Any harm running the car on 3 piston

[sagaboy]

After servicing my dual port 1600, the #1 spark plug wire was not plug-in and was running the car on 3 piston for the last 2 weeks around town below 40 MPH, any harm done?

I didn't notice any performance difference driving the car on 3 piston, everything seems fine except for a wisp of white smoke during starting in the morning and a litter judder at low speed when slowing down, didn't even notice any loss in power. Strange that one can drive the car and not knowing it is running on 3 piston!

After putting the #1 plug wire back and going for a drive, I notice a significant increase in power and torque.

[Marc]

It seems unlikely that you were actually only running on 3 cylinders without noticing any loss of power (to put it in your terms, it should've been down on power by a minimum of 25%)...I suspect the plug wire was close enough to the plug that it was still arcing to it, at least until the time when you opened the hood.

If it's running fine now, there's no need to check the spark plug (sometimes they'll foul, but this one's apparently OK).
Do check that your oil hasn't become contaminated with gasoline.

[crvc]

I had a '74 squareback. Actually my dad had it but while he was at work and I was home from college I loaded everything into the back and drove it from Ft Carson, Colorado to Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Over 1000 miles. All the way with just three cylinders working. Twice while trying to climb hills on I-25 I quit and headed back but ultimately made the entire drive. On the hills I couldn't get it over 30mph but on the flats it got up to 55mph max. I didn't know much about VWs and nothing about squarebacks but eventually figured out it was a bad injector. Once I replaced that injector it was amazing how much power it had.

But during the next school break while driving it back to Colorado I fell asleep at the wheel and crashed it.

kevin

[Marc]

My `69 Beetle (my parents bought it for me brand-new in the fall of `68, trying to bribe me to be the first in the family to attend college) was repossessed by them when I dropped out, and it became my Dad's daily driver. I enlisted in the Navy and was on a Polaris sub based out of Guam; I was deep underwater when I got the "family-gram" from Dad that the Bug had dropped a cylinder. Soon as we returned to port, I rushed to get a HAM link and call him to see how bad the news was...as I recall, he said that it "still does 70MPH, it just takes longer to get there"
As it happened, I had left a good-running H5 1500SP out back in the chicken shed before I went in the Navy, and Dad was able to take that to a local independent VW shop for installation. That cheesecase motor managed to serve him well until I was able to come home and put in a decent engine....years later (amazingly, it still ran) I stuck it in my ex-wife's car to get her off my case and shortly after that, her car was stolen...best possible fate for an H5 IMO, karma is a bitch
That Bug still sits in my yard, it managed to log at least 450,000 miles before we took it off the road...just can't bring myself to crush it (too much emotional attachment, especially to the back seat).

[crvc]

Very few reasons for anyone to have an emotional attachment to the back seat of a bug. The obvious; in my case there wasn't enough room for my girlfriend and I to make whoopie effectively. So you must have stashed drugs under the seat, the only other reason for a bug's back seat.

In 1974 six months after buying that bug--a '65 with a hand crank sunroof--I wrecked it and had the engine put into a '65 van. MUCH more room for my girlfriend and I but the trade-off was the constant illegal searches by traffic cops. It was the original hippie wagon after all and it didn't help that I had a blond ponytail going halfway down my back.

kevin

[Marc]

These days I may as well not even have a back seat other than as a place to put luggage, it's challenging enough for me just to get into the front ...but take my word for it, when that car was new and I was an athlete with a 105-lb girlfriend some amazing gymnastic feats took place back there (at least 7 times a week) - none of which involved any type of drugs

[sagaboy]

My `69 Beetle (my parents bought it for me brand-new in the fall of `68, trying to bribe me to be the first in the family to attend college) was repossessed by them when I dropped out, and it became my Dad's daily driver. I enlisted in the Navy and was on a Polaris sub based out of Guam; I was deep underwater when I got the "family-gram" from Dad that the Bug had dropped a cylinder. Soon as we returned to port, I rushed to get a HAM link and call him to see how bad the news was...as I recall, he said that it "still does 70MPH, it just takes longer to get there" .....

In other words, in theory, with a dual port, it is possible to drive for a long long time on 3 piston if we cover-up (block) the port hole to prevent petrol entering the engine via the non-functioning piston.

[Marc]

...In other words, in theory, with a dual port, it is possible to drive for a long long time on 3 piston if we cover-up (block) the port hole to prevent petrol entering the engine via the non-functioning piston.

Those are indeed "other words" but I have no idea how you managed to infer that from any of the above. It would certainly be better than having fuel get in there. There are quite a few production engines that use a "selective-displacement" scheme to reduce fuel consumption, by shutting off fuel delivery to some cylinders, but IMO it would be folly to think that there wouldn't be consequences to operating a VW for "a long long time" on three.

[crvc]

In my case the injector had failed so it handled the drive from colorado to Louisiana without unburnt gas leaking into the crankcase.

kevin