Some Progress

It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to do any work on the Beetle. Unfortunately, new years eve, my 83 year old mother slipped in her bath tub, punctured the back of her head and fractured her 2nd vertebrae. We spent the evening and stroke of the new year in the ICU of a local hospital. Fortunately, she is doing a bit better, but due to her age, she’ll be in a neck brace for at least 4 months and will be transferred from the hospital (hopefully tomorrow) to a rehab facility for an undetermined amount of time before she’ll be able to go home. We’re thankful that it isn’t worse than it could have been. So today, I tried to redirect my mind and concentrate on something else. I got the other head cleaned up and put on the motor, got everything torqued down, test fitted some other components and if I could’ve found my feeler gauge, I would’ve set the valves. But at least for now, it’s starting to look like an engine again. As you may have read before, I was planning on replacing this head because of a broken cooling fin. I acquired a replacement head only to find that when this motor was rebuilt, they had put 92mm pistons in it and had the heads cut for larger jugs. I visited a VW mechanic of 30 years today who was going to cut the replacement head for the larger jugs, but after looking at it, he recommended that I use the head with broken cooling fin. Not only was it cut for the larger jugs, but it also had larger valves that I also hadn’t noticed. He said it was a much better head than the stock head. So, I took his advice and put my replacement head back in the classifieds. Besides, you can’t see the broken cooling fin anyhow. lol I also finished painting the oil cooler exhaust duct. I’m still waiting for the hoover bit that I ordered from Awesomepowdercoat.com, was hoping that it would’ve at least been shipped this week, but I’ve not gotten a confirmation from them. As for the reset of the tins, I’m going to have to replace them. The ones I have are just to far gone to repair, repaint and re-use. Looks like I’m going to need a dog house, both cylinder head tins, front plate and possibly a breast plate. I’m going to take a closer look at the breast plate that I have, but it looks to me like it’s been cut and modified. I really want to get the engine buttoned up so I can sit it aside and get back to the body. Baby steps….

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