Father & Son Build - VW 1600 Long Block Assembly

Sam and Nathan assemble another top end but this time it is on Nate's first complete engine build. They start by installing a full flow oil pump and cover, and finish up by snapping on vented valve covers.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Sam, and I'm Nick, and we're going to get back to work on this.

My apologies for the last video: A, it's long; B, uh, like usual, I messed up building a short block again. But as you can see, we've got it back together. A, B, C, I don't know. I also, when I dropped that camera at some point, smudged the lens on that camera. That's one thing I'm going to check from now on out is to make certain that my lenses are both clean and clear. And now we're going to get to work on putting in the oil pump, which is a flat cam oil pump for a full flow because I full flowed this engine case. Uh, I did it by hand, no machine shop, no fancy drill presses, no CNC machines. I just did it by hand. I ground down the case, drilled out the plug, pulled out the plug, drilled out the port, tapped the port, and now I can put in an oil fitting for our return line from our oil pump, which is what we're going to put in now.

We've got an oil pump gasket in place with some gasgacinch. When we realize that our oil pump thickness plus our cover thickness doesn't allow us to get on a nut, so we're going to remedy that right now by backing our studs out ever so slightly, 2, 13 mm. Yep, that's good.

Let's just go on with the nyloc cuz I know that's a 13. There and tighten this guy onto it and then back that stud out a little bit. M, all right, and that should be ample enough. Boom. Yeah, looks basically even. All right, good, good.

All right, we got three nuts ready to go back in, gasgacinch still tacky enough. Yep. Oh, I just sprayed this break cleaner, so my hands are icky and sticky and whatnot, and brake clean. Yeah, clean as brakes. Remember, just rock it; that is how I did. I just put force on it and then, yeah, don't just rock it. There we go, beautiful.

All right, gears. You want gears? Yeah, give me all the gears. That does look like gears should be right there. There we go, lined up with a cam, mhm. And what's that dot for on there, to make sure that it goes out? See the dots, that's all it matters. M, very thin coat of gasgacinch. I'll put this on cuz it's extra sticky. You want to give a shot of assembly lube inside those gears? Oh, sure.

Pump cover in place, put it down. Lost washer again. Long, it's not on that one. All right, 168 in lb, 170 in lb. Oh, what is the max torque? Make sure all the other, wait, should I do the top ones now? 14, 14, 14, and then so it's all 170 then. Yep, then you're going to need that for that bottom one as well. Got that. Good, good, good, good.

Okay, it's 5:10. We really don't have time to get into the cylinders tonight, so we'll have to leave those for another night. Need to get ready to go, so that took longer than planned. Didn't quite go as planned, but we've got outlet, inlet, some of that assembly lube just being ooey and gooey down here on the bottom. Oil change gasket kit should be in here somewhere, mhm, right there. We got our O-rings, still factory sealed. We've got our push rod tube seals. We're going to need those in a little bit. We use one gasket, lots of good old gasgacinch, like so. Slap that on there. Oh yeah, we are not going to run a screen because we are running an external filter. The oil goes from here, MH, straight to here, and then from here, we go straight to our filter. We're not going to put any restriction between here and here, and our filter, external filter, so we are not running a screen.

Done a little bit of research on this. One of the Godfathers of Volkswagen performance, Jean Berg, his recommendation was to not run a screen, so I am not going to run a screen. Pull it off now, pull it in. Okay, put it, put it on, and then put those on. I don't believe I have any cab nuts here, so we're going to run 6 mm nyloc, some plate screen that's 5ft lb, 5 * 12, 60. Tighten those up. Oil drain plug is 25ft lb, and that's what, what 25 * 12 should be easy. 25 * 12, if it's so easy, then what is? Well, it's 4 * 25, uh, 100. How many times do four go into 12? Oh yeah, 300. There you go. See, told you it was easy; you just didn't think about it.

There you go, so that's all good to go, which means now we just have the top end to do. Huh, on that note, pull off all the torque on the wrench. I mean, this is basically where the other instrument was at, huh? Yep, more or less. I got a flywheel o-ring in. I got a rear main seal in, after putting in the flywheel. Shields up to 86,000, or thereabouts, uh, regardless, my end play is hearable but not seeable, which is good, so that's exactly what we're looking for. So, this engine is ready for pistons and cylinders and the rest of the top end, but that'll be another night. Later, guys.

Now, we are top dead center number three. Bye bye rubber bands. Do not drop those in the engine, yeah, that would be kind of a bummer. Yeah, I measured the deck height at 60,000ths and with 60,000ths shims, this shim is 60,000ths thick. That will increase our deck height, so the cylinder won't stick up quite as far. With our 34cc combustion chambers, we should have 8.7 to one compression ratio, which is, which is pretty high. Now, I do have our piston ring gaps set. I do have the ring position. I have them all clocked already cuz we've already gone through all that in, yeah, we've done that already in another videos, so need to do that again. Everyone knows my favorite gunk, the stinky skunk stuff, the skinky skunk stuff, yep, just a nice, good bead all around. You know what, I'm going to do this one, and then I'll let you do the rest.

Now, the hard part is just making sure that shim doesn't come out. I mean, it probably shouldn't because all the stick tar. I think we're going to be good. All right, I'm going to be your assistant, if you want to, uh, let's rotate this a bit more straight, just so it's straight up and down, top dead center. You want to drop that down in, no, not low enough yet. Oh, bit further, about there. Okay, feel around for it. You might have to twist the piston a little bit. I think it's, oh, there we go, yep, push it on home. Snap ring pliers, and these are slightly different snap ring. Oh, it's a bit harder with these ones, seems like. Oh, did I get it? Maybe. And you can just grab that hook with the end of a screwdriver and make sure it spins around. Looks like it spins, huh? Yeah, number three on. Square it up in the case and plop, drop it in. And with those shims, it makes it good compression, huh? Not super off, not super high, so we've got a good amount of clearance there. These cylinders are already oiled up. However, I just dropped some debris in there. We'll get that out of there. It'll just go, it'll just get blowing out the exhaust for, yeah, arrow is pointing towards the flywheel. So, now number four, yep, and that was right, they're over there. They're marked, yep, so put this one in now.

So, should I start putting the stuff on? Yeah, be careful, do it over the cylinder, that way, don't drop it in. Here we go, that looks right. I think, oh, take out the rubber bands first, that might help, probably help, uh, can you rotate number four? There we go, oh, I lost that shim. There we go, uh, up a bit, be about right there. Oh, felt it, there go, yep. Yeah, these things are pain in the butt. I prefer the other ones better. You know, these things would have made working on that leaf blower way easier, this little tool right here, cuz I just had to use a couple screwdrivers to, pry it in, basically.

Yeah, the thingy thing fell down again. All right, well, put it back up. Can't tell if this is, is in or not. I mean, I also can't spin it, see. Yeah, it's in. Oh yeah, make sure that all of your studs are lining up with the cylinder as you tap; otherwise, you're going to be tapping all day, you ain't going to go nowhere cuz it's going to be stuck on a stud. There we go, yeah, it's a bit high over here. Yeah, it's a bit hot everywhere. Now it's better. We use a plastic hammer cuz we don't want to dent or scratch for our cast iron sleeve.

All right, before we do anything else, what are we going to do? Head, oh wait, no, the tin deflect tins, like so. There we go. Is there deflect tins on the 67? There's the original deflect tin, which is the center only. This is the heater shroud, which comes around the back side as well. Make sure it's all in there, and now, tubes. We might need to safety wire those in later, but good thing is, is this is an off-road car. Yeah, there we go, that's now in. That should hold everything better. Push rod tubes, yeah, and the seals, seal, four, eight, for this side, right? Yep, all the seals on. You don't have to put them in place yet. Yeah, I know, it just, somewhere to put them.

Uh, we didn't clean these either. What, we didn't clean these, did we? Noe, I will give them a scot with some break clean in a moment. There you go, our push rod tubes cleaned up. I'm sorry, our push rods cleaned up nicely. Blow these out real quick, just do a little bit of assembly lube and those. You got to set in place because you got to put the icky stickies on the end of them. Well, we also need cleaner. Oh yeah, yeah, all right, so guess what, I'm going to leave those out. There, here we go, he going, which way with the lines facing out because oil actually follows through the weld, yeah, and also follows the laws of gravity. Oil does go down, it goes down, down, down. We're almost out of a little better sticky. My hands are becoming a sticky mess by doing all this.

Hopefully, these aluminum push rods hold up. They are original German, so hopefully they'll be all right, but those are dual valve springs in those heads, so, so they might be a little tough on this bad puppy. But at this point, they're about ready to go, the 3 four head, yep wait, so it's dual, so that means that there's two, there's two strings per valve. Okay, bring them back towards me. Okay, one second.

All right, inside, outside. Oh, and my chart was for 8 mm studs, not 10 mm studs, so guess what, we've got to bump these up from 18 ftlb to 23 ftlb. We also got to do the same thing in your engine, but you do all that when you retorque the heads anyway, so wait, are both of these tins those engines are 10 mm studs as well? Oh yeah, the engine outside's 8 mm. Go ahead, let's get in there.

Right, there. Now, paper towels and stuff our intake ports, so we get nothing in there. We've got our brand used push rods, cleaned and oiled push rods, well, cleaned anyway. We'll just oil them up as you drop it in, put some oil on the top side. Slick, yep, drop your brand news rocker assembly in there, but we're not going to tighten these because before we start this thing for the first time, we're going to run it without the rockers in place. What, how we're going to start it and let the oil get everywhere cuz this will take the load off the cam, oh yeah, and let oil get everywhere beforehand.

So, with that, let's put those on, down to the nylocs. This side is basically done, yeah, for now. Let's get this protected. All right, snap that on, just off-road style. They all the washer here, so you can put a zip tie here to prevent that from coming up, and they're vented, vents point toward the front of the car. This side is done, dude, mhm. Spin her over, let's do the other side.

Yeah, that's a long walk. So, Nathan, we've got your first long block that you built, mhm, crank out to valve covers. This is your first build. We'll get this turned into a turnkey engine, uh, probably over the course of this coming week, nights after work, and maybe by Easter weekend, this will be ready to put in the car, or back in the sand rail, rather. Well, I can't back into the sand rail. It came out of the Baja Bug. It's going to go from the Baja Bug into the sand rail, and the engine that we got with the sand rail but not in this sand rail is in my car, is in the Baja Bug, and running, mhm.

So, yeah, we'll get this engine, we'll get all the accessories and everything else put on it, turn this into a turnkey engine, and we'll get it prepped to fire up for the first time as a freshly rebuilt engine, mhm. And yeah, on that note, this video is done, and this long block is done, mhm. So, with that, life's full of good people. If you can't find one, be one. Later, guys.