Anyone have heartburn with this kit? I'm running factory fuel injection on the 72 1.7l and don't want to stray too far from stock with heavy mods.
http://vwparts.aircooled.net/Piston-Cylind...p/vw9000t4e.htm

They're OK, if you like Chinese stuff. I have a set of original German pistons and cylinders here in storage, and I even know where they are! If you'd like to jump up a little, I have a couple of sets of OE 93mm pistons. Makes your engine 1800ccs, and your FI will still work. PM me if you're interested!

The Cap'n

I just installed a similiarly priced set of flat top P/C in my '76 2.0. They are AA 's that I bought from Rimco. Look up hypereutectic pistons in wikipedia or somewhere. Its interesting. I will be using this car as a DD and cross country trips so I didn't think I needed to go with forged pistons or other top dollar stuff.

Anyway, when I seated the jugs in the case, the cylinder heights didn't seem even. I took them down to a friendly machine shop for advice. With a dial indicator he found 3 jugs to be within less than .0005" of each other but the 4th one was .0025" tall. He said that should torque down just fine but that he'd machine it if I wanted.

Len Hoffman decked my case to even more zeros so I said I wanted to be proud of this engine. He charged me $80 to even the 4th one up to the other three.

The engine is back in the car now and this week I have been hooking things up. I hope to turn the key this weedend.

BTW I seated the jugs using short PVC pipes under the head nuts. and I got all kinds of weird readings for the cylinder heights using a feeler gauge under a straight edge. I'd recommend using metal spacers under the head nuts for better measurements.

I too would like to hear from anyone with experience with AA or siimiliarly priced P/C's. And is that .0025" difference negligable? ( This machine shop has little experience with VW stuff.)

I've always heard that it takes 1.5 - 2 AA kits to find a matching set
and that relying on them stock as purchased was going to lead to trouble

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=204227

Those will give you a little extra Oomph

Stu

I haven't broken down the original engine yet. I wanted something with a little more Oomph as someone else worded it on here. So the dome top pistons are very appealing to me.

It's possible I'm sitting on the original engine that came with the car. I guess I won't know till I break it down and look for various markings? Any ideas how you would know if the engine had been rebuilt?

On another note, I adjusted the timing on my 2.0l and it gained a few horse power, I guess it was a bit retarded in timing instead of advanced. It's a lot more spunky! Still kind of loud but my guy friends are all favorable to it. We are all midlife in age, so maybe its not too loud?

I went ahead and purchased the 1.7l 90mm piston/cylinder set that I posted at the beginning of this discussion. I'm pretty excited. They arrived last night, super fast shipping. Less than a week. I will be out over the Easter weekend but will start the process of balancing the set when I get back next week...unless I get some time this evening. I suppose that's possible. The pistons/cylinders in my stock 1.7l are very clean and minimal wear but I had already ordered the replacement set before inspecting. I kind of jumped the gun there...but hey! Now I have a spare set for the next rebuild in several years. I've been replacing seals and gaskets on the factory engine/tranny that go back in the 72 and that has been a good thing for sure. The seals in the tranny had gotten so stiff that they crack when I pinch them between my fingers. The car would have been leaving an oil slick everywhere I go. I'm replacing the crank seals front and rear and all the gaskets. I changed out all seals and gaskets on the tranny...am I missing any? I will do some inspection on the valves while I have the heads off. They all look great. Thick like maybe they were all replaced the last time this was rebuilt which probably was not that long ago in miles since there was no ridge in the cylinders and I could still make out some faint cross hatch all the way around the cylinders. I am glad I broke this engine down. Like I said, all the seals had hardened but even more. The keeper wire had broken on one side in the head and was wearing on all four push rods. Also, one cylinder that I pulled so far, the oil ring was partially seized in the piston, may be more of that..so I think I would have been pretty frustrated with a leaking smoking engine.