Club 80-90 Forums

Hmmm... was certainly working before the rebuild but I'll check!

Whistling/wheezing means an induction air leak. EZ start test has never worked for me. I bet the inlet manifold gakets were reused...

sadly not. they were new as with everything on the rebuild otherwise that would be an easy one to fix! Could they be letting air in anyway?

A while ago I swapped a set of DG ancilliaries onto a DJ. It was fine but developed a knock, so put in a SS with the same parts. It refused to start, tried everything then in desperation lifted the inlet manifold. I guessed that it refused to seat down properly, so I resealed the gaskets with a whiff of Dirko both sides and it fired up first time..

Like Mr silver bullet, I have learnt never to assume with a VW.

Great! Will do that immediately and let you know what happens!

Good grief... I did as suggested and that seems to have solved the hissing/ whistling problem. Now there is a horrible banging/ loud knock coming from, i think, the right hand side of the engine. This happens on the first few attempts to start and then, once idling, when I try to give it some revs. Almost makes me sick to hear it It's not regular and sounds more explosive than a regular bang so I feel like it may not be the bearings. It's also loud and as I've replaced all the bearings, water pump, oil pump I'm hoping its not a moving part. And that seems to leave me with a timing issue, ie, the fuel igniting too early. Does this sound in any way reasonable? I've never dealt with a knock so this is all new to me.

Defo a knock? Louder than the clattering tappets in the second vid?
Pop the rocker covers and check that a pushrod hasnt failed to seat in the tappet or jumped out.
I prefer only half a turn of preload on tappets that have some "spring" i.e. not hydraulically locked solid.

No it's loud. Maybe a backfire. It's a big nasty explosive sound and its in no way regular (other than it happened every time I tried to start the engine). Could it be the timing way out? Just came in a bit stressed so if I had a clear head I would have got the timing gun out before posting but it's too dark and cold to do anything now!

you have got the leads on right.
on the distributor 1432 clockwise

Yeah pretty sure. I took them off to get at the inlet manifold and I always reference the manual even though I've done it countless times. I will of course double check tho.