Engine tin :

Since the engine is outside of the car, I decided to give it a fresh look as well.
I started by sandblasting all the engine tin (why the hell did I wait so long to build myself a sandblasting cabinet?!), then brought everything to the auto body shop a for a shiny coat of black paint :
There you go! That will look waaaaay better now!

Cylinders heads :

I was a bit concerned by one spark plug threads (cylinder #3), so I took off the head to have a closer look... In the end it only needed a tap to get it straight.
It was the opportunity for me to take the head (35.5/32 DP) apart, to give a thorough cleaning to the channels and valves, and check everything... And I did the same with the other head as well for good measure. Everything's fine, no cracks, no bad threads... A good cleaning and it'll go back on the engine.

Exhaust :

It was the right time as well to get rid of the hideous exhaust that was on Kitty since I bought it, and replace it with a 38mm CSP Python, along with its specific heat boxes. That's quite a pricy baby there, but a really nicely made one. And with its merged design, I should get a nice lambda reading. Well, hopefully!
It's a bit overkill on my little 1600cc, but at least Ill be prepared if I ever decided to go bigger! (spoilers alert!) I take this opportunity to give a tip of my hat to the Customers Service of CSP : I did not receive the correct muffler for my Ghia, so they exchanged it for me (twice!), never asking me for a single dime, sending me directly a shipping company to retrieve the incorrect one, all of the above just sending them an email.
That's quite a common customer experience in the US, but here in Europe it's usually not that smooth. Great job guys, some shops down here in France should learn from you!

Putting it back together and... my Major Screw Up :

I put back the engine in the car for a first start with the Megasquirt and its wasted spark ignition (distributorless), but without the injection, still with the carburetors, just to validate the setup.
A funnel hooked to the ceiling and some rubber hose will provide the fuel to the system... And here it comes, my Major Screw Up.
The Class 1 mistake.
Like, 8 on the Richter Scale of Blunders.
I forgot to remove the distributor drive shaft..

So upon start-up, it went up a little bit, till it went out of its bottom housing, so it tilted a bit, seized up into the case and machined the drive pinion on the crankshaft, sending bronze shavings all over the case...
The engine has probably not run more than 8 seconds, but it's too late, back to square one, I have to take it out again, open the carter and clean everything!
I'll remember this one for a long time... Excuse my french, but F*CK! Round of applause for the 2013 Screw Up of the Year! And simultaneously, stretching my knees articulations to give myself a couple of kicks in the butt.
Argh, I can't believe I was just moment away from being able to drive it! Grrrrr!!!
Still, the good new is, it started perfectly, so at least my ignition setup is validated! (come on, let me have this good news!)

Ok, so, i just have to open it, clean everything, throw in a set of main bearings just to be sure, an close it back, right? Ts'gonna be easy, ain't it? Imma right? Uh?

But nothing's ever that simple... That would be too simple.

Opening the engine :

I can't avoid the usual set of nasty surprises : just by removing the flywheel I find a nice oil leak at the crank seal...
Next, on the crankshaft itself I find heavy bluing marks, which I really not like. Upon inquiry, it might just be the result of the machining process of the journals, but still, I'm not too keen on putting it back like that... Anyway, moving on.
The lifters are totally worn out... Great...
Needless to say, the camshaft looks the same. Now that's a good start, right?...
Next, I take out my metrology set to see where we're at... A couple of micrometers, a bore gauge, calipers, a small surface plate, V blocks, magnetic stands, telescopic feeler gauges, Plastigauge, depth gauge, gauge blocks set, I got myself reasonably equipped over time, which gives me some autonomy when it comes to controlling my parts.
These are quite pricey toys, but keeping an eye on eBay and the adds on specialized forums helps finding bargains!
The crankshaft is fist on the line...
Bam, it keeps getting better : the out-of-round is 0.07mm! Volkswagen gave a factory tolerance of 0.02mm max, it's already way off! Next, I measure its main journals : they're OK, still in standard size (a bit too much out-of-round on #3, I'll have to double check to make sure).

• Main journal 1 : 54.988 / 54.985 / 54.988
• Main journal 2 : 54.980 / 54.980 / 54.980
• Main journal 3 : 54.988 / 54.985 / 54.983
• Main journal 4 : 39.994 / 39.993 / 39.993

Well... Let's say that it's salvageable through grinding... Meh, I'm not to happy with that solution.

Next comes the time to check the case... I fetch the bore gauge, and then, you get a laugh :

• Palier 1 : 66.02 / 66.03 / 66.04
• Palier 2 : 65.51 / 65.51 / 65.49
• Palier 3 : 65.49 / 65.49 / 65.50
• Palier 4 : 50.57 / 50.58 / 50.57

Yup. The main bearing #1, on the flywheel side, is in its last machined dimension : -1mm (confirmed with the markings on the bearing itself : "KolbenSchmidt EXT 1mm, INT STD"), while the other are machined at -0.5mm!
What the Hell?? Someone felt asleep on the mill at VW South Africa??

All things considered at this point, I reckon it's finally a good thing that I opened my engine... OK, it used to work great, but it might very well not have done so for much longer.
So, plan B it is.

Years ago I bought an AS41 case/crank set from my friend Dangerous, as I had the project to build myself a bigger engine...

It might very be time to do so, don't you think?!

Precisely 25 years ago today, on November 23^rd 1988, was put into circulation my daily driver, aka "Krapo Bleu"! (that would translate as "Blue Toad")
I thought it was the perfect time for a small tribute, to celebrate its quarter-of-a-century, including 16 years (and 120.000km) at my service : I bought that car in august 1997 for a whopping 23.000 Francs (around 3500 €)!

My "old friend" as I call her, is a Golf (it might be a "Rabbit" in your country) Mk.2, a limited edition created in 1988 to celebrate the production of the 10 millionth Golf, and named for the occasion "10 Millionen" (but renamed "Champ" for the French market, go figure)...
It featured specific rims, paint color, blue tainted windows and upholstery, that's quite a rare model! I recently managed to get my hands on the original brochure available at the time in the german concessions (collector!) :
The Golf went a long way since then, as the 30 millionth was produced last June!
I really did everything this one, and I transported just about anything with it! It occasionally suffered a bit (I drove with low oil and/or water levels, without the water tank cap on, overloaded to the point the tires rubed in the fenders...), it made *me* suffer as well (interior radiator exploding and sending boiling water on my feet, clogged rain water drain holes getting a good 8 inches of water in the car, etc...), it sometimes got bumped into (along the years I had to fix 2 fenders, 2 doors, a bumper...), and it had to deal with the weather for 16 years (never slept into a garage), but in the end it has always been faithful and was always there for me! (well, almost always!) I made some modifications to her, lowered it by 40mm with Apex springs, and installed Bilstein B4 shock absorbers (I rode adjustable Red Koni Sports for a long while, they're efficient but way too hard).
The original, model-specific 14" wheels were badly corroded, so I replaced them with a set of 15" ATS Cup (found brand new on eBay Germany, with their original VW/TÜV certification papers!), mounted on Yokohama Parada 195/50/15 (great tires, and affordable with that! I highly recommend them!). It has quite a impressive road handling capabilities!
I can't imagine parting ways with that old thing anytime soon... You get pretty attached to these buggers!
But well, it's getting old, I'll need to plan for a coat of paint one day or another... And if one of you had a spare 1.8l engine (carb 90hp) with not too many kilometers on it, I'm interested!

Happy Birthday Blue Toad!

In order to switch to fuel injection, you obviously need quite a bunch of specific parts... Here's what I'm using!

Intake :

On the intake side, I'm using parts from the 1600i engines that were installed on the last Mexican Beetles : complete intake manifold/plenum, throttle body, and alternator stand. (thanks Laurent!)
A thorough cleaning (beadblasting or ultrasound bath, depending on the parts), a couple of new gaskets, and it's ready to go!
I've ordered a few new parts directly from Mexico (fuel rails, manifold boots and injector gaskets), via a vendor on TheSamba (Antonio Trejo, very good contact!). On the other hand I'm not gonna use the original fuel pump, regulator, injector or ECU from the Mex beetle : technology has progressed a lot since then, let's use something more up-to-date!

Injectors :

The original Mex injector were "EV1", an old generation of injectors, which output flow looks like one of a supersoaker water gun (single hole output)... I wanted to switch to EV6 (multiple holes output) to get a better air-fuel mix (see this video to understand the flow between these two generations).
Not that easy to find from smaller engines. Finally, I ended up adapting injectors from a Citroën Saxo VTR (Bosch ref.0280155794, 135cc @3bar) which look pretty good to me, and you can find used ones for cheap. I lathe them down a bit to adjust'em, and I can install them via a small adapter (see here).

Fuel System:

The injection pump is a Walbro, weel known brand : GSL391 model, 190l/h, way more than necessary for my small 1600.

The mandatory fuel pressure regulator is a cheap generic model (40€ from VA MotorSports, or on eBay UK). I have friends who use it on a daily basis without any issue, but I'll keep an eye on it nonetheless...

I wanted to avoid having to drill/weld my fuel tank for the return line, so I went for a 1 liter surge tank (swirl pot), installed right below my fuel tank, and gravity fed (found on eBay UK at Demon Motorsports, for something like 40€). It should avoid the pump from sucking air in sharp turns when fuel tank level is getting low. Well I guess I'll see how it turns out in driving conditions...

I've ordered all the N-6 fittings, and the high-pressure fuel filter on eBay UK, from Torques UK : nice prices (well, compared to others, 'cuz these fittings will keep costing you an arm and a leg at the end!), fast delivery, and a very complete offer. Keep that address. I'll detail the fuel system installation in the dedicated post later.

TDC sensor :

One of the tricky points of the whole install is the having an accurate, reliable (and possibly stealth) TCD sensor.
I went with TheDubShop's solution (excellent contact with Mario Velotta), with the damper pulley (Black Equalizer 2.6kg/5.5lb) that I got balanced (Feller Service). It's installed with a longer screw from Gene Berg.
The VR sensor is tightly bolted on the case, hidden behind the pulley, you just need to drill a hole in the tin for the sensor to peek through. Pretty clean solution...
I just replaced the original connector with a more widely, waterproof model : it connects on the shielded cable running to the MS box. Before I went on and install the pulley on the engine, I wanted to make sure everything worked fine, test the sensitivity of the sensor, its wiring, etc... So I mounted the pulley and sensor on my lathe to give it a spin, via a DB37 I made for this purpose, with only power and sensor input welded on (and yes, I'm listening to BBC News in my garage!) : Result : everything works just fine, I get a clean reading from 30 RPM, even with several millimeters between the toothed wheel and the sensor. Ready o go on the engine!

O2 sensor :

To be able to control my air/fuel ratio, and properly tune the VE tables on my MS, I install a wideband O2 sensor : Innovate LC1, ith its tach below the dashboard to keep an eye on it. The electronic box of the LC1 will go in the engine compartment, inside the right fender. First tests are pretty positive, I just hope it's stay like that since I've recently read many bad feedbacks from users of this products.

Ignition :

My ignition will rely on a dual-coil (wasted spark), directly controled by the MS : no Ford EDIS module in the middle, so that I can control the Dwell from my MS... And more important, no more distributor!
I use a Ford dual coil (originally installed in Fiesta/Escort models, ref. Bosch F000ZS0212), but it needs specific clips to fit the wires on it... So I make a set of lead wires by taking a set of clips from Ford Fiesta wires, and grafting them on a VW Taylor 8mm set of wires.
Be extra carefull when taking apart the Ford clips, they're pretty fragile... I broke one, but managed to silver-weld it back together. Finally, to install the dual coil on the engine, I needed a proper stand : a couple of aluminum scrap, and here you go... Too much?
Yep, maybe, but I like it! I made the machine-turning finish with the template I made a few month ago for the lathe, so it did not take more than a couple of minutes to achieve.

The spark plugs will now be NGK models, spark gap set at 0.8mm, but I should be able to push it a bit more : since the Dwell is doubled with the dual coil, I get a big fat spark!

That's it for the hardware... Now let's install/plug all of that in the car!

The "brain" of all the setup is a Megasquirt : I went with the MS2 with a v.3 board, i.e. with standard components, as opposed to the V.3.57 which is provided fully assembled with SMD components.

For those of you who don't know about it, the Megasquirt is an Engine Control Unit (ECU) able to deal with almost everything you can imagine : engines from 1 up to 12 cylinders, naturally aspirated or supercharged, staged/semi-sequential/full-sequential injection, wasted spark or sequential ignition, Dwell, NOS, lambda, water injection, additional air valve, etc... Obviously I'll use only a slimited set of these options.
The ECU is tuned with a PC computer, via a dedicated software (details to come in the "software" section). You can make modifications live to your engine setup, without even having to shut it down!

The Megasquirt takes in different inputs from sensors on the engine :

• Crank/TDC position sensor (VR sensor)
• Manifold Air Pressure (MAP)
• Throttle Position Sensor (TPS)
• Air Intake Temperature (IAT)
• Coolant Temperature (CLT)
• Lambda/Air Fuel Ratio (AFR)

Depending on these data the MS manages the engine : fuel pump, injectors, ignition, idle valve... And maybe a couple more on my setup!

I bought the ECU from DIYAutoTune as a DIY kit. Not that difficult if you can handle a soldering iron (well, get a proper temperature-controlled soldering station, and a good magnifying lamp), but it still took me 12 hours to complete it! To be fair, it can be done in much less time than that, but I was doing it in parallel with a freind whom I had to micro-manage (his first PCB soldering experience! Come on Franck, you gotta install your MS now!). I guess this can be done in less than 6 hours ; the kit is very well made, each and every component is labelled in its own individual plastic bag, you just have to follow the build manual.
I strongly believe it is recommended to assemble/solder your Megasquirt yourself, not only for financial reasons, but it helps a lot to understand how everything works together!

I've made a couple of modification to the standard design (everything is very well documented for that purpose) of my Megasquirt : I've flashed the firmware to MSExtra (more options), I've added a transistor to control the idle valve (additional air, the original 1600i on the Mexico beetles had one), and I've wired two outputs for the wasted spark ignition coil. I've installed the two transistors controlling the ignition coil in a dedicated box (Spark Box), bolted below the MS. It makes their cooling a bit better, limits the interferences, and prevents overpopulation inside the MS box (it's already pretty crowded in there!). Well, that's just my opinion...
In the very same spark box I install the three diodes that allow me to extract a proper signal for my tachometer (Tach Output).
The whole thing is then installed in the car, below the back seat, on the driver's side, on a set of silent-blocs. OK, electronics, check... Now, let's connect it to the engine, right?

The one big modification on Kitty is its conversion to FUEL INJECTION!

Most of the VW community sees that as some sort of blasphemy, but come on, you gotta live with the times : fuel injection offers easy driving, the engine is available at any RPM, increased mileage, reduced pollution, no more carburetors that you got to adjust after 500km... Same goes for the ignition, which I intend to control with the same control unit as for the injection...
So, after test-driving Laurent's 1303 (check here : 1303.skynetblogs.be), I was convinced. And I went for some parts hunting!

For those of you interested by this setup, I'll go through the differetn modifications in full details during the next days/weeks, explaining the technical choices I've made :

• Electronics

• Hardware

• Electricity

• Fuel system

• Software

• Engine

But before I even started installing anything, I first wanted to have a clean engine compartment - which was in dire need of TLC. I first tried ordering a firewall/tarboard insulation kit from West Coast Metrics (via Slide Perf) : really nice product, but I wasn't satisfied with the final aspect.
So I finally went the hard way to remove all traces of glue : 6 hours of work with 5 liters of aceton (heavy duty gloves and gas mask mandatory, this produces some nasty fumes!)... But at least, it's finally clean So, be get ready for a series of quite technical articles!
To be continued... Real soon!