The balancing of the new connecting rods and the pistons is now done. They were within about 1.5 grams to begin with, so there wasn’t much to do. Neither the rods, nor the pistons, had balancing pads. On the pistons I could see where material had been removed around the skirt for balancing previously, so …
The second step in the “oil mods“, after boring the case to increase oil supply to the left-side (in the airplane) lifters, is to modify the lifters themselves to increase the oil supply to the head. As you can see below, the lifters have two circumferential grooves in them. One of the grooves has a …
While working on the “oil mods”, I’ve also been trying to get the combustion chamber volumes more even, as I talked about two posts ago. As so many other things, this became quite an ordeal. It turns out 2cc is a lot of material to remove. I’ve been grinding and measuring for what seems like …
I finally got the “aircraft drill bit” (which is a very long drill bit. Why they are called that, I don’t know) needed for the modifications to the oil delivery in the engine case. Apparently, type 1 VW engines have marginal oil supply to the rocker arms in the heads. Oil gets there through a …
Things are slowly proceeding on the engine front as I’m meticulously going through some things while waiting for parts for others. I got the cam gear thrust bearing endplay, mentioned in the last post, set right only to realize that this added to the free play in the gears (they are helical, so end play translates …
I finally got the engine case back from the machine shop, so I could proceed with remaining work. First I finished up drilling out all the oil passage plugs from the case that my Dad and I started before giving the case to the shop. To be 100% sure that you get all gunk and …
Along with needing to machine the engine case to fit the Force One bearing, there was one additional task needed to fit the propeller to the new hub. The Aerovee hub centers the prop on six bushings around the bolts, while the Force One hub has a 2″ centering pilot. Neither of our two propellers, …
Over the last month, posting has been sidelined by my parents visiting which, as usual, was accompanied by lots of home improvement work. My dad and I got some work done on the Aerovee too, though. As suspected, the local VW shop deemed the crankshaft unserviceable (apparently the center journal wasn’t just way worn, it …
Since the last post, I’ve taken everything off the AeroVee and split the case. It could be worse. The cams and lifters look OK. The bearings, though, do not. And the long periods of disuse has caused a fair amount of corrosion on the connecting rods and the crankshaft. All the bearings look pretty bad, …
The first step in tearing the Aerovee down was to get the engine off. This was actually not that bad, it took about 3h to remove and disconnect everything such that the engine case could be unbolted from the accessory mount. However, getting the prop off turned out to be a little bit more difficult …