So I received notification today from AA Performance Products that Murbella’s new engine case is getting ready to ship. That sent me down a path that I probably should have not gone down, but I was thinking… should I try painting a new case? Now I’ve seen a lot of painted cases, and I’ve read…
Category: Project – 2020 New Engine
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 – 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 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…
Murbella – Day 35 – It needs align bored.
So I set about torquing the case halves together to get some bore measurements. While overall things look round, even if I figure my measurements are just slightly off (due to user error), there is some variations in 1, 2, and 3 main and I didn’t even bother to look at 4. I see no…
Murbella – Engine – Day 1 – Too much play.
Yeah. I am pretty sure the case can’t be built as-is without being machined. So much for having a week off to build the long block. Best case scenario… needs align bored. Worst case scenario… case is warped internally and is trash. And if that’s the situation, Murbella is no longer numbers matching.
Murbella – AJ Engine – Day 1
I started the bearing work today, making sure that the oil passages conform to the bearings oil holes, as well as doing a small mod to the thrust bear cam saddle to allow for the tang of a double-thrust bearing to fit. The Silverline set of double thrust cam bearings basically duplicates 2 identical thrust…
Murbella – Day 31 – AJ Engine Rebuild Starts
So I suppose I can officially consider the first day of the engine rebuild since I always mark Day 1 with the post last cleaning plugging of the case! (We’ll just pretended everything to this day was Day 0!) AJ Engine Rebuild, Day 1 The case was cleaned one final time with some soapy water…
Murbella – Day 29 – Restored Exhaust Components
So I ran out and picked up the blasted and then ceramic-coated exhaust components and damn if they don’t look amazing! Restoring the original solid 1979 muffler instead of swapping on that cheap ass aftermarket one was one of the best things I could have done. I love all the little parts that say West…
Murbella – AJ Engine – Do I go filtered on the oil system?
Now I’ve been back and forth on some things as the projects have moved along. However, based on what the engine case looked like inside, and knowing full well how clogged some of the oil passages were, not to mention other oil sludge in the sump, I’m thinking of doing a bolt-on mod that will…