Aircooled VW South Africa

Okay, I have pulled the beetle engine out. I was told that it had a fanner tappet & was misfiring.
To cut a long story short, I'm just following orders.

Now that the engine is out, how easy is it strip out the cylinder heads. Do I have to mark the timing or something. I have worked on other cars, but they had a timing belt & marking etc.

What's the procedure, when removing the cylinder heads? Do you have to mark the push rods or something like that.

Excuse the igmorance. I have worked on my Nissan 200SX Engine before, but never on a beetle. So want to make sure I do it right before stripping.

With a pushrod engine there's no need to mark anything when doing a top-end stripdown. Removing heads is fairly obvious and reassembly is just the reverse of disassembly, but pay attention to the correct loosening and tightening sequence for head nuts.

Use the opportunity to clean the outside of your engine and all the tinwork really well. And replace all your fuel hoses.

Should the Head bolts be replaced instead of re-used. the left bank cylinder head had a loose head bolt lying on the inside cover.

o I have to remove the tappets seperatley, or do they come out with the cylinder heads?

A loose head bolt?

Wouldn't that explain the "tappet" noise?

you will have to pull out the tappets to get to the head studs. The studs do not need replacement but if you say one of them has been pulled, then you need to get it repaired. No sure if you can do that in place, but I am sure it can be done.
To pull out a cam follower, you need to strip the entire engine out, crank and all.
The cam is gear driven, so removing the heads wont affect that at all. It wont hurt to mark each pushrod so that it goes back to the same valve, but its not 100% required.
Before re-assembly, get yourself a copy of the torque sequence and follow it

Although, it was put back, the tappet noise was still there. We had a guy who tried to adjust the tappets, but he said that he could with on of them as it was at it's maximum. He adjusted the timing, but ever since he left, the beetle seems to be firing on all of one cylinder.

if there is one tappet that is beyond adjustment, remove the rockers and check the pushrod. If the pushrod is OK, check the rocker and adjuster, you might be lucky to find them worn badly (highly unlikely). You prob have a broken cam follower and need to tear the engine down completely. Happened to me once on a very steep cam profile, I'll try to find a pic so you can see what I mean....

OK, for me, everytime I adjusted the valves, I couldnt get one of them right. I even put in my Porsche adjuster to provide extra length but that also didnt help. Everytime I drove the car, one of the pushrods would pop out. Ended up having to do a complete rebuilb....

Good cam follower has the flat part on it....

Thanks for the advice guys. I will be pulling the heads of the motor this weekend. I'll take some pics when I get a chance.
Will follow your advice, & if there is anything you need me to check,let me know.

just take it step by step, check things as you go.
Get yourself a good manual (Heynes for eg) and work thru things with it. Take your time....

Check under technical ,diagrams, Chiltons manual, there should be something about the sequence to tighten the head nuts and so on......

At least its still firing on one cylinder
acvw engines are easy to work on youll see.. Just have some plasters and a seatcover handy... Makes things go smoother....