Fix the real problem: Teach the poster which side of his phone is up.

It's the forum programming... not the photographer or camera.
Click on the image and it will enlarge AND be properly rotated.

@Rand - It's off the car and on the floor - the rotation is correct as it is the best way to show the interesting thing the PO did.

Back in the day, when guys were drag racing with a lot of boost they would find these heads would FLEX A LOT. To Stop that heads gained studs, gained welded reinforcements, etc. Problem couldn't be fixed.

I talked to a guy who drag raced a Beetle with a built T4 engine. Don't remember his name, but he ran stock based heads for several years. He would have to re-lash the valves after every run and pull the heads off every weekend to make sure they will OK. He switched to Pauter heads and he could run the whole weekend without making changes or even removing the valve covers.

Those heads need to be flow tested and checked for integrity. Once they are fixed and signed off with a clean bill of health, slap them on a 10:1 engine and let her rip. Could be a pretty sweet street engine for someone, but its not worth trying to boost a Type 4 with stock based parts. They aren't strong enough. The Germans couldn't even be bothered to add the proper number of bearings to support the crank.

Just tried to measure stroke by measuring the total distance the connecting rod moves during a revolution and it looks like 82.5mm. I used a tape measure so I don't view this as super precise but more indicative.

That looks about right for a 2.3L build?

Good morning and thanks in advance for the thoughts and experience.

Holy cow - I may have done this wrong but if I take my measured bore and stroke and assume a safe deck height this thing calculates out to be a 2.7L engine.

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Deck height doesn't matter for engine size-it's swept distance so just bore*bore*PI/4*stroke. 82 mm is a standard stroker crank so that's probably correct. So you do have a 2.7L.

Holy cow. I thought that required 6 cylinders

Thanks @jd74914

That explains the front mounted oil cooler.

It doesn't require 6 cylinders, but it sometimes makes for a fragile engine.

@ClayPerrine - thanks for the response.

This car has a front mounted oil cooler that is set up just like a 914/6 would, think that is enough to keep it cool or are the piston/jugs retaining heat the blocking issue (generally) on something this size?

Good morning gentlemen-should I finish tearing this down and split the case? Because of the oil pressure being low the case is going to have to be split if it’s going to be rebuilt, so what I’m really asking is should I have a machine shop to that or just carefully do it myself and bag and tag everything?

Blow it up, Bag and Tag....lets see it naked...just make sure you find all the 8mm nuts..

then trade it for a stock 2.0

I assume you're savy on tearing it apart. Check the main bearings to see if they're a very tight fit into the journals, If not you'll need a line boring job done and oversize bearings

This is probably great advice but I'm itching to try it and save it... Right now however I'm kind of excited to just take it apart as part of learning how it was put together.

Hope all is well in Utah.

Thanks @barefoot . Will continue to give updates on what I find and (might be a while) let you know what the machine shop eventually says.

Hope you are doing well.

Biral cylinders, aluminum cylinder with an iron sleeve.


Teflon buttons, common with VW Type 1 performance and many other engines. Not a fan of them, I'd rather have clips.

I don't recognize the rods, I hope it's not a VW rabbit rod crank, but I don't think it is. In the 80's builders tried to use the smaller journal rabbit job to clear the cam on long strokes. Problem is the smaller rod journals makes the crank too weak.

@Mark Henry - thanks for the info.

I'll keep going, carefully, and document tearing the engine down. It's been fun learning and doing the archeology as I go.

Wish I could have seen this thing actually running back in the day!

chuckle.

Or you could teach him which side of the camera is up. He surely got it until technology happened.

@Rand - yep, your superior intellect nailed it. I'm a Luddite, if that is even how you spell it...

Thanks for making the forum a better place.

Anyone know of these dots in the cylinder head, which look drilled, are normall? Purpose? Don’t think these are standard...

Hope everyone had a good day.

Click to view attachment

Don't know about the ding in the valve face, but the dimples in the chamber wall are to affect the flow characteristics of the intake charge. Not sure how effective they are in a combustion chamber. I would be worried about carbon buildup in the dimples causing pre-ignition.

BTW, I can't tell if that picture is upside down or not.

Good morning, thanks for the response @tbrown4x4

These are laying on the garage floors so sorry that rotation of the picture was 180 off.

Thanks for the info on the dimples, looks like custom work then by prior owner.

Valves look bigger than expected so I measured and intake is 50mm, exhaust is 40mm so significant bigger than stock.

That was just debris on the valve in that picture above ( it’s all going to get taken apart so I haven’t been super worried about cleanliness on the heads), but look at the nicks on the surrounding area.

Think that was foreign matter or something else?

Click to view attachment

Looks like something was inside there trying to get out.

Good morning, hope you are doing well.

So looks more like foreign matter rather than detonation? I'm still very new at engine internal diagnostics but I believe denotation generally looks different than this.

Those are impacts. See how the metal is displaced around the marks?

And I was joking about the picture orientation.

The dots around the intake are laminar flow enhancers (golf ball dimples) you usually see these dimples machined into intake manifold runners on high end porting/flow jobs - the other ones looks like a nut went down the intake and smashed around a bit.

Thanks guys, sorry I missed the joke @TBrown4x4 !

So does that scrap the head or "just" require more money to repair IF I try to use these again.

I don't see why you couldn't use them as they are. After a trip to the machine shop, of course.

Wow those dimples are funky, I doubt they contribute anything but imaginary horsepower. And a 50 mm intake valve, especially on a turbo engine where you force the charge past the valve... Feels like the builder ticked all the most expensive options without really knowing what it would result in...

Thanks gentlemen, appreciate the insight.

Pulled the flywheel - 12.3 pounds.

Note to self - blow off the clutch dust before bringing it inside next time.
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Great stuff, thanks for sharing.

Yes - I thought the tip to avoid getting brake dust on your bathroom scale was super useful. Ha, I am such a dope. Vacuum, don’t try to wipe it up btw.

:-)

Hope you are doing well.

picture of backside for reference pls.

Here you go

Click to view attachment

Hello gentlemen - just an update that after lots and lots of cleaning this engine went to Brothers for a rebuild this morning.

Going to run it around 8.5:1 compression so pump gas is OK and not too highly strung. Case being split and everything checking and replaced/addressed as needed.

Appreciate all the engagement on this thread and others (like flywheel questions).

Will be going back in the red car it came out of so will be using Ben’s /6 bits on a different build.

Will keep this thread updated with how it all turns out, going to be a couple weeks.

TD, apologies if I missed a post. Did you determine who built these parts? Pauter?
Thanks

Hi Bao-I have not been able to figure that out but a couple of the shops I talked to said the welding that I thought looked sketchy was actually very deliberate to allow the heads to handle more heat and the builder when we went over everything gave it a “Yep, this will work” initial review subject to splitting the case in doing the detailed checking/machine work.

Apparently there have been quite a few of these big motors built in greater Southern California over the years and while they have somewhat fallen out of favor they’re pretty known territory.

Happy to share whatever I learn and will let people know how this goes.

Looks like the heads have a semi-hemi cut.
Are you turbo charging again? If not I'd use a bit more CR. But you might not be able to if the head CC is too big.

Good morning Mark.

I decided to ditch the turbo set up, so will be normally aspirated. I discussed targeting a 8.2 - 8.5 CR with the machine shop, it all needs to be checked and figured out. Since it came to be as someone else's work lots of unknowns here still. It did have copper head shims installed when I pulled the heads off.

Bit of a gamble to be sure, but even when it was only running on 3 of 4 it felt pretty strong and that was with a wonky single Weber with whatever compression ratio it had.

Are you re-using the cam in it? Or at least measuring it to see what was there? If the combo did work well N/A it'd be a shame to mess it up.

Looking forward to see what comes of it. Glad the heads are being reused!

Hi Jim - hoping to re-use the cam since it seemed to work well but everything being inspected since the case is being split.

Thanks for the ideas and interest in the build.

Quick update - Brothers Machine Shop, nice people to work with, were not thrilled with the heads that were on the engine so I brought them a spare set of 2.0l heads that had already been prepped for a big bore build. I am having them rebuild and port those, so will be another couple weeks before much more is done.

Flywheel I bought second hand is junk, ugh, so need to track a good one down or pop for a new one.

Did you get to see the 914 they are working on at Brothers? Maybe a couple by now.

I didn’t, but I did see a super cool sandrail dragster!

Check with FAT...they sourced me a good used FW when I got my stroker crank from them...

Thanks John, good idea.