I give up! - advice on who can help - oil everywhere post rebuild

AFR = average fart level, a must have measurement favoured by owners of insufficient worry guages

Seriously, I feel for you as what has happened is just shxxt. Good luck and fingers crossed for you.

 

Do you guys use an afr on your setups? Tempting for getting a perfect setup and improved engine longevity but more money spent again i guess...

 

Thanks Chris.. its been a painful ride and not over yet!

 

Only because we have unusual engines (me) or a tricky carb (Mike) and a one off trip to a rolling road to let someone else ( ) tune it is almost as expensive as an AFR setup.

 

Do you do willy warmers? Asking for a friend.

 

I told you not to ask..

 

Isn’t Pete in Portsmouth? He’s hit and miss unfortunately

 

@scrooge95 asked if you still want a little bell on the end?

 

Yes, up towards Cosham.

 

...
Obvs..

 

The jetting was right on the day it was set up. But because the carbs are so big even slight variations in fuel level will put it off tune too rich or lean.
Also a rolliing road measures power output by spinning up a large mass and calculating power from the torque. Its checking the performance of the engine and carburettors only under moderately heavy accelereration. If the mixture (AFR) is measured, its showing correctness under acceleration.
In the real world the bus sits at a fairly constant speed and so will reach a steady state. If e.g. fuel level drops in the float bowls to maintain input as it has to, the engine will tend to run leaner with big carbs because they are more sensitive to fuel level as there less suck from low vacuum signal and more gravity affecting their operation.
On the rolling road you would hope the float bowls start full and dont empty much during the test. So its a different, valid but partial test compared with watching the AFR during real world driving. Rolling roads are a good start point but lead to good drag racing performance.

Watching my AFR on hills led me to down sizing a secondary jet recently and reducing the effect of driving up a constant hill but losing power as the engine was being run far too rich .. same jetting on the flat was pretty spot on. Going from 130 to 125 pushed the speed up a bit and the AFR from 10:1 to 11:1 with foot hard on the floor.

 

funkenblitz don’t have a rolling road, that piston looks broken/cracked rather than melted , could be fuel, could be something else

 

I don't know if you already saw this, it really worth the read
https://www.aircooled.net/how-to-use-a-wideband-to-tune-your-carburetors-on-the-vw-flat-4-engine/

 

So, things are going from bad to worse. I spoke to South West Splitz today. It looks like he does not want to accept that he should have compression tested the engine before fitting the breather stuff and is saying he wont offset the labour element on the fitting work done and has now quoted £1200 (36 hours) labour plus parts to drop the engine, flush it and fit new barrels and pistons and put back in. In my mind if you know what you are doing it cant be any more than two and a half days to do the work so its all adding up to be a nightmare. At this cost its debatable whether its worth getting a new engine. I am thinking i should get the van back but worried that doing it myself will dig myself another hole to fall in to. Any advice gratefully received.

 

I'd get the van back and decide what to do in your own time without being rushed into it by the garage. As the relationship with the garage seems to deteriorated I wouldn't trust them to put their best efforts into the rebuild. Whatever you do, with the back up of the TLB, is going to be better than the current position. Just my thoughts.

 

Typical garage wants you to pay for their mistakes. Most find a way.

Just get it back and DIY, the bloke has only his own interests at heart, you're just a cash cow. Stop the rot.

 

To be blunt, why should you pay for his labour to fit completely useless parts to your engine based on a false premise. There was never any point doing this as I said near the beginning of the thread. He does not have the first clue about how engines work and most certainly has no interest beyond bolting random bits on. Maybe high price is because he'll sub it out and stick a wodge on top. You could do that yourself also.

 

All of the above. Or, get one of those preservation engines for that price.

But most of all, get your Bus back and sleep on what to do next.

 

A bit like taxi drivers taking the scenic route - you get there in the end, but your wallet is empty and the driver is having steak with his chips tonight and a nice red... and having a day off tomorrow while you do some overtime.