Ummm I think I F##ked this engine!!!

[1958 Harry]

Well WHAT a weekend!!!

I was driving Hatty on the Motorway Saturday morning, going to Marks to get her undersealed and the other minor bits she needs doing sorted, and there was a crunch (doing about 65mph) and suddenly she's running on 2 cylinders! Up until that point she was running the beast she EVER had!!! :laughing:

RAC man comes out, can't get her running any better, cylinders 3&4 are just FULL of petrol and not firing! So as she was driveable (all be it VERY slowly!) he followed me back to my parents, which was interesting to say the least, she couldn't do hills at more than 5mph! :laughing:

Anyway spoke to Squirrel at Bristol cherished cars, either a cracked head, or piston failure. So as I expected worst I case I managed to source a complete 1300 Twinport, just in case Hattys engine was f##ked!

Anyways me and Jim (a MAHOOOOSIVE THANKYOU for all your help dude!!!!!) pulled her engine and stripped the head to find this....

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/gertiebug/27072008133.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/gertiebug/27072008134.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/gertiebug/27072008135.jpg

The top of the piston had sheared off!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:

The bottom part of the piston was still attached to the con rod, con rod perfect, head perfect, just piston split in half! Anyway, this was unrepairable at the mo as I had spare heads (cheers Luce!!!) but no barrels or pistons :(

So the 1300TP seemed to have NO compression when we looked at/bought it this morning, luckily the valves had no clearance so weren't opening, a quick set of the tappets, filled up with oil, the leads/dizzy cap (was brand new) from Hattys engine, whacked it in, started first time sweet as a nut after being stood for 18 months!!!

Just needs a new exhaust as the one on there is completely knackered! Holes all the way around it, heat exchangers are also rotten, luckily the exchangers on Hattys knackered engine are good, so when I change the exhaust (unfortunately the zorst on the 1200 is completely different, I only fitted it a few weeks ago as well :( ) I'll fit the good heat exchangers.

So fingers crossed Hattys all fixed (we HOPE!!!) :laughing: I just don't understand how I damaged the engine like that :lol:

[Tofufi]

Jus' go more careful on that new engine fella ;)

Glad we got the new 'un sorted. :)

[Shamrockez]

omg that was well and truley broked!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

At least a 1300 engine is easier (and cheaper) to find parts for too :)

[1958 Harry]

Yep it was well and truly fooked!!! :lol:

I just don't understand how it went like that!

If I can, I'm gonna have a go at rebuilding it at some point as the main case is pretty good with very little endfloat, so would be a shame to junk.

Also on removing it we realised the rear oil seal was VERY gone as the bellhousing was full of oil! :lol:

Oh Luce, let me know if you need any bits of tinware or anything for Bella, as I have lots of spare now!

[1958 Harry]

Jus' go more careful on that new engine fella ;)

Glad we got the new 'un sorted. :)

Cheers dude!

Its opened my eyes to ranting them now! :eek: :laughing:

[Shamrockez]

Yeah I'm not sure how that happened either - perhaps it was fitted at an ever so slight angle, or a bit tight? And using it gradually weakened it till it went bang?

I don't suppose you have the bit of tinware which goes over the gearbox area, which has the fuel pipe go through it? That's the only bit I need for Bella now :)

[1958 Harry]

Yep I have that, I'll bring it to the Brizzle meet for ya :) (Just remind me closer to the time ;) )

It did seem tight in the barrel (well the end did :lol: ) but I just thought it would be because it needs to seal for compression?

[yellowbug]

oh no poor hatty :(

I hope she is all better now :)





erm......now I dont want to seem un caring lol
but in your first post it kind of sounds like you might have a 1200 zorst going spare?????? if you do we might be able to relieve you of it as ernie needs a new one :D

[Shamrockez]

Cool, how much do you want for it? :)

I'm pretty sure the ones on Bella's old engine came off reasonably easily.

[1958 Harry]

Nothing for the tinware Luce, you did give me the heads! Incidentally, do you want them back?

Ria, for the Zorst, incl OK tailpipes (Zorst is only 3 weeks old!) say £25? :)

[Nico]

OOOOH dear, thats not very good!

We have had very similar things happen on our porsche engines, we have found that it is caused by a pretty major over heating. However our engines are aircooled. But we also realised that it doesnt happen necessarily when the engine is too hot or recently overheated. It can be a gradual process.

The high temperatures cause the metals to expand and contract, this can weaken the piston wall, and just a hair line crack in the cast will soon grow so much so that the top half, or sometimes in our case bottom just shears off, and often looks very clean brake!

Everytime we run a engine too hot or dry of coolant, we will have to strip it down and normally find one or two pistone with hair line cracks, and if we leave it we get very similar pistons to yours!!!

Realy hope you get it sorted mate, may be worth checking the others whilst in pieces?

[yellowbug]

Ria, for the Zorst, incl OK tailpipes (Zorst is only 3 weeks old!) say £25? :)

sounds good to me :)
since we discovered ernie has holes in his :lol:

can we get it off you at the southwest meet?

[Shamrockez]

Nothing for the tinware Luce, you did give me the heads! Incidentally, do you want them back?

Ria, for the Zorst, incl OK tailpipes (Zorst is only 3 weeks old!) say £25? :)
Thanks :) I don't need them back if you need them, but if you don't need them, i'll put them back in the shed just in case I break Bella's lol.

[1958 Harry]

sounds good to me :)
since we discovered ernie has holes in his :lol:

can we get it off you at the southwest meet?

Yep no probs I'll bring it along :) The only thing you'll need to get from GSF is an Exhaust fitting kit (about £6) which has all the gaskets and stuff for the exhaust in it :)

[1958 Harry]

Thanks :) I don't need them back if you need them, but if you don't need them, i'll put them back in the shed just in case I break Bella's lol.

Could I keep one of the heads? I want to have a go at rebuilding the old engine at some point so just in case the valves are knackered in the head it would be handy to keep one :)

[Shamrockez]

yeah sure :)

[1958 Harry]

Cheers hun :)

[Kowalski]

Thats pretty bad, never seen one that bad before!
It does look like a combination of overheating and oil starvation.
Harry get yourself one of those engine rebuilding DVD's they are about 15 squid and show you pretty much everything on how to stripdown, replace and rebuild.

Good luck

[1958 Harry]

OOOOH dear, thats not very good!

We have had very similar things happen on our porsche engines, we have found that it is caused by a pretty major over heating. However our engines are aircooled. But we also realised that it doesnt happen necessarily when the engine is too hot or recently overheated. It can be a gradual process.

The high temperatures cause the metals to expand and contract, this can weaken the piston wall, and just a hair line crack in the cast will soon grow so much so that the top half, or sometimes in our case bottom just shears off, and often looks very clean brake!

Everytime we run a engine too hot or dry of coolant, we will have to strip it down and normally find one or two pistone with hair line cracks, and if we leave it we get very similar pistons to yours!!!

Realy hope you get it sorted mate, may be worth checking the others whilst in pieces?


Ah right! How did I miss your post earlier! :laughing:

Thing is the car was being used as a demo car for a Stock Car track in Cornwall, then it was sold, resto'd and resprayed back to its original colour, so maybe it was ragged around a lot down there?

I did wonder if it was a gradual process, I've noticed a sort of exhausty rumbling noise from it the last few weeks (I thought it was because I'd not connected the exhaust to the heat exchangers properly) so thought nothing of it, but it must have been the start of the problem with the piston! When I do have a go at fixing it (would be nice to as the case is fine, and the engine has no endfloat, its also the original engine for the car!) I'll strip the lot and rebuild both sides I think - I'll also get that engine rebuilding DVD to help me along the way :)

Luckily we have got another engine fited to gems car for now, which is hopefully OK, its a 1300 so has a bit more power (or it will have once we replace the completely rotten exhaust)

At least you've answered my question of how it happened! :laughing:

[Delenn]

Wow! That looks shocking! Glad you had a spare engine. And I thought I had problems this weekend!

[Kitten]

Poor Hatty :eek:

At least she's in good hands and you'll know she'll be really reliable when your finished :ghug:

you have some great friends, what a lovely bunch of people :ghug:

[Kowalski]

I am a firm believer that the 1200 is the best engine VW made, they are uber reliable and it will run again.

http://www.vw-diy.com/

My mistake the one you want is £20 but worth every penny!

[1958 Harry]

T'is a good engine the 1200 - that engine ran OK on 2 cylinders :lol:

And got me home (with the RAC man following)!

And yeah there are some top people in the VW scene!

[Kowalski]

Just a thought mate but if your now running a 1300 it would be wise to change the decklid as it will need more air to cool it - you could end up with two f##ked engines.

[Shamrockez]

Early 1300 and 1500 engines ran without vents :)

Altho I do love the look of the 2 vent 1300 decklid!
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a309/Shamrockez7/Bertie/bertie.jpg

[Kowalski]

The early engines did run without vents but VW quickly changed that.

[1958 Harry]

Unfortunately Gems Decklid has been smoothed and modified (no plate, no plate light etc removed) so no chance of changing it. Plus we'll have to get it re-sprayed which we don't have the money for! :lol:

Jims running a 1641 in his '65 bug with no probs so I should think it'll be OK (hopefully ;) )

[dgro76]

I'm now running a 1776 in the back of my '66 with no vents on the deck lid. Before that I had a standard, single port 1600 that was in the car for 5 years and had the opposite problem in that the bugger took an age to warm up. I never reached full tmperature even on motorway driving.

VW realised in the late sixties that they could save a load of money by standarising decklids across all the Beetle models. That's the only (originally) why the deck lids had vents in the saloon. They were introduced due to losing the vents below the rear window for the cab - that ARE needed for cool air!

[1958 Harry]

I'm now running a 1776 in the back of my '66 with no vents on the deck lid. Before that I had a standard, single port 1600 that was in the car for 5 years and had the opposite problem in that the bugger took an age to warm up. I never reached full tmperature even on motorway driving.

VW realised in the late sixties that they could save a load of money by standarising decklids across all the Beetle models. That's the only (originally) why the deck lids had vents in the saloon. They were introduced due to losing the vents below the rear window for the cab - that ARE needed for cool air!

Yeah it should be fine, for some reason the tinware seems smaller on this engine so the rubber seal doesn't meet the tinware at the rear, so we'll need to replace the seal. Also getting the new Zorst and decent heat exchangers fitted some time this week, was gonna do it myself but I've been signed off work ill so I'll have to pay someone now instead :mad: I need to do a proper oil change on the engine as well before she uses it as we chucked all sorts of **** in it to see if it runs - so don't wanna leave that in it! :laughing:

[gratboyslim]

1914cc in my 66, no vents and only 6 under the rear window. 1300 will be fine as long as the factory cooling like the thermostat etc works and all the tin ware is in place.

[1958 Harry]

All tinware in place, no thermostat, so cooling there isn't a problem as the flaps have been removed from the tinware.

Just need to replace the engine to body seal as we managed to rip it when we took the engine out.

[1958 Harry]

A little update on this :)

Engine in, new exhaust fitted, serviced up and valve gaps re-checked - all seems good for now, so fingers crossed Gem's good to go! Just need to re-tighten the battery clamp, re-fit the interior and then clean all the oil off everywhere :D