With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

dude, you're just draining the battery

2009 October 31 10:56

I spun the engine (with the starter) in the Beetle last night. Yay!

Here's where I started yesterday afternoon:

Now the rear engine tin is in, along with my spiffy custom aluminum patch piece:

Since there's a new piece of engine tin in front of the crank pulley, which I bent a bit to give the pulley some extra room, there's a bit of a gap between the two pieces of tin under the pulley. So I closed most of that gap with Aluminum foil tape:

Now, the goal of the evening was to get the engine enough together so that I could turn it with the starter and get the oil system primed. That doesn't strictly require the crank pulley, since the engine doesn't need cooling air. However, the crank pulley provides part of the air seal of the oil compartment and furthermore, it has a spiral groove that provides air pressure to the oil space:

So I installed the pulley.

And probably the single most important part of the getting-the-engine-set-up checklist, put oil in the thing.

And so the moment came, and I cranked the engine with the starter. Someone hearing this would think that a very dumb person was trying to start a car that just wasn't going to start, and you're just running the battery down, knock it off already. However, I just wanted to 1) get the oil pump primed and 2) get oil into the bearings and generally into the oil system. This part, at least, was successful. The first time, the oil light went out (meaning oil was being delivered under pressure by the pump) after about 6 seconds of cranking.

Since I'd very carefully packed the oil pump with vaseline to assist in priming, I was very carefully avoiding turning the engine at all until I did the initial oil start. Now that I'd done that, it was time to set the static timing:

DMM on "ohms", red lead attached to distributor wire (bottom left), black lead grounded on fuel pump.

I only ran the starter for 20 seconds at a time or so to keep from overheating it. I was very pleased by the third cranking. The oil light wnet out immediately, and it stayed off for like 5 seconds AFTER I'd stoped cranking the engine, which makes me very happy about the state of the oil pump and the bearings and such.

Here's video of it. Watch the oil light on the lower right part of the speedometer:

After all that cranking, the battery very very much wanted a recharge:

Here's how I left it:

All the hoses attached, most everything tightened down. Now that I've spun the engine, I'm going to torque the spark plugs, set the valves, and then I should be ready for a start tomorrow. Whee!