type 3 in garage - partial mess

[squeakie]

it started and ran. still have an oil leak. another one. haha. keep trudging through.

[squeakie]

i just made a promise to myself to stop "talking cars" with people. i always end up offended. i have made this promise and broke it many times before. i just realized something (why i am typing right here), i can put my thoughts here in my very own build thread. it is only me talking to myself and if someone replies, i know it doesn't matter because you guys aren't real anyway. all just figments of my imagination. it'll be just like me talking to a computer - a really good one. as long as it doesn't offend anyone, i will share my thoughts here. i will keep it volkswagen related.

my dream is to have a roller cam in my veedub. in fact, it is very important to me. i don't know why and i don't know why i get so offended when someone replies with, "what? you don't know anything about roller cams."

[squeakie]

the battery i bought for my car... i bought the absolute cheapest battery i could find... $61 at menards. it will start my car once and that is it. then i have to wait 4 hours for it to charge back up. i thought i learned my lesson about cutting corners and going cheap.

[squeakie]

i am struggling a little with finding a good spot for my oil cooler. i bought one of them big ol' Derale oil coolers with fan. it is pretty nice, but probably a little too big. i am leaning towards putting it behind the engine on the driver's side and right next to the engine fan to body bellows. i will have to get creative with some brackets if i go this route.

https://goo.gl/photos/j9522nYJer4519gK6

https://goo.gl/photos/cavDrajnxdykJVFi6

do these links work? i sure hope so and if they do, i will keep doing it this way. way faster and easier for me (and they are full size for all of the gory detail).

[Piledriver]

Links work.

[Jadewombat]

OK, I'm going to be "that guy." Why do you plan to do the external oil cooler, etc.? Because of engine size or ?

I haven't seen many benefits to doing all that extra plumbing for street cars. It makes the engine run a lot harder because of the load you're creating. Which is easier, sucking honey out of a 2 foot straw (normal 3/16" ID soda straw diameter) or 6 feet of 1/2" ID hose? And the load created on the alternator to run that fan a lot of the time.

True that the T3 cooling system is not quite as good as the doghouse, but it's not horrible. Most extra cooling needs for aftermarket heads and bigger displacement (up to 2000cc) I've seen are pretty straightforward. You just clean up the fins on the heads to make sure no rough casting edges are left on there and more importantly that hole between the two intakes is open. No kidding, my friend had some CB heads and that area was completely blocked. We drilled redrilled them (just like stock heads are supposed to be) and it dropped the head temps. 30 degrees.

Do you have some initial temperatures of the oil/heads as the car is now?

[squeakie]

No, I sure don't have any temperature history. This is a brand-new engine. I built this engine back when I was planning to drive it to work everyday (180 mile round-trip). Now, my drive is only 110 miles round-trip, but the same amount of time. Anyway, the reason for the external cooler is because I went with an oil thermostat. The engine is a 2332 with circa 2002 CB 044 heads. This is the first time these heads have been inside a car. haha. I was not and still not ever worried about this thing overheating. I built this thing with the intention of running E85 from day one.

Which is easier, sucking honey out of a 2 foot straw (normal 3/16" ID soda straw diameter) or 6 feet of 1/2" ID hose?

This is a very good question! I asked my dad when I was really little why the intake valves were larger than the exhaust valves and he gave me that same example. I am not sure it applies to the oil system, though. The only part sucking (besides it being a volkswagen ) is the suction side of the pump which is identical to what came from the factory.

https://goo.gl/photos/maVJjrKFjr8w8ka17

[squeakie]

Links work.

thank you!

[Jadewombat]

Yeah, I hope I didn't come off as sounding condescending. It's just I dunno, I see so much stuff over the years people keep doing and wondering if it's all that necessary. Maybe it is, maybe not. Remember deck lid standoffs on bugs for street cars in the 1990s? Those things made the engine area so dirty it ran hotter far more than any extra cooling benefits.

I've built up 2L. engines with just two mods: a T4 oil cooler replacing the T1 in the doghouse and just cleaned up all the burrs off of everything and the engine would have normal head temps.

But along those lines I never understood why VW thought it was necessary to put an oil filter on the T4s, but not on the T1s. Why they never went to overhead cam, or aluminum cylinders, etc.

[Piledriver]

VW did actually put a filter on WBX and Mexican T1s, (via pump/filter combo) as well as hydraulic lifters...
But I'm with you, the stock oil cooler and even the factory pressure based "thermostat" setup work just fine unless you jack in an oversized oil pump and too thick oil.

I downsized my t4 oil cooler to t1 size for some ac compressor clutch clearance, oil temps are still not an issue in Dallas in summer...

I would add the external only if you can actually measure that the std setup isn't enough.

[squeakie]

Yeah, I hope I didn't come off as sounding condescending. It's just I dunno, I see so much stuff over the years people keep doing and wondering if it's all that necessary. Maybe it is, maybe not.

It's all good. I hope I didn't seem 'dooshy' with my reply. Yesterday was a little stressful. haha.

My real reason for running an external oil cooler (sorta what I hinted at previously) is not to have it just to have it - I really wanted an actual oil thermostat. I plan to drive this car daily and with it often being in single digits to minus temps in the winter time, I don't want to over cool the oil. And with running E85 and what ever oil is floating my boat at the time... you can see the conundrum.
I understand the factory pressure relief system. It works for what it was designed to do. I feel like I am stepping out beyond those parameters.

Now to fix this next oil leak. woohoo! Can I be so lucky that it is a loose fitting a third time?!?!?

[squeakie]

nope. not a loose fitting. it had been altered by me, though. i saw why i did it, but it appears now that i didn't need to do it. easy enough fix. just put some thread sealant on a new fitting and jammed it back in there. as soon as i get a new battery, we will test it again.

[squeakie]

tried to start my car yesterday. spent several hours flooding and clearing and drying spark plugs. haha. never did get it. going to try again today when i get home from work.

[squeakie]

https://goo.gl/photos/cGGE5qzWuJtD1VY28

https://goo.gl/photos/1rjQaWxxqBqxX1WCA

a little camshaft break-in action

[squeakie]

looking like it has to come apart... or rather sounds like it.
oh well. makes sense - got a good job so now my engine is broken. it all evens out.

https://youtu.be/skOlZMx9xyY