The Cal-look Lounge

OK, thought a general thread on ideas for keeping your motors cool might help us share some experiences. Here's some of my recent finds. More to follow shortly when the 2276 is finished...

I just had an interesting lesson in cylinder head temps and how they are affected by the spark plug lead not correctly fitting the cylinder head tin. Just bench ran a 1641 to break the cam in and I was monitoring the cylinder head temps on the outside of the tinware with an infra red heat gun, when I noticed that number 4 was running 40F hotter than the rest of the cylinders. I knew it wasn't a jetting issue as the motor was running the stock single carb. Anyway, kept checking the head temps and was scratching my head when I noticed that the plug lead wasn't fully home on Cyl 4 so air was leaking past the big rubber sealing grommet. Guess what? Fitted the lead properly and the head temp fell to that of the rest of the cylinders. It just goes to show how important a leak-free tinware setup is!

I am pressently working on building a 2276 for my Bay Bus tow vehicle and am using all genuine tinware, but I have modified the cylinder tin and other bits to make sure the tinware is as leak-free as possible.

Here's the tinware. It had a 4mm gap so was going allow a lot of hot air to rise in to the fanshroud...

(http://img110.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/05/15/dsc00188-4aipexxci.jpeg)

I then cut some 4 mm strip and tigged it on and ground the welds flush

(http://img107.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/05/15/dsc00195-4aipf5yg0.jpeg)

The front of the cylinder tin now has the crescent shape by the main bearing hardware welded...

(http://img701.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/05/15/dsc00198-4aipfb7bz.jpeg)

The back of the tin is now super-snug too!

(http://img107.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/05/15/dsc00199-4aipfgkyn.jpeg)

Cool runnings... hopefully

That is quite a bit of effort you took there to correct the problem, and I commend you! Most people wouldn't even bother.

Zach, the motor is going in a Bus, so every little helps. I will post some more pix of the other mods I am doing to the tinware etc.

Hi All Torque,
I can't quite see in your pics, but do your cylinder covers have the air-"tent" between the sparkplug cutouts?
Those are important in directing cooling air over spark plug areas and not letting cold air blast sneak through the center.
I slot the sheetmetal screw holes and trim that "tent" if covers are going on a motor with cylinder spacers so the tin can be shoved against case tightly. Good work on adding material.

I am anxious to see how Dean K's air ducts into engine compartment (from fenderwells) work.
Seems that Baja bugs and dune buggies always seem to run so cool, with that motor out in the cold ambient air, ask RACEHEAD... he went to power pulley, early 40hp fan, just to GET some oil temp with his 1914

Hi Jim. The cylinder tins are genuine VW and have the 'tents'. I didn't want to mess with them, so went for the welding option.

methanol  ;D sorry had to say it

Hey Jim, do you mean the air deflector  with tent? :)
i had to cut my tins quite a lot so i d be able to mount my manifolds, so the deflectors were cut out as well,
i m still trying to find a way to get them back in

You can see here what i had to cut to clear the manifolds when installing:
when installing, the manifolds just clear the tin, but then when they are bolted to the head the gap is sooo big...

I would get some new covers and buff the manifolds down with a belt sander.
My Scat manifolds (were) big and bulky so I buffed them down with belt sander, I had to open the mouths a little on tins but kept the vane.

thanks Jim,
i ll start buffing them too then!
i cut the tins nicely with a dremel, so welding the pieces on again is still possible :)
so if i understand correctly, you could keep most of the original opening?

I was just thinking the same thing - I think you might have gone abit too far there dude  :-\ :)

i might have gotten carried away  ;D,
but i saw some pics on the greenhearts blog, and the tins look similar....

Hmmmm looks like they have gone abit too far too  :-\ this is very interesting as Me and Gav (G77) have just spent AGES getting his cylinder head tins to fit after his engine rebuild which involved reduced deckheight and flycut heads AND new manifolds......

The problem was the manifolds would not sit all the down as those little "TENTS" were hitting the top fin - so after some carefull grinding and subtle bending we have a pair of tins that fit nice and tight to the case and still have the tents AND the manifolds FIT :)

I will try and do a photoshop pic to show you what we did  :)

thanks dude :)

you can't really compare that amount of clearance to what is needed for normal manifolds.
that motor has gusseted and welded manifolds...

(http://i26.tinypic.com/2hoh0dl.jpg)

(http://i26.tinypic.com/sfwffq.jpg)

(http://i29.tinypic.com/25p5nc9.jpg)

sorry for the blurry pic.
same motor,welded and extended tinware on a wide (2387,5.7 rod) engine
lots of attention to detail and tight fit. thanks Pete and Randy ;)

 To seal the gap you could make a little extra cover that goes over the manifolds and secure it with the manifold nuts...  ???

I used a piece of weatherstrip before when I had SF heads

(motor still cooked though)

those maniolfds remind me of a friend's pet boa  ;D

I found a nice, clean and lightweight air scoop and air hose off a few Mercedes that can be used to feed oil coolers mounted up high near trans.
1030900382 is the cold air scoop for M103 engine in W124 cars
6170940582 is cold air intake snorkel for OM617 5 cyl turbo diesels
together they should make a neat air snorkel with small oval scoop that can be located near driver's torsion housing (rear)

another intake hose that might work is the 928 110 272 04 hoses off the 4.5L 928 Porsche, but they're way more expensive.

 :D :D

I was also thinking that this weld job make me think to something animal.
Nice job indeed  ;)

Is that an Auto Linea case?
Would a mag case run cooler? Just a thought regarding the trhead title  ::)

I have heard that the mag cases run about 15 degrees warmer (oil temp).

From my experience thats the wrong way round.the ally cases run hotter.proberly due to the thickness of the material more than anything else

cheers richhie,uk

Oops. That's what I meant to say.

Ive got to lay off the drink! :P

One of my customers/friends found the aluminum cases have less windage passage-volume than the stock case, which lead to higher operating temps. He found manicuring the webbing in case helped cure that, along with puking breathers and oil seeps.

My 2165, aluminum case with DTM shroud and T4 cooler ran 20 to 30 F hotter than the mag case. I'm going for original tin and lower CR ( 8.5:1).

Matt

You could turn if off ! then it should be pretty cool  :o

 ;D

Little bit more work done recently to keep the motor from radiating heat upwards. The lower pulley tin can allow a lot of heat to rise if the clearancing of the oil return union to the engine case is not exactly tight. Rather than cut a hole for the oil union, I prefer to heat up the tinware with oxy-accetylene and put dome in the tin with judicious use of a ballpein hammer! It takes a lot less work than cutting a hole and keeps the tin intact 8)

(http://img701.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/06/03/dsc00048-4aq14gm4y.jpeg)

mate I just got a new breast plate - the old one had a massive hole around the union - then I carefully ground it back slowly and offered it back up, did that about 50 times until I had the hole just big enough to clear the union with no gaps.  If I had Acetylene it would have been better like yours.  Very nice touch.

Agreed dude - Nice Touch  :)

Also I must mention those Plug lead gromits - After reading this thread I realised I DID NOT have them fitted to my "Taylor 8mm" leads  :o and after fitting them and can deffinetly say they DO make a big diffenece - I ripped it down the M1 yesterday back from my mate Rob's (Bronze manx) and I did 90mph pretty much ALL the way and she was nice and cool when i pulled into the services - the heads seemed ALOT cooler and the filter felt like it does when I've been doin 70mph, Normally she doesn't like doing over 80mph for long periods but yesterday she was perfect :) and before everyone says it I KNOW I NEED SOME GUAGES ::) ;) :)

Thanks for the tip dude  :)

Hey Phil, if you fancy a oxy bashed one give me a shout. Will do it for free as long as the tinware is OG ;)

Hi Monkiboy. I was surprised at the amount of difference the grommets made too! It just shows that VW certainly new their onions 8)
I might have another couple of mods to post shortly as I am nearly finished with the motor.

Here's an interesting scenario for any of you running a Type 3 with any carb setup other than stock. I have recently fitted a set of DCNFs to a a 1641cc Type 3. Little bit of headwork, stock valves and a 110 cam. Pretty basic, but the motor ran hot and the fuel started to boil in the carbs. After ten minutes the car was undrivable. It took a while to work out just what was going on, but I got there in the end. You see the problem is that there is a lot of radiating heat in a Type 3 engine bay with a header type exhaust. VW new about the radiating heat with the stock exhaust so they pulled the air for the carbs from outside the engine bay.
Now when you fit aftermarket carbs the motor sucks in hot radiating air. The air goes in and out through the exhaust and kind of recycles. You start to get a compounding heat problem and before you know it the carbs can get so hot (as was my case) and the fuel actually boils! >:(
We combatted this problem by mounting a heater fan from a Bay Window Bus with a Type 4 motor. You know the fan - it sits right there in the engine bay. It has a really good cfm.
Anyway, we mounted this fan to the left of the gearbox and then routed two ducts from the fan to the rear tinware. We cut two holes and fed the ducts straight to the carbs. One either side.
It worked an absolute treat - the carbs are now stone cold after a good thrash and the engine runs as cool as stock. Again folks, VW knew what they were doing. If you ever have any doubts, check out what the factory did and copy it as close as possible.

With my Fastback project I recently aborted, I was planning on adding another factory air inlet to the left side of the engine compartment, and feeding each DCNF independently with them. Maybe another time ::)

been thinking something similar... but i wanted to have an inlet just next to the carbs directly into the airboxes at the sides where the air enters. but your idea looks a lot more factory.