Stripdown of paneuropaul's engine

And they melt....

 

The standard cam is designed to make the engine run hot at idle to reduce emissions but it will, or should, run cooler as revs increase.

Common factor on these three engines is a hydraulic cam and new, probably oversize, oil pump. An oversize oil pump generates more flow, but can cause the oil to overheat because the oil system bypasses the cooler when the relief valve returns excess oil to the sump. But these engines seem to suffer from low pressure and that’s odd. Paul attempted to increase the pressure with thicker oil, but that can cause more oil to bypass the cooler.

Hydraulic cams and followers wear relatively quickly but shouldn’t cause high oil temperatures and I don’t see how it could cause low oil pressure. However, I would never build a (VW air-cooled) engine with a hydraulic, or standard profile solid, cam - unless it was for an auto transmission and therefore needed a slow idle speed.

If the compression ratio is too high the engine can detonate (pinking) because the mixture explodes instead of burns and a standard cam needs a low CR, but it’s difficult to get a high CR with dished pistons even with a small deck height.

Conclusion; I don’t know what’s wrong with these engines but it’s probably a combination of wrong oil pump with a poor fit in the crankcase, wrong oil (sorry), wrong bearing clearance, possibly high CR and little or no deck height and a generally poor assembly. Building engines in an old stone barn balanced on a beer crate on a concrete floor is not ideal.

By the way, I live in France and I build engines* but I didn’t buy any of these.
* Not many and only for me.

 

I camped there on my way to somewhere, he was well organised and tidy. Though not yet building engines or maybe he'd done one or two in amongst his other work. He didn't have any on the go at the time but he'd just bought a milling machine and he meant business.
But that's another reason I only ever split a case once (for a friend to replace the pickup o-ring) in 8 years.
Top end, fine, but no further. If you do bodywork, your workshop and everything within, including the walls and the ceiling is polluted with steel grinding dust that would take weeks of deep cleaning to remove...and so is your office if you have one, even if you keep the door shut. I had workshop, paint shop and a fairly clean storeroom next to the paint bit (both in a separate building) ... but I built mine on my dining room table at home.

 

I’ve never been to his workshop, I based my comment on pics he’s posted on TLB and the pics on his website and I apologise if his facilities are better than they appear.


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Ah...Oh.. well I was only basing that on what I saw on one day. I don't remember TLB pics and didn't even know he had a website! My bad.
I'm orf for a look.

 

Had a look - blimey, if that was me I would NOT have those engine pictures on my website! Particularly the rods out case one!!!! I see exactly what you mean. This is a big part of why I refused to consider splitting a case let alone "building engines". Well, that and appreciating that I couldn't possibly know enough because I kept learning more...and still am many years later and STILL no nothing.

 

If you are interested in pics of the build of my engine he posted loads!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154259896900099

 

And also there's much stricter noise regs these days on new cars with A/C motors are unlikely to be able to pass, the coolant jacket on water cooled engines helps by acting as a sound insulator.

 

^this. There's only so much electronics you can put around an air-cooler to pass emissions. As above, even Porsche gave up in the end.

Apart from cheapness/simplicity, aircoolers don't have much going for them.

 

Fair enough. Is this ok?
Some facts without comment.
1) On his website, the builder describes himself as "Specialising in the air cooled VW type 4 engine but also experts with everything VW Type 1"
2) Given up to three attempts to fix errors on two of three engines that he'd built, the builder gave up trying and partially refunded. IDK if the third received any refund.
3) Because of their experiences, two of those customers decided to fit Subaru engines and one sold his bus.