Cheap Junk 1971 Build

[Leiif]

So in the end what did the budget run for this "cheap" build? It looks like it came out better than any off the shelf long block from online dealers.

Thanks for putting this thread together.

[Pbnjimages]

Clatter, I'm new to this forum, came looking for info before tackling a build on my TIV. This thread has been one of this most informative that I have found. In my case, if i swept my garage, I'd have sawdust, so I'll be using mostly new parts, but I learned quite a bit, and was very entertained by your writing. Thanks!

[kharon]

This was very informative for me as I'm going to rebuild an AN-engine (1,8l, 85hp with 8.6:1 pistons and twin PDSIT 40mm, Euro-version) from POs 'spare engines' -pile for my 412 ... we know it has been running at some point but no-one could remember where or what parts it has inside. Or has it anything else than block as stock. Factory repair manual has a lot of details, but it assumes that everything is new and fits perfectly. That's not usually the case with old parts.

Interesting part for me was that you can get commercial media/soda/bead blasting cheap as here (Finland, EU) they charge about $70 per hour at half an hour steps. Also 'tanking' was a new term for me: Cleaning in acid or something similar? AFAIK that is a service no-one offers here. It would be a tremendous help at getting the parts clean.

[Piledriver]

"hot tanking" process depends greatly on what you are cleaning.

The traditional caustic "hot tank" is used on iron/steel parts and sometimes copper/brass radiators to remove corrosion prior to repair.

That "hot tank" process would eat an aluminum block to nothing in minutes.

When cleaning aluminum, the "hot tank" contains heated detergents and perhaps solvents and only mildly acidic or alkaline if that.
That is the usual method these days for environmental reasons in any case, as effluent is biodegradable//easily disposable.

[Clatter]

Thanks for the kind words.

-Funny-
A guy recently pointed to this build didn't have good things to say.

He indicated that he wasn't interested in 'Cheap Junk';
wanted his new bus motor built right.

So he got some brand-new AA P&L, some new Silverline Bearings, new QSC flywheel, etc.

Just gotta smile
No sense in busting that guy's bubble, just smile and nod...



My local FLAPS has two different tanks.
Neither of these is a traditional "Hot Tank".

A traditional Hot Tank is used on big Diesel trucks, and American V8 motors and such.
These are for iron and steel; NO aluminum or pot-metal or other non-ferrous materials are allowed.
Like Pile said, these tanks would literally dissolve an air-cooled VW case.
If I were in a different country, my first place to look would be where they service trucks.
You could get your crank/rods/etc. done, and they would likely also know where to get aluminum cleaned.


Anyways, back to my favorite place..
The first tank they use is referred to as the "soak tank".
It uses some type of traditional petroleum-based solvent, albeit one that is friendly to the EPA here in California.
As such, it is pretty mild, and parts are left in typically for a number of days.
The last super-grungy (baked on from an engine fire) type 4 case soaked for over a week.
You have to be careful with this thing nonetheless, as non-ferrous parts left in there can be damaged.
The smooth fresh/crisp machined surfaces can be 'etched', or slightly eroded away.
A set of window regulators I accidentally left in too long once were almost ruined.
They had a super-soft mag-type center that eroded away badly in just a few days.
There really is some skill and vigilance involved in the tanking process, to get things clean before they start to degrade.
This tank has to be operated under permit here, the solvent is recycled, and the tank does not use any heat.

The second tank they have here is really just a big home-made dishwasher-like thing.
Like an industrial washer they have in a restaurant kitchen..
It uses hot (hot hot!) water and a citrus-based orange-smelling detergent.
It has a spray-bar that spins at the bottom, and parts come out steaming hot and smelling nice.
They get a blast from a hose/nozzle spray of hot water for rinse as they get taken out,
Then some compressed air, and finally some sunshine to dry outside.
Because we live close to the ocean, they will need to dry quickly to prevent flash rust.
If I had to, I'd get an old dishwasher and give it a try.
They say it works.

Depending upon how bad things are before they get tanked, there can be a lot of cleaning before the tanking process.
Because the guy who runs the tank is a friend of mine, I really, really, try and get things clean first.
Scraping with stick/spoon/screwdriver/chisel/pick etc. is done with the parts in the trash can.
Using wire brush/wire wheel/toothbrush and canned de-greaser like Gunk is done in the back yard,
Or,
In my next-door-neighbor-that-I-hate's yard when he's not around..

Even after tanking, there can be little tits and spots of hard baked oil that remains.
Especially on complex castings, say, cases and heads..
They pop off very easily, but can leave stains.
If I really want to build pretty, I'll have a case vapor-blasted,
or, if nobody does this on your area, glass beads are OK.
You have to have the galley plugs pulled before going this on cases,
and anything touching oil will need cleaned afterwards.
(I went over all of this before, so repeating myself...)

Either way,
Clean all of your parts before you take them in to be tanked,
and,
Have your parts tanked before you get anything blasted.

Hope this helps!

[Piledriver]

Thanks for the kind words.

-Funny-
A guy recently pointed to this build didn't have good things to say.

He indicated that he wasn't interested in 'Cheap Junk';
wanted his new bus motor built right.

So he got some brand-new AA P&L, some new Silverline Bearings, new QSC flywheel, etc.

Just gotta smile

That cracks me up, most wouldn't believe how many hundreds of thousands of miles i have put on my current T4, to date it has been built almost entirely from used German bits and pieces, inspected and cleaned and reused if in spec--sometimes not even that. Its been through 4 different cars now...

And that's not constantly rebuilding it like a T1, that's running it 300K until I HAVE to work on it, and only fixing what is borken, oil changes/valve adjustments per spec is every 12-15K. ...ish, whether it needed it or not.
(10 years of ~80 miles a day commutes, multiple long distance trips, usual weekend stuff living where simply shopping at Walmart is a 35+ mile drive at the least)

The build with the most miles had worn out 1700 jugs when I started, it was just a quick slap together to get the car on the road, really only rebuilt heads and a reseal.

MANY miles later, I finally "rebuilt" it with the same case and main bearings (but lower mile/low wear $25 66mm crank rod/bearing set off TOS)...
and a different used factory oil pump with less play in it. New cam/lifters/dual thrust cam bearings.
Everything was in spec. Has great oil pressure hot or cold with the used factory pump.
(later swapped that for a ~heavily modified Melling as an experiment, and to save the factory pump for later use)

The cam thrust is what was failing, making "funny" noises (and being slapped off the road by a semi) is why it was torn down, it still ran just fine to the last.

The ring seal was initially so bad on it it prodded me into doing some.. experiments.. running crankcase vacuum/EGR setups...
Those worn out jugs/rings were sealing just fine when I finally replaced them 10 years later---looked great and had ~zero blow by... Just a little noisy due to piston slap.(still have them, make get some 90.5 T1 slugs)

...Piched up some used (but good) 1.8L pistons, fresh rings and fresh heads, new cam/lifters...
That has 80K on it so far, and I may pull it over a weekend to pop some new crank seals in it as they have started oozing, and just maybe pop some 96s in it (new mystery jugs that seem to check out with a set of NPR pistons (used) from the days of yore.

Clatter did a much nicer job on his than I have ever bothered with, so his "Pile" should last a very long time IMHO...
I'd take decent used German parts all day long over mystery metal/spec Chinese bits new..

[CobraJet]

Good reading here, you have been very thorough! Thanks for doing the step by step and ALL the pics.

I've done a couple of T1's before but this will be my 1st T4. Actually it will be my 1st engine in 30 years!

[StretchCt]

thanks Clatter, a great writeup. And, yes, a dishwasher works very well.

[baydreams]

Learned more from this thread than from all the other threads I read,and I read lots,thanks for this.
That heat shield you used was it the sticky kind and how thick is it,would you use it again?
On another site,discussing valve seats dropping,You mentioned hyd lifters and steel push rods,would you recommend an hyd cam upgrade on a new 1800 build?
Thanks;Nelson

[Clatter]

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words.

The heat shield is not sticky.
Sticky would likely become non-stick in this environment.
There are aluminum shields in place to support the material, and prevent it from moving.
These were part of the original design, as the asbestos material used was floppy and needed support.

I'm not a fan of hydraulic lifters - harder to tell when a valve is going away.

[capitolatim]

Steve,

Thanks for the advice today.

Slowly making progress on the 2.4, great props to Jim. M

[Marc]

We used to have a caustic-solution heated tank that was outstanding for stripping engine tin to bare metal - if you screwed up and put an alloy part into it you didn't get much (if anything) back. Same stuff that most machine shops used to boil cast-iron blocks clean when I was a kid - they came out with no cam bearings.
For cleaning engine parts we had two 55-gallon drums of "Zepresto". It was $500 a barrel in the `80s and is about four times that now. The "good" barrel was used for carburetors and to get already-clean parts sparkling, while the older one was for initial cleaning. Just a few pieces of painted parts would "turn" the Zepresto, causing it to attack machined surfaces of alloy parts so we had to be vigilant about double-checking every basket before it went in. If you dropped a non-ferrous part that couldn't be retrieved with a magnet you'd need to take off your shirt and reach in to the shoulder to grab it, and that stuff was hot on the skin - a few seconds' exposure before rinsing off was about all you could stand. We'd buy a new barrel twice a year; I made a drill-driven pump/filter setup out of a VW oil pump to transfer the best of the old stuff into a clean empty barrel for the "new" precleaning step, and whatever was left over had to be disposed of at toxic-waste fees by the Safety-Kleen man. Expensive, but it sure was a delight to have spotless parts to work with.

Ever-tightening city & state regulations eventually forced us to abandon this regimen and buy one of those big "dishwasher" machines. Never did do quite as good a job but at least we no longer had to separate painted, ferrous, and non-ferrous stuff anymore...and no more flaming armpits

[Piledriver]

flaming armpits

What an awesome name for a metal band
Right up there with "cold cranking amps".

[Marc]

What an awesome name for a metal band
Right up there with "cold cranking amps".

One of the guys on my pit crew played sax for a local jazz bar-band, "The Dynamic Logs".

Made an apropos name for a band in what was once a logging town, even if you weren't a math major

[raygreenwood]

We used to have a caustic-solution heated tank that was outstanding for stripping engine tin to bare metal - if you screwed up and put an alloy part into it you didn't get much (if anything) back. Same stuff that most machine shops used to boil cast-iron blocks clean when I was a kid - they came out with no cam bearings.
For cleaning engine parts we had two 55-gallon drums of "Zepresto". It was $500 a barrel in the `80s and is about four times that now. The "good" barrel was used for carburetors and to get already-clean parts sparkling, while the older one was for initial cleaning. Just a few pieces of painted parts would "turn" the Zepresto, causing it to attack machined surfaces of alloy parts so we had to be vigilant about double-checking every basket before it went in. If you dropped a non-ferrous part that couldn't be retrieved with a magnet you'd need to take off your shirt and reach in to the shoulder to grab it, and that stuff was hot on the skin - a few seconds' exposure before rinsing off was about all you could stand. We'd buy a new barrel twice a year; I made a drill-driven pump/filter setup out of a VW oil pump to transfer the best of the old stuff into a clean empty barrel for the "new" precleaning step, and whatever was left over had to be disposed of at toxic-waste fees by the Safety-Kleen man. Expensive, but it sure was a delight to have spotless parts to work with.

Ever-tightening city & state regulations eventually forced us to abandon this regimen and buy one of those big "dishwasher" machines. Never did do quite as good a job but at least we no longer had to separate painted, ferrous, and non-ferrous stuff anymore...and no more flaming armpits

DUDE! ....DO NOT put your apendages in that stuff!

Zepresto is sold by Associated Fuel Systems. Its a Zep product. Very good stuff.....but its main four ingredients are
Dichloromethane (carcinogenic as hell)
cresol.....or cresylic acid (still under investigation for a range of ugly)
potassium salts (generally meaning potassium hydroxide....mildly corroisve to parts heavily corrosive to people)
Sodium nitrite....just not good for you....used as a wetting agent in this mixture.....and also is approved for killing ferral hogs......which might just kill many of us!

This is a great degreaser. Its designed to startify into two layers in the tank. The solvent based one on the bottom and the caustic water based one on top. The top layer dissolves oils and grease that were mixed with water and then dried (the kind of crap that gets stuck on transmissions and suspension parts that nothing removes)......the lower layer dissolves mainly just oils and grease.

So as mentioned....to clean the tank you pump from the bottom and add fresh and it layers out again.

You have to be careful with this stuff. It can kill you.

Along with Piledrivers thoughts in this thread.....I generally find that the type 4 1.7L is about the most bulletproof engine configuration VW made. I have never failed to get on average about 200k from a factory 1.7L that was well cared for....even if it was just a junkyard refresh......meaning pull it apart, clean it and new cam bearings and rings....nothing else. Ray