My 1966 Beetle rebuild

[supercub]

Today I disassembled the old head I'll be reusing and lapped in the new exhaust valves and the old intake valves too. One exhaust valve is a little looser in its guide than I'd prefer, but I'm just going with it. Cleaned up the two cylinders for that head and lapped them to it as well. Then I assembled the valves and springs into the head and called it done. I've been going into work a couple hours before we open and working on it during down times too. I was originally going to do it all at home on my days off, but really want to get it back together so I'm powering through. Tomorrow the new head will get lapped to its cylinders and then put back together. Then I've got to hone the cylinders. I was just about to buy a cheap adjustable hone on Amazon and then remembered I have a hone that I bought 15 or so years ago for an old Honda motorcycle engine I was rebuilding. Turns out that hone is adjustable too and fits the VW cylinders just fine. Nice.

[supercub]

I got the cylinders honed and lapped to the heads. I final assembled the new head. Naturally one of the keeper washers for the valve springs went flying when the spring compressor slipped off as I was installing it. The washer got lost in the abyss, so I cleaned the rust off one of the crusty ones from the new head and used it. Ugh! I cleaned up the pistons including the grooves. I used the procedure in the Muir book of breaking off a chunk of old piston ring to clean the grooves. Worked out pretty well. I did a quick cleanup of the case exterior and studs. Not a perfect job by any means but that thing was really grungy. Waiting on the new rings and gasket set from Wolfsburg West and then reassembly will begin. Here are some pictures.

Engine as it sits this afternoon after cleaning. Surprisingly it is totally dry around the oil cooler. I'm not messing with those seals. Don't fix what's not broken, right?

Pistons and cylinders cleaned and bagged. Sorry didn't feel like unpacking them for a picture. They're not all that interesting anyway.

Cylinder heads "rebuilt". New head is on the right. Still need to install exhaust studs on the new one.

Here's the #3 combustion chamber on the old head with the hammered seat on the right. It is BEAT. This thing was running on borrowed time.

[supercub]

The engine is back together aside from a couple pieces of tin. I cleaned the grunge off the cooling tin before reinstalling it and it looks a lot better. This morning I installed the new engine compartment seals. I forgot how much of a pain that is. To make matters worse, the seal channel on the right side of the engine bay is fairly beat up in spots and I had to pry on it a bit here and there to get the new seal to slide in. Since the engine was out and I had a new starter bushing in the glovebox, I replaced the old one in the trans bellhousing. Tomorrow morning, I'll replace the rear transaxle mounts and that should complete the work to the car. Then I need to pull the engine off the stand to put on the front tin and fan shroud and it should be ready to go back in. I'm off work on Monday, so if all goes well it should be running again by then.

[supercub]

It lives!! I reinstalled the engine this evening. My brother helped me out with guiding it into place and starting the upper engine to trans bolts. I was just going to get the engine back into the car with his help and then finish it up tomorrow but once the engine was in, I couldn't stop. Fired up pretty easily and runs really well, better than it has for quite a while actually. For how long, who knows. Took it for a little drive around the neighborhood and then called it a day. Tomorrow, I'll get it out for a good 40 or so mile drive and then change the oil. Sorry I didn't take any pictures of the work. I was in the zone assembling and didn't want to stop. I'll take a couple pictures tomorrow.

[cdennisg]

Cool to have it running again. I forget, did you install new rings? If so, make sure you do the basic break-in procedure for seating new rings. Full operating temp then a series of hard (not too hard) acceleration pulls followed by a series of off-throttle deceleration steps down through the gears. This helps wear/seat the rings with pressure from both side of the ring for the best compression seal over the life of the ring/piston/cylinder combo.

I usually find a back road where I can hit 55 or so, and hit all gears on the way up to 60, and all gears on the way down to under 10 MPH. 25-30 miles or so, then drop the oil, check the valves, fresh oil, then the next 400-500 miles with no prolonged single speed. Just drive it normally, but try to vary your speeds and engine load here and there.
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[supercub]

[supercub]

Yesterday I put about 70 miles on the VW and it's running really well. I did a 40 mile drive with lots of acceleration and deceleration from various speeds to help break in the new piston rings. There are a number of backroads here with lots of rolling hills that were perfect for this. Then I changed the oil. As expected, it was pretty glittery, but no big pieces. Just a very fine metallic sheen too the oil. There was nothing in the filter screen. I waited several hours for the engine to cool down and then adjusted the valves. They were all a bit tight after break-in, but nothing worrisome. I did another couple of shorter drives in the car, and it is running great. It definitely feels peppier than before. The deterioration of the engine over the years was so gradual that I never really noticed it, but now that it's fixed, wow, what a difference. The idle is much smoother now as well. It's had a somewhat choppy idle for several years now so maybe the valves had been going for quite some time. In any case, I'm thrilled with how it turned out and hope it holds together for a couple more years. Total investment including the "new" head was right around $200. Of course, I spent a lot of time cleaning, preparing and reassembling the engine. That's what I love about old VW's. You can take an engine with a dead cylinder head, pick up a worn-out but serviceable head that's been sitting on a shelf for who knows how long, clean it up and do a little work to it, put it back together with a few new parts, and be on your way again. Here are a couple pictures from the first drive with the repaired engine. Hopefully there will be many more miles to come.

And here's a picture of the engine back in the car. It's been years since the engine was this clean.

[cdennisg]

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[supercub]

I realized that I never posted about the ill-fated trip to Kansas that did in the exhaust valve. So I was going out to Kansas to spend a few days in the Flint Hills area and then go to the yearly car show at the college I went to out there. The drive out was two days of fighting against a violent headwind. I spent probably 75% of the time at full throttle. I camped one night at Blackhawk Lake State Park in Iowa. The campground is right along the lake shore and the wind was howling across the lake all afternoon and most of the night. It was also really cold in the mid-30's. The next day the wind was already kicking just after sunrise and only got worse throughout the day, most of which I was heading straight into it. I had planned on going further west to Fort Robinson State Park in Nebraska for a day but grew weary of the brutal northwest wind and turned south into Kansas early.

I headed for Kanopolis Lake State Park, a place I had camped at many times back in college with my friends. I got a dispersed site right along the lake shore, made dinner and watched the sunset. I was in the VW reading a bit before turning out my light and going to sleep. Shortly after I turned off the light, I see headlights shining though my side window as a car is moving slowly along the campground road. I looked up and could tell it was a police car. It continued on and I laid back down.

About 5 minutes later there are headlights shining through my back window, so I looked out and there's the cop car right behind me with his spotlight aimed at the VW. I sat up and could see him get out and start walking up to the car. I rolled down the window and he came up and says, "I understand you've been scaring some people out here tonight." I was dumbfounded. I hadn't interacted with anyone all evening, save for waving at a couple people who walked by earlier. "Scaring people?" I asked. He said they've had multiple calls about me out here. Naturally he asks if I've been consuming any controlled substances. I told him all I had done was eat dinner, read a bit and was about to go to sleep. The officer looked me over for a minute and must have determined that I was not a threat. He never actually told me to leave but said something to the effect of they've got their eye on me. I don't know who was calling in about me or why, but I wasn't about to ask around to find out. Someone didn't like me being there, so I decided to head out. I hastily packed up my stuff and drove to the nearest town and got a hotel room for the night.

At this point I was feeling pretty depressed about the whole situation at Kanopolis and just felt like heading back home to Wisconsin. The next morning, I did just that. I left early and drove the whole way back in one shot, over 900 miles. The VW was gradually running worse and worse as I went on. To further thwart me, the wind had changed direction and was now blowing hard from the east.

The VW's ailing engine suffered a lot of full-throttle miles fighting against the gale. I drove one section of road in Iowa that was about 40 miles long straight into the wind through open fields with nary a tree in sight. That was really rough. The car was getting harder to start after stopping for gas and whatnot as well. It would crank for a while and then sort of sputter to life and lope along at a lumpy idle. I've listened to this engine for long enough that I could tell the valves were off. There was not enough of the usual valvetrain ticking. A valve or valves were getting tight.

I was not in the mood to wait for then engine to cool down to check the clearances, so I apologized to the VW for the abuse and told it that if it just gets me home, I'd do nice things for it. Because the VW is a champion, it made it all the way back. I think I got home at around 11:00 PM after leaving Kansas at about 5:00 that morning. It was a stupid trip cut short by my mental dejection after the camping incident in Kansas. Looking back though it was probably good that I left when I did because my original plan would have added about another 500-600 miles to the trip which I do not think the engine would have tolerated.

The next day I checked the valves and as I suspected, they were off. Number 3 exhaust clearance was down to nothing. I adjusted them and the car seemed to be running okay again. I drove down to Illinois to walk at Glacial Park. That round-trip is about 90 miles and by the way back I could tell the valves were off again. After the car cooled down a few hours, I checked them and sure enough, number 3 exhaust was getting tight again. At this point I decided the engine was done and started the teardown and refresh which was detailed in several posts above.

And that was the trip to Kansas that killed my VW.

Driving along a dirt road in Eastern Iowa.

The VW at the Shell Rock River in Iowa. I ate lunch here.

The Shell Rock River.

Bluebells in the woods along the Shell Rock River.

Whitecaps on Blackhawk Lake in Iowa. It was very cold and windy here. Did not feel like May at all. I did see an Osprey here.

Neat old steel-decked truss bridge that took me across the Missouri River on the Iowa/Nebraska border.

A little view along the edge of the Loess Hills in eastern Iowa. It's a nice area.

Controlled burn on the prairie in north-central Kansas. I watched this fire move across the field for a while. Several other people drove up to watch it as well. There's not a whole lot going on in this part of the state but that's sort of what I like about it.

View from Chicken Ridge in Iowa near the Mississippi River. This is the only picture I took on the return trip as I was feeling burned out mentally. The sunset was just too pretty to not stop and enjoy it for a bit though.

[supercub]

Since the last update I replaced both front wheel cylinders and brake hoses. The car has been pulling to the left a bit while braking for a couple years now and I finally got inspired to figure out what was up with it. Turns out one piston in the passenger side wheel cylinder was rusted stuck so it was essentially stopping on only one shoe. That would explain the pull. Not sure why that piston rusted so bad. I've flushed the brake fluid a couple times over the years. The free piston on that cylinder is leaking a bit as well. I went ahead and ordered both wheel cylinders and front brake hoses since that stuff is closing in on 15 years old now. Good thing too because the left wheel cylinder was leaking a little on both pistons. The leaks were all minor enough that the dust seals were keeping the fluid from leaking into the brake assembly. The VW stops much straighter now.

I've taken a couple of longer trips now with the repaired engine. Last Friday I drove out to Kohler Andrae State Park on Lake Michigan. That was about 180 miles round-trip. Today I drove out to Pleasant Valley Conservancy near Black Earth. About 65 miles each way. The car did great. It pretty easily held 70 mph coming back through Madison, though there was a slight tail wind. I walked around at Pleasant Valley for a few hours and came across a flowering plant I've never seen before. Turns out the reason I haven't seen it is because it is Fire Pink which is listed as endangered in Wisconsin. Seeing that was worth the trip.

Here are some pictures from today's trip to Pleasant Valley Conservancy.

The VW at Pleasant Valley.

View from the top. I'm pretty sure the tall hill in the distance is Blue Mound State Park.

Overlooking Pleasant Valley Road from a rocky outcrop. If you look really hard you can just see a bit of the VW behind an oak tree in the center but it's very tiny.

Fire Pink. An endangered plant in Wisconsin.

[cdennisg]

Very nice.
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[supercub]

The VW rolled 100k miles since the rebuild today! The odometer turned back to 72142 while driving through Sauk City, WI on the way to Spring Green Preserve and Ferry Bluff. I'm proud of the car. It almost made it with no engine work too, until the 3-4 cylinder head replacement a few months ago. Parts replacement was minimal during that project, so I'm still curious as to how much farther this engine will still go. Another 50k would be great. We'll see. Congratulations little VW! Here's to another 100k!

Odometer back at 72142, where it was when I got the car.

The spot in Sauk City where the VW rolled 100,000 miles. Well, it was actually on the street just before the parking lot, but this was a main road through town there was no shoulder to pull onto for a picture. The car hit 100k in front of an all-natural pet nutrition store. Ha.

Here are a some pictures from Spring Green Preserve and Ferry Bluff where I was headed to when the VW hit 100k.

Spring Green Preserve. Known informally as the Wisconsin Desert.

Prickly pear cactus in Wisconsin? This area is really open, hot, dry and sandy which allows cacti to flourish well away from their normal range. Growing up in TX I saw plenty of cacti but never expected to see them in WI.

A stunted Red Oak "bush" and more prickly pear. There were a lots of these shrubby little oak trees of several species growing here.

The view while walking back.

Overlooking the Wisconsin River from Ferry Bluff.

Looking the other way.

[supercub]

This afternoon I woke up the '66 from its winter hibernation. We had a good rain last Friday which washed the leftover salt off the roads, so it was time. As usual, it fired right up no problem. Went for a 30-mile drive in the VW and all seems well. It did ride a bit mushy, but the tires probably need some air. It's approaching 102k miles now. This past winter I have been contemplating possibly selling the VW sometime in the next couple of years. My interests have gradually changed over the past 14 years that I've owned the car, and I'm definitely not as into it as I once was. Part of me wants to keep on running it until the engine finally wears out though before letting it go. I'm still kind of interested in seeing how much more it has left. I don't know. Anyhow, I'm planning to drive it out to Kansas in early May to go to the yearly car show at the college I went to. Hopefully the trip will go smoother than last year, haha.

Here it is out and about again.

[mukluk]

Always good to see an update on your '66 and any associated travels. Keep or sell is all up to you, just don't let it rot away forgotten under a tarp.
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1960 Ragtop w/Semaphores "Inga"

[supercub]