1967 VW Variant.

No spare motor. So more diligent inspection of the existing motor,
and I think I have it fixed now. Solenoid may be ok, and a good cleaning of the shaft to allow
free movement of the gear may be all thats needed.
Waiting on a battery to charge to test it before refitting.

Fingers crossed

Just for the record the starter gear was definitely sticking on the shaft.
Although I could move it, the solenoid did not have enough power to.

Good clean with WD 40 did the job. And its cranking nicely now.

Just inspected and cleaned the points and distributor cap.
All looks ok now.
But this car would never start with the positon of the ignition timing.
Its way too early

Its so far advanced I cannot get a pic down through the timing inspection hole.
Its firing about 40mm before it should. So its firing when the exhaust is closed,
and when the inlets are not fully closed. Probably backfiring up the manifold.

Its firing way too early. So I am going to do a cursory setting of TDC, and then half spoonful
of go juice down each manifold, and hit the starter.

I have a new set of bosch plugs that I will install, but leave in the existing points, at their existing gap, just to see was it this that caused the problem.

Vw points were notorious for moving, and if they did this changed the ignition timing.And this would never happen had the points hitting the cam been greased before fitting. But this was never done.

Most problems with moving vw points, was that they fully closed, then no spark, then no starting.

Just off for a cuppa now.:)

Well now that i have it running, i will keep it stock

Success.:p:p:p:p

Just waiting for a battery to charge.

Engine was running, with smoke everywhere from the oil put into the cylnders to
check for compression.

And of course a startup after 53 years non running is going to be hard on batteries.

I managed a startup vid which I will post later on, but its doubtful you will see me and John

through the smoke,:D

Starter motor was not great at the start as you know, and the continuous cranking has now
made the solenoid go off the deep end.
So....
I am putting the starter in for a rebuild tomorrow morning

And to bring you up to date on the position so far, and whats happening,
and what we found that possibly caused thsi car to be a non runner.

As you know there was spark at the plugs and points. So the next step was to
check the ignition timing to see where that was . As stated in earlier posts,
the timing was so far out it would never start.

So we attempted to reset the timing, but we could not revolve the distributor
far enough to accomodate this at all. Strange as the unit moved freely, but would not go
to where we needed it to go.
So we investigated further....

On early vw engines there were various distributors fitted, in short, some with a large vacuum canister
to change the advance/retard settings for the plug spark. Getting its vacuum signal from the carburretor.
There were basically 2 types of canister. Large and smaller body.

On closer inspection of the distributor body to see if there was any restriction reasons why we could
not reach the setting. We noticed that the vacuum body was clipping the distributor connection plate bolt
that holds the distributor to the engine case. Unless you knew about VW engines , this issue would be easliy
missed.And indeed it had been fitted with a large body unit, instead of a smaller one.

Solution was to remove the distributor, remove the large vacuum and replace it with a smaller one.
So distributor was taken off, but no replacement unit to hand.
Not wanting to go searching for one, we decided to take off the vacuum, and replace the distributor with out it.
And as we only wanted to fire the engine up, this would suffice.

Thats what we did, dissy on and cranked it.

Fired almost immediately, filled the place with smoke:D:D

Next plan is to fit the repaired starter, and work on getting a nicely running engine:)

And by the way, the "we" is myself and my brother John, who is also another VW nut, and between us we have 100 years joint experience of working on old volks. We both met alpha and assured him that we would get it running.

So we are over the first hurdle:P

Onwards and upwards.

Date stamp is from my old cam corder not set correctly.

Alpha can confirm the car, and the voices,:):)

John Hutton wrote: »

It's good, I was worried we'd see nothing till you got the cable, good save!

Might be easier to just record with the phone next time?

Great work.

Yes I think I will do that. I was going to leave it until I got the cable , but there is so much interest in this thread thanks to Alphas great work with his thread for the Cope Foundation and the motivation behind that.....I thought why wait, do it now:P

Igotadose wrote: »

All bow down to Kadman and his brother. We're so not worthy.

I think you should direct your admiration to

Alpha, his Mum, and Cope Foundation:):)

Beagslife wrote: »

I think with the pace of your progress this could be a very quick thread!!!

Well done and keep up the great work.

��

Not at all, its slowed up a bit because I am waiting for the rebuilt starter.

Tomorrow all going well.

I took the opportunity to take off the twin carbs, and clean them. I also

replaced the bent float and missing float spring that was not installed on the right hand carb

Inaccurate float levels can affect the normal running of the carb. From flooding chambers to fuel starvation. This is due to the main jet pick up tube, which is set well above the carb bottom, so that there is no major debris getting pulled into the small jet circuit.

Consequently if the fuel level falls below the pickup, there is no fuel getting into the circuit.