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

for everything there is a first time

2009 November 01 22:36

I've been interested in airplanes all my life, and I suppose vaguely in cars that long as well. I've always been interested in the mechanisms of things. I liked physical science labs in Jr. High and high school. I even took auto mechanics class in high school, but that was the extent of my working on stuff for a few more years. I liked the electronics aspect of physics in college. It wasn't until 1997 when I started working with my research group in graduate school that I got to build real skills in working on and building stuff.

But all along I'd sort of wanted to know how to maintain a car and work on engines. When I started getting more serious about becoming a pilot, it occured to me that owning a classic (air-cooled) VolksWagen would cover some aspects of both. They have simple, air-cooled engines (like piston-driven airplanes), so I decided that maybe buying one as a project car would be something useful to do. Our across-the-streen neighbor from 2003 to 2006 had a model-A Ford that drove around from time to time, which slightly fed this notion.

I bought a 1972 Superbeetle just before we moved away from Illinois in 2006. I drove it a lot at first, but in May of 2007 I discovered that there was a valve badly out of adjustment. In June of 2007, I realized that the valve was going out of adjustment REALLY FAST, which means that something is seriously wrong in the engine. I've basically been chasing that problem since then. In July of 2008, I realized that I was going to have to pull the engine and look at the heads to see what was going on. Well, I ended up replacing the heads, cylinders, pistons, oil pump, and some other stuff.

The engine went back in the car a week ago. Friday, I got everything wired up and spun the engine with the starter for the first time to prime the oil system. Today was the first start attempt.

Here's a video. It's over 4 minutes, and a 100 MB download: Beetle first start video

November 2 morning edit: also available, a shorter 10 MB version of the video without my speech, and just the start itself

Here's a still from the video just as the engine catches:

The severe smoke (seen in the photo and in the video) is because I've been oiling all the parts, particularly the insides of the cylinders, as I've been putting the engine together. In fact, I squirted oil into the cylinders before the first crank on Friday. So the engine is FULL of oil, so that had to be burned off. It's not that the engine burns oil normally. By the end of the 10 minute run, the exhaust was clear.

(By the way, I'm particularly please how fast it started once fuel is in the carb. When I replaced the starter, about 3 years ago, I managed to flood the engine and it took a long time to start.

Here I'm checking the generator voltage--it's working great!

I didn't get through my entire planned 20 minute break-in run. The engine quit after 6 or 7 minutes by itself. No nasty noises, just stopped. I'm not sure why. I took a quick look at it. The carburetor's full of fuel, as it should be. The points in the ignition are making and breaking contact. I'm going to be busy with work a lot of November, so the mystery may well stay that long.

Since I ran the engine as a break-in, I really should change the oil:

So oil's drained, taking little nasty stuff that happens in a break-in away with it.