Recently we, my wife and I, came across a used 2.0 air cooled engine and 091 transmission at what I felt was a good price. After installing the engine with the original transmission I'm having some issues. The first issue is that the head has a hair line crack that leaks oil on the #1 cylinder exhaust valve rocker arm bulge. The second issue is that is starts fine but bogs down bad when I try to rev it up. This is possibly related to having a 231 178 009 distributor with the #1 cylinder TDC mark point at the #3 cylinder. The valves are also a little more noisy than I would like.
To this end what to do to get thing working better. Since I purchased this engine so I could have a working vehicle while I rebuild the original engine with much lower compressing I want to try and get it working without swapping the heads, assuming I can accomplish this easy enough. I have devised the following order of operations to try and get the issues resolved.
- Clean and apply Quick Steal to the head oil leak through out the morning while I work on other things.
- Disconnect clean and re-connect all wires. Specifically the ground wires on the drivers side under the plenum and the wires attached to the starter.
- Find TDC compression stroke #1 cylinder and make sure plug wires are installed 1 - 4 - 3 - 2 based on the where TDC in reality. To achieve this I plan to do the following to make things easier and maximize time.
- Remove all spark plugs and do a compression test to verify what I was told compression was when I purchased the engine.
- Record cold compression
- Examine spark plugs for issues
- Find TDC for #1 cylinder and check distributor and fan timing marks.
- Mark fan with TDC #1 with one mark and 180 degrees off, TDC #4 with another mark to make adjusting valves easier.
- Record what each mark means in the service log.
- Make sure spark plug wires are on distributor in correct order.
- Set timing at 28 degrees advance at 3600 rpm
- Try and see if there is a cir clip in the follower/lifer with a flashlight and also test to see if the shaft or tip of the lifter is aluminum/steel. Hopefully without having to pull rocker arm to determine if the engine has solid or hydraulic lifters. If not I'll need to pull the rockers and pull a push rod at a minimum. Pulling a lifter is easy enough with a magnet but pulling and replacing push rod tubes can be challenging. I have one extra set of push rod tube seals if needed.
- Adjust valves 1.5 turn past contact at TDC compression stroke for all cylinders.
- Record # turns for each adjustment.
- Verify all rocker arm bolt are torqued to 14 ft lbs.
- If I'm still having issues I'll swap out the exhaust for a stock exhaust in the event the Catalytic Converter is plugged.
