Is there any advantage in fitting ducts around the air intakes to catch more cool air to aid cooling in the engine bay. Is there ant advantage in running with the engine lid open a little or is that a seriously bad idea. preparing for 2019 and last year on a decent evening, running the van down a dual carriageway section at 55 /60 for around 40 miles of so it got hot enough to lightthe oil light on idle.. A bit worrying but from what I hear nothing exceptionally unusual.. I was also thinking about adding a heat shield and possibly some heat shielding tape to the primary tubes . The issues I thought might occur by taping the headers would be keeping to much heat in the exhaust system, but I might be overthinking that a bit . The exhaust on there just now is a stainless type as sold by JK and like all exhausts it gets proper hot but not so hot as to discolour the stainless around the silencer although as expected the header tubes are discoloured but all evenly.. If the vans been running a while and I check under the lid it fair to say the tins are pretty hot with a fair amount of heat in the engine bay. I suspect a lot of the heat is being transferred from the exhaust.. Hows about additional oil cooling ? or electric fans in the engine bay sucking air in through the side vents ? I also refitted the underside tins. Im a bit separate from other folk on the purpose of the belly pans , They dont offer any significant stiffness in my opinion, but they do smooth out the airflow under the van, so I fitted them with the thinking being that increased uninterrupted airflow under the van would assist cooling the bottom end of the motor .. Think about it .. If VW really wanted to stiffen up the van my guess is they would have boxed the main chassis rails and added additional outriggers from the main chassis to the inner sill.. less material, cheeper manufacture and more strength ... But thats just my theory ..
I've heard that the 'earz' fitted around the vents help with increased air flow. But after driving thousands of miles...hundreds in a day too...without any additional 'cooling' I believe if your bus is in good running order and you drive it with love it doesn't need anything more.
Open lid bad idea.. it keeps the air the scoops caught in there and helps push it though the engine tin over the engine, if everything is in in good order they run fine in much hotter counties than ours... hot running is usually more to do with something wrong..or modified Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
I always thought that. Pretty sure @1973daisey did an experiment though and it actually cooled the engine.
I would of thought that the fan can only cope with how ever many litres of air I wouldn’t of thought you can force anymore through it And it’s governed by the v belt and engine speed
ive seen bays in egypt ie taxis running around with engine lid open , in america ive seen air scoop fitted to the side vents
If your ignition timing is set up correctly and the carb's not leaking air, the engine shouldn't get too hot. If you've got an older engine with worn bearings, the oil light may come on if the oil's really hot. Oil temp on a type 1 can hit 120*C if you thrash it. The stock fan from memory can shift 1200cfm at full crack -- how much cooling air do you want ? Ears on the air vents do nothing and are a complete waste of money - it's more air through the fan that's needed. Leaving the hatch open (curiously) may make the engine run hotter. If you're going to fit something fancy, fit a "velocity ring" - a kind of circular ram pipe/volute that mounts on the fan housing and steadies air into the fan. VW themselves used them on the later Beetle engines, I believe. They work. An oil filter dangling in the breeze also acts as a free extra oil cooler, if you're minded to fit one. As a comparison, my old (sh*gged) Vege engine used to hit 115 - 120*C on a fast run. New engine with velocity ring and dangly oil filter rarely reaches 100*C (which is too low, IMO).
On my type 1 engine, I reduced the heat in the engine bay dramatically by fitting a new foam seal around the engine, making sure all rubber donut seals going through the rear tin were in place and sticking 2 layers of heat resistant sheets on the underside of the rear tin, above the exhaust. Did this over 2 years ago and the heat resistant sheets are still stuck fast and doing the job. The aim is to reduce the amount of heat from the hot exhaust rising up and heating up the tinware. And make sure the engine oil level is kept at maximum as the oil is an important part of cooling.
He did say it ran cooler .. I’m sceptical as I don’t know how he was measuring temps plus the aerodynamic properties of a square brick would suck exhaust back it ... As to the original post , VW did know what they were doing and I think only fitted belly pans to some commercial and vans that were going to have a massive hole cut in by conversion companies ... westfalia bays never had them fitted as they were sunroof models Late bays have bigger air vents than ear lies due to the introduction of the type 4 engine .. which in turn have bigger vents than splits due to bigger engine CC A stock engine should be fine in all temps depending on oil ...............
If you have your engine set up correctly and all tinware on properly you shouldn't need additional cooling. VW knew what they were doing. No reason to be overheating at 55-60
All tinware is in place all sealed with new screws and seals, carbs set, tappets set, always has fresh oil, occasionally will get hot probably driven further than a lot of busses in one go, always OK when air temp is what we might call normal for the UK and although the oil light wont come on its fair to say the tins are hot . But on a good warm day driven for say 100 miles culminating in a dash down a dual carriageway at 60 ish on reaching home noticed at idle the oil light flickered . Ran it at higher idle for a bit to let things cool down before switching off .. That happened a couple of times. Engine is set up as well as it can be, everything is new, no reconditioned stuff, other than the tins which are Genuine VW as is the fan. Twin carbs rejetted to suit the 1641, runs points, timed at 32 degrees currently but been advised to pull it back to 28. plugs are cool and show pretty much perfect mixture pattern Despite vw knowing there stuff it seems to be well documented that busses get hot when pushed a wee bit.. I believe that VW elude to this and acknowledge flickering oil light is OK .. That auto manufacturers for yah A wee anecdote, actual and not second hand.. Myself and a buddy hired a couple of bays a few years back, These things were well used and abused, his had a recon engine just fitted and mine was just as it come .. I made it back home to get set up, but before we left I changed the oil, adjusted the carb, set the plugs and valve clearances, stuck in a set of points and timed it . Thing went 100 times better.. meanwhile my buddy broke down before he got home , new motor siezed solid .. The hire plac had a split screen with a twin port 1600, so they were not prepared to hire out the split but they would relinquish the engine .. We set to and swapped out the motor but by 10 pm and with a departure time looming we didnt wory about the tins, basically we got the thing up and running, had to repair the throttle and make up a suitable linkage but we got there of sorts and set of bright and early next morning.. My bus never missed a beat although it was low on power compared to my own bus.. His bus was down to first gear climbing moderate hills. We toured the North coast of Scptland for 5 days , no seals or front / rear tins fitted and not a hint of overheating !!!!! How does that work ?
VW only made around 30 million air cooled vehicles . They were worked hard all over the world . Millions spent on R&D and constantly improved .. I don’t get why people think VW didn’t have a clue and remove things like thermostats and other essential parts .. as basic as a VW air cooled engine is with its loose tolerances it will take a ton of abuse . They will run with a ton of endplay and I’m sure if you removed 2 cylinders it would still get you around Scotland for a week . The tins will get hot , they separate the hot and cool sides of the engine . How are you measuring temperature and what grade oil are you using
^this. Leave the lid open, and there’s no pressure buildup in the engine compartment. A guy on the Samba did it as an experiment I recall, and his engine ran hotter.
having a read around I think I will back off the timing to 28 degrees total advance and fit larger main jets to the carbs. Currently runnings ict 34s with 150 mains which I fitted to smooth the idle . But reading the blurb, it suggests that our crap fuel with ethanol could lean out the mixture as much as 10% at higher cruising speeds .. so stepping up to 155 /160 mains might provide a cooler mix.. Im getting around 30 mpg from the set up s can sacrifice a wee bit of fuel economy.. shouldn't make to much difference to the overall consumption..
Temperature measurement is primitive, basically the flickering oil light .. I usually keep it 55 or below to stop it getting too hot. Im always checking the temp of the dip stick if its to hot to touch but seen the stick being hot and the oil being cool ... so no real numbers on the temp. Oil is Castrol GTX 20 50. which will open a new can of worms as some folk prefer synthetics ...while VW recommend mineral.. doesnt appear to be two the same ..
28 degrees is just fine. You won’t fix idle problems by increasing the mains . At idle, they’re not doing anything.
I dont have idle problems, should have probably added in the text an array of jets and emulsions to smooth things out, had mains in my head after a bit of reading... time for bed ..
