OT: Late '70s VW Rabbit Distributer, Where to find ? Options

[jim_hoyland]

Where could I locate a source for a late 70's W Rabbit ditributer with centrifugal advance ?

[914four]

Where could I locate a source for a late 70's W Rabbit ditributer with centrifugal advance ?

How do you still have one of these cars? I purchased a 78' VW Scirocco new and had four valve jobs and an engine rebuild by the time it was five years old with 80,000 miles on the odometer. I feel sure it was in the junk yard by the late 80's.

[Cap'n Krusty]

IIRC, they all had centrifugal/vacuum distributors. I'm sure I have one. points or electronic? Gotta number? The Cap'n

[Cap'n Krusty]

Where could I locate a source for a late 70's W Rabbit ditributer with centrifugal advance ?

How do you still have one of these cars? I purchased a 78' VW Scirocco new and had four valve jobs and an engine rebuild by the time it was five years old with 80,000 miles on the odometer. I feel sure it was in the junk yard by the late 80's.

Somebody didn't maintain it, or maybe got suckered, or bought bad valve jobs. Most went well over 200K+ before the head had to come off. My '80 Audi 4000 went 450K before it burned a valve, and I had an 83 GTi that 750K before the car puked, (NOT the engine). The Cap'n

[cholland_]

Where could I locate a source for a late 70's W Rabbit ditributer with centrifugal advance ?

How do you still have one of these cars? I purchased a 78' VW Scirocco new and had four valve jobs and an engine rebuild by the time it was five years old with 80,000 miles on the odometer. I feel sure it was in the junk yard by the late 80's.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I have (now) both a '75 and an '86 Scirocco. The '86 has 320k km on its original engine, that's never been apart at all.

To the OP: stuff like that is mostly NLA and not reproduced. My best advice is to go onto vwvortex.com and post a WTB ad on the mk1 forums. Those guys tend to hoard stuff.

[ArtechnikA]

Where could I locate a source for a late 70's W Rabbit ditributer with centrifugal advance ?

I have one from an '83 US ur-GTI if that'll help you ...

[DBCooper]

I smiled when I read that, an old VW hot rod trick. If I recall correctly that distributor could be disassembled and the drive part of the shaft from a T4 distributor put on to it, to get a much better distributor for the T4 than the old 050. I believe it was pointless, or you could put the electronic module from a later pointless distributor into it to get a better curve than the wasserboxer pointless distributor. Could be wrong, that was quite a while ago...

[Cap'n Krusty]

Pointless appeared in 1980 in CA, maybe later in the rest of the country. The Cap'n

[914four]

Somebody didn't maintain it, or maybe got suckered, or bought bad valve jobs. Most went well over 200K+ before the head had to come off. My '80 Audi 4000 went 450K before it burned a valve, and I had an 83 GTi that 750K before the car puked, (NOT the engine). The Cap'n

Cap'n,

I appreciate your contributions to this forum but at least in this case you seem to have little faith in your fellow 914World members to properly maintain their cars, not get suckered or purchase quality service.

Shortly after I sold my car I received a letter from VW of A accepting responsibility for the valve jobs because there was a manufacturing problem identified causing many of the engines to require frequent valve jobs.

This might be an interesting thread if someone knows if there may have been a law suit that triggered the letter.

Respectfully,

Kelvin

[ejm]

Shortly after I sold my car I received a letter from VW of A accepting responsibility for the valve jobs because there was a manufacturing problem identified causing many of the engines to require frequent valve jobs.

Those cars did not need valve jobs they needed valve seals. Cyl head removal and a "valve job" with the seals getting replaced was the repair often performed to stop excessive oil consuption. VW was slow to act on the problem but did finally upgrade the seal material and come up with a special tool kit to change the seals without removing the head. Owners were notified and some got reimbursed for previous repairs. I did seals on hundreds of cars, they allowed 2.5 hours for the job but it could be done in 45 minutes.

/hijack

Jim - if your're still looking for a dizzy let me know and I'll dig thru some ancient stuff in the garage

[Cap'n Krusty]

The guides were changed to a better alloy sometime in the early 80s, maybe '82 or '83. Knowledgeable aftermarket machine shops were using them by '77 or '78. Porsche used the same crap in the 911s until mid '77, when they started using Technovance guides. A substantial number of '76-'77 911s got free valve jobs up to about 50K miles, because they were failing as early as 20K. Audi 100LS cars (pushrod I4s) used guides up so badly it became a routine thing to find some holes with no guide left at all. My '75 Rabbit and my '77 Scirocco had no guide problems, BTW, and didn't use oil. Now that I think about it, I erred in my earlier post. My mom fell victim to a low mileage dealer valve job on our Audi 4000, which I redid in 6K miles because they left the intake manifold loose and burned a valve or 3. From 60k, it then went 450K more before it just got too tired to go on.

The Cap'n

[Scott S]

78 rabbit GTI (yep, grey market car)- 230k
83 GTI - 195k
85 GTI - 210k

I beat the living cr@p out of those cars. Other than the 83, I sold each one for nearly the same amount I paid for them. Great cars. The only time the motors were aprt was when I was screwing with them - usually just a cam, intake, and exhuast. Never any valve issues other than the cold weather "tick" on the 85 as it got older.
I remember searching junk yard for the coveted audi 5000 throttle bodies because I could not afford the 100.00 they cost from the aftermarket parts places.

I wish I still had the 78 .... sorry about the douche in the picture - it was 1984, gimmie a break....

[ArtechnikA]

78 rabbit GTI (yep, grey market car)- 230k
83 GTI - 195k
85 GTI - 210k

I have no idea how many miles on my '83 because it was very used when I bought it in 1995 following a rollover in the GLI. And like most of the vintage, the odometer had stopped somewhere around 85K. Ran fine for a couple of years, especially after I took off the 50 lbs of useless AC and cleaned about 20 pounds of impacted greasy grit out of the radiator (behind the equally grit-impacted AC condensor...) Then I started swapping over parts from the (8V) GLI including eventually the engine (a bit of a trick putting a CIS-KE engine in a CIS-K car) along with a Techtonics 268º cam, new valve springs and trick no-cat exhaust. (And new big oil pump and hydraulic lifters that finally eliminated the cold start-up clatter...) That was with about 200k on it. I put in the 16V spark control box for the 8200 rpm rev limiter and went E-Prepared SOLO-II for a year in a fully streetable car. Without racing-stiff springs I was toast whenever a real EP car showed up but I made enough events to win the Reno Region championship that year (and nowhere on the trophy does it say 'fluke.'

I did that to make sure I still knew how to prep and drive a car to see if I wanted to make the big investment of ressurecting the 914/6, which I was about to plunge into but life took an abrupt and unexpected direction when I met Joy and got married. No regrets.

[jim_hoyland]

Thanks for the info; I'm going to PM a couple of the offers tomorrow after talking to mechanic. Here's a few pics in the meantime:
I am not the car's owner, but trying to help out a friend.