The T3200E thread

[silverbullet]

Windage just about finished. Central drain hole enlarged to 65mm (the largest Qmax cutter I have) and lipped downwards, notched for the oil pickup tube. Some tricky clamping and spot welding to finish...

[oilrag]

Lovely work ! 

[silverbullet]

Its a never ending hand fitting waking nightmare! Piece by piece, add one bit that fits, then it doesnt fit. Adjust until it fits again. Repeat.

Love my old ARO spot welder though

[Aidan]

you have to wonder, did Oettinger think about a sump baffle originally and then gave up after a weeks fannying about, after VW changed their minds and said they no longer wanted to buy as many engines for the factory as originally planned

[silverbullet]

The Type 4 history is an odd one. That engine was designed to take a alot-in windage tray but it was only fitted to engines fitted to cars, not vans and is frequently missing. Further reading suggests that they seem to go in and out of fashion in the Type 1 racing scene.
A search for "vw type 4 windage tray" throws up a lot of results along with a bit of 914 engine info and there is some archive material on the samba.
Oettinger cut a lot of corners with these engines and made some very odd design decisions too. Some very small details could have made it so much better, such as an extended oil pickup to put it in the middle of the sump, instead of using the wbx4 part. Probably fine for road use I suppose where the rearward bias suits oil feed under acceleration but under hard braking or steep downhills there is a rish of exposing the pickup and the resultant oil pressure drop.

[silverbullet]

It occurred to me today that final assembly is going to be a bit of a fiddle, because the "combs" that will stop oil being pushed up the pushrod tubes will foul the camshaft as the case halves come together
I might just have to cut it down the middle...a dry build will tell all.

[Aidan]

it will be fine, eventually

[silverbullet]

Its putting up a fight all the way. I worked out how to get it assembled: put the cam in the "wrong" half of the case along with the baffle and oil pickup pipe (which are not negotiable) and hold them in place with an Arno strap. Easy to line up the timing marks with a couple of small wooden blocks holding the case apart.
Then when it came to assembly, all sealant applied, I torqued the case closed and it nipped the crank
I suspected a long dowel because they have given me a bit of gip, but unfortunately it was the 0.5mm shim that I had to put behind the rear main flange. It had excaped and bruised the thrust face of the case....so I took it all apart again, cleaned off the rapidly curing flange sealant...
The shim damage is a bit ugly but the crank thrust area is already a mess thanks to previous mods. A scrape and a gentle file, its all good.

[silverbullet]

Something is still wrong. Two days of repeatedly assembling and disassembling with no clear cause as to why the crank is going tight.
Took the cam out, no change so its not the gears.
Something is wrong with the middle pair of mains, it looks like the half bearings have too much nip and the one closer to the flywheel is worst.
More measuring tomorrow, its either a tight tunnel bore and/or a bad set of mains (x2 because the engine uses a combination of Type1 and Type4 bearings)

[mrhutch]

plastigauge the mains?

[silverbullet]

Its got less clearance than a gnats fart. Goes absolute solid. Taking it to my local shop to see of they can hone a little out of mains #2 and 3.

[mrhutch]

Oh bugger, grips solid??  free if mains are removed and crank refitted?  
Cranks not bent is it?  I know it's new
 

[DoubleOSeven]

Sending hope.

[ghost123uk]

Sending hope.

I'm sending main bearing scraping info https://www.marineinsight.com/tech/what ... re%20built.


Sorry, couldn't resist. I am sure it will all come good  


 

[silverbullet]

Engine shop gave me almost an hour of their time talking through how to work out what *could* be going on. The words "you don't f### about when it comes to line boring a flat engine with multiple bearing bores" was used.
They use the same shop as I went to for line boring work and they know that they do good work, so that is reassuring.
I have to measure everything again, torquing up and fitting the mains progressively, checking for tunnel straightness etc to see what it reveals.
Probably going to have to make a false main bearing carrier to check the Type 1 split mains for size and roundness etc, its possible that they are faulty or overlength (they have a lot of nip protrusion for an early thickwall type shell)
It is also just possible that the case halves have relaxed with age and are therefore refusing to pull up reliably and/or getting stressed, even though the mains have ring dowels.
Which isnt the end of the world but would mean removing all the main beaing studs and taking a light cut over both mating faces, then having it line honed to restore straighness and sizes of the mains AND cam bore before I remachine the rear crank seal and oil pump bore.
But thats the nuclear option when all else has failed.
Bloody old VW's