As Zed says have a scrape at that crud to clear as much of it as you can Something like a small flat headed screwdriver will be fine. The round plastic bit is the remnants of an old valve guide seal Vw deleted them at some point because they just fall apart Is that a spacer ring with a gap in it inside the head where the barrel seats?
If spacers are needed to alter the deck height they really should be fitted between the case and the cylinder. That one with its gap won’t seal anyway It almost looks like someone has put a piston ring there
I am going back up tomorrow and will have another look i'll get more photos of the heads and see what is going on lol "luckily" this engine was bought in the knowledge it had laid about for years and would probably need work and parts but I went ahead and bought so I can learn to work on the engines so I am not too worried as I have a couple of good engines so will use this one to learn and hopefully at the end come out with a working engine
I’m not sure what’s there or why the spacers are there there was one came out when I stripped it down (see photos) but only one has the gap?? what would the spacers be for?
There doesn’t appear to be any pieces missing ?? Buts that’s only my thoughts I’ll get the crud out with a screw driver / brake cleaner / power washer / dish washer lol Where was the plastic bit meant to go because it looks ok in the head (see photos) but again that’s an uneducated opinion cheers
Every valve started with a seal. The remains are in the bottom of the engine case. That engine looks almost like its been in a boat - crud in the manifolds. The spacer rings should be complete and best practice is to dry assemble pistons and cylinders, press the cylinders onto the block with some arrangement. Then measure how close pistons come to the top of the cylinders, maybe above. Then add spacers at the bottom of the cylinder where there is only oil splashing about to get the space above to what you need . The spacer rings in the heads seem to be from recon heads where they machined off the step and replaced with a ring. Replacing one maybe damaged ali to cast iron interface with two : ali to steel , steel to cast iron. More chance of leaking with the ring in the cylinder head. But it ran well when freshly done.
Cheers but I have no idea what any of that means lol I’m a complete beginner so no idea what pressing cylinders onto the block with some arrangement means I’ve not a clue about any of the above lol EXCEPT I agree it does look like it’s been in a boat like I said I bought the engine knowing it had been lying in a shed for years and hoped I could save it but it’s clearly way out of my ability if I can’t even understand what’s being said in posts lol think it’s time to accept it’s too far gone for me to sort and just stop
Don’t give up Kev These are simple enough engines once you get your head around them. Don’t worry about everything at the moment Just concentrate on one bit at a time. First things first is to clean those cylinder heads up properly
Looking back through the pictures It does appear that you have a piece of valve guide missing near the combustion chamber It’s hard to tell for sure with the crud surrounding it and the low quality pictures. It also looks like one of your pistons has a dent/damage to the top again hard to tell with the quality of the photos. I’m wondering if the damaged piston and the Broken valve guide were corresponding if so I bet it’s dropped a valve at some point in the past.
That's what here's for ... gotta learn somehow / start somewhere ...and a practice engine is great Pressing the cylinder onto the block.. for deck height (gap between top of cylinder and face of head) Something like this.. Though I'm measuring the middle there which is not a lot of use normally, as pistons are dished.. but mine were flat so I was just checking too .. it's important to help work out how much the fuel has been squashed before you light it.. (or compression ratio) Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk
Dont give up. Clean up things. Be gentle, try not to scratch soft alloy surfaces where things seal together. Those spacer rings can be hooked out gently from the inside of the ring. On my old cylinder heads they were so covered in crud I didnt realise they were actually separate . The idea of spacers is to make sure that the top of the piston comes to within 1.0 to 1.5mm of the cylinder head as the piston passes though top dead centre on each stroke. There are people like vwdarrin, theEzGz on youtube who take engines apart and rebuild them . If nothing else watch videos so you can see what the parts look like .
Grab hold of the front pulley or the flywheel and give it a good push and pull If you can feel or hear movement then the crank has excessive end float This will indicate that the case will need machining or may even be scrap depending on how much movement there is and if the case has been machined before.
