2.0 KCC 356 Speedster - www.356speedster.co.za

[flatfourfan]

so....................8 odd months of planning and tinkering and then going whole hog came down to this.

Pitched up at Willems to hear that I still have a water leak, but it is so damn small, I can at least do my testing now on the car and then sort it out next year. We'll remove the whole pipe from the car as to do that is much easier than doing it on the car. It'll also give me time to have some run in time and then drain the system again and fill it up fresh. The radiator fan cowling also decided to smash into a million pieces shortly before I arrived. I put this down to sitting in a scrap yard exposed to the elements for 12 odd years. I was planning on fitting a slim line fan anyway as I want to move my radiator way back so that I can fit my spare wheel in the front of the car, this'll only be done in the new year though.

After putting in the last of the oil, the time had come to fire her up and take her out.

We had decided that I'd drive the speedster and Willem would follow me in the double cab. The first drive would be back to my house which is about 8 km or so away. Besides the moving it around in and out the garage and a few trips to the bottom of the road.......30m or so, she's pretty much remained un-tested. Willem was confident and he said the build was done right and the car cools the way that it should.

Some points.

1) Engine - She sure as hell has some power. I was feathering the throttle most of the way and the first thing that you notice is torque. I could potter along at 60 in 4th and push my foot down and she'd launch. I forgot how much better throttle response is with EFI. This car was built as a cruiser and damn, she does that so well. The one thing that I noticed was that she runs damn quiet, I mean super quiet. When she's idling, you can't really hear it. The truck silencer kills it all. I may be looking at changing this as I think that I do want an exhaust burble. I really need to get my tach fitted as I kept on tapping the throttle pedal to hear if she was still idling or not.

2) Cooling - This is one thing that I was really worried about as I had mixed and matched cooling systems from 3 different makes of cars and also used a radiator set-up that has not been done locally yet. The Civic dual core unit was fitted because it was small and fit in the nose like a dream. I was however worried that I was going to have issues with cooling while the car was running as I doubted that I didn't have enough cool air coming in as the actual opening is about 400mm x 50mm. I shouldn't have worried though. The car came up to operating temps pretty quick, (2 minutes or so) and then proceeded to stay rock solid at 82 degrees the whole way home. I was in traffic a few times at a few robots and the temp gauge crept to 84 degrees, but didn't go any higher. Once I was moving again, it came down to 82 and stayed there. I was mainly worried about moving temps, nice to know it's sorted though.

3) Brakes - They actually felt good. I will have to adjust them up a bit as they haven't been done in ages. But stock brakes have no issue reeling in this car. The speedster only weighs in at 740kgs though.

4) Misc - The engine mounts are 100% toasted, I get tonnes of vibration through the body of the car. So this means that the upgrade to the V8 mounts next year will be done sooner as well as fitting the cross member. The vibration comes in around 4k rpm and is annoying as hell.

This weekend I'll be making the last few changes to the scoop up front as well as the bumper and mounts and try to get everything back to normal looking and also to clean the car as it hasn't had a decent wash in about 8 months. I also have to start fabbing the air intake and air box set-up. I do first have to clean out the rats mess of wiring behind the engine and that'll take me a few weekends to do on it's own.

But at least I can drive it and enjoy it while fine tuning. Will snap some pictures after the weekend.

[splitfan]

Well done Gary ! Its all worth it in the end ! You might consider using 4 cyl Passat mounts (can be found @ Goldwagen) had the same issue with vibrations on my Syncro with 2.0 motor and the Passat mounts sorted it out 100% (althoug my 2.0 uses a crossmember with the mounts)

[flatfourfan]

Cheers bud......We're going to tackle the cross member in the new year, we already have a design based on the unit that GILO used to sell. Willem's using V8 mounts on his kombi and it's a cheap mod to do.

[flatfourfan]

So some pics.



I was begining to think that I'd have to drop the back of the car as it was standing way too high, but with the extra weight out back, it's dropped it at least another 50mm, so she'll stay like this for a while until I'm ready to do the IRS swap. You can also see from normal height that you can't make out the scoop in the nose. You can only notice it when you get low.





The size of the scoop.





Once this has been painted black like the rest of the scoop, you won't notice anything. It also sits quite far back. I have driven over kerbs, speedbumps and I have yet to hit anything with it. Once the final incarnation of the scoop is on with the new fan, it'll sit so far back that even getting flat down on the ground won't reveal anything.

I also picked up a new starter from a connection of mine. I ended up buying new with a year guarantee.

A final pic (bad pic) to show where my temp gauge sits. I'm still going to wire in a light to tell me when the fan is on that'll be down here as well. When sitting in the car, this gauge is at the perfect height for the driver to see.



Fitting the starter tonight and then I'm going to cover her up for the new year as I'm still working 9-5.

[beetlefanatic]

Well done Gary ! Its all worth it in the end ! You might consider using 4 cyl Passat mounts (can be found @ Goldwagen) had the same issue with vibrations on my Syncro with 2.0 motor and the Passat mounts sorted it out 100% (althoug my 2.0 uses a crossmember with the mounts)

Had the same issues on my Syncro and changed to the Passat mounts. End of vibration problems. They are also available from Midas. Around R150 for the 2 IIRC

[flatfourfan]

aaaaaah, cheers for that info, yup, heard from a few guys this week that the passat mounts are the way to go. I have some stuff to think about first as the vibrations have pretty much gone, so I think that something somwehere has now settled. But it's still got to be done anyway.

Need to replace the fan this weekend as well as trace a bad ground on my lights. Besides that I'm in it all the time. I'm having some noise on my starter ring gear combo, so she needs to get up on a lift to see if there are any issues. Besides that, rock solid at 82 degrees and freaking pulls HARD.

My exhaust though.......she's too quiet.

[flatfourfan]

Well Last week I was driving it all the time. With the exception of the really small water leak out back, the car was going great. I drove it on a few days where the outside temps were over 34 degrees and yet the car stayed rock solid on 86-88. I drove it to work last week Friday and damn, she's small, parked next to a Honda Jazz she looks like a noddy car.



Now I always knew that I had an issue with the starter/ ring gear for some or other reason and now it sounds as if it's slipping when it starts. So this weekend will be time to pull the motor to do some inspection, we have a spare flywheel from another 2.0 conversion that we can use if there is an issue with the one that is on my car. If the issue is the ring gear, then it'll be me visiting GILO next week as this car has maybe 30 starts on it since we did the conversion and they advertise that this kit works 100% with a stock beetle starter and beetle gearbox.

We're going to use this opportunity to do the cam belt and tensioner change as well oil seals on the cam gear and also remove the oil cooler as I have the blank off plate that'll allow me to clean up what's going on down there and also allow me to move the last of the wiring harness which will clean up the last of the engine bay.

I also picked up my SP steering wheel last night that will be dropped off an a friends engineering works this weekend so that he can make some mods for me before I make some final changes to it.

I'm so itching to do the last of the body mods on the car.

[beetlefanatic]

Gary,
I also had issues on my 1st conversion with the ring gear getting eaten by the starter. After the 2nd conversion I realised what the problem was and modified 1st to be the same. On mine it was the small shim plate between the crank and flywheel that was missing. This just moves the flywheel a bit closer to the starter. Mine was aggrivated by the starter bolt rattling loose, but since I replaced the shim and tightened the bolts, I have had no more issues. It also sounds much healthier when the starter engages.

Hope this helps.

BTW Gilo replaced my ring gear for R610. Took all of 5min to get my flywheel back.

[flatfourfan]

interesting......I'll be sure to check for that. What's the size on that shim? Does it really make that much difference? I was thinking more along the lines of the flywheel that was faulty. I sure hope that this is an easy fix. Is the shim an extra or is it on the motor already?

Cheers for the info.

[beetlefanatic]

Both my import motors still had either the torque converter & flywheel or just the flywheel fitted and the shim was between the crank and flywheel.

It is reasonably thin but it made a difference on both conversions. Worth a try but also check for other obvious problems like my top starter bolt that used to work itself loose. The starter just needs to be a small bit out of alignment and it buggers up the ring gear chop chop.

[flatfourfan]

So tear down time........a bit of PT to remove the exhaust as well as the exhaust manifold, intake manifold etc, but I was ready to pull the engine out in about 2 hours, now that I've done it once, I'm sure that I could have the engine stripped for removal in about 30 minutes next time. Thanks to using the quick plug from the original harness, I was able to just disconnect the wiring with 1 clip. Bonus. Drain the water as well as remove one of the water pipes as I had to get the leak sorted. Willem will reweld this one this week so that I can re-fit it back into the speedster this weekend, he's also going to shorten the 1 upright pipe so that I get rid of the extra pipework that's in the engine bay. Clean up time.

Ass up again.



Box of everything that came off the car. Not that much really.



This gives you an idea of the size of my rear silencer and tip........yeah it's big alright.



Everything off on the one side.


So to the flywheel.......



You can only JUST see it here, but the damage is there. The chamfer/ bevel is on the one side has taken a knock and works its way to a straight gear once the starter has aligned itself. Smart work as Willems old flywheel from Gilo, doesn't have this, obviously to make start up easier. Plus.............I noticed when the flywheel came off that the shim wasn't there.....................moer..You can also see on the starter that the engagement marks are barely halfway, on my stock beetle engine, my starter shows marks almost to 3/4 of the way on the gear. Plus it you can see that one ear on one of the mounting holes has a crack in. I think that the mixture of a few small things has added up to a big problem.



Plan of action this week is to get to GILO and have them put on a new ring gear as well as drop of the starter at a welder who can fix the cracked eye. I should hopefully get everything sorted this week so that I can get the car back together on Saterday and get her home. GILO reckon that the tolerances are so small for this conversion and that any small error will result in the ring gear being shredded as you can see with mine. School fees......

[flatfourfan]

Just had a nice long chat with GILO..........that spacer......shouldn't be on...They said if it was supposed to be on, then it would be in the kit. The spacer is just a left over from when the car was automatic.

I'm popping over on Thursday to have a chat with the guy, but it seems that there may be an issue with the ring gear itself as it appears to have pulled away from the flywheel in a spot..........stay tuned.

[flatfourfan]

Update time:

Firstly my visit to GILO. Really nice guy, we chatted for a good hour about conversions in general, midget racing and my issues. We believe that the 1 item that's giving issues, seems to be the starter, GILO reckons that the reduction style starter that was sold to me isn't right and after testing it, he said that it's way too noisy. So that's got to go back, internally its noisy as hell.

They flipped the ring gear for me as one tooth had a bit of a knick, they said that it won't make a difference, but I was there, so they did it while I waited, no charge. We had a long chat and he said that the kit is a very simple set up with the 2.0 and that there are no spacers that are needed for the flywheel whatsoever. So BF, I don't think that this is your issue.

Was at Willems nice and early and had the car up, water pipe back in as well as having all the cam belt gears off so that we could replace all the oil seals, nice easy job and the oil seals that were on there looked brand new. Cam belt as well as the tensioner was also done seeing that we had the whole engine out at this stage. We also had the adapter off to check if everything was in place and the two bushes on the engine were there, so we knew that it was centered properly. We drilled out the threaded section on the lower mount point for the adapter so that we could put the lower mounting bolt on and then the clutch and flywheel went back on.



The water pipe went in, in about 20 seconds, nice and easy when there's no engine in there, this has been re-welded as we found a small leak line where it seems that the water pipe did not meet too well. We shortened the rear upright on the pipe and flipped the water temp sensor to the back, so that we can get my air intake pipe through the firewall to the air box. Like I said all a learning process and everyday is a school day.





Willem also did the machine work on my intake manifold for the sensor, I like his work........nice and neat. So now I can get focused and refit the exhaust and intake and put everything back and get her out.



By the end of the day, we had the engine back in and I had to bail early as we're house hunting at the moment and I had some appointments set up.

[beetlefanatic]

Hope yours is right now, but on mine the spacer definitely made a difference. Have not had issues since.

[flatfourfan]

Well we cranked it over on saterday just to check and it cranked nice and smooth with a loaner starter.