Club 80-90 Forums

hi i am in need of a thermostat for my 2 litre Aircooled. I have had 2 now from brickwerks and both have failed within days of fitting. I cant seem to find them anywhere. Anyone know what i can do.
Steve

Hello,

At the risk of calling down the wrath of the gods upon me.......


Dump the thermostat , bracket, cable, and either fix the flaps in the open position...

Or pull them and dump.

Block off any airholes with gaffer tape, preferably tastefully colour coded

I can almost hear the screams now ::: you'll blow the engine, the oil cooler will go to 1 million degrees,

Blah Blah,

I've been building Aircooled volksies for over 30 years now, always strip out the flaps, done it on our 2 latest vans,...

Did Santa pod in 10.998 secs. way back in the 80's, taxed and MOT'd

Round Europe loads of times.... cool dipstick... never even have to lift the engine lid..

Oh, and just so I get burnt as a heretic, I pull off the crap Hall ignition system and retro fit a SVDA drive ...

Better performance, better mpg, better sounding motor....

Works for me....

But then I'm a heretic so what would I know.....



Ah.. Burn him anyway....

Cordialement,

heretic, Hades beckons and no doubt I have a seat next to you agree with you 100 % may the doubters be inflicted as Thebes was..... and speaking of heat that reminds me i have some hot little flakes here for you
mm

Thermostats for Aircooled 2.0L VW engines are no longer available, and Brickwerks don't sell them - at least, I can't find any on their website - so not sure I understand your query. Do you mean the thermostat cable?

Some useful info here: http://www.ratwell.com/technical/Thermostats.html

Thanks. Gonna ditch it then, my flaps are held open anyway so ill leave them how they are. Surely someone will start making them soon.

if you dont run a thermostat especially in this weather the engine will take forever to warm up which leads to more engine wear , its ok if you live where its warm and sunny but the uk never is , the thermostats are available but very pricey or you can convert the type 1 thermostat to fit which is loads cheaper

faggie wrote:if you dont run a thermostat especially in this weather the engine will take forever to warm up which leads to more engine wear , its ok if you live where its warm and sunny but the uk never is , the thermostats are available but very pricey or you can convert the type 1 thermostat to fit which is loads cheaper

Hello,

Oh, dear, I think I small woodsmoke....

Firstly, the ambient air temperature has very little to do with engine cooling.. we go down to minus 18 here in Feb..

An Aircooled engine should run at a constant temperature, hence the finger on dipstick test..


Secondly, the fixed venturi carb used on aircooleds was great when petrol was under 1£ per Gallon.

May I suggest the following procedure, for economical starting, both on engine parts and fuel...

Ignition on, listen for solenoid click, throttle to floor once ,start motor, run for 1 minute.

Switch off... roll cigarette.

Restart engine, blip to lower revs, after 1 min switch off,

Smoke cigarette,

Start van, note engine speed and pulse now normal....

Aircooled bliss..

So what is all this about...

When you draw air through a tube, it cools down,..A single carbed Aircooled has the central part of the inlet manifold fitted with heater risers to preheat the 'Plenum chamber' ( that the carb sits on), on 2 carb vans the inlets iare simply shorter..

On startup the engine has developed no waste heat and so the inlet manifolds cool down rapidly after about a minute causing the expensive petrol to change from an air/ petrol mist, to droplets, causing the 'lumpy' running typically under choke.

This is easily demonstrated, by locating and touching the inlet manifolds as the engine warms up... the effect is surprising..

very cold during warmup, and warm to the touch at normal operating temps..

I recently did a buggy engine where the inlet manifold preheat had been blocked, causing ice to form on the elbow,giving 15 mpg. ( new inlet mf 82€) 30mpg.


So, by letting the engine warm through before driving, you will save petrol and money,

And of course be calmer, more Zen, and therefore a better person, ....

Unlikely to burn people at the stake....


Cordialement,

J. you will always find at least 1 stake burner ( and i just learned something)
mm

i dont smoke as its bad for you and it stinks your van out , and your saying vw fitted it for no reason then

vw fitted it for no reason then

Yep. Just like the auto-chokes and the idle stabaliser

I wondered about this when I had my Baywindow 1800 - essentially the same engine as the 2.0l CU. When I first had it there was no thermostat fitted, but the flaps were still there and fixed in the 'hot' position. Having examined the way it works I decided that a standard setup was worth a go, so I fitted a stat, cable and adjusted it. Some things became immediately apparent; both the fuel and oil consumption slightly improved, and it became obvious that the stat, flaps and auto-chokes are arranged to work together.
When the flaps are fixed open, (or removed I imagine - more on that a bit later), the engine takes quite some time to warm up , particularly so in cold weather, and the choke 'switches off' before the engine is up to temperature meaning that either no tickover or lift-off the gas stalling could be a problem, when either completely cold or completely hot it wasn't a problem, but in the region in between it could be very irritating to drive.
I suspect that if you live out of town, or drove at times that didn't involve idling in traffic at that certain point in the heat up cycle, this would be less apparent, but where I live I'm often straight into a bit of traffic.

The other thing that concerns me is that having examined the system closely it's quite clear that the CU engine's cooling flaps aren't just open or closed, they don't just either allow air flow or stop it. Specifically the left flap when in the 'hot' position directs air through the oil cooler, but does not in the 'cold' position, or if it's removed. Having seen how it works, I don't think removing the flaps or having them fixed - in any position - would be a positive step, there certainly won't be much airflow through the oil cooler with no flaps, and if fixed in the 'hot' postion the air flow through the cooler will mean the oil will take a longer time to reach suitable temperature, I suspect it is this that accounted for the change in oil consumption, I can't be certain that's the specific reason of course, but it did change when the original bits were refitted,

Can't answer for the CT engine - haven't had that much to do with them.

I know the specific parts for the CU engine are NLA new, but if the flaps are still and the stat missing, it must be possible to arrange something with Beetle/Baywindow bits.