So i have at last had chance to strip the Vege short motor i took out of the van which was noisey when cold. The AA 1911 barrels & pistons I fitted about 3k miles previous look in great shape with very little wear. The Mains,big ends & small ends are also good as was the oil pressure before removing. I have found excess end float in the Cam thrust bearing about 6tho. Also more gear lash than it should be, can hear clicking of the teeth when checking. I think the Cam is a bit 50/50 also. Thoughts?
The cam ‘looks’ knackered Graham, what do the followers look like? With excessive thrust clearance the clacking noise is probably the cam knocking back and forward on the thrust, is the cam thrust bearing tight in the case? Incidentally the case looks nice and clean.
Yes I thought the case looks clean. Regular oil changes & not a lot of miles I expect. The followers are quite pitted also. The Cam thrust bearing is tight in the case. I am thinking the recon motor never had a cam bed in. Don’t know whether VEGE would have bench run it or not. Looks like i have a good case, crank etc to rebuild with a new Cam & followers & gear when i am ready
I don’t know what VEGE do but I doubt if they run in the cam and it might not even have had a new cam. I agree.
I would just check both what the main and cam bearings have been bored out to ... Vege reportedly bore every thing to the max whether it needs it or not ?
My VEGE crankcase had the mains bored but the cam bearings were standard, the crank was ground mains and big ends.
Looks like an old cam to my eyes. If the cam is riveted to the gear it is old, if it is bolted then it is new.
well not quite, some 7 or so years ago supply of main bearings for type 4 has been depleted with no manufactures planning on making production run for over a year, so most have resorted to use what was left available and those were all the oversize bearings.
back then only 2mm oversize (that's maximum) bearings were available (as normally they were rarely needed). Just checked it was around 2010. http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=113178 https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=446760&view=next https://www.volkszone.com/VZi/showthread.php?t=683486 https://shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=134021
Just to clarify things when i get round to it I will measure the case for align bore size & update the thread. Could be a while, so don’t watch this space for now.