JG54 Greenhearts

The JG54 'Green Hearts'* are a club for hardcore Cal-Look Volkswagens. Cars in the club must run quicker than 15.99 seconds in the 1/4 mile. The original JG54 '* Grünherz' were the elite Messerschmitt squadrons in World War II. Some of the highest scoring flying aces were in the JG54. This Blog shows the JG54 club cars and other cal-look inspired pictures/comments... MAC USERS PLEASE USE SAFARI TO VIEW SITE... . FOR MORE PICTURES - CHECK THE ARCHIVES (TO THE RIGHT)...

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Ivan's 67 ( White One )

Ivan , VolksWorld magazine Editor , has taken a couple of well deserved days off after all the hard work getting ready for and working at The 2010 VolksWorld Show . He's come to the workshop to strip the 2007cc engine down . The engine has the worn lifter bore problem previously pictured on the blog . I am going to see if the engine case lifter bores are savable by machining and fitting ally sleeve bushes . Ivan has spent all day scrubbing and cleaning , prepping the parts for reassembly .

Knackered Cam

On top of the worn lifter bore problem , we have also found that one of the cam lobes has gone away badly . Strangely , it's not the lobe that runs against the worn lifter bore . Anyway new cam and lifters required .

Below is a pic of an undamaged cam lobe .

Below is a pic of the knackered cam lobe .

Alex Thorn's 63

I had to wait for Matt , my TIG specialist , to have spare time to gusset and reinforce Alex's manifolds for me . he did them last night and dropped them in for me this afternoon .

Mind Those Ercos

We were trying to get Alex Thorn's car ready for the VolksWorld Show . However , Alex noticed this rather nasty crack in one of his race weight front Erco's , whilst cleaning them . This , on top of a few other problems ( waiting for the inlet manifolds to be gusseted and the exhaust header rubbing in places ), meant the car didn't make it to the show . The wheels were on the car when Alex bought it , and I've never really liked the idea of race weight wheels on REAL street cars . I'm having the wheel repaired , and will try and get a replacement in the mean time . Then this wheel can be relegated to a spare .

This is the view from where the inner and outer rim are welded together , these wheels have been ally MIG welded together , and you can see that the crack has gone along the edge of the weld .

Tony's 67

Made a little progress on Tony's yesterday . I made the support plate for the nitrous bottle . I wanted to make an ally plate that matched the one Tony had made for the MSD components . Also , the rear luggage bay area is all being painted on Tony's car and I didn't want to bolt a heavy Nitrous bottle directly to the floor sheet metal . I also made a similar mounting plate for the MSD HVC Coil , and made the mounting tabs for the MSD component plate . I also made a bracket for the oil filter bracket , to bolt on over the T Bar .

Monday, March 29, 2010

Alex Thorn's 63

Ready to refit the rebuilt engine into the car .

CB mounts replaced with Genuine VW heavy duty " Grey " mounts .

Alex's car had been running CB Street Eliminator heads , and while they are an older head design , they worked really well on Alex's engine . I was able to source a brand new pair of Street Eliminators . I copied the chamber shape that I had die grinded on the old heads , and did a bit more porting work than the old heads had , as they were basically sanding rolled stock Street Eliminator ports . I also bumped the compression up a bit from 10.1 to 1 , to 10.6 to 1 .

Alex suffered some engine damage at last years VW Action at Santa Pod . He had been doing really well , with little track experience , managing to get down to 13.2 on regular Pirelli radial tyres . Unfortunately he suffered valve float during a rolling burnout , not helped by the fact that the rev limit chip was missing from his MSD6AL box . So an expensive lesson was learned that day . The valve keeper locks came out and the valve dropped out . Luckily the piston pushed the valve back up the inlet port , and while it damaged the top of the piston , and destroyed the head and marked the barrel , no bottom end or case damage occured . So the damage was bad , but could have been worse .

Ivan's 67 ( White one )

Well , we were all set for Ivan to drive the car to The VolksWorld Show

However , the car had had a niggling engine rattle on start up and it had been steadily getting worse . It didn't sound good to me , I thought it could be a lifter bore issue , as I had heard a very similar sound on another club car , that turned out to be an ovaled out lifter bore .

I decided to have a look and check , just to see if it was anything obvious , that might result in more damage if left unattended , and boy was I glad I did ! I took the rockers off the No 1&2 cylinder side , removed the pushrods and looked up the pushrod tubes with a torch . The No 2 cylinder exhaust lifter bore had a gap around it , top and bottom , and was considerably worn . When I put a long thin screwdriver up the pushrod tube , it was possible to wiggle the lifter up and down in the bore 2-3 mm .

So , it's engine out time , Ivan is taking a couple of well deserved days off after the weekends show , and coming down to strip the engine down and scrub and clean the parts . i am hoping the lifter bore is savable by fitting aluminium sleeves . I popped the engine out quickly yesterday ready for Ivan to stip down .

The engine is a John Maher Racing 2007cc motor with 9.1 to 1 compression , FK8 cam , CB Street Eliminator 42 x37.5 mm valved heads . it made 152 HP on the JMR dyno .

The engine had only done 1500 miles , and such damage is gutting , but goes to show what an incorrectly layed up engine can do . The car was taken off the road and garaged in 1998 , and the owner Chris , started it periodically , every 6 months or so , but less frequently in the last few years as the fuel lines had perished and leaked when the electric fuel pump started . A guy from Ireland had expressed an interest in the car before Ivan bought it , and the car had been started after a long period by someone the guy from Ireland sent over to look at the car . it is likely the damage ocured then .

If you are going to lay an engine up for such a long period of time , then the best thing to do is remove the rockers , seal the rocker covers on completely . Remove the carbs and just fit the spark plugs finger tight . Then fill the engine to the maximum mark on the dipstick , then add 2.5 litres . This had the effect of sitting the cam , lifters and lifter bores in oil , protecting them from drying out . When you do want to spin the engine over , take the plugs out , diconnect the fuel pump so fuel doesn't spew out , and crank the engine . With plugs out and rockers off , the engine will spin quickly , getting oil to the bearings super quickly . But no damage to the cam , lifters or lifter bores will occur as they are sat in oil .

If the person that had started the engine before Ivan had bought the car had gone through this routine , and left the engine overfilled for a few days before cranking over , the oil soaking into the lifter bores , may have unstuck the lifter and saved the damage from happening in the first place .

If you look closely in the full size pictures , you can see the gap at the top and bottom of the lifter .

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Ivan's 67 ( White One )

There were a few little chips here and there , picked up while the car was in storage for 12 years . I asked my good friend and paint supremo , Paul Tomlin , to match some touch up 2K for me . And he expertly came round this evening , and went round the car " disappearing " the chips . Just a good clean and polish tomorrow , and it's ready for the VolksWorld Show .

Ivan's 67 ( Beige One )

While the engine was out for the tinware to be sorted , we decided to pay attention to the engine bay . it was blistering up in quite a few areas . This was probably due to reactions caused after the engine bay was re-painted following the engine fire years ago , when Ivan first got the car . So we are stripping the engine bay right back and prepping it for re-painting .

More to do tomorrow .

Friday, March 19, 2010

Tony's 67

Today I finished off the rear main hoop to frame fork brace support bars

I have them mocked in place at the moment , and will be TIG-ing them together tomorrow .

I had my engineer friends next door to me mill the end of the CDS tubes for a nice accurate fit for welding . Here is Ron fish mouthing the tubes for me .

I have made the rear tubes bolt together at the main hoop end , for ease of cage removal for painting . There is a 5" solid tube sleeve that is a snug slide fit inside the tube . This is drilled and tapped to accept 8 M10 bolts to hold it all together . The CDS tube then butts together so the join is flush .

Tony is running a 2176cc engine and a Rancho Pro-Drag gearbox , and will be using NOS , to give a bit of extra " Essex Shove " . I just checked that there was room for the bottle between the rear cage bars .