I kept chugging along with the tin work today. Some of it good. Some of it crappy when I sprayed too much and ended up with drips. As always, I think I do a good solid job of cleaning and acetone washing everything as final prep and I appear to miss a spot or two…
Category: Projects
Murbella – Day 38 – Lifters and camshaft work
Engine – Day 3 Lifters I pulled out 2 possible sets of lifters that might go into the new engine. What I did forget to do was clean up one of the originals pulled from the AJ case to weigh and compare to these new ones. So I recently purchased a set of AA 28mm…
Murbella – Day 38 – Tin and intake manifold repainting.
So I acetone washed up more of the tins that I had previous sanded. I washed a few others again and then also did the acetone final wash down and all were left in the sun to evaporate. The 2 intake manifolds I bought were scrubbed up and I tried to get them as clean…
Murbella – Day 38 – Balancing pistons and rods
Engine – Day 3 So I was generally happy with how close the weights were with the pistons and rods. I spent about 45 minutes removing what little material needed to come off of a couple of them all to balance out the weight. I decided the best place to remove material was a thicker…
Murbella – Day 37 – Not the transaxle she was born with?
So when I took the transaxle up to be rebuilt, I was talking with the owner and he said that it was not a 1979 transaxle. It is properly coded as AT, but the physical gearbox case and differential side plates are not from a 78-79 vehicle. My heart sunk. Sometime in the past 41…
Murbella – Day 37 – The trans and heads are being rebuilt!
So one 6 hour round-trip later and I’m back from dropping off the transaxle and 2 FI heads to Jim’s Custom VWs way up northeast of here. Given their current queue, I’m probably looking at August I imagine. So being able to do a complete long block assembly will indeed be some time in the…
Murbella – Day 36 – TPS Sensor Case “Repair”
So I pulled out Murbella’s original throttle position sensor (TPS) to compare the one I removed, from the questionable functioning part I purchased. Now I wasn’t concerned in that TPS sensor working so much as I was in the condition of the plastic cover. This “repair” will perfect. The new old part is solid with…
Murbella – Day 36 – First attempt at a gasket
I decided to try making my first custom gasket today. I learned that I need for sharper tools to do this. I need to make three gaskets (above) that are used to either seal the 2 plenum halves (right), seal the throttle body to the plenum (top left) or the oil filler to the plenum…
Murbella – Day 36 – Parts cleaning and sorting
So I spent the day multi-tasking after I went and got more degreaser detergent. The transaxle was scrubbed one final time. I was tempted to take it to the car wash and hot water power wash it but I figured this was good enough. It is at least clean enough to put in my car….
Murbella – Day 35 – Engine internals weigh-in!
Engine – Day 2 When I build my engines, I’m aiming to meet basic VW tolerances as well as some other things I’ve learned from reading about engine building from the high-performance world. While I would love every engine to have a completely balanced internal crankshaft with a balanced flywheel, that is just not practical…