My '76 Microbus / Camper : Landyn

Busy day, but picture wise it's a bit light!!

I've been putting off starting the build, just a bit nervous about putting socket to nut, so to speak. So... nice clean crank with no.3 bearing and the timing gear already...



Rods with new small ends and matched pins... in numbered bags...



and a reference image from where the crank was taken out so i can get the numbers and the rods in the right place!!



I few "minutes" later, rods are installed...



Then followed a few bits without pics. I whipped out the oil pressure relief valve and gave it a clean and reinstalled with a new gasket, as well as the sump plate (with new gasket and copper washers).

The Tom Wilson book then suggests installing the dizzy next so that you can check the play and don't risk dropping the shim into a bolted up case... so here it is with the Petronix module installed a couple of months ago. Lubed up and new seal. The clamp has been kept in the same position so it just dropped back in.



No.2 bearings installed and the bearing studs...



And then spent ages getting the rank in!! which I eventually did, it just seemed a bugger to get the bearing holes to line up. I had to call it a day at this point cos the dog wanted a walk!!

I'm also not sure i've got the postion right. The Wilson book suggests you hold the crank by the small ends of 1 & 2 rod and it drops into the right position - this means the timing dots face towards the right case half... then it says that the two dots on the timing gear should align with the case split and face the bottom which isn't then same thing!! I've made sure that the rotor arm aligns with the mark on the dizzy and the dots face the sump but this means that No.1 rod is half way up the cylinder... is this correct?

 

This will lift your mojo dude























































































You know the inside of an aircooled motor better than me ive never taken one apart yet

So now you know your a few steps ahead of para you have the grinfactor that your providing me with pics that may be helpfull


I love the way the dub world switches round like that

 

make sure you get plenty of oil on those bearing as you asemble it, theres no such thing as too much here

 

Another day on the van, unfortunately with pants progress!!

I woke up at 5.30 this morning worried about the whole timing issue in the last post and pondered it on and off until 8ish!! Woke up and googled it and confirmed what i thought : get the dots on the crank to line with the dots on the cam and then worry about the dizzy later.



That said, the first thing i did was set the dizzy so that it hit the marker when No.1 is at the top of it's stroke and the cam / crank dots align.... this I understand should be right (and leaves the rotor 1/8 out when the dots meet)



There are errors in a couple of these photo's which I'll get to later...

Cleaned all the old sealant of the cam plug, resealed and installed...



Cleaned and installed the Oil pickup. I did some net searching and concluded that I haven't lost a windage tray... there probably wasn't one there as they were fitted to 914s & 412, i.e.saloons that get thrown about rather than lumbering vans!!



Cam all pasted up, a bit of extra lube on the bearings and the gears...



I put sealant on the undersides of the case bolts and washers as instructed... but got a fuzzy photo, so left it out!! Put the little spacers on...



Slapped a load of silicon on the case joins and lubed up the bearings a bit more...



...and bolted up...





All good?? Spotted the mistake?? As I stood back and admired my handy work, thinking the crank was rolling nicely, there were'nt any spare bolts lying around, the birds were singing, the sun was shining i thought, I'll wipe off a bit of the pushed out sealant and thought that the consistency wasn't what i expected. Went to look in the package of greases i got from Stateside and realised I'd used the wrong bloody sealant!!! (I used the one on the right)



So out came the case bolts, off came the case half and cleaning recommenced

Stopped to take the dog out at that point, then went to the chippy for tea before Sunny (the dog) decided to start choking on a sit of bone. In some distress we then had a trip to animal A&E... perfect for a Friday night!!! He seemed to have dislodged the bone by the time we got there and was right as rain flirting with the counter girl!

That'l be £136 out of the carb fund!! So glad I got the beers in last night, they were right at hand when I walked back in the house!!!

 

plus... I flatted back the paint in the bay and threw a couple of extra coats on while the sun was (as mentioned previously) shining... the rest of the weekends weather seems a bit poor!

 

I did an when I read "slapped a load of silicon on the case join".

 

Whilst finishing one of those beers... i'm not say which one... I am reflecting that it was much better to have spotted the mistake at this point when all I had to do was unbolt a case half and not later when it *******ed oil out all over my nicely painted bay, tinwear and fanhousing!!

Every cloud

 

It's not so much that that it would have leaked. The case halves are made to very fine tolerances and require the thinnest smear of the correct compound on the join. The silicon would not have squidged out enough and all your bearings would have been loose. And worms of silicon would break off and block the oilways.

Well spotted, but it's good to post your stuff as someone else would have alerted you before you'd done any damage. Careful you don't dislodge that pick-up o-ring. As you know the pick-up waves about hooked on a case bolt and only becomes tight when the sump plate is on. I had a test after finding the one I posted earlier and it's quite easy to push the filler through the thin wall the o-ring seals in. When you pull it back it gets caught and that's how mine got out of position. If you accidentally move it once the case halves are together, have a cup of tea and think how much quicker it will be to check it's ok now, than to strip the engine when the oil light doesn't go off.

Going well - take your time.

 

Cool, thanks for the heads up. I suppose the windage tray would have held it in place and stopped it waving around.

Will heck it over tomorrow before i close it all up again.

 

I remember looking for the windage tray...
Just make sure it still turns while you torque it up. The bearings are awkward I agree.

 

A bit light on pictures as I had to rush out to a 30th birthday party... Strictly soft drinks as she's 8 months peggers and I'm writing this on the train...

So in words, good day!! Spent a couple of hours last night and a couple this morning cleaning off all of the RTV sealant and making sure it didn't get into the case and contaminate the oil ways etc. not the quickest of jobs, but done nonetheless!!

Then, it was pretty much the same as yesterdays update, only with black / brown sealer! I also took the time this morning to consider the sealing around the studs a bit better as well as re-lubing the bearings and timing gears....

Last pic would be the block wrapped in cling film with tissue in the lifter sockets.... But I can't do flickr on the train!!

More pics tomorrow!!

 

Home from the tea party... honestly, three bumps and two children isn't exactly a rock'n'roll party! Got home to BTCC coverage followed by MOTD, happy days

Photo's to accompany the earlier post...

Cleaned and carefully given a lick of THE CORRECT sealant!!



Followed up with some fresh lube on the bearings and bolted up...



and wrapped up so I didn't come back in after a few beers and poke my finger around inside!!



The only negative points - I've miss placed to of the minor case bolts, one through bolt at the top of the bell housing and a nut at the bottom... I've written these down in the to do list, i'm sure they'll turn up amongst the other boxes of bolts!! My brother and I were taking these bolts out, so I expect one of us put them in a different box!!

 

Busy and productive day... which means I've not managed to spot my mistakes as I've gone!

First things first... cover one of the big holes! I cleaned the strainer and cover and loosely reinstalled. The gasket kit seemed to include only one gasket and not two as described and I couldn't find a new copper washer in their either - so it's on the list of this to remember and buy during the week!!



Then I took apart the oil pump, gave it a clean... all looked well.



Stuffed it full of "white grease" as Tom Wilson calls it... or "my girfriends little pot of vaseline for dry lips that she won't notice i've stolen when she gets back from her work trip to Morocco tomorrow" as i call it!! He also refers to it improving suction until the oil gets round the system and fills the channels... guess I'll be replacing that little tub of vaseline



All back together and those little nuts torqued up to a whole 9lb ft... i broke sweat.



Then I installed it and got so excited i just moved onto the next thing and didn't take a photo... oh well. Next was the fuel pump block off, which needed some new bolts and a bit of sealant. If anyone reading this knows the correct torque setting for these I'd be grateful if you could tell me? the TW book didn't say, so I aimed for 14lb ft to match the oil pump.



I'm going to skip a few of the photo's I took cos this isn't an instruction manual... if you want to see the piston rings in the right place, clickr the flickr link! Suffice to say I cleaned the pistons and cylinders, arranged the rings, oiled everything using motor oil and installed. A little tip from the redneck on YouTube was to use some tubing to hold the cylinders in place while you install the others... which worked well!



Times by two....



and by two again...



Replaced the copper tubing with a cylinder head...



Had a bit of a panic as I had to hand 16 nuts and 12 washers!! Luckily the other four weren't too far away... all torqued up incrementally in criss cross patterns to 28lb ft... will check them again in the morning as the studs may have a little stretch in them.



A bit of paper towel in the key areas and all good for the evening. I was tempted to go headlong into the valvetrain, but figured I'd screw that up after a long day!

I did one last little job before finishing up for the day, which was to remove all of the masking from the engine bay...





The line across the back doesn't look great, but I wanted an indication of what this mix of paint was like compared to some of the factory paint. Going to give it a rub back next weekend (or one evening if the weather works out better) and bring up the shine a bit!

Tomorrow... valve train and start building up the ancillaries!!

 

Last day before i go back to real work!!

Started off with the under cylinder tins and retorquing the heads... should've been a simple job but as I only had one of these tins originally I had to find another three fitting screws and that meant a trip to a very busy Screwfix, which lost an hour of the day!! All bolted up with shiney stainless allen bolts (but ugly unpainted tins cos they missed the powdercoating boat) ....



Followed by the first of the newly painted parts!! the lifters and pushrod tubes all installed, plus some of the red RTV sealant on the tube gaskets... doing what it's designed to do rather than sealing the case!!





Then i bolted up the rockers and ran into a little problem!! one stripped stud I imagine this was because I hadn't read the next line in the book that said "unscrew the adjustment screws fully before bolting down the rockers" which may have undult stressed the threads?



Fortunately, the stud came out very easy so should be an easy fix! I was also careful to make sure i got all of the bits of broken thread too - don't fancy those floating about in the system



TBH, i was more worried about installing the retaining spring for the pushrods, which was an absolute breeze!!

Followed this up with the good...

One rocker cover to protect the open holes, thermostat bolted up, cable pulley...



Oil cooler, oil filter mount and oil pressure sensor... the massive 5lb ft on the oil cooler bolts had me panicked!!



and lastly some more painted parts - the oil filler neck and new cap, and the engine mounts!!



So there's a few issues to sort out; a new stud, i need the rear crankshaft seal as that wasn't included in the seal set and not advertised as such either!!! I also started to round of the tappet lock nuts as they'd sat out of an oily environment for so long... so they're up for renewal too!

I'm also on the look out for another retaining bolt for the thermostat cable... the replacement stat has a different thread to my original

I think I'll miss this tomorrow... I got a CSCS test to prove I know what I'm doing when I walk onto a construction site - which I haven't revised for.... doh!!

 

Quick update before I go out for a ruby...

Almost all of the remaining niggly parts arrived from VWH this week, so started with the rockers... all bolted up. Then set the tappets - a job i've never done before would you believe!! The photo came after putting the cover on... a tip for anyone doing this themselves - grease the cover to stop the clip scratching your newly powdercoated covers!!



Next I put the fan housing on. I bolted this up during the week and had started to get the ancillaries on it already...



Then I took it off again, cos Tom Wilson neglects to tell you to put the tin over the oil cooler first!!



The the piece on the otherside, which i temporarily held in place with a bit of string...



Then the tins!! this job took a lot longer than I expected! The piece over the bellend doesn't fit amazingly... i'll give it a bit of a push when it's off the engine stand.



Then the airbox holders and air ducts....



Then the fan (cleaned and powdercoated), the oil breather and the dirty old coil!! spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to paint nice white timing marks



Quite tired now and just had my mate help me lift it off the stand, which has just about finished me off!!

Tomorrow... flywheel, alternator, manifolds, etc... and work out how to get it out of the front door!!

 

enjoy your curry - looks like a really tidy job

 

The visual stuff is instantly gratifying and I'm very pleased with that... I even had a long and supportive conversation with the misses about replacing the coil cos it doesn't look the part!!

The self doubt is strong though and probably wont disappear until it's purring!!