Watch the video to see Sam's progress on this 1967 VW Beetle

Our 1967 Beetle is ready for an engine so Sam picks up where he left off and now is going to get the engine ready to reinstall. He starts by pulling apart the engine a bit so a new Bosch alternator can be installed. Then he removes the drain plug to drain the oil for the first time in roughly 25 years. We took a look at the title and it was signed over in 1998, so we're taking a guess that is the last time the car was roadworthy. While the engine is out and easy to work on, Sam runs the engine on the stand to make sure everything is in good shape before reinstalling it.

Video Transcript

Now that our Beetle’s ready for an engine, I better get our engine ready for the road.

So, I need to pull off this generator so I can put an alternator on. Which means I've got to remove the stand. Which means I got to pull off the filler. Got to pull up the fan shroud. Which point we can pull everything up. I can repair this section here. I've got kind of an idea for that. We'll see how it goes. It should be about it on the top side. I am going to swap out this 009 distributor. I've actually got a vacuum advance distributor in there that I've put an electronic ignition in. So that'll take care of ignition duties. We do have a new fuel pump. We do have a new carburetor. We'll put some new fan shroud hoses on. I'm probably just going to leave the stock exhaust. I might even just leave the dented tailpipe. Kind of adds a character. It's got a Volkswagen stamp on the muffler. You're not going to come across those every day. Yeah, let's get to work.

I guess first things first I probably got to pull off this fan shroud nut back here. So I'm gonna start with that. Fortunately, I brought this from home. Maybe one of these days Ryobi will be nice and actually be kind enough to send us some tools to use. An impact wrench is typically the only way you're ever going to get this guy off. So that's free.

Spin her around. Pull this, this, this, that. We got stuff to do. No not a 19, it's a 21. You know what my pile of parts, everything I grabbed, I didn't grab a new belt.

Oh, never mind. We've got a cracked pulley right there. That's not long for this world so as much as I'd like to keep the original pulley on here, we're definitely gonna have to swap that out as well.

Oil filler neck nut or oil filler. That guy keys into it.

Just like that.

Those things are tricky. You've got to make certain to get those teeth engaged before you hit go on your impact. You know what, that thing's happy right there. But it is missing a road draft tube so I'll have to get one of those on there.

And I want to reuse this so maybe I’ll hold on to it.

Where did you go? It couldn't have gone far. There you are. I see you.

Thank you.

These guys here and here. And since we don't have a thermostat, that should be it.

There we go. Let's pull this guy off. More gunky gunks. Oh nice, didn't even have bolts in there. And the stock nutsert blew out so they put in another one there, or just a sheet metal screw there. Not ideal, but it worked. Of course now we got that large hole right there.

I had these things made a couple years ago specifically for my Super Beetle. What if I was to like trim that out put it in there somehow. I’ll figure out something.

That and that. Now we can pull that up and out. All right so just pull that aside for safe keeping.

And now we've got our generator off. Not horrible inside, as far as build up and stuff goes. Definitely seen worse. Inside how do our cylinders look? We've got a little bit of build up there. We'll scrape that off, vacuum that out. But all in all, not bad. This side looks pretty darn good. Again same thing, we'll just come in and vacuum some of this stuff out.

All right, had to delete some more videos off my phone. I think like about 130 videos that I'm recording for you guys. So now that I got some more room I can continue on with this.

And honestly, it would be a good idea to replace that with a dog house oil cooler while I'm in here, but it'll work with an upright. Obviously it's been on the road for how many years beforehand with it and it seemed to do just fine. And seeing as I'm not going to be, you know, making a high horsepower engine out of this thing, doing a bunch of upgrades.

All right, for some reason my phone decided to just stop recording as I was pulling this out. I was like, oh are we still recording and no we weren't. There we go.

A hollowed out eight millimeter stud. That is just some pure craziness.

Now, there we go. Just like that, no paper gaskets. Let’s see if I got the stub for that. I'm pretty sure I do. And I do. Hold please, I gotta get an alternator stand. When I was pulling parts the other day I had this on my list, but I didn't grab it. I'll put the new guy in the back.

Generator, fuel pump, with an alternator. It fits. Reinstalling this guy, which is never fun.

Still got a cap there.

All right, now you can see the difference between those two stands. This is cut back much further, where this one comes all the way out because this actually has the alternator with the large bell at the front.

All right, so now I'm going to save that. Can’t save that, unfortunately. Note the order of removal: fan hub, nut, disc washer, fan, we've got one, two, three pulley spacers, inner hub, and then our generator. And then we've got to pull off our backing plate. Note that points down and this doesn't actually have a vent hole. Just like so. I'm going to knock all the dirt and dust out of here and we'll install these on the alternator.

Very little wobble. I like it. The main thing is, of course once, when you put in the fan shroud, how does she sound as far as grinding or otherwise. But that's a different story. It appears that we clear. Even by pushing down on it, still seems good. All right, now come up with a game plan to take care of some of these extra holes.

All right, more yucky.

All right, we are basically short of a pulley, and the belt, right back where we started. Let me get that and that, slap those on.

Oh, I gotta check the clutch on this thing too. Let's do that real quick. Well, it's got good material. It's not at all at least. I think it's more rust than anything. Give it the old stand test on the pressure plate. It's not a 2100 pounder by any means, but I think she'll fly.

All right, so we're back where we started. I think was a productive day.

All right. day two. I didn't like the lighting in yesterday when I went through and edited the video this morning, so flipping around and we'll see how that works.

But yeah I'm gonna drain the oil on this thing because A it's got a lot of it because that bypass oil filter, and B is really dark, and C who the heck knows how old it is. Let's get started there.

I bought gloves yesterday. I never, hardly ever, wear gloves. For the good of my skin I might as well start.

Oh wow, that is chunky to say the least.

Oh my goodness gracious me. You guys getting all that? That is a good amount of sludge and drudge and just good old yuckiness.

I think that was long overdue. We'll let this drain for a little bit. I'm gonna grab a gasket kit, a new screen, and uh we'll be back in a bit.

All right, so when I was cleaning off the engine I pulled off a big, huge hunk of silicone from right here and I'm wondering why. But based on the size of that crack in between the case and that oil pump right there, I'm wondering if there's some issues with this oil pump. So I'm gonna actually bench run this engine once I get the oil changed. We're just about there. Letting that dry off a little bit. We'll flip it up right again. Anyway, I want to get some run time on this thing first before I put this engine back in.

Please pardon all the construction noise. I had to open the door. It's just getting a little too stinky in here, but at least we got some nice natural light now.

All right, well in normal circumstances I would actually put on some gasket cinch and the gaskets and the screen and then put on the sump plate, but as I am still questioning this case because of that big old gouge there and there and this remnants of silicone right here I'm not going to bother with any gaskets in to seal. I'm just going to put on, yeah you can see more of that silicone in that gap right there, so I'm just going to put on the paper gaskets dry and we're going to bench run this thing before I even pull the valve covers off honestly.

All right, I'm gonna throw some spark plug wires on this thing, rewire this coil up, just generally get this thing ready to run as it sits on the stand. But that starts with some fresh oil. And we don't need that to be capped off anymore. Don't need that to be capped off anymore. That needs to be capped off still. I'm going to use Valvoline VR1 racing and classic cars, specifically designed for push rod and flat tapping engine. Whatever you're doing with your oil in your Volkswagen make sure that you have zinc.

Here I'll show you my bench testing setup. We've got an old, junk transmission cut down to bolt on there and there so we can still bolt on a starter. Starter, we've got power. Off the case we've got our ground. Yeah we're running two battery positive cables, but we're smart enough to know what we're doing. Uh we've got power to our coil, power to our starter. So with those two, this is all this thing needs to run. The red wire obviously going to our coil, to a little jump connector in case we want to plug in gauges or otherwise. So we've got a wire to our coil, from our coil to a warning light, and that will tell us if our alternator is working, which it is. We can also unplug it, plug it into our oil pressure switch and tell if that's working and we're building oil pressure, which we are.

So yeah, that is our bench testing setup. It works. Could we have something fancier? Yeah. Do I want to build something fancier? Yeah, but we haven't got there yet.

Alternator is alternating.

All right so, I mean it's probably been a good 30 plus minutes. I cleaned up underneath just to make certain that I wasn't seeing old stuff or new stuff. The only drop we've got of oil is brand new, clean oil when I overfilled the oil filler. It's still dripping off of right there. But other than that, I need to tighten the belt. I need to go through and adjust the valves, which I can't do now because the engine's warm. We got a pretty good rattle coming from that guy right there so I'm going to put a washer and bolt right there. Tighten that guy down. This guy's missing it as well, but everything's nice and tight here.

Just for fun threw an air filter on there. Just because why not, we're going to need an air filter. I've got to pull out the spark plugs, put new spark plugs in. Pull off the valve covers, do the valve adjustment. All in all, she's a runner. She sounds good.

On a hunch I went out to one of our cars out in the back that we picked up from Kyle and it had the heat riser block offs. The 1971 Super Beetle. So guess what, I commandeered them for this. So a little bit more engine tin in place. We're still missing the pulley cover, but what you're going to do? I'll keep an eye out for them. And I tightened up the alternator belt.

So that wraps up the week of September. Today is Friday the 22^nd. Time's ticking down until we've got to get to the show. But in the meantime, aloha.

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