1968 1200cc Beetle

[Marc]

...Marc - you talked about the 0 BTDC distributors used on autosticks. I'm fairly certain that this was ONLY in the USA, since the Aussie and Brit references to 68 and 69 autosticks I've seen refer to timing being 7.5BTDC, similar to the manual cars...

Quite likely, the response to tighter USA emissions requirements was typically to retard timing at idle. `66/`67 vacuum-only distributors were set to 7.5°BTDC, `68-`70 (whether 4-speed vacuum-only or AutoStick SVDA) were 0°, and `71-up DVDA were 5°ATDC - the `74 SVDA was the only one in the US set to 7.5° since 1967.

Early 1200 heads (c1961/62) with the long rocker studs need looser valve lash (.008" intake, .012" exhaust has worked well for me). Those rocker studs are about 5" long, pass through the floor of the rockerbox, and are anchored halfway down the head - they can be seen/felt by looking/groping up from below between the pushrod tubes.

[jshbrgs07]

The other main thing is the number of holes in the tinware. I can see several in the fan shroud itself (the lower ones should have plastic clips in them which hold the spark plug wires) and there are holes of unknown purpose higher on the shroud too - I would be plugging them up to start with.

Have you checked the valve adjustment recently?

Thank you so much for your input and to marc as well, i will be working on the holes and the valve and give a feedback afterwards.

Will be replacing my jet to 120main as well, 122.5 seems too much. I hav a strong feeling it spews more than it can burn at that size.