Drove the ‘69 beetle to work this morning, parked, and discovered we had been leaving a bit of a trail.

Don’t quite see it in the cellphone pic? Here, this is under car after 2.5min…

Houston, we have a problem. After work the stain was just a bit larger, but the whole left side of the lower block and engine ancillaries was coated in fresh oil. I had checked the oil two nights ago, and it was just above the mark. Now? about 1.5qts down. When you consider the beetle has a stock oil capacity of 2.4 quarts…that’s pretty significant. Thankfully I have a 2 quart external sump attached to it!

I limped the car home, filling it up twice along the 45min drive, and the further we limped…the louder it got. The left side valves are rather loud, and it was leaking exhaust. The odd part is I think it’s leaking between the head and the cylinders…which would then explain the oil. The pushrod tubes are a pretty common place to leak, and if the head has come loose the pushrod tubes will no longer seal. Head’s don’t just ‘come loose’ though, so that’s a problem. The other potential cause of the oil leak is the oil-cooler seals. The oil-cooler is mounted on top of the block, hidden under the fan shrouding.

You might wonder why I chose to run the car, as opposed to tow it. The current engine, a stock 1600cc unit, is slated to be changed for a new 1776 with dual carbs this winter. I have most of another 1600 in my spare parts, including two brand new heads…so why tow when you can run? Besides, half the adventure is getting there! Whether its the oil cooler or the head, the motor has to come out.

Well, rolled it into the garage at 8pm tonight…

Basically you disconnect the air cleaner, accelerator cable, heat flap cables, fuel line, wiring, three cardboard tubes, one piece of engine tin and then remove one bolt and three nuts. Slide the engine off the input shaft, and drop it down.

And had the motor out by 10pm. Not too shabby for my second engine pull, considering I had to wait for a buddy to drive over to help me pull the motor off the jack. Dad says he gets ‘em out in 35min, so I have a long way to go! It would also help if I actually consulted my Bentley, would have remembered where the lower bolts were!

…now, in my haste to yank the engine tonight I did manage to forget one important step - drain the oil! Trevor, the buddy who drove over to help me for a moment, reminded me that there probably isn’t much left Hmmm…how to drain the oil? Answer - Hole saw:

Tomorrow evening/night I’ll start stripping it down to find the problem. I mean, I have to have it together by 6pm on Saturday to drive to the VW club xmas party!

-Dave

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 am and is filed under Random Thoughts, '69 Beetle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.