WBX-Unknown

[937carrera]

A little more progress this evening.

I have taken the other head off, no apparent issues there, except that a rather large piece of piston ring dropped out of one of the barrels, about 1/3 of a compression ring.

I then moved onto separating the cases. All the bolts came undone (one of the top 13mm ones was missing), though the lowest, and rustiest 17mm nut did need a bit of heat, lubrication and persuasion to unscrew. The inner case bolts are also off, but work had to stop at that point as I got called away, so no chance to separate the cases or examine pistons / bores. At least no studs are broken.

Oil pump cover nuts seem to have a fair filling of red sealant



I did a rough check on endfloat. Showed about 0.38mm, even at the angle shown, which seems to be rather a lot beyond the wear limit of 0.15mm

[itchyfeet]

Clearly a DG by the way
those red bits on the nuts are a one time use seal
nuts are relatively expensive so I don't bother I just use curil T or have used Dirko HT with stanard stainless nuts amd washers

[937carrera]

Cheers, I'll have a think about what to do with the oil pump nuts, probably re-use with a small quantity of RTV to remake the seal.

I agree, it is a DG, I did a bit of reading last night and came to the same conclusion, then added to Silverbullets old thread on compression ratios

So, more progress this morning

First of all, these WBX engines are so much more difficult to remove the pistons on. I managed, remembering something about threaded rod, so I adapted a spark plug tube extraction tool to be a gudgeon pin puller. I used an M8 flange nut and simply wound that on using a ring spanner once the threaded bar was through. Perfect size, it gave traction on the gudgeon pin and missed the circlip

You'll note on this bank I used it as a puller, on the other side I did use the slide hammer method. Number 4 required a bit of ingenuity as I only have cranked circlip pliers. Just like when I had no tools

No rings because I had already removed them, and found out that you can't pull the case off with pistons on because of the webbing on the case. Never mind



Once that was done the cases separated, here's what it looks like after a quick wipe over the bearing surfaces

One half



The other - that camshaft shell definitely looks on its last legs



Not too happy with the non rotating part of number 1 & 3 main bearings. Number 2 journal has a tiny bit of marking



Perhaps the most disappointing bit, there seems to be a fair bit of wear on the camshaft. Opinions welcomed, it is 35 years since I had a type 4 engine in pieces.



The broken ring, this is the second compression ring on number 3. And a couple of washers that fell out of the case. I think these are from the dizzy drive.



That's it for now, conrods will have to wait for another day

[itchyfeet]

looks like a rebuild thread to me

most cams are knackered but it will still run just with less lift
it depends on what you want from this engine
if you are you just repairing with minimum cost reuse it, if you want a long life engine replace it.

remember no more VW cams afaik repro or Aircooled offers more choice

[937carrera]

looks like a rebuild thread to me

To misquote someone else, this is not the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps near the end of the beginning.

Stripping nearly complete, measuring & assessment next, do you get a special badge or membership upgrade for a rebuild thread

[itchyfeet]

Badges, we don't need no stinking badges

You just get the satisfaction of encouraging somebody else to do it.

I was encouraged by rebuild threads on here, I had done top end WBX before just with Haynes and my general skills but a full rebuild needs a bit more encouragement like you get from others re build threads. A full rebuild using Haynes alone would be hard work.

recycled knoledge is what we all need its all out there but sometimes nice to ask questions and you can't ask a Haynes manual, or a Bentley either.

[bigbadbob76]

I was encouraged by rebuild threads on here.

Me too. I would never have attempted it just with haynes and without you guys to hassle with my questions.
Although I have re-built a 2cv6 engine before which is basically just half an oil cooled flat 4.

[bigbadbob76]

most cams are knackered but it will still run just with less lift.

I've seen metion on FB of different ratio rocker arms to give more lift.
Never seen them metioned on here though so did wonder if they were just full of wind.
A assume the pushrod end of the rocker is longer than standard but then how does the pushrod sit in the tube. hmmmm....

[937carrera]

..... and about 15 minutes to do an engine swap in a 2cv

Well I now have the excuse to expand my toolkit again, mic and bore gauges

[937carrera]

I've seen metion on FB of different ratio rocker arms to give more lift.
Never seen them metioned on here though so did wonder if they were just full of wind.
A assume the pushrod end of the rocker is longer than standard but then how does the pushrod sit in the tube. hmmmm....

I see them as Yank mods, and have never really paid much attention to them either. They must work in one of two ways: either simply changing the lengths of the two parts of the rocker, with consequential geometry issues, or changing the fulcrum for the same overall length and having the rocker shafts move up or down the head. I haven't considered the dimensions to see the extent of any geometry issue.

[bigbadbob76]

Mine's in a trike so the engine just lifts out the back.
Really is about 15 mins to take it out and carry it up into the loft where my workshop was at the time.

Re: higher ratio rockers- https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewt ... p?t=286606
Sounds like they could be a good solution to a worn cam.
Scat ones are pricey though.

[itchyfeet]

a worn cam will just keep wearing,
Rratio rockers to compensate for a worn cam is a bodge which won't be any cheaper in the long run and wil accelerate your cam wear.

[937carrera]

I had a few more hours this afternoon so did a first clean of the cases and the started examining components, camshaft first

One of the bearing 3 shells was definitely on its last legs, top layer completely gone, but no signs of stripping metal. Number 1 & 2 bearings showing signs of wear around the oil hole

I'm still trying to work out why this engine had been robbed of ancillaries. I don't think that the cam shell wear would have been noticeable, though perhaps it may have contributed to low oil pressure. Though there are signs of wear on the cam, the lobes don't seem to be badly worn. I haven't worked out why the wear on the base of the lobes is there, especially as it is definitely biased towards the flywheel end on all lobes.

Thoughts, opinions always welcomed, crankshaft later



Next are some photos of the cam, two different orientations

Wear on the base of the cam, flywheel end so this is 1 &3 exhaust



Similar story at the other end



Not so bad on the other side of the lobe



Showing wear on both the base of the cam and the lobe

[Oldiebut goodie]

I wondered why I had popping in my intake on the boat engine: ( with corresponding degradation on the cam ) Of course a feeler gauge bridged the hole when checked. When covered in black diesel oil eyesight sometimes lets you down.

[937carrera]

Definitely a loss of valve lift there then OBG ?

Now onto the crankshaft.

I'm a bit confused about this engine, at least with my current state of knowledge.

The cases are late cases I believe. Tonight I have discovered that there are 3 WBX 1.9 crankshafts, early, late blue code, late red code, the colours denoting the bearing size.

As I understand things the early crank has a wider "all in one" number 1 thrust bearing, while the later models have a narrower bearing with two thrust washers. As I cannot see any paint marks on my crank I assume I have an early crankshaft with the wider thrust washer. So why is it in a late case ??

So, onto the crankshaft assessment. Conrods numbered, matching rod numbers all on the underside. Didn't have a puller to remove the gear so that'll happen later



Number 1 bearing seems to have some tapering at the flywheel end, I have not decided if that is wear, or as designed as the journal may not be in contact with the bearing at that point



Now cylinder 4 big end journal, can you see those three or four little marks on the left hand side, I'll need to take a closer look at those, not rough though.



and the corresponding rod, some wear on the rod bearing



Next up the crank, number 2



Number 3 looks very good



Number 1 showing clear signs of wobble on the rod. I measured the side to side play using a dial gauge on each of the rods at the small end before removing. Number 1 was the worst at 1.36mm, others were in the range 1.0-1.1mm. I believe the spec is 0.7mm



One nearly naked crank. I measured each of the the journals. Each of them was just 0.01mm below nominal dimension (so a nominal 60mm journal measured 59.99mm) which is as new for a "blue" or early crank, except for number 4 which was 0.03mm below nominal when the wear limit is 0.016. I'll need to recheck that measurement.



So my initial conclusion on the crank, subject to reviewing a couple of points, is that it is in very good condition with virtually no wear. I have not checked the little ends or gudgeon pins yet, perhaps that will give some clue as to the cause of the wear on number 1 big ends bearing.

I measured the shims, 0.35, 0.34 and 0.26mm, didn't see if the sizes were still visible on the shims themselves

Taking account of what I know so far, perhaps the reason why this engine has been put in the recycling basket was not for any major failure, but simply for low oil pressure, caused by general bearing wear, even though some of them do look very good. That does seem contrary to this being a VW rebuild engine, which I assume would have been done "right" but I suppose even these could be 20+ years old now and who knows what mileage.

Next step is I think is to reassemble rods and measure bearing dimensions. I haven't checked yet, but I bet the rods have stretch bolts in

Further thoughts / comments welcomed