Club 80-90 Forums

We have a 1980 2ltr Aircooled westy joker engine number CU, after coming back from BVF van sat for two weeks on starting up horrible noise like many hammers banging, Is coming from cylinders 3 & 4 side. reading manual makes me think hydraulic lifters sticking, drove it round block noise still there and when trying to brake seemed like servo was not working(can these be connected ?) Is it possible to remove the head with the engine still in the vehicle? as our drive is very steep and makes it very difficult to drop an engine out of a van. Anybody else had this problem? Off to buy a compression tester to see what that shows me. Is it possible this could be a valve gone?

Firstly you do not need to take the head off to examine and replace the valve train or hydraulic tappets on an Aircooled engine, just take off the rocker cover, undo the two nuts holding the rocker shaft together and the whole assembly will slide out, remove the pushrods and the tubes will slide towards you through the head, hydraulic tappets are in the case where the tube joined it, they pull out with your fingers or if tight a pair of long nose circlip pliers will pull them out.

Secondly if you do find it is a combustion chmaber problem it is easier to drop the entire engine from an Aircooled than it is to mess around taking the tinware off in situ, drop the motor with the gearbox intact, two trolley jacks are needed and a second pair of hands to steady it, will make life all the more easy when you have to strip the motor.

Thanks for the info steve going to give this a try. dropped the motor out of splits & bays before to rebuild but have never had a van with servo so wasnt sure if a loss of compresion would also effect the servo brakes as this happenend at the same time.

ran a compresion check

NO 1 READ 145psi

NO 2 READ 145psi

NO 3 READ 110 psi

NO 4 READ 142 psi

These engines sometimes sound like a tin of nails on start up,ours does it and sometimes takes several miles before it runs nice and quiet. Nick.