1973 V8 Super Beetle Front Engine Conversion - 283 SBC

[ferfre007]

I understand! restoring a car takes a lot of money, more the cost of new family and home! hehe!


sorry por mi bad ingles!! hehe

[V8SuperBeetle]

A little bit of Bad and Good News...kinda. Lemonade out of lemons.

So I started taking the short block apart this weekend. I got far enough that I noticed some play in the #1 piston rod. I knew right away what it was and I didn't even bother to check cause I trusted the guy I traded motors with. Lesson learned.


The BAD:

So the rod bearings spun on the #1 and #2 rod journals. It seems as though the engine wasn't ran long which is good cause there's minimal wear. The crank looks like it'll clean up with a .020 or .030 grind.

To get the 355 rotating assembly back to spec it'll take grinding and polishing the crank, having the assembly balanced, and either new connecting rods or machining to get them back to spec. After all those costs it'll probably be cheaper just to get a new rotating assembly balanced and ready to drop in from the manufacturer.


The Good...

I'm thinking about just bumping up my motor to a 383 ci. The cost of new parts and or machine work will be well within the range of a new 383 bottom end balanced.

I've also been looking into just getting new set of Speed Pro dished 4.030" hypereutectic pistons with a 1.425" wrist pin height, a new 3.75" Eagle internal balance crankshaft, and buying two replacement connecting rods. I found a whole set of 8 for $20 (stock set). I'll just upgrade the connecting rod bolts to APR. Then have the whole assembly balanced. I already have new piston rings bearings, flexplate and damper that'll fit an internal balance 383 crank. The cost will be less as well.

I did the math and with 12cc dish pistons, the .015 shim head gasket, 64cc heads, and a .021 deck height I'll be right at 10.27:1 CR. Which will be fine with the vortec heads cause you can get away with .5 more CR and still run pump gas.


I've got some thinking to do, more saving and selling of parts. So the building of my engine has been put on hold for another month at least until I save the cash and have decided which direction to go.

I should pick up about another 40-50 hp and tq though so that's good. I'll see if I can't get someone to desktop dyno my combo as a 383.

[Humble]

I love the 2 tone look of black over candy orange, very sexy. Too bad about the motor, I've been there and I feel for ya. I'd say shoot for the 383 if you need to replace the bad bits to do it, why not? If you can afford it try to get forged pistons, they are quite a bit stronger then hypereutectics and will hold up to higher cr's better. Too bad about the set backs, I know I've had my fair share, just keep pushing and see it through to the end

[V8SuperBeetle]

Thanks Humble, I appreciate it! I would go with the forged, but can't afford them right now and probably wont need them because I'm not going to push this car too hard a whole lot. Just some toying here and there, but mainly cruising and taking it to shows. It'll see the track a couple of times too.

Well, some good news. I ordered an Eagle Specialty Products internal balance stroker crankshaft for my 350.

http://store.summitracing.com/partde...P-10350375057I


And I bought some (383) Speed Pro dish pistons.

http://store.summitracing.com/partde...t=STL-H859CP30


Both parts will work well with my stock 5.7" rods. So I'll save some $$$ there. Coolest part is I did some shopping around and found the crank for $231 here...

https://www.horsepowerparts.com/inde...oduct_id=21684


and a set of 8 pistons here...

http://www.kmjent.com/cart/product.p...9&bestseller=Y


...I called summit up and said, "I'd like to buy these parts (I listed stock #s and he gave me the pricing) but I found them cheaper here (I then gave him the website URLs)". They beat their competitors prices by $1 for each product. Summit has a beat-a-price guarantee so I thought I'd see if it was baloney. It wasn't. I got the parts for $407 with shipping. At Summit's pricing it would've been $522 total with shipping. So I saved over $100 smackers.

So I have all my parts, or they're being shipped, and the motor can go together soon. That is after hot tanking, decking, and balancing. I might not have the assembly balanced if the bob weight of my pistons, pins, rings, bearings, cap screws and rods are fairly close to the neutral bob weight of 1825 +/- 2% from Eagle. Maybe balancing will be cheap enough if I give the machine shop the bob weight and they only have to balance the crank? We'll see...

[Jim]

Sound to me a great dealing!!!keep going mate..

[V8SuperBeetle]

Originally Posted by Jim

Sound to me a great dealing!!!keep going mate..

Thanks! Still going...

Received my new pistons and crankshaft for the 383 build. I have to send the crank back though cause there's a scratch on one of the rod journals from shipping. It's from one of the shipping staples poking up into the box. You would think it's from the box getting the luxury treatment. LOL, look at that box. Oh well...

Match set is always good.




Made in India, that's good too right? LOL...






This is exactly how I received it...great job UPS and FedEx!!!




It looked OK. There was a little rust on one of the bob weights, but then I found an unacceptable scratch...back it goes.




A plastic bag of this weight really shouldn't have tears in it like it does. Wouldn't you think?

[V8SuperBeetle]

The replacement 3.75" crank came in and it was in much better shape.

[V8SuperBeetle]

Update...

I started disassembling the engine. I plan to even remove the freeze plugs, oil gallery plugs and cam bearings myself as well as install them to cut down on costs and to get some experience doing so.

Used some bolts and an arc welding rod (with the flux coating knocked off) to catch the piston.




And some fuel hose press on the rod bolts to protect the cylinder walls.




Works pretty nice. I don't have to worry about them falling on the floor without help. These will be up for sale. They're forged 4.030.




Cylinder bores are pretty much flawless by looking. No scratches or groves worn in from the pistons. Hone marks are still visible.




I rebuilt the carb. Here it is before.




Disassembled.




I sandblast the body and other parts that didn't have any jets. Cleaned it with a can of carb cleaner. Then I scrubbed it with warm water and light soap. Then blew the water out with compressed air and used a blow drier to completely dry it out before reassembly.




Cleaned up parts...




Cleaned up parts...the floats look really nice and new. ;D




And the rebuilt car. All new gaskets, seals, pump, linkage kit added, etc. Ready to rock!

[V8SuperBeetle]

Finally, got my engine block and rotating assembly back from the machine shop. Had it hot tanked, magnafluxed, decks set to 9.020, hone, new pistons pressed, 383 ARP rod bolts pressed in, rods resized, and the rotating assembly balanced. Total cost was $590. Looks like they did a great job.






I started the pre-assembly process. I had enough time to plastigage the main bearings and I'm working on plastigaging the rod bearings. So far the mains have come out to a hair under .002 clearance. Once I get all the rod bearings checked I'll then clearance the block for the larger stroke crank and check cam clearance. So far it looks the rods are clearing just fine. I'll check with a feeler gauge to make sure I have at least .050 clearance.








More later...

[volkdent]

Keep it up! That thing oughta scream.

Jason

[V8SuperBeetle]

Originally Posted by volkdent

Keep it up! That thing oughta scream.

Jason

Yeah, it should make it boogy.

[V8SuperBeetle]

Quick update...

I got all my parts back from the machine shop, again. I had them check to make sure I didn't knock any of big rod ends out of round by using the brass hammer. They checked out fine. I had to order a new piston because one got away from me and hit the ground. So it then didn't want to go back into the bore smoothly. Seems it was out of round. I had the new piston pressed on the rod. I also managed to buger up the rod journal during pre-assembly because the rod caps were hard to get off. So I had it polish and it pretty much got rid of the scratch. Last but not least, the machine shop figured out why I couldn't get the #3&4 pistons on the rod journals. I had the wrong bearings. Apparently you have to have narrowed bearings because of the extra fillet machined on the journals that give it extra strength. I wasn't too upset I had to buy another set of bearings because I now have some Clevite 77 high performance mains / rod bearings now rather than the cheap Summit bearings. This thing is now going from a cheap project to an expensive one. LOL!

So all those problems were taken care of. This past week I took the engine block to the car wash to give it a good bath. I wanted to make sure I got it super clean just to be sure there's no left over metal in the block from machining. I had some help from my fiancé's brother.





Austin wiping the bores down, after hosing it with a can of WD-40, giving it the "paper towel test". I cleaned the block with an engine cleaning brush kit.


When I got the block back from the machine shop I had them leave it bare. No plugs, cam bearings, nothing, because I wanted to install everything myself so I can learn. Months ago I bought a cheap cam tool from summit (summit brand tool). So I gave installing the bearings a try. Well, I managed to ruin a set of bearings and had to remove them because I was using the tool wrong, I think? To remove one of the stubborn bearings I had to put a screw driver through the oil hole and bang out the bearing that way which bent the bearing into itself. Needless to say, I got some bearing shavings in the block. So I had to the load the block back up for another wash. I then had to buy a new set of bearings, which is fine cause I bought a better brand / set (I had a summit bearing set), and I then modified the cam tool. It worked a lot better and thought it should've came the way I made it work. ;D I'll take some pics and show you the mods.

Any who, cam bearings are in, I masked off the engine and painted the block black, knocked in the freeze plugs, and trial fitted the cam. So far everything is going smoothly, for now. ;D




This weekend I'm going to try and have the short block assembled and sealed up. Just like the machinist told me, "You might accidentally get this thing together after all!"

[V8SuperBeetle]

Here we go. Here's some pictures of the build.

Here's what the crank looked like when I got it back from getting it polished after I boogered up the crank (small scratch). When I got to the machine shop I thought, "Wow, what kind of crank is that with the gold journals?" Haha.




I wish I would've take a few more pictures while we were building, but I was so into the build the last thing on my mind was taking pictures. The day flew by fast.












This last picture the intake, valve covers, carb, and air cleaner are all just sitting there. I was anxious to see how it would look.




I'm going to work on it some more throughout the week and I'll hopefully have it finished by the weekend. Putting an engine together takes much longer than I thought.

[Humble]

Looks good so far, just take your time and be methodical about everything. I really wanna see what this beast will do in the car. Got any dyno plans?

[V8SuperBeetle]

Thanks Humble. I've been taking my time to make sure I get everything right. I can't wait to see what she'll do once together as well. I do plan to at least do a chassis dyno. I'm going to look and see if I can't find someone here in Houston to dyno and tune the engine.

It's still coming together. Just about finished though.