Due to arrive soon

Started by 94touring, August 07, 2020, 01:46:39 PM

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94touring

Got the engine and transaxle pulled.  Drained the gear oil and tooknoff the nose cone to find tons of metal, bearings floating around, and bits of gear teath.  Will be surprised if anything internally will be salvageable when he pulls it apart.

BruceK

1988 Austin Mini
2002 MINI Cooper S
1992 Toyota LiteAce (JDM)
1997 Jeep Wrangler Sahara

MiniDave

No warning other than it just felt like it lost power? No crazy noises?

That's a complete mess, I agree about there probably not being anything salvageable inside - maybe the final drive escaped the carnage....

I sure would want to know just what caused the issue - a gear that simply failed or what exactly.
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

#503
Initially I smelled what I thought was propane/natural gas, which I'm thinking was plastic bearing cage being finely ground up.  Those chunks in the one photo are parts of the cage. Then a loss of power soon occurred.  It all happened in under a mile.

Well I guess there was maybe one other indication.  As everything was nashing together in there the gear oil heats up and begins to expand out a weep hole.  When I popped my head under after this catastrophe there was a lot of gear oil dripping down.  Before the trip I do an inspection and check oil lines, fuel filters, ect..  well I did notice some oil under where that weep hole is which I didn't think much about since it wasn't an amount that was alarming.  But it was probably beginning to create enough friction in there to cause the expansion.

94touring

Another thing I was planning to do after this trip was pull the motor and redo the heads to something more sporty and add ratio rockers. I pulled a head yesterday to do some calculations and see what all I had going on in there.  Well I can't say I'm impressed with the engine builder because I was told I was getting 8:3:1 compression but got more like a stock 7:1.  Having read countless amounts of material on engine builds for these I am also aware of ideal deck height for max performance.  With the head off and a cylinder jug torqued down I was getting about 1.15mm which is damn near perfect.  1.0mm being the smallest amount you should go to account for things stretching. 1.5mm being the big end in the best deck height zone. Well he added copper spacers that spec at 1.3mm, giving me 2.45mm.  The heads when I roughly CC'd them using a measuring cup with ML's came to be entirely too large for combustion volume. Nor was the step machined out.  He basically just slapped on some bigger valve heads and called it good.  This would explain why my webber jetting is so much smaller than what other 2110cc engine guys are running.  It still hauls but it's not nearly as efficient as it should be.  Running the dubdyno app I'm down a fair amount on what type of power I will achieve once I bump the compression up, get those rockers on, and use better flowing heads.  Showing about a 25% increase on average. 

MiniDave

I'm doing this from waaaayyyyy back memories, but it seems there was a paper gasket under the jugs and supposed to be a copper gasket between the head and jug? Are you saying they should have been thinner copper gaskets? Maybe a phone call to him to ask?
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

Paper gaskets were used on the type 4 engines I'm fairly certain but not on type 1 like I have. The copper gaskets are only used for spacing if the deck height is too short/negative or you need to alter compression ratios.  Otherwise you shouldn't run them. There's also barrel shims between the jug and block you can use to set deck height.  Those can be bought in smaller shim thicknesses whereas the copper head shims are only available in 1mm and 1.5mm.

94touring

I looked up the paper gaskets Dave, VW discontinued them in 73 looks like. Prone to failure.  Usually what people do is take a cylinder jug and some lapping paste and lap the heads to the cylinders to ensure a perfect seal.  But then again most guys don't even do that.

94touring

Still no word on the damage to the transaxle.  The guy was sick last week but also I'm not in a huge hurry.  In the meantime I've been cleaning things up and tinkering with some minor improvements.  One thing on the list was yet another exhaust.  The one I've been running, while it was sized properly and sounded good, the metal itself was crap.  As in so bad it started falling apart.  I had read empi exhaust were junk and they weren't joking.  So, decided to fork out some money on a quality USA made stainless exhaust, and boy is she pretty.  The welds are also a thing of beauty compared to the empi exhaust that had big globs hanging out into the flow of exhaust at the flanges.  Just bought the header only and will be fabbing up a couple dynomax mufflers that will be much quieter compared to the muffler options that came with this header.

MiniDave

#509
Read an interesting thread on GRM about a guy that put a Subaru 5 speed in his bus, maybe an option? Stronger box and you get more gears, and I doubt it's more expensive than fixing this one. I can post the link if you want to read about it?

Those welds were Tig'd, I'd bet on it! And clearly, by someone who knew what they were doing!  77.gif
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

#510
Quote from: MiniDave on September 19, 2022, 05:38:05 PM
Read an interesting thread on GRM about a guy that put a Subaru 5 speed in his bus, maybe an option? Stronger box and you get more gears, and I doubt it's more expensive than fixing this one. I can post the link if you want to read about it?

Those welds were Tig'd, I'd bet on it! And clearly, by someone who knew what they were doing!  77.gif

The whole engine swap or just tranny?  Cause the entire engine swap from what I've read is rather pricey.  20k neighborhood.

Found a pic of the previous header failer.  Plus I had welded several cracks where the collector meets and pipes to muffler.

MiniDave

#511
Just the transmichigan......

Here's the build thread...... https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/subaru-transmission-into-a-vanagon/190155/page1/

But you're right - his Vanagon already had a Subie motor in it.....my bad.

Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

Yeah pretty common on vanagons. Not so much on kombis.

MiniDave

#513
Still, if someone makes an adaptor, a 5 speed would be nice to have. I suppose you could put a Porsche 5 speed in there too?

I find Subie 5 speeds for as little as $500, but who knows what shape the synchros are in at that price. Still, Japanese transmissions are pretty robust.

Here's a company that does a conversion kit for Type 2 Kombis, no cost mentioned in their ad

https://ranchotransaxles.com/rancho-subaru-5-speed-conversion-for-type-1-2-and-vanagon/
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

Yeah those are 4600 bucks. They have to reverse gear it and then there's adapter plates.  They actually get those parts from outfit in Australia that came up with it for type1 and 2s.

MiniDave

That's where the guy in the GRM article got his - down unda!
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

Maybe someday when I'm able to blow 4600 on a transmission. There really isn't a reason why mine should blow up, other than when UPS dropped it, it pinched that end of the case where the bearing failure started.  Hindsight and all when I had issues with a pinched bushing not allowing the hockey puck to select gears, I should have just shipped it back to have it gone over to fix what got mushed up internally.  It did last 13k miles before failing.

tmsmini

What does it take to modify a four cylinder Porsche/VW 914 5 speed transmission to fit? Not that there are alot of those to be found.

MiniDave

You'd have to flip the ring gear, might not be possible in those gearboxes, then design a shift linkage as the VW box the shifter comes in the back and on the 914 it's in the side....
Complete failure at retirement

1989 Cooper Racing Green
2009 Clubman S
2014 Audi Allroad

94touring

#519
It has to be reversed and a bunch of fiddly mods.  There's some berg 5 speeds out there occasionally too, but all these options set a guy back about 5k.  Really nothing wrong with the 4 speeds I have, 71mph is turning 3600rpms.  The stock gearing had a bus rated for max cruising at 68mph at 4000rpms.

Hell the stock Brazilian gearing had me doing 4400 rpms at 65mph!

tmsmini

I remember hearing about the Berg units along time ago when we had Type IIs.
http://www.geneberg.com/cat.php?cPath=13_387

94touring

#521
I almost mentioned what was in that article, which is you begin to run hot with the lower rpms.  Not to mention I'd be shifting down into 4th to pull slight hills if I had a 5th overdrive.  Or a headwind for that matter!  3300-3800 is the sweet spot for power and cooling on my setup to do 65-75mph.  And I can cruise slower in 4th but because the wind resistance and power required drops off it runs nice and cool there too.  Typically I'm doing 68-71mph to and from the shop. Some of these cross country trips I'd do 75mph just to keep up with traffic.  The transaxle guy always wants to push a 3.88 or an .82 4th, but this 4.12 and .89 4th combo really is the sweet spot.  It will be interesting to see if temperatures maintain within safe limits with the bump in compression after it's all back together. After getting a proper CC tool the old setup came out to just shy of 7:5:1.  The new heads calculate out to 8:9:1.  They will flow better and they claim to run cooler being a proprietary blend of metal made in the USA vs China.  They're heavier and have some nice looking fins so we'll see.  The bump in compression will run hotter of course, however getting rid of that huge deck height allegedly will cool things down. Maybe it all offsets. 

94touring

A few goodies came in.  Fancy gaskets that won't fail and are reusable.  They'll get a spray of copper coat too to ensure no leaks. Have a matching flange for the exhaust when I'm able to weld up the exhaust.

94touring

Played around with this exhaust stuff a little. The piping I'll be using slips snuggly into the flanges. As a way to form a tight seal as well as align the two perfectly together, the end I'm fabbing will extend beyond the flange to slide into the header flange.

94touring

Here's some damaged gears and bearings pitted up.