What I've been doing on the darkside.

[equate975]

I don't think I have posted this here yet, so I thought I would. Yes as you expected, I have ANOTHER VW. Picked this guy up last august I think, with the plan to fix it with my buddy and flip it. I got it for $900 I think, the engine lost oil pressure and was bad apparently. We dicked around with it for a while, when I drained the oil I took out damn near 10 quarts. Since it turned over I thought maybe some fresh plugs and the correct oil would clear it up, just spent forever trying to get a coil pack for the fucker.



Well it ended up not working, and by this time school was starting and I needed a project car to rebuild an engine in. Originally, I was going to rebuild the motor and "sell" the car to my father who wanted it as a DD so he didn't have to take the 7mpg burb all over. About $1k into the build he then decided he didn't want it, and thats when it all went downhill.

Specs, 97 Jetta GLX VR6. "Fully loaded" tis got teh powar windows, cruise, trip comp, and even ABS!

My original vortex thread is here if you wanna read it:

http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4018810

I will sum up whats been going on up to this point.

Pulled the motor





This is how I was testing the compression since I found the ignition switch was bad



Motor out



Stripping the fucker down



My wonderful rod bearing



All the pistons were fucked





This is when it went downhill. I figured, fuck OE, lets bore it out. So I went out 2mm to 83mm pistons for a dirty "3.0" build. Also the pistons ar 10.5:1 CR versus the 10:1 stock. I decided to couple that with a mk4 HG to raise the final CR to 11:1



This is where the project halted for a LONG time. The crank I had was junk, bought a new crank, it was junk, bought another one, it got bent in shipping. This is when I decided to say fucked ebay and forums because people are stupid. Around this time I also ran out of money.

So like a month or so ago, I FINALLY got a good crank from a real shop, not some bublefuck grease monkey on vortex who can't tell the difference between a cylinder head and a spare tire.

I then ordered up some 268 deg cams, HD valve springs, new buckets, and seals.













Also sent the injectors out to Witch Hunter to be refurbished



And while I was out it, fuck it lets powder coat some shit





Head all done

[equate975]

So I started to assemble today. Didn't get very far because I spent majority of my day trying to find a fucking degree wheel for my torque wrench. Apparently no one has any.

so as it sits now, the head is torqued to stage 2 of 4. Just need to track down a wheel so I can button it up good.

My block all done:















Mk4 HG











I also got all my powdercoated stuff back. I had the intake done, rear engine mount bracket (kinda I waste, the whole thing I was thinking it was the front one), Upper timing cover, lower timing cover, and thats it.

I also got bored at school a little while ago so I blasted my exahust manifolds. I didn't realize how much carbon those things had in em, took out a good 2mm of the stuff or so.





















Thats about it. not a tremendous done. In addition to spending all day not finding a degree wheel, I also broke my engine stand. Forgot to put the lower bolts in and when I put the engine on the bottom leg almost busted off. took me a while to patch it back up.

Also the bolt for my other cam sprocket is stuck the fuck on, I can't get it off for the life of me. So I am stuck on getting the timing done until I can get the fucker out.

That is all.

[equate975]

Also in addition to all of this

I replaced the control arms, all the bushings & ball joints, sway bar end links, bushings for the swaybar, all new pads, rotors, mk4 aluminum rear calipers, inner and outer tie rods, new clucth master and slave, new front wheel bearings, re-did the rear wheel bearings, ummm I think thats it. I'm going to take my 60/40 cup kit off my junked mk3 and put it on this one eventually too.

[ethirtydavid]

looks like it's coming alone nicely, love the look of clean engines like this

[Ben Carufel]

You need to POR20 those exhaust manifolds.

[Miatamania]

Needs more ebay header?

Looks good. When I get rid of the ETA I think I might go for an OBD-1 VR Jetta/GTI...not sure, I want to get back into VW, but def not a 16v mk2 again for a daily.

[Ray Smoodiver]

That is one of the strangest heads I've seen!

[TDE30]

That is one of the strangest heads I've seen!

Looks awesome man, I'd love to see some pictures of the finished motor if you have a chance.

Replacing the heater core?

[equate975]

Today was another day of worthlessness. Took my alternator to auto zone to have it tested, I never checked to see if it was even any good and I figured I should do so before going through the effort of putting it in. Well its not good, sweet... Probably going to drop it off to get rebuilt monday.

I then decided to tackle the stuck on cam bolt. That was a full disaster. That thing must have been torqued on by jesus because its not coming off. Stripped the damn thing out, tried heating it which just melted the plastic on the trigger wheel (which I figured would happen) and was also no assistance in getting the bolt out.



So I said fuck it, and threw it on the floor, I quit with that cam. Just going to go to the dealer monday and order up new parts. I ended up making another list of misc stuff I overlooked and still need to buy, mainly o-rings and some gaskets.



Basically today all I did was clean stuff. I had a lot more to clean than I had initially thought. I also started to assemble my oil pump and got some lubez to put it in.



Cleaned up my oil cooler



Cleaned up the oil filter housing



Painted



I have like 9 million little bolts that I need to clean, and I have been using a bench grinder with a fine brass brush to do bigger ones. But the little guys are hard to hang on to and take forever to clean. Then I had an idea.

Step 1: Soak in simple green



Ugly and DIRTY



Step 2: Place in whatever this shaker thing is, my mind is burnt and I don't feel like thinking wtf this thing is called



Step 3: turn on and wait all night.

Bye Bye! See you in the morning!


I don't know if it will work, but I don't know why it wouldn't. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow all my bolts will be nice and clean.

Oil pump, I bolted the tube on, and cleaned the gears for the top end. Not pictured




I also got my injectors back from Witch Hunter a few days ago, they look purty now. I guess this was like the 1 thing on this engine that wasn't shot. Injectors were barely bad at all.









that is all

[equate975]

Needs more ebay header?

Yeah I was thinking about it, I just don't feel like dealing with ones that don't fit right, and from what I read and looked at on ebay, theres about a 100% chance they won't. Also I hear there are 0 gains from putting them on. I think I will save the $100.

[equate975]

Looks awesome man, I'd love to see some pictures of the finished motor if you have a chance.

Replacing the heater core?

Yeah fore sure, I will have the pics all the way till its done.

I'm not going to do the heater core. Its really easy to disconnect the hoses in the engine bay, its the dash thats the bitch. I would do it if I swap a black dash in, but I'm still un-decided if I feel like doing that or not.

[mikeedler]

its a shame that that isnt a s14 getting alll that love.

cool project BTW.

[shmutzigE30]

mice build. love vws and cant wait to see more

[BrewCity11]

Step 2: Place in whatever this shaker thing is, my mind is burnt and I don't feel like thinking wtf this thing is called

You're funny.

That's a great idea. Never thought about using a tumbler like that. They sell them at hobby shops. Might have to pick one up.

[equate975]

Yeah I noticed that right after I posted, I was hoping no one else would.

btw, it worked mediocre. Probably some cleaner / more gritty media would have made it better.