On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 00:49:16 -0400, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 23:00:58 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 22:10:10 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 6/17/2019 9:09 PM, wrote:


Was it burning the oil or just leaking? Those push rod tubes were
famous for dripping. There were a few tricks to plug the leak but the
right fix was to pull the jugs and put in new tubes. On an old VW,
dropping the engine was a 2 hour thing and more like an hour the
second time you did it. Two guys could easily hold it or one guy (me)
and a floor jack.
I bought a 58 bug and made a dune buggy out of it. Before it was over,
I got to know quite a bit about VWs.


I had a '64 Karmann Ghia convertible. The body was rusted out and it
was hit when parked so I sold the engine. It was rebuilt and in great
shape.

The guy I sold it to cut a couple of wires for a short cut but had it
out in less than 15 minutes.

I was taking it out, planning on putting it back so I was labeling
wires, hoses and such. I also had not bought my "complete idiot" book
yet so I was just looking for what was holding it up there.
I still have the cylinder hone I bought and the 36MM socket you need
to get that big nut loose. It also fits the swing axle. You had to
back off on the torsion rods to get the wheels straight up again when
you put the dune buggy chassis on it. If you see a dune buggy or kit
car with a serious negative camber problem, they missed that step ;-)
That's a serious POSITIVE caster - and a good chance of doing a
"scorpion" turn!!

Camber is the tilt from top to bottom, Caster is the tilt of the
steering knuckle that causes the steering to center, just like the way
a caster works on a tea cart.
I agree if they are tilted in at the bottom, that just makes the "tuck
a wheel and roll" problem on a swing axle much worse. Dune buggy guys
used to put a spacer on the strut to limit the amount the wheel could
tuck in.