Club 80-90 Forums

I'm going to be looking at a 82/83 air cooled tomorrow. Body and running gear i'm fine with.. Engine wise i have no idea!
I know properly sealed tinware is a must (big seal around the edge?) and that you shouldn't be able to see the ground through the engine bay? I have read there is also meant to be tinware underneath and there is thermostat flaps. i have no idea where these are.. From reading it looks as though the bellows for the stat are fitted underneath,with a wire up to a rod that controls the flaps and that they fail safe. How can you tell if they have failed safe? Does the rod position tell you this? Can you see the flaps by looking in the engine bay?
If anyone has any pictures of a air-cooled engine bay above and below and can point out all the important parts, i would be eternally grateful. Any other tips on these early vans would be appreciated

Afraid I can't point things out but this is as our engine bay looked after Steve @ Gasure fitted in May for me!!

thanks for the pic, confirms a few things for me

An original engine should look like this.



Thermostat flaps lever located near and below the dipstick tube will be vertical if the flaps are fail safe open like this.


Make sure the spring has not broken or some nob hasn't removed the flaps.
Distributor should be the twin vacuum type they don't run that well with 009 all centrifugal distributors.

Most likely got an oil leak from somewhere, most aren't a big issue apart from the oil cooler seals and the flywheel oil seal
Performance gets better the warmer the engine is. Engine should pull nicely through the rev range you don't normally need much more than 3000 rpm no point in going past 4000 rpm that's 80mph in top gear.

thanks very much