining up the way it ought to.  The last step of the day was to put on a bit of bling: the chrome head covers look real slick!

Tools

I saw this on the net today and it reminds me that I am not alone:

"Originally from England, this is an old list that's been floating around for generations."

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive car parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing convertible tops or tonneau covers.

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning steel pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works great for drilling rollbar mounting holes in the floor of a sports car just above the brake line that goes to the rear axle.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXY-ACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting those stale garage cigarettes you keep hidden in the back of the Whitworth socket drawer (what wife would think to look in there?) because you can never remember to buy lighter fluid for the Zippo lighter you got from the PX at Fort Campbell.

ZIPPO LIGHTER: See oxy-acetylene torch.

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against the Rolling Stones poster over the bench grinder.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar callouses in about the time it takes you to say "Django Reinhardt."

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering a Mustang to the ground after you have installed a set of Ford Motorsports lowered road springs, trapping the jack handle firmly under the front air dam.

EIGHT-FOOT-LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2x4: Used for levering a car upward off a hydraulic jack.

TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters.

PHONE: Tool for calling your neighbor Chris to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.

SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog doo off your boot.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.

TIMING LIGHT: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease buildup on crankshaft pulleys.

TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps and hydraulic clutch lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.

BATTERY ELECTROLYTE TESTER: A handy tool for transferring sulfuric acid from a car battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that your battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.

AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT: The mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; can also be used, as the name implies, to round off Phillips head screws.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty suspension bolts last tightened 40 years ago by someone in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and rounds them off.

New Tools, Clean Heads

Well, I went out an bought some new toys...erm new tools for my project and workshop.  I've been thinking for some time about a few tools that I need to add to my workshop in order to tackle the upcoming jobs related to the body.

New air compressor...too small

The first thing on my list was a new air compressor.  I've got a pretty comprehensive set of hand tools, but I really don't have any power to do more difficult jobs like sandblasting, cutting, grinding and sanding.  I've got some good electric tools too, including an angle grinder/cutter and a die grinder for the bigger wire wheel jobs.  I have a bench grinder/wheel and a shop vac, but other than those basics, it's not much.

New air compressor...right size

Nor do I want much more, but I do want to take advantage of air power for the rest of this rebuild, so when I had a few hundred dollars saved up, I bought an air compressor.  of course, the first one I bought was too small, so I went back a couple of days later and traded up for a larger model.  It actually has the same motor and pump, but the tank is bigger, which allows for a longer use of a tool at any one time.  Since some of the jobs are fairly long, I need all the tank I can afford.  For now, this will do, but if I had in mind painting the car (which I don't) then I'd need the next size up at least.  As it stands, this compressor and tank is quite adequate for my immediate needs.

Sandblasting gun and abrasives

My blasting 'booth'

One of those needs is sandblasting, so one of the first tools I bought to go with my new compressor was a sandblasting gun.

It looks like a paint gun and operates the same way, essentially.  You fill the container with abrasive, attach it to the air compressor hose and blast away.

I look like an insurgent

Blasting away

Actually, it's not as simple as that.  I bought a bag of sand from Home Depot on my way back from buying the compressor and blaster, only to discover when reading the directions that "Sand may not be used as a blast material."  It turns out that a special abrasive is required.  Fortunately they sell this at Harbor Freight, where I bought the compressor and blast gun.  It is expensive, but it is worth it, I think.

It's not powerful but it works

The worth is in the ease and amount of time it took to blast my first few items.  Once I got it set up and covered myself adequately (I discovered that the blasting is equally back at the operator--a matter of physics) it turned out to be quite easy to use and not as powerful as I thought it was going to be. This is actually a good thing, because I was afraid it would simply blast away all the metal if I pointed it at one area for too long.  While this may be the case with more powerful units and certainly there is some degradation when it's directed at a single spot for too long, but it's hardly even powerful enough to take the skin off my finger.  I know because I tried.  Not deliberately of course, but I do know just how powerful this tool really is, and that's not much.  It is just powerful enough to take off paint, some surface rust and aluminum oxidization, which is really about all I need.

Rusty handbrake lever...

Transformed...nearly.

The first thing I blasted was the handbrake lever I recovered from the junkyard a week or so ago.  The blaster took off all the paint and some of the surface rust without even scratching the steel at all.

Aluminum cleans up nicely

The manifold is nearly done

My next test was on the manifold, which is made of aluminum and steel.  The blaster cleaned up the aluminum without degrading it, and took all the built up grease and grime off the steel tube with no problem.  I do have to stop every ten minutes or so to allow the compressor to recharge the tank, but this is a minor inconvenience.  I'm actually glad to stop after a few minutes because the abrasive really gets in everything in spite of goggles, a face mask, a hat and a long sleeved shirt buttoned up at the collar and sleeves.

These fins are hard to clean

The carbon buildup in the heads

The last thing I did with blaster was to clean off the heads.  I had cleaned them up about 90% of the way, but had no way of cleaning in between the fins and in all the crevices, not did I want to scratch the inside of the heads where the carbon buildup was the most extreme.

All clean after a blast

Put away till it's time for them

Enter the blaster.  This did both jobs, and in just a few minutes I had a clean set of heads, ready to install on the engine.  I put them away in a box as I start the next task of tearing down and rebuilding the engine.

My little shop

Not big but effective

Oh, and I treated myself to another toy.  Not a tool exactly but in the same category.  I bought a new tool chest.  This one is more than just a tool box.  It's an actual five drawer chest with deep drawers and rollers.  With my little old red box on top, I now have a place to store most of my tools, including all the new air toys..erm, tools.

Driveaxles

While I am waiting for an bolt of inspiration that will loose the stuck nut that hinders my progress on removing the right rear wheel, I decided to work on something else, knowing that there are others things to work on and hoping that progress there would raise my gumption level and break the impasse that stalled me for a week or more.

Although I don't intend to rebuild the engine, I find that term 'rebuild' to be a bit flexible.  That is, because I have removed the engine, there are many parts of it that I will remove, clean, repair, sand, paint and replace as part of the overall refurbishment.  These are things like the alternator and fan, the 'doghouse' shroud that holds that fan and covers the oil cooler, the carburetor, the intake manifold and the alternator pulley.

None of these things need to be replaced, just cleaned, painted and reassembled.  The engine has, from the beginning, looked to be in very good shape, and when I got all that stuff off my hopes were buoyed, if not actually confirmed.  The oil that I (finally) drained from the crankcase was dirty but not contaminated with any metal that I could feel.  For some reason, I have yet to conduct one of the easiest and most basic tests of an engine's condition, the spark plugs.  I'll have to do this tonight.


Once I had all the dirty (but not rusty or even bent) shrouding removed and buffed the dirt off the head covers, I discovered a little tag that says "Made in the Netherlands".  I am not sure if this means the whole engine, or just the head cover, but it's an interesting discovery.  At this point I stopped and put the engine aside, but before I put it back together, I will consider removing and/or changing the heads.  I plan to put in dual carbs, so it may be that some new (or rebuilt) heads would improve the engine performance enough to make it worthwhile.  I'll 'save' that for later.

The next task I turned to was removing the driveaxles.  This job required buying a(nother) new tool--which came as part of a set of three--to remove the bolts that connect the two ends of the driveaxle.  The driveaxle connects the transmission to the wheels, and removing it is the next-to-last step in the tear-down process.  When the body is still on the frame, this in one of the hardest to reach and dirtiest places on the car, but as it stands now, it's very easy to reach.

These bolts are still plenty dirty, though, and to make use of the tool without stripping out them out, I had to make sure all the little splines were cleaned out thoroughly.  These bolts are unique to VW's, and are apparently still in use on today's cars, so you won't find the tools to remove them at Home Depot, or even Freight Harbor.  I had to order them online. It was certainly worth the expense and the wait because it really does fit at both ends: into the bolt heads and on my ratchet.  It was a little scary, at first, using it.  It felt as if it was going to strip like aluminum, but a little extra leverage was all it took.  In no more than ten minutes, all twelve bolts and the driveaxle were out.  Although this was dirty, it doesn't appear to be damaged or rusted, so it's likely that a simple clean and re-grease is all these parts will need.

After both of the driveaxles are out, I can remove the transmission.  Like the engine, it looks to be in pretty good shape.  I'll have to drain the fluid and see if there is any metal in it, and decide from there whether or not I'm going to replace it.  This is another decision to be made down the road, so to speak.

Next I will turn my attention to removing the diagonal swing arms, which connect the wheel bearings to the frame of the car.  This is more heavy metal work and may even require one more special tool, but it will be the last (major) part to come off the car.  There are still a number of pieces to come off the frame before it can be cleaned, sanded and painted, so I can't say that the teardown is at an end, but I am getting close!

Stuck

I'm stuck.

It's not a big problem, really. But it is enough to have got me stuck in what Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called a "gumption trap." This is a place where, for a reason often very, very small, an entire project grinds to a halt because the driving desire behind the project--the gumption--is lost.

A gumption trap starts with something simple that fails or doesn't work the way it is supposed to. In my case, it's a stuck nut. I know, I know, that sounds like a perfect description of yours truly.

In this case, the nut I'm talking about--the one that has me figuratively stuck because it is literally stuck--is a rather large steel one. To be precise, it is a 36mm nut, and it holds the brake assembly--drum, brakes and backing plate--to the rear driveaxle. There are two of these nuts, one on each side of the car.  They are--quite naturally, given the job that they do (holding the wheels on)--torqued down very, very tight.  I got one off, no problem.  But the other one is, well, stuck.

I don't know how many foot-pounds it takes to break this nut exactly, nor do I really care, but I do know it's one helluva lot. I know (now) that you are supposed to break these nuts while the car is not merely still assembled, but also while it is still resting on the ground. In other words, this should have been one of the first things I did, like six months ago.

This nut is stuck because the amount of force required to break it free is no more than two or three pounds less than the entire weight of the car.  Now that it's stripped down to the frame, I just can't bring enough force to bear. My puny little 140 pounds of dead weight is just not enough. Even the breaker bar that extends my reach by a foot and a half and doubles my leverage is insufficient to the task.

So, there you go.  I'm stuck. I've tried various solutions, but so far, nothing's worked. In fact, so many things haven't worked that I can say with some certainty: I am stuck. I look at it. I think about it. Nothing comes to mind. Yet.

Actually, being stuck isn't all bad. In fact, it may be the very reason why I've undertaken this project in the first place. In Zen, Pirsig used the idea of 'stuckness' as a pivotal point for his inquiry into the nature of Reality.  He observed that it's not until we are stuck--that is, in a critical situation without an obvious solution--that we become momentarily aware of Reality itself.

Reality appears to us only for that moment, however. As soon as we find our solution, we lose that direct contact with it, and find ourselves dealing instead with the duality that masquerades as the world.  We turn from the light and again see only the shadows.

Fear not, I'm in no danger of losing touch with Reality.  Though I am staring at the light, I'm still well and truly stuck on this damn nut.

The exasperating aspect of this situation is the fact that this is a double-edged sword (or wrench, if you will) that I'm holding here. On the one hand, as both Readers know, I love the metal and the grease and the whole taking-things-apart idea that the Ghia project embodies. In a simple world, it'd be easy to explain these impulses as simple boyish desires to have fun tinkering and getting dirty.  I don't deny it. To a large extent, that is actually the case.

On the other hand, if it were all too easy (if that nut were to just come rightoff), it'd be no fun either.  Ironically, it actually feels good to be stuck.  For a while, anyway.  It seems that I seek stuckness as a way of finding satisfaction in what I do.  It's an integral part of the process and the source of my motivation.  Escaping from the gumption trap is truly an exhilarating feeling.  But you can't get that feeling without getting stuck, first.

I know, to a casual observer driving down our street on a Sunday afternoon, it might look like I'm just standing over a rusted hulk of a car with a couple of buddies, drinking beer from a green bottle and doing nothing. There's some truth to that.

But that's only part of the story.

Inside that stereotypical South Austin driveway mechanic is a true philosophical type, pondering the infinite mysteries of a stuck bolt in much the same way Socrates considered the nature of Love during one of those infamous all night drinking parties he had with his buddies.

Ok, ok, so I'm no Socrates and this is no Symposium. But then, could he, would he, have figured out how to break this damn nut?

Down to the Frame at Last

Bolting it to the dolly

Me, Steve, Dan, Tom, Richard, Chis & Henry

Three weeks ago we lifted the body off the frame.  I have to say it went much smoother than I imagined it might.  My seven helpers, Dan, Richard, Henry, Chris, Steve, Tom and Valery and I lifted it off in just two tries.  The only thing I forgot to disconnect was the speedometer cable so that's why we had to lift it twice.  No matter, the muscle was sufficient to the task, as was the giant wooden dolly that I created from a picture on the internet.  It worked, far better than I expected.

Rotten floor pans

Cutting out the rust

Two weekends ago I cut the one of the rusty floor panels off the frame.  It was much easier than I expected, mostly because whoever welded the last set of floor pans in was either so lazy or unskilled that only half the pan was actually welded and that was shitty, to say the least.  You can read about some of the experience in my account (Tools Make the Man) of using the cutting tool in my journal.

Passenger side is next

Both pans are out

The second floor pan came off the frame last weekend, and the story was much same.  I can only hope that whoever cuts the body panels out the next time will have slightly higher regard for my welds than I do for the quality of the previous owner's work on this car.  They get some points for trying, I guess.  In the end, it's a fortunate fail for me.  The frame is free of rotten sheet metal at last.

Off to the scrap heap

Ready for teardown

Now, I can finally attack the frame, suspension, tires, transmission and engine.  No small list, I know, but consider this.  My plan is not to restore but to refurbish this car.  I want to get it running and actually drive it, so my task of cleaning and replacing worn parts will begin this week.

Next week I will remove the wheels and tires, put the remaining frame up on jack stands and give it a good power wash.  Next to a sand-blasting this is the best way to really get down to the bare metal that I can think of.  It will be easier than using chemicals or hand-grinding, to be sure.

Then, it will be time to tackle the front suspension.  I love this work.