I have bragged to my carburettored friends about how the '74 1.8 L Jet starts off the key even after a lay off of a month or so. Lately it has required two cranks to start. I suspected a vacuum leak as I pulled a plug and the pluf looks like the mixture is lean but the exhaust tips are black

Click to view attachment

I made a smoke maker based on this YouTube site

THE BEST SMOKE TESTER YOU CAN BUILD!! / THE MR. FUSION MINI BUILD - YouTube

Applied smoke into the intake system and this is what resulted.

Click to view attachment

Over the years I have read about ensuring the oil filler cap has a good O ring and cap seal otherwise unmeasured air will enter the intake system downstream from the Air Flow Meter and cause a disturbance in the A/F ratio determined by the ECU.

There is a factory hole in the oil filler cap as revealed by the smoke test. I have 2 filler caps and they both have the small hole.

How does this work if the L Jet intake system is supposed to be closed?

I was expecting the smoke test to reveal a vacuum leak in the intake boot or elsewhere and that would be the 'aha' moment. Not so lucky. However I would like to confirm that the intake system is vacuum leak free.

Would appreciate some explanation from the collective brain trust.

A word of caution: If doing a smoke test, perform it outside or in a well ventilated garage otherwise it will set off the smoke detectors. How would I know this?

David

sh$t.

oh no.

thats got me beat,.........and interested.

like you i assumed after all the written orders over the years re oil cap and gasket its meant to be tight tight tight.

i just went and looked at mine.
same pinprick hole.
tiny.

never noticed it before or that the oil cap was a teapot.

wonder if it only blows one way?
i held it up to the sunlight and could not see through it.
i'm going to assume mine would do the same if i took it to the cigar bar.

re exhaust tips being black.
you mean exhaust pipe tips?
you might be thinking of the distant past nihil44.
unleaded fuel won't give you light coloured exhaust pipe tips.

When I did my smoke test nothing came out that hole...

two possibilities
hole is meant to open.
or hole was gunked up?

mystery!

EDIT

there is a thread on the hole in the cap here. a lot of stuff.
samba.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic...sc&start=20

i have not read it all. you got to sift through it to find the smart cookies.
its a bit confusing as they all talk between D jet and L jet.

obviously it is a vent though or it would not be there.

i took mine off again now that its nightime and shone a torch through it.
there is not light shining through the pinhole in mine.
does not mean anything. could vent in sideways or through a second layer behind it.

i read that samba thread from end to end.

not that it directly helps much because the L jet on buses or 412s had a different set up for the crank case vent.

separate oil filler tube and cap off to the side.

but i noticed something - which i have noticed more and more looking for parts etc.
VW seemed to assemble a lot of different function components from common sub mouldings. eso. plastic parts.

the top section of the oil filler cap on the 1.8 appears to be the same as the top part of the crankcase ventilation cap on similar type 4 bus engines.
in that situation it definitely has a pin sized hole right through.
underneath it is a membrane set up with a spring.
it works like a positive pressure valve.
the pin hole seems to be to allow air to escape as the membrane is pushed up by crankcase pressure towards this cap piece. the hole does not have any direct connection to the crankcase or the induction inlet tract. its just to allow the membrane to move upward and then to let air back in as the membrane relaxes.

the system on the 914 L jet is nothing like that. we don't have any valve or membrane in there. its just a crankcase vent to the inlet tract. i think there are some kind of baffles to the side in the little rectangular box below the oil fill tube. i don't think ours even has a valve in it down in that box section like the d jet cars. d jet owners would know more about what is in theirs. but i think ours works as a straight vent to the intake air duct.

i'm thinking that VW used that standard moulded piece combined with a ring grip section bonded to it to make the oil filler cap on our cars. but plugged the hole which was in the standard casting for the upper top piece?

but the plugs might have fallen out of yours or failed?
maybe all they did was goop some epoxy in there.
i've tried looking at mine from the bottom or the inside and i can't see anything.
its not gunked up with oil goo or anything, its pretty clean in there..
and as far as i can tell that hole does not go right through. its sealed i believe.

makes sense, because you do not want that hole - it is unmeasured air.
its a very small hole for sure but then most of the ones that cause problems are pretty small holes too.

thats what i think.

others here may know better.

that would accord with djway's oil cap smoke test too.

I think we have a bit of a red herring here. Based on that geyser of smoke, it looks like you're pumping some serious pressure into the crankcase. As such, it will find a way to escape and that pin hole is definitely where it should be escaping. Further, you have the hose that runs from the fill neck to the intake boot, which appears to have Olympic level clamping so, well done on that!

I would set aside the smoke show and go back to the original symptom that prompted your investigation e.g. start-up cranking. Have you checked your points gap and your timing? Second, when cold starting, is your idle sluggish for the first several minutes or does it climb up and then settle as the engine warms up?

@wonkipop

Yep. I read the Samba article and it did my head in and am not much wiser. The cap is a little bit of a mystery . I inserted a fine probing wire into the hole and it engaged what seemed to be an annular balloon. Very difficult to see and it may indeed perform some pressure control / gatekeeping function for the crankcase. I will have a look more closely in the next day or so. Laid up at the moment

@Van B

I will park the smoke show aside for the moment. I was only using a couple of psi for the smoke.

The start problem. As described, the car used to start straight off the key even after not having run for a month or two. It always made me feel quite smug.

Now - after not running for a few weeks, crank for 4 or 5 secs and no start. Fuel pressure gauge is installed in engine bay and it shows operating pressure after this initial cranking.
Crank again and it starts and idles as it would from a warm start and drives perfectly.

The cold start injector may be a player here and I haven't performed the test of removing the injector and cranking the engine to see if it is working. It is such a bitch to get to the cold start injector without removing more components than I want to.

I will take your advice Van and check the point gap etc

Thanks for the help

@nihil44 there are about 5 posts to read in that samba thread.
ignore 75% of them.

the type 4 engine running L jet in the bus (and other vws) does have crank-case vent using a valve. the valve is on top of the rectangular baffle chamber just like our oil filler tube.

unlike D jet or the bus/kombi pcv valve, we do not have a valve on our L jets.
its a straight oil filler tube with the vapor hose out the side.

why VW wanted a valve on the kombis i don't know.
but they did.
that valve closes when the engine is switched off and vapors stay in the crankcase.
maybe it had to do with the orientation of all the inlet components in the engine bay.
ie oil could condense in the inlet air duct and run down to the AFM unit.
i really don't know.

for some reason they were confident with no valve in ours and valves in other model type engines.

they cobbled together the components for these two different set up using plastic sub components. that much is clear.

the central part of the oil filler cap on our cars is the same as the top section of the pcv valve in the type 4 kombi. its a much bigger pcv valve than it is for d jet engines on those kombis.

and in there is a membrane valve that works off crankcase pressure pulses. releasing vapors to the intake system for burning during combustion. its pretty simple.

the pinhole is necessary to the membrane being able to be pushed up and then return to the closed position at rest and seal off the crankcase from the induction system.

the pinhole is not an opening to the atmosphere in the induction system.

the pinhole is not a crankcase pressure relief valve, there is a membrane in the way.

so in my view that pinhole is not meant to be open in the 914.

or in the kombi.

and if you can force smoke out of it.
- that means
in a kombi the membrane has failed - and your pcv valve is kaput.
or in a 914 something has given out in the top of the cap that normally seals the hole.

@nihil44

you made me know too much about oil filler caps i did not want to know.

another case of just how they made all these different functioning components out of a set of common parts = interchangeable and adaptable.

like van says i think even if the pin hole has opened on yours or is closed its a furphy.

(did you know furphy is a word invented in australia van?).

you could easily tune around an air leak that small when you think about it.

you may have forced it open with a lot of pressure.

Considering I have never heard and am not even sure how to pronounce what you just said, I think it’s safe to say I did not know that lol!

I think another matter to consider is that things do go wrong when not being driven. I would also recommend spending some time in the car and shake out the dust and corrosion that may have set in. Points, plugs, fuel, and so many other things can go bad just by sitting. Maybe by after a run through a tank of petrol, she’ll come back to life?

furphy = red herring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy

Massively versatile slang right there!

Click to view attachment

I have been looking a little more closely at the filler cap. Under the centre cross piece (red arrow) I can probe a spring. This spring holds up a diaphragm which appears to have an inflated donut on its periphery (green arrow). I am going by probing as it is impossible to see and photograph these areas. This may be a membrane and not a donut but in either case the purpose of this donut or membrane seems to be to seal off the pin hole in the cap.

Why? Dunno. I have run the car with the cap on and have closed the pin hole with my finger at both idle and about 2000 rpm with no effect on the running of the engine in either case. So, I guess if it is not affecting performance then I will leave well alone and turn my attention to other things. Mystery unsolved

It was gnawing at you eh? Well that pin hole is there to vent excess crank case pressure. Have you been driving the car much?

Van,
Haven't been driving the car much. Biblical rain and floods in our area at present so 914 stays inside.

I thought the pin hole vent would work the other way - ie crankcase pressure would keep it closed. Positive pressure would force the membrane over the pinhole to close it off. The spring would keep it closed and negative crankcase pressure would cause a pressure differential to force open the diaphragm and allow ingress of atmospheric air.

Probably southern hemisphere physics!

you might be on to something nihil44.

its a boxer engine. ??????

nice work sticking your microscope into the world of L jet esoterica.

someone was on here posting a while back that leaky valve covers don't matter for 1.8s.
sure thing?!

stay dry mate.
that seems to be the mother of all rain bombs up your way.
i hope you live on one of those nice steep hills in brisbane.

Perhaps, I made my assertion based on observation. I only feel air coming out of mine when the engine is cold. As the cylinders warm up, the air out of the oil cap stops. Thus, my conclusion that cold engine blow-by was creating positive crankcase pressure that needed to be vented.

Maybe this is something worth testing in the absence of an expert to explain? Should be easy enough to make a test rig.

Edit: I still say that before you start trying to diagnose potential problems, the car needs to be driven regularly to make sure your issues are not prolonged storage related issues. No car can survive storage.

@nihil44

looking close at photo you posted of interior of underside of filler cap and taking another look at mine this morning, i reckon the top of the cap is this.

see photo.
(but it doesn't have the big spring like the VW ones).

Click to view attachment

image courtesy of thesamba website.

----

i believe the centre of the screw down oil cap in the 914 engine uses this standard part.
there is a membrane and i think its bonded to this plastic piece which forms the central section of the filler cap. if its not bonded its fitted in tightly.

photo of standard vw central cap piece.

Click to view attachment

i understand this membrane is a flexible valve that allows pulses of fumes to be released from the crankcase into the inlet system. its used on bus L jet engines and was used on the 412 L jet engine too.

here is a photo of a 412 L jet engine.

Click to view attachment

there is no oil filler in those engines. instead the dipstick and oil filler are elsewhere.

------

i don't know enough to tell you exactly how they work precisely in the VW applications.
but i believe its pulsed release of crank case fumes into the inlet system for burning.
but it might also be designed in those engines not to open at idle and only open at higher revs in addition. dunno.

main point is its not open to atmosphere. the pin hole just lets the membrane operate at atmospheric pressure on one side. so it can flex up and down over the top of the crankcase vent tube coming up through the baffle box.

i think ours are the same. there is no opening to the atmosphere. but in ours the membrane is rendered inoperative. no pulsed release of crank case fumes to inlet system. our crankcase vent tube is open to inlet system all the time and the cap is sitting up at top of oil filler tube well above the hose outlet to the inlet manifold.

all it does is seal the cap and its pinhole.

they could have made a separate stand alone part. but they didn't.

maybe because they made 10 million VW versions of the engine and only several thousand 914 versions? so it made sense to do an adaption of pre made elements to build up the part.

as far as i can tell the oil filler tube and fill cap is only on these 914 engines.
but i don't really know much about the millions of VW fuel injected engines that floated around the USA in the early 70s.

the failure mode for the VW part is just what your smoke test showed.
fumes out of the pinhole.

- the fix for failure of this membrane in the VW engines is to take it out and replace with a rigid circular steel plate. this converts the valve into a permanently open to the inlet system crankcase vent like our cars have. this also seals off the pin hole to the atmosphere which would normally be sealed by an uncompromised membrane.

i would say the pinhole is never meant to be open to the crankcase.

doesn't mean i am right though.

i didn't really even know L jet had a totally different pcv valve set up to D jet engines until a couple of years ago. not something i took much notice of until recently.

----

i guess there is always the chance its meant to rupture in case of excessive crankcase pressure. like a fail safe one time valve. but i doubt it. its a pretty small hole.
i would have thought given the way it all is just big bore hoses into the inlet system, such pressure - whether negative or positive would tend to equalise up through the AFM via idle air passage? there is no valve anywhere in the crankcase vent as far as i can tell in a L jet 914. its just open from crankcase to combustion air inlet.

????

@nihil44

i am looking at our cap and oil filler real close now.

and i'm wondering if its not pulsed in some way too. just like the VW engines.

can't quite figure it out yet.

but the whole cap sits down into one ledge and the breather hose joins above that.

more later if i can find something further on this.

need a cross section drawing.


point would be, if it is a pulsed valve incorporated into a screw down oil cap then if its blowing smoke out its failed.

this would kind of make sense.
the buses and the 412s had a separate oil filler cap and dipstick outside car for convenience.
so its just a pure pulsed crankcase valve on top.

but we have the oil filler cap and dipstick on top of engine.
is it a pulsed valve and screw on cap combined into one?

just can't quite fathom how it works looking at it just yet.

i can understand how the VW one works. but not this one yet.

here you go @nihil44 .

why your remark about negative pressure made me think.'

the VW pure crankcase vent works this way.
on the L jet 412s and buses.

the membrane and spring inside is a 2 way valve that can respond to either crankcase vacuum (neg crankcase pressure) or alternatively intake vacuum the same way.
restricts or even closes off fume chimney from crankcase.

i can't remember all the combos for engine crank vac v positive pressure in relation to intake vacuum, high low and almost none.
all has to do with engine at idle, or engine under hard revs or engine at high rev cruise etc.

the valve is designed to respond to all those conditions.

-----

now -- there is just the oil cap version on the 914 to see if there is indeed anything to that and its not just a straight up cap with seals to the oil filler tube.

but you were right with your hunch. crankcase vac when it happens is involved.
its not always positive pressure. and van is right. because sometimes it is positive pressure. but the pin hole aint a pressure relief valve. at least for the VW version which i can understand. but not ours yet.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

ok @nihil44

i had a good look at this over lunch.

i noticed the cap has a little hole in the side where the lateral springs join.

this does not vent straight through into the very interior of the cap (ie the crankcase chimney - instead it opens into a hollow body. the bottom section of the cap assembly is a hollow body tube.

i reckon we have a pcv valve exactly like the ones on the other VW type 4 L jets.
its incorporated into the filler cap itself and a grip ring is added to that to assist getting the cap off.

i drew a cross section of how i think it works more or less.

it cannot be taken apart easily, probably destroy the cap. and be be buggered if i am going to do that as i know you cannot get one of these in australia nor probably find one at a junk yard to cut open and do an autopsy on.

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

i can't remember where i read that there is no pcv valve on a 1.8.
maybe i was imagining it.
but if i did read that somewhere i reckon it is wrong.
there is one? its built into the top of the filler cap?

the weird spring

i've stared at that spring for years trying to figure out why its there.
some sort of grip on the filler tube?
shrugged my shoulders at it.

it hit me today.
its the flame arrestor for a backfire.


more useless research provoked by your smoke machine teapot simulation?

@wonkipop

Man that is some dissertation on the filler cap! Thanks for the cross section diagram. That is the way I thought it would be and I agree that I am not going sacrifice a cap just for dissection purposes or purchase one from USA. Hardly any 914 parts available in Aus.
I received another bunch of parts today from 914rubber via Fedex and commented at at the time that the amount I have spent on trans Pacific carriage of parts could probably purchase a couple of business class fares to Europe

It all makes sense. I too wondered about the function of the spring inside the cap and the flame arrestor explanation also makes sense.

Nice work!

David

most of it is not a dissertation.
just thinking out loud on the way to the last post.
the last post is the succinct summary of prior ramblings and dismissal of my own errant thought projections.

its your fault.
you sent me off on a tangent.
can't stop until i get to the end.
blame it on my post graduate training in the USA.
its their fault as well.

i was talking to my mate max tonight on the phone after diinner.
he said that mgs had these types of oil caps and were round in australia.
said they were famous for turning into chimneys.

never mucked around with an mg and never will.
but ...... if we knew some mg guys they probably could have told us about this.

@djway is right on the money.
you should not be able to blow smoke out of that pinhole.

well it's a good thing those caps are NLA...
I suppose I better start searching for one of those too. I know for sure mine vents on occasion when the engine is cold.

you can't get the bus version of it either.

and if you look through that samba thread its pretty clear that at this point in time 99% of those bus ones are kaput. but the engines are still running.

........not much you can do about it?

except maybe rig up a new pcv valve set up external to the existing one and somehow gut the cap and seal the pinhole there?

the cap pcv looks to be a delicate thing to balance crankcase pressure to intake vacuum so its a draw very closely matched to whatever blow by there is.
since there is no other way inlet air is drawn in to the system unlike the d jet cars with their vented heads? you would always want a slight draw from the crankcase i think,
just to help the oil return down the pushrod tubes. but it all must be very slight as you don't want any significant unmetered volumes of air - although i would have to think hard about that and give myself a headache as that air has in a round-about way gone through the afm already. so its kind of a balance of losses?

it does look like its designed to fail wide open - unless you got unlucky and somehow remnant diaphram blocked the channels to the engine intake line.

------

i could be wrong but i think i have seen images where potentially they kept on using that central diaphram part for later golfs and passats in the second half of 70s. probably NLA for those too. but a possibility would be to see if they can be gotten hold of.
then a disassembly operation done where you insert that cap piece with diaphram into our oil cap assembly if they can fit together. its really only the diaphram bonded to upper cap that is needed.

i would only be willing to do it with another second hand 914 cap and see if its possible to take it apart without destroying it. and if so is there a diaphram part you can then fit into it and then i guess glue it all back together with the spring positioned in it. with care it must be a possibility that it can be taken apart the same way it was assembled in the first place.

@Van B and @nihil44 .

i think i have satisfied myself what the original valve does.
its not so much a positive pressure relief valve -
its more an excessive vacuum control valve.
its there to stop over strong vacuum situations where inlet vacuum might be high enough to cause too much suction -----> leading to sucking in the valve cover gasket as people like to talk about happening? meant to stop that?

i'm guessing that the typical high vacuum situations on the inboard side of the throttle plate are not the problem as the high vacuum is in the intake plenum but not the intake boot (ie idle or de-accleration) - but perhaps it can happen at cruise - part throttle which is a high vacuum situation where the vacuum is also in the intake boot (also operates the advance can in the distributor in that situation but no other).

with no membrane this control would be lost in that situation.

a lot of the rest of the time i don't think there is so much vacuum getting through to that valve. sure its strong vacuum at idle but that is inboard of the throttle valve and this connection is outboard of that. and at full throttle there is not a lot or no vacuum really, its pretty atmospheric.

most of the time its going to want to be open. except at cruise/part throttle?
then it might want to be very restricted or almost closed. could also be sucking oil up the crankcase vent pipe at times like that too.

i mentioned the mg smokestack behaviour above.
it must be very prevalent in the southern hemisphere.
you can buy a rebuild diaphram for them!
check it out from this heritage mob in new zealand.
(a very similar dimension to the 1.8 cap - 75mm).
https://www.classiccarparts.co.nz/index.php...product_id=1421

led me to ebay and numerous rebuild diaphrams for all sorts of later model vws. must be a whole cottage industry of folks rebuilding their pcv valves.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283483223754

some of them look similar to the diaphram inside the bus unit from the 70s.
which i assume is what it is like inside ours.

might have to go in search of a second hand filler cap for a 914 and ship one in.
doesn't matter if its kaput.
then go test the water with these various diaphrams if i can get it apart.
i believe if i were to retain the original spring in the one we have, there is a chance you might be able to rebuild the pcv.

i've fixed up bosch 3 port fuel pumps when they are supposed to be unfixable sealed units. it is probably worth a hack at this.

i'll be smoke testing the one i have when i get the car in the workshop.
i can't feel any puffing through it, but you never know.

edit

here are some more promising leads much closer to the mark.
need some diameters.


https://www.rkxtech.com/blogs/news/replacin...valve-diaphragm

https://www.rkxtech.com/collections/pcv-val...alve-repair-kit

@wonkipop
I did some part number tracing (because you’ve pulled me into this vortex of obscure oil cap research) and the only 914 to ever use this cap was the US/CAL 1.8L

All other models, including the AN engined Europe 1.8L used the standard cap. What they had instead is the PCV in the little black box that the filler neck bolts too.

So, rather than trying to repair NLA parts, why couldn’t We just seal the cap (or buy a sealed cap) and then find a parts store PCV that can be put inline on the hose that runs between the fill neck and the intake boot?

we probably could.
but first i have to stop referring to it as a positive crankcase vent valve.
it is a PRV valve - in the L jets. Pressure regulating Valve. there is a difference.
works the opposite way to a typical pcv in the D jets.
they are trying to pull air through and they inject air to do that. they can.
we can't. its more about balancing the pressure in the crankcase in ours.
back and forth. and never letting the vacuum draw from the crankcase become too strong because it will go looking for that air at the weakest point.
kind of the opposite of too much pressure and blowing the seals and oil out.

so we have to have the right valve.
which is what i think most modern valves are.
more or less the same way of working as the L jet ones.

the question would be matching the valve to the engine.
working with the spring in the way that the cap valve does with its spring.

------

correct - the AN twin carb engines have the same valve as the D jets.
though i don't think they have vented heads. thats a d jet thing i believe.

you are right, the one on ours is only on the EC L jet engine.
something like 15,000 - 20,000 engines at most.
chickenfeed to VW.

------

just started mine to do the puff test.
could not discern anything holding my palm over it.
all i could feel was air current being pulled into fan making it difficult to know what might be going on anyway.

did yours noticeably puff?

used my finger to plug the pin hole - nothing happened. idle or revs did not change.

watched the vid nihil44 was talking about. pretty neat smoke machine. will have to make one its so good.

----
only thing about a replacement in line versus original is the spring strength in relation to vacuum. the way i was thinking of it only the membrane gets replaced. and you know it works because you have retained the original spring. these things are a kind of universal design for a lot of cars but suspect they are tuned through spring strength?

Alright my Ozzy friends,
I tested my oil cap today. I wrapped the side/throat (around the spring) in electrical tape real snug and put vacuum on the center bore using a rubber cup that came with my mighty vac. It was tricky to get the cup to sit well enough that I could pull vacuum, but once I got it, I was able to pull 25 in hg. It would leak down, but not faster than I could build vac. I think the leak was from the imperfect sealing. But regardless, the pinhole on top is definitely there to allow the diaphragm to move.
If I blew into it, no air came out the pinhole.
When you release vacuum, you will feel a small puff that is from the diaphragm spring pushing it back, but nothing else.

I guess I was imagining things when I thought I felt air coming through it…

Also, the PN on my cap is 022 115 303, not the PN from the pats manual of 022 115 309. I can’t even find a picture of the -309 part on the interwebs.
FWIW, -303A is the type 4 breather the VW L-jet engines got.

good stuff.

fair chance mine is ok too then.

been up country picking grapes at my uncles beef farm (with small vineyard).
took the big citroen.
my only problem was holding it under our ridiculous speed limits - 110 kph.
the cit just wants to run, 140-150.
almost as much fun to drive as the 914.......almost.
corners flat, no body roll - hydraulic suspension.
(there is one in the car chase in the film Ronin - takes a hammering getting rounded up by a big audi).

on way back today dropped in at workshop.

told mike about prv hidden in the oil cap.
he hadn't picked it either and he is a mechanic. he thought it would be down in the baffle somehow and hadn't bothered to look or think twice.
---said there is a mob in queensland he has in his contacts that repairs vacuum diaphram valves - if they have metal casings. eg, the decel valve i have found, if its not good.
but have to be metal vacuum valves.

however......if need be they may well have been a possible source for a new membrane.
we would just need to get (a potentially sacrificial) cap apart to explore the option.

------

@Emerygt350 sent me a pm with some photos of his fox body mustang he just had to break out and take for a spin in winter. i love it.
ford styling of that era is just right in my book.



so.....here is some falcon shots for him.
its been keeping me away from pulling the 914 into the shop.
i'm nearly finished. got the prep and paint for the tub to go.
i have learnt body work on this poor victim.
replaced areas indicated in images. and anything painted black por15 in tub. which amounted to a lot of the car (in a key dicey structural area).
aussie cars do rust. did not get galvanised bodies until near the end of car manufacture here. this is a 94.
not going for over-restored with this one. its meant to go on as a functional work horse.
so we kept its lifetime accumulation of battle scars as much as we could and just went the rust. plenty of that!!! the interior is amazing. usually aus cars are like desert cars in usa - cracked dashboards, fried vinyl, brittle plastic hell. but this one has a showroom interior astonishingly. think it spent too much time parked under trees in the shade getting shat on by parrots which probably caused half the rust.

didn't do the paint. skills in that department extend as far as picking up a brush and applying Por15.


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Man that is such a cool looking cruck. I think you mentioned before but I forgot: Is it the 2.3? What did they put in it?

4.0 L straight 6. just under 200hp. overhead cam, EFI.
pretty simple engine.

manual or auto trans. this one has the auto.

Oh yeah, that sounds like a great motor. Was it multiport fuel injected?

yes

pretty much like this.

as per ford 80s/90s engineering department conventions, when they went to the cross flow head they left the distributor where it was in prior version of engine and its buried under the inlet manifold.

Click to view attachment

this model (the XG) had the EFI.
the model before which looks identical apart from a different grille piece and some minor interior details still had the carb.
best bit is you can still get all the parts, ubiquitous. ......and cheap.
unlike 914s with L jet.

That thing is just begging for a turbo....

https://www.tiperformance.com.au/products/e...conversion-kit/

might need a traction control unit to go with it? -
given the utes had problems at roundabouts in the wet unloaded.