Am I screwed?

[teenytrout]

i finished my t4 (for a westy)and put the following in it: JE 96 mm slip ins, a c/w crank at 74 mm, a mild cam from stock with a 10-15 degree higher lift, and stock heads, total seal rings...this is my nightmare unfolding...

i broke it in running it at 3k rpms for 30 minutes to break in the cam, afterwards i drove it around and it drove terribly. It hunts at low rev to idle and stalls. It gets power in the mids though but still runs terrible. Now i have 40 idf's on it that were jetted for a stock 2 liter, which it is no more. I need help -

1.Do they need to be jetted again to the new engine config?
2.and if everything is fine...would webers cause a brand new engine to run like garbage with no power?
3. I've been told that it may take anywhere from 500 to 2k miles to really break in the engine...till then its paste...is that true?

jake? tuna? everyone?

what do you all think about this? Im scared i just spent 2 to 3 grand improving a t4 that will never run...and yes, the cam dots did line up as they should have...

teenytrout

[teenytrout]

my apologies Jake...i had to use a 60th and 10 thousands shim on the bottom of the jug and a copper 60th thousandth on the head...this (as much as it is) gives me a hair below an 8 to 1 c.r. -sotck con rods, the 96 JE slips.I tend to think its around 7.7 or 7.8 to 1 (with stock heads yielding ~ 51 cc's of combustion chamber). When I had set the deck height I had to use thicker mains to compensate for bernie bergmanns "grounded to hell" crank. I took it from everyone here that I sort of got screwed by bergmann from buying a c/w from him cause it was grounded so much(i had posted this a month or two ago here). im not sure but off hand i think my main bearings were .02 or .2 something like that...with a 2 in there somewhere and how many decimals over it goes i cant recall. so thats the c.r. end of it. I got the cam off of german autosport (in california)...you know, george(?)...they sell nothing but type 4 equipment...it has a C grind to it and i want to say a 270 degree deal to it. It is supposed to be a "mild" cam...now, i got it, of course, after all you guys praised webcam in an up and coming future post, and by then it was already in the engine. I got this cam cause i have to tackle 7 to 8 degree grades everyday and need the torque more than the horsepower in the t4...george told me that i would have to get the hydr lifters to match the cam, and i did. but he also said that i would have to get the chromoly push rods for it and get those cut to spec. So after the engine was together i hauled it down to a local hill climber hot-shot in the colorado springs area and had him do that. But he called me back a day later saying the push rods were just fine and that he didnt need to do anything...so the chromoly rods went in...I put on stock heads, brand new, and at whatever valve diameter they come in due to me having my old heads port and polished, but only to learn after $500 that they had hairline fractures between the 44 mm intake and 38 exhaust (on all cylinders too)...thats a serious bummer. some gurus told me that i would get better air flow, stronger flow and better torque, by going with stock...and I did. Now i had that hill climber hot shot tune my carbs before i split the case to do all of this...so they were jetted (at high altitude/9,000 ft) for a straight stock...but now that i have a 2.154 liter with the same jetting...the engine runs terrible...and the only thing left as a potential culprit are the webers...

I had met a Redline guy up at the rocky mountain motorworks show we had here a couple of weeks ago...he told me that the webers were as sensitive a instrument than you could find in any analytical chem lab...which made me think that even the slightest alteration in a engine can throw the webers off much less a new engine...i had others tell me the same thing....I marked the TDC at cy #1 on the fan, but wiped some berryman b-12 which basically erased my mark on it by accident and so when i was starting the engine i had to do it by ear...

Weber Carb Jet Settings


Venturi ? 28 mm
Main Gas - .115
Main Air Correction - .200
Emulsion tube ? F11
Pump jet - ?
Idle Jet - ?

And this is the way it is now, im wondering if i need to a larger gas jet? During my intial start up and also while driving it, i had back fires bad...so i did rich it up but still had the back fires...now, they sounded like back fires...im solo and didnt have anyone to help so i dont know if these backfires were coming up through the throat or out the exhaust...

i hope that helps maestro...but will i have a bad time for the first few months as the total seals set in?

teenytrout

[JohnConnolly]

First off; what elevation do you live at? What IS your compression (not a guess)? What spark plugs are you using? What ignition (all of it) are you using, and what timing are you running?

Tell me this, and I'll get your bus running well. Do you know how to adjust valves? Do yo know how to adjust hydraulic lifters?

[[email protected]]

I think your 28mm venturis are too small for a 2.1 liter engine! Either buy a set of 32mm vents (biggest available for a 40 IDF) or contact Aircooled.net for Venturi boring service. John at Aircooled can give you numbers to get your jetting close. Read his articles on synching carbs and jetting.

[[email protected]]

I think your 28mm venturis are too small for a 2.1 liter engine! Either buy a set of 32mm vents (biggest available for a 40 IDF) or contact Aircooled.net for Venturi boring service. John at Aircooled can give you numbers to get your jetting close. Read his articles on synching carbs and jetting.
Steve Arndt

[teenytrout]

you guys are amazing...really. you know what? I have no business building this engine, which is why I keep coming back to this site constantly. You guys really have it...the upper crust of the best there is...this is what Im going to do...the van is downtown (40 miles from me) at a shop. the guy, who is pretty good with VW's, checked everything, fixed that oil leak i had out the driver valve cover...set the timing at 12 degrees...re-did the valve clearances...and rejetted the carbs...of which you were right..he completely rejetted everything and resized everything but the emulsion tube...from what i can understand...now, the engine still runs pretty bad...he cant figure it out and on top of that, when the engine starts up there is some kind of rattling noise coming from within the case (we think). This guy did tell me that my new petronix was working at the lows but would cut out up into the mids...i thought petronix would be a good thing but maybe i should go back to points?..i was there every step of the way and torqued everything myself with a handful of air cooled heads standing around me (who know more than me)...i had initially thought that the JE slips in would make a funny noise till they heated up, but the funny sound last for up to 20 minutes, then goes away, but can come back...im at a lost on this one...could it be a bearing that never seated? well, this is the first time ive ever done this and clearly dont know what the hell im doing...im humbled in your presence...at this point should i just pay another grand and have a VW shop rip it out and put it back togther? ive got to go get the thing tomorrow and try and get it back up a serious hill to another outfit that specializes in this sort of thing for Vw's and porsch's...when we did the c.r. we did after measuring the old, hairline fractured heads, which had more cc's cause of a bigger combustion shroud...the reason i dont know the exact cc's from the new stock was that, i did measure them with my chem stuff from school, but it went from 55 cc's with the old to 51 cc's with the new stock heads...so i figured that if i had 8 to 1 dead on with the 55 heads, going down to 51 would put me slightly below the 8:1 ratio...that was my line of thinking anyway right, wrong, or dumb...but you know what? you guys said something that scared the hell out of me...no, i did not measure the deck after all of this- no one told me too...and maybe thats where my screw up is at...so after reading your thoughts i could feasibly be sitting at 6:1...would that cause the engine to run terrible?

also, i very grateful for all our your time and input...can you keep checking back to this post occassionally for me...

so how does that sound? i take the van to a shop who can tear it apart again, and rebuild it right...well, better than myself...i dont want to spend the cash but i want this thing to run right...

teenytrout

[JohnConnolly]

Guess what? If you went from 8:1 with 55cc heads, and bolted on a set of 51cc heads, YOUR COMPRESSION WENT UP TO 8.4:1

Not down, it went up!

However, I still think there is something else wrong.

Your engine has WAY too much timing in it! Back it out to 6 degrees BTDC at idle. What plugs do you have in there?

TIP: adjust the valves YOURSELF. Pop both valve covers, and pop the distributor cap. Rotate the engine by hand until the ignition rotor is aiming at one of the plug wires. Follow THAT wire to the plug, and adjust the two valves on that cylinder. Repeat for all four, then put the covers and cap back on.

To adjust hydraulics, loosen the locknut, and back out the adjusting screw until you can spin the pushrod. SLOWLY tighten the adjusting screw in until the pushrod can't be spun (between a couple fingers). Tighten it one full turn, then tighten the locknut. Repeat for the other valve on that cylinder, and then move on to another one.

Drive it, and THEN deal with jetting issues. We need to know your ignition specifics and your jets (you never gave us idle jet sizes) if you want us to help.