my63vw

Tomorrow i’ll install the engine again, this was the first time that i assembled a head by myself, hope everything is right.

UPDATE: Is working the way it should, today i had a litle problem with one carb. but its fixed now!

By now i have more than a year driving my car, when we assembled the engine, we reused as many parts as we can, sometimes this is good, sometimes not, in this case it wasnt so bad, but not really good. When we sended the heads to be reconstrcted, we discovered that they had something that in spanish we call “guias sobremedida”, in english is something like bigger valve guides, cause my engine was a refurbished unit from Volkswagen, they fixed the case and the heads, in the valves guides case, they made the holes were it fits bigger, thats why the guide’s exterior diameter is bigger than stock. Here find that kind of guide is really hard, but i finally found 8 and fixed the heads. Another common fix here is, when the spark plug hole loose the threads, you make the hole bigger and then make new threads and intsert what we call “helicoide”, it is a bronze piece with a thread in the interior for the spark plug and one in the exterior that bolts to the big hole in the head. My two heads had this, but the one in the cilinder #1 was pullling the spark plug out sometimes, and it finally stoping working, so i disassembled that part and by now im triying to fing some good heads. Im going to change them, cause i have two 1300 Heads, bored to 85,5mm to work with 1600 cilinders, this heads have smaller valves, and the combustion chamber is smaller too, this make the CR (compression ratio) go up, making the engine run hotter and it doesnt work exactly how it should, i didnt know that at that time, and now i have to pay the price. Cause my engine is single port, and i want to keep it that way, i found two old single port 1500 heads that im waiting for the shop to fix the guides and put new valves on it, ill show you the new heads and the old ones when i got them here again!..

By the way, now i have some of the parts im going to use in my 2110, ill put some pictures soon!.

Like i said in the past post, when i finished the car, i made some changes to the engine, i did it cause i really liked the car’s apearance, but not the engine. I had some pieces that didn’t belong to it, like the pulley, had some problems with the dinamo, etc, and looking at internet i decided to get a dual carb setup. One think i really like about my car is that it looks old, thats why i wanted a pre 67 car, and i tried to restore it originally, at least so much as i can, so i wanted an old school look engine. I found info about the Okrasa 36Hp engines and decided to do something like that, asking about carbs on the samba, some people told me “get some 34s” and some other “get some kadrons”, and i found a really nice set of used Kadrons, they have the old air filter model, they came with a nice set of dual port aluminium manifolds, but my engine is a single port, i looked for a pair of sp manifolds and found a set, the two were right side, so i made some litle modifications to one of them. Cause i wanted the look of an okrasa engine, i started looking for a FRAM Oil Filter, and finally got a NOS unit, for less money than a FLAT4 replica, for me it really looks nice, and it works too!. Finally i was having big troubles with my original distributor, problems geting parts for it, and problems with the advance, it was making my engine to run really hot, and has less power at high rpms, so cause i was going to put a dual car setup, i started asking about the 009, some people told me, “for the old speed look, get a 010 or a 019″, then i learned that this old distributors are far better than a 009, i found a really good guy who restore them, so i contacted him, and buy a good one at a really nice price, if interested, look here!. Well what can i say, the diference is amazing, the engine is the same, but it has a lot more power, it doesnt get hotter than it should, and with my new transmission i can go with the trafic really well.

At the same time, i painted all the engine tin again, this time the right way, i finally discovered the problems with the dinamo, i had to change the parts that hold it to the fan shroud, and the part that holds it in the case, i have a 12v dinamo, and its bigger than the 6v, so the guy who made the swap, didn’t changed the pieces and made some modifications to the originall ones, thats why it wasn’t straight, i ended recostructing the dinamo cause that, and it had only a year of use, now everything works fine.

In this post, i’ll show you some pictures of my engine’s assembliy, some months after i finished the car, i made some improvements, at the same time i changed the trans, now im saving money to buy parts, im planing a 2110 if it’s possible.

The car didn’t came with the original 40Hp engine, it had instead a 1500, this engine was refurbished by volkswagen in Germany, i know that cause in the serial number it has a “X” at the end, it means is a reconstructed engine, looking at the serials i found that the case was originally for a type2. Cause we broke the engine in the way home the day we buyed it, i just pulled it of the car, and leave it that way for two or three months, then was disassembled and reconstructed one more time. Here is almost impossible to find parts for 1500, so we changed the pistons and cilinders to 1600. We didnt have to much money and cause it wasnt that bad, a lot of parts were reaconditioned and reused, we wanted to finish the engine, we did it right, and some time later i fixed some details we missed, or incorrect parts, but nothing really important. Here are the pictures, the first group during the disassemble, the rest are the assembling.

The original post in spanish is here.

This post is mostly pictures, cause they talk by itself.

Fixing the bolts i broke during the disassemble

Trans installed, months later i changed it for a better one, ill talk about it later.

We recromed the bumpers, and assembled them again, that was really hard, but my dad has the patience to did it.

Gas tank, cleaned and painted.

Steering whel, i feel really proud of it, i did it all by myself, clean, fix and paint.

Wiring harness, is the original one, fixed and marked by me, now it all works.

Some parts i got, a nice bosh headlight lense, to mach my original one, ruber for the engine comparmet, switches, etc.

Recromed mirror

The first thing we did, was clean the pan, it was really ugly, but not bad, only the part where the batery goes was rusted and neded a replacement, so i went to look for a floor replacement, but how i was talking in the past post, the parts you find here are for brazilian cars, cause it wasnt the same, we cut only where the batery goes and replaced that, the welding was really dificult, at least for us, but it finally ended the way it should, after that, i found a nice 3M product called “sellador de juntas”, (something like a silicon but when is aplied it gets really hard) to fill the holes between the two parts. After all this was done, we cleaned the rust really well, then aplied a really nice anti-rust primer, and painted it black, the same work was done to the front beam later, and started the assembling.

First, forgive my english, i really need to practice a lot more.

In this post ill talk about the disassemble, i started it the same day the car got home, i was really exited, this was our second restoration - the first one was a m38a1, military jeep - but they are really diferent. First of all i started removig all the lights, cause they didt work, the electric system was complete but only a 20% was in working condition. After that the fenders went out, all the interior, and everything that needed to, cause the next step was remove the body from the pan, it was not that hard, really, you need to remove the bolts all around the car, then 4 in the front, 2 more below the gas tank - it was removed first - and 4 in the rear behind the wheels, then we and 4 friends lift it up, and puted in the ground next to the pan, dont do what i did, forgot to remove the acelerator cable, and with the car in the air i had to remove it. After all that i couldnt belive how easy it was, and how good the chasis and the body were, in that moment my love for german cars started to grow really fast : D. Of cuorse you cant forget to clean, i think that maybe a 50% of the final results in a restorations depends on it, so clean, clean, clean and clean, sure it is really boring and discosting sometimes, but you will see the diference.

With the fenders out, we found something we didnt realized before, the car was crashed hard in the front, but at least it was complete, so the disassemble contiued, we removed the engine, trans, front beam - not sure if it is the name in english - and then finally all the windows, doors, cables, everything. For now thats all!.

I think that the better way to start this, is presenting you my 63 vw, the original owner buyed the car in Germany, where she lived for 20 years or so, - i didnt meet her -, and in the mid 80’s she moved back to here, Venezuela, where i live, in 2000 her family sold the car to a good guy who wanted it to restore, indeed he buyed some missing parts and all that, but never started to really work in the car, so his wife wanted the car out of her’s house, and then is when i came in and buyed the car, with my dad, well really he buyed it for me, im 23 and didnt have the money at the moment, but thats not the important here, so we triyed to bring the car home - 220Km - by itself, but in the highway my dad broke the engine, so i didnt drive the car, i had to wait until it was restored.

Too much words, lets see some pictures.