Thanks to several of you who replied. Your suspicions were correct: the motor
had been driven hard (and hot). Piston skirts scored, cam had worn grooves,
cracked cylinder heads, and a baked in grime inside that smelled pretty bad.
Tearing the machine down and cleaning it up has been a blast. I've sent the
case to be cleaned, and am shopping for parts now. I'm a little shocked at how
much these air cooled suckers cost to rebuild...new heads, ~400 ea., cam ~180,
piston/cylinder set ~425....add up all the big an little stuff and I'm looking
at $2K easy. And I thought that since there were so many of these things alive
and kicking, that parts should be fairly common (and cheap).

Makes me wonder (here's a kook idea)...has anyone ever done a hybrid
conversion? If the bug air cooled engine were significantly cheaper to maintain
and has better mileage/emmissions...then it might be a cool idea to build an
aircooled hybrid. Bug motor powering an electic motor and battery bank.

Undoubtedly more expensive than simply rebuilding my motor...any thoughts out
there?

-Todd

--- ForestDweller <seattlesalamander@yahoo.com> wrote:
> So I just bought an '80 Vanagon Westfalia camper. PO#1 had receipts for
> roughly
> $3K worth of work and the car ran so smoothly that I figured I didn't even
> need
> to take it to the mechanic...I paid PO $2.8K, thinking that I had a great
> deal
> and she had a load off her back, and sailed off to emissions land (here in WA
> state, emissions testing are a part of life).
>
> Here's where it all goes bad. PO#1 had been, as she said, 'crooked' by her PO
> (PO#2). She had been delivered a van w/ a bad junkyard motor, leaking oil
> everywhere, that barely ran to the shop...So she (PO#1) had a different motor
> installed & clutch plate, among other things.
>
> With all that money spent, and the car running so well, I figure all I need
> to
> do is spend a few dollars...fail emissions a couple of times, get a waiver
> and
> I'm off to surf city. However, my emissions mechanic informs me that this too
> is a junkyard engine, and that my compression is so low (60/70/70/95 #'s)
> that
> this alone could have fried the catalytic converter (after market cat
> ~$150.00). Apparently, the rocker arm is frozen, caused by overheating?.
> Assuming I can get an emissions waiver, my emissions mechanic says I'm
> looking
> at a topend rebuild...(~$1500.00 for parts if I do it myself).
>
> Which leads to my question(s):
> 1. Previous mechanic that installed this junkyard turd claims that the
> compression 3mos ago was ~120#'s in all cylinders and that a seized rocker
> arm
> could be causing all this. He recommends pulling the rocker train and doing a
> leak down test..looking for a dropped valv seat/burnt piston prior to
> rebuilding engine. Logical? How is this done?
>
> 2. If I do perform a rebuild (my first major mechanical endeavor), my
> emissions
> mechanic suggests draining the oil, setting the motor on an old 50gal drum to
> work on it, using the exhaust system as a handle to lift it onto the drum,
> then
> taking this off when rebuilding. I've got a copy of John Muir's 'compleat
> idiot
> - 25th year aniversary edition' from the library...what else do I need?
> What's
> a good comfortable way to work on an engine? Where should I go for parts?
>
> -Todd
>
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