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- March 2007
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March 2007

Welcome to the first ramblings of the Racing Diaries.

I'm Andy, and I've been into VW's for quite a few years now, and it's been a long running ambition to take part in the drag racing that I have enjoyed watching over the last few years. The story starts when my girlfriend, Claire, agreed to let me race her Beetle on the condition that I build it a new engine to replace the tired 1300 that it was running. With that offer, and my own Beetle being so far off completion, I under took the chalenge. I have to thank Stu, Claire's brother for agreeing too, as he shares the Bug with Claire.

Anyway, after a trip to Dubfreeze in February, the parts had been collected to start putting an engine together. Now this all started out with a VERY limited budget, so a lot of the parts used have been recycled for previous engines that I've broken during my VW ownership!

I started off with a spare AS41 case that I had, the case was cleaned up and all the oilways blown out with an airline. I picked out the best crank and conrods I could find in my stash. Everything was fitted with new bearings, the crank, the rods and the camshaft.

The camshaft was matched up with 8 followers, care had to be taken that each follower matched the correct lobe on the cam to avoid 'running in' issues.

I picked out a set of 1600cc pistons and barrels. The cylinder walls were honed to remove any glazing and the pistons were fitted with new rings. Once assembled, I checked the deck height to make sure everything was in order and to double check that the compression ratio would be in the right ball park.

I then needed to source a pair of good heads. I called upon a friend who also like to have a collection of spares on hand, and managed to buy a pair of used 1600 heads off her... cheers Vikki! ;-) With the new heads in hand, I headed back to the garage and dismantled the heads and lapped all the valves in. Once the heads were rebuilt, car was taken to fit them to the engine, and make sure the head nuts were tightened up to the correct torque in the correct sequence.

Then, it was time to load up the car, and carry the newly built engine and all the tools needed to do an engine transplant to Sheffield. Now, just how much stuff can you fit in a Seat Arosa!!