I just got my 2056 back from my engine builder, and now im trying to install all the sheet metal. The engine builder suggested that i wire open my cooling system so that it doesnt ever mess up and overheat my engine. My question is how should the flaps be oriented if i wire them open. Why do i even need these flaps if im not using the thermostat system? IF anyone has any pics of how they oriented their flaps, that would help alot. Thanks!! Hopefully back on the road soon!!

...........My preferred orentation for the heater flaps is.....folded over and driven into the ground., this saves a lot of concern over whether they are orented properly, the intermediate connection is stable, the bellows is working,the wire is still attached, or the roller is broken....and it saves the weight of that worthless crap from being hauled around....The , not insiginificant , side benefit of knowing your engine will not overheat from any failures of all that junk will give you a significant level of piece of mind. You will just have to allow a few minutes to warm up the engine before driving.(recommended for any air cooled engine-including your lawn mower, or private airplane.).

Cool, so your telling me i can take the whole flap system out and call it good? Is there anything else that i will need to pay attention to, or set up different without these flaps in? It did seem like i could just leave them out, but i wasnt quite sure how the air flows through everything.

If your tossing everything, you will want to tuck the passengers side cooling flap over the oil cooler, it slips under the tin that stops the flap from hitting it.. that would make permenant the fail safe cooling position from overheating.. this is common for people whom do not care about warming up but want to keep from overheating..

the wieght savings is nil... better just to lose 2 lbs. in your diet.. or drive without a helmut..

No do not take the flaps out.

In static open position the drivers side flap is open and should hit the little rubber bumper against the cylinder tin. the other side should be sealed snuggly down against the oil cooler deflector tin.

Now hook up the cable and pull it tight which will hold the drivers side down shutting "most of the air off. and the passenger side will be up and in the way of air flow.

If you let go of the cable things should defalt to wide open.

Sorry, i dont quite understand what you are explaining. Are you saying remove the rod and the flap on the drivers side, but keep the other flap and wire it down over the oil cooler?

Check out this post. Then search for "cooling flaps" with the quotation marks, and you'll learn everything you need to know.

ME733 is the only person who thinks the flaps can be left out.

I would not throw away or take out of my car what I do not understand first.. but if you insisit then you want to at least keep the engine cooling system intact yes? well tthe flaps are part of that system, if your going to chuck it I would recomend keeping the passenger flap over the oil cooler this is the cooling position also the fail safe position.. so when you trash the rest of the system you will then have a single paseneger flap unattached to anything and you will see the oil cooler and you will see oil cooler tin, tuck the passenger side flap under the tabs on that oil cooler tin.. this way you at least keep the engines original cooling desighn..

.........Detox...may have a resonable suggeston., however I toss EVERYTHING..I have found that the oil cooler cools just fine without the part he suggests....discuss this with your engine builder...ONE other thing to look for ...the plastic wheel for the bellows wire pull...has a bolt into the crankcase., you will need to install an appropiately small, bolt with sealant to seal this HOLE., when you decide to toss the flapper junk...The small openings (for the flapper ends which protrude thru the sheetmetal)...can be rubber plugged, sealed with a small bolt and nut, (prior to sheetmetal installation)...or left open-do nothing...it,s all good.

Great, i understand now. Where i was confused was that i thought when the flap was over the oil cooler, it was closeing it off to air flow. I should be set now as far as that part of my engine goes. Thanks guys

I second that ! Do not remove the flaps! They are critical for warmup and cooling as the right one forces air through the oil cooler. they are factory sprung to spring open when the thermostat cable is loose or broken. NO REASON to wire them open! What was your engine builder thinking? Obviously not Jake Raby!!

quote name='Joe Ricard' date='Jun 16 2010, 01:36 PM' post='1331581']
No do not take the flaps out.

In static open position the drivers side flap is open and should hit the little rubber bumper against the cylinder tin. the other side should be sealed snuggly down against the oil cooler deflector tin.

Now hook up the cable and pull it tight which will hold the drivers side down shutting "most of the air off. and the passenger side will be up and in the way of air flow.

If you let go of the cable things should defalt to wide open.
[/quote]

................well there is one.(.TWO..) more worthless pieces of crap you can eliminate which will have a benefit on cooling and the way the ENGINE REVS UP.. there are two baffles under each cylinder head, which are screwed to the head....Note that these baffles have only a small square opening.(note that the total area of the openings are smaller than the total open area in the casting air router-and openings...Note that the sheetmetal baffle is formed in such a way (upwards) around these openings. These are insanely non aerodynamic, in terms of the air flow direction. elemination of these pieces of crap will allow higher airflow, and a higher RPM before cavation occurs.(air packing up inside the sheetmetal)...Your engine will rev up like a porsche engine should instead of a V.W. of which 914 engines are based on.

Top photo=Warm engine position (maximum airflow over oil cooler), Middle photo=Cold engine position (minimum airflow over oil cooler)

Wow it's been awhile since I seen a stock flywheel. That is one big hunk of iron.
Heaviest one I have is 12 pounds and it is in a box because I am running an 11 pounder.

Jeff,
Are you sure this is right? Top photo looks like failure mode if thermo cable breaks.
Tom

Yeah, i think the explaination of those photos is backwards. Atleast from what everyone else has explained.

Yeah i believe that if there's no cable tension and if the spring is on right then it holds the flaps open to the cooling position. Like Jeff's first picture.

Even the pros mess up at times. Jeff mislabled his pictures. The top picture is the cooling position, the bottom picture is the warmup picture.

If you take out the flaps, you are not forcing the air to go through the oil cooler, which will result in higher oil temps.

Zach

The top image is the maximum cooling position. It's also the fail-safe position in case the thermostat or wire fail.

DO NOT REMOVE THE FLAPS


Without the flaps there will be no air flow to the oil-cooler. They are called cooling flaps for a reason ...
Andy

I don't believe that for a second.

Do you have test results?

Well, there will be some, but it is severely limited ...

(insert big sigh here)

There is probably a reason VW spent money developing the flappers to function like they do. At worst, I'd leave them in the failed open position always working to get the thermostat fixed, hooked up or whatever.

Threads like this kinda scare me. People wanting to run their "Street" cars as cool as possible.

Cool, go for it and have fun trying to burn all that condensate out of the crankcase and oil.

Everyone knows auto manufacturers like to spend time and money developing parts that are completely unnecessary.

Nope. And I am not willing to chance it with my engine, either.

I can say, though, that air will follow the path of least resistance. The flap over the oil cooler forces a percentage of the air going through the tins to be diverted to the oil cooler. There is no where else for it to go. Without the flap, the oil cooler would be a natural low pressure area, and would suck up a little warm air from under the tins into the cool air above the tins. It would not provide much, if any, cooling to the oil, aside from being a heat sink.

So, no. I don't have tests to prove it. But I am willing to believe in the theory until proven otherwise. I am always willing to be proven otherwise if someone is willing to run the tests in a relatively scientific manner.

Zach

Fixed my photos descriptions above. These OK now? I got these photos somewhere, apparently the descriptions were wrong there too.

I noticed this morning the engine was running "cool" on the temp gauge. Popped the lid when I got to work, yup the little cable worked loose. Gotta fix it.

Had that not happened to me this morning, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have bothered posting to this thread. This has been hashed out so many times I've tossed my arms up in the air to it. People will do what they want anyway.

BTW - with my 914 running cooler and having carbs, it pretty much ran like poo the whole way to work. Never really warmed up to what I have things tuned to. FI will most likely compensate for the cooler running, but carbs generally don't.

Assuming your cooling flaps are installed correctly with the springs in place, if the cable came loose from the pinch bolt (or if the cable broke), the flaps would spring open to the "warmed up" position. Assuming your drive to work was at least 15 minutes, the engine oil should have come up to operating tempurature by then.

I think you may have a different problem, maybe with your carbs. I have my cooling flaps installed and connected to the thermostat. My engine running dual carbs runs fine right out of the gate and continues to run great after the oil is fully warmed up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the heads and the combustion chamber come up to temps pretty damn quick, like in a manner of minutes. Not sure how oil temps make the engine run like poo.

so you guys "scrapping" your cooling fins, care to donate them?

Yes and no. The heads come up to temp fast, but can also lose it fast, particularly on down hill runs, off throttle. I will regularly see my head temps drop into the 220 - 250 range, especially on my drive to work on a cooler morning. Its all fast, long downhills. Optimal temps are ~270-370.

Zach

.............If you can believe the FACT that the sheetmetal is pressurised, (by the fan), any concern that the oil cooler will not work is unfounded. I have built enough of these engines without flaps and bottom cylinder deflectors to know it all works just fine-BUT all the engines were carburated, and therefore produced more h.p. than a stock engine.....it,s possable, i suppose, that a F.I. engine, in the depths of winter could run too cold. This would be true ALSO with any UPRIGHT fan engine, no matter whose type or design you might have.(because they too do not have "flappers and oil cooler diverters.)....practically speaking F.I. o.e.m. engines are limited severly in camshaft duration and lift due to the design of O.E.M. system.(In stock form). By virtue of using carburators, and a higher duration/lift camshaft--to achieve more H.P. at a higher rpm range, the engine will have more btu,s of heat which must be disapated/removed for engine durability and longetively.my suggestions are based on experience. Additionally for a historic perspective-back in the day of formula super-vee which used the type IV engine. those cars had no fan at all, just air-flow from air scoops, used fabricated fiberglass cylinder covers-no flappers, no oil cooler diverters,no bottom cylinder deflectors....and reved to 8500 rpms, producing more than 165 h.p.with carburators.(solex 40p11)...the engines were good for the entire racing season.The O.E.M. cast fan is efficient, and will cool off the engine just fine.(and provides a counterbalance for the flywheel, and P.P. at the centerline of the crankshaft.). it,s a good system and with a few minor tweeks is even better for engines with higher than stock H.P.

That's true up to a point, however the inability to increase fan rpm relative to crankshaft rpm means it is impossible to increase the cooling ability of the stock system beyond merely freeing up the airflow through the system.

There is another shortcoming of the stock system. The oil cooler always sees about the same airflow even when the oil is not up to temperature, since the thermostat is not there to preheat the oil.
My latest improvement to the Tangerine Horizontal Cooling System incorporates a simple thermally actuated valve designed to allow airflow through the stock cooler only after reaching operating temperature.
Here's a pic of the prototype which will be operational in a few days.

Click to view attachment

I can confirm that running without the flaps operating on a 2.0L with Djet is bad in cold weather. Like ME733 said, maybe it is not so good.

My engine was rebuilt in 1978 with all the right parts but we did not hook up the bellows wire. Even with the car running warm enough it was easy to tell that it was running too cool. Would not accelerate right on cool days, and ran damn poor on cold days.

Changing the oil found enough bits from the main bearings to know that the car was being damaged from the constant NJ winter.

Sold the car, told the new owner to tear it down, but he wrapped it around a telephone guide wire in a bad turn even on a dry day within a week. Car was junked in 79, and no I do not have the VIN.

So much for not having the flaps working.

J

10.2 miles to work, as Zach also mentioned, heads temps can change quickly with load of the engine.

FI has a couple of sensors that allow the fuel ratio to be altered slightly to compensate for an engine running a little cooler than "normal". Carbs just can't do that.

"poo" refers to many stinky things, but in this case, just a little hesitation in the lower RPM's was all.

Alright, I'm done with this thread, promise this time. I'm too much of a dumb-ass to trust anything other than what the factory did for cooling. Best wishes to the rest of you who want to modify it, I'll stick with stock.

I love this topic every time it comes up

kind of like 4vs6

...............Chris....your going to get that damn flat-fan perfected to the point I,m not going to be able to live without it.(short-story) had a buddy with a flat-fan , carrera engine,550 spyder.(rare engine)...displacement was 1750. son-of a -bitch ran like a scalded dog..The flat fan of that engine just had a very special look., and...So does yours.

Thanks guys. Im going to leave the system on the engine without the thermostat hooked up for right now. I live in LA, so i need to keep this engine cool. The car will also be in Bakersfield "devils armpit" alot, so it will be seeing 112 degree days.

Those would be mine.....

brandomc, I did the same thing, as it never really get too cold here.

This is a great thread - learned a lot. Inspecting mine it looks like the thermostat is gone - I think I know the answer but I’ll ask anyway - can this be our back together w/engine in car or does it need to come out?

Holy thread resurrection!

Yes, the thermostat can be put in with the engine in the car. Not a big deal. but make sure the bolt which holds the thermostat pulley is installed regardless. It's a through passage and you'll have a lot of oil everywhere if it's not installed!

While i agree with the above, before you put a thermostat back on there make *sure* you still have the cooling flaps and they are operational.

Otherwise the thermostat won't do squat ...

Is that doable with engine in? Removing all that tin? My assumption is it might all be gone if the therm is gone. Might explain the high CH Temps

Then you need the wheel and bracket too. No néed to remove the top tin and the rest of the hardware. Feed the new wire down or pull it up with a piece of scrap wire. Leave some wire length at the rod connection. If it's too short and you have to release the top, you'll play hell trying to hook it back up. Frustrating lesson. Had to buy a new cable.