Many purists may raise their nose to the idea of using Porsche parts in a VW motor but for me, I love experimenting and learning how to interchange components, modify them and make one hell of a motor. That said, Here’s my engine blue print for the bottom end:

What you see in this picture is a 1958, 36hp Volkswagen engine case. 36hp cases are easily identifiable by the oil filler/generator stand that is cast into the case, similar to early Porsche motors.

The cylinders are the original 36hp 77mm size. I was having a heck of a time deciding what to do with my piston/liner setup. More about that later, here are the piston liners (they turned out great!):

Deciding on using the original pistons/cylinders was tricky. I want this little stroker to move and have a good compression ratio. What Tom clued me in on was the fact that 66 Bug (1300) motors have the best pistons available for this motor and they slip right in without any modification to the original 36hp liners! The bonus shown in the following pictures is that there is significantly more product at the top of the 1966 Bug pistons than the earlier models which allows me to dome them for better compression!

The Piston at left is the original 36hp, you can’t see it from here but the design of this piston leaves very little “meat” at the top making it impossible to put on a lathe and dome. We feel that this would end up in a blown piston. The middle piston is the 1966 version. Notice the wrist pin is the same size as the piston at right (Porsche 912). This allows the 66 piston to slip right onto the Porsche connecting rods. The middle piston is also domed on the inner casting, giving it significantly more material at the top which allows me to throw it on a lathe and dome it, like the Porsche piston at right. As for wrist pin placement you can see they are all three different heights. I will have to use spacers or shims to boost the top end out for clearance.

The rods I’ve chosen, as mentioned above are the Porsche 912 rods. These will work well with the 74mm Stroker 912 Crankshaft Pictured here:

The 912 Crank will be “turned down” on two of the mains. This means that the thickness of the metal at the main bearing points will be removed as to fit into the VW 36hp case. The stock mains for the Porsche are 55mm and the VW is 50mm. So, in theory 5mm will be removed. We will dial this in precisely at the crank grind shop. Here are the VW and Porsche Cranks side by side. The Porsche Crank at top and the VW Crank below. You can see the size is greater of the Porsche crank, this is why the engine will be referred to as a Stroker.

As for the cam, I will be using an original Iskenderian 2-J or “Isky” cam. This gives a nice lopey lift and great power all the way through the range. Tom is the current custodian of the cam and I plan on picking it up next week.

The conservative estimated HP for this set up will be 70hp. I will update on the heads and carbs next. Stay tuned!

Size 77.75MM

Call Chris- 320 491 5THREE-0NE Slx

I’m starting with a Vintage Volkswagen 40hp motor. This will be the powerplant for my racer. Don’t worry, by the time I’m done with it the motor should be pushing at least a whopping 70hp, maybe more if I supercharge it? Today I tore the engine down and began blasting the engine tin.

Here’s a picture of the engine how I found it, in a barn, in South Dakota… I unbolted it from the later model running gear and had a heck of a time getting it out of the barn! With the help of my Uncle Jim, we finagled our way through one mans junk and brought out another mans treasure (I hope)!

More to come…

July 7th, 2010
After tearing down the top end of the engine yesterday I decided to run down to my Uncles garage and sandblast my engine tin. It turned out pretty nice and is ready for powdercoating or paint. I’m not sure which way to go yet…

Here’s what the engine looks like half-naked!

Update #2 for the day. I reconsidered the engine tin and need to clean up a couple more spots on it. Once that’s done it will go for powdercoating. The engine case is at the shop getting cleaned up and ready for some new hardware. I will be ordering an OKRASA ground cam and crank from Joe Ruiz. He was very helpful over the phone and I think we’re on the right track to a peppy little German hotrod!

In this pic you can see the rod I’m pointing at is sticky. It should be laying down in the hole like the rod on the right. This may or may not have been problematic when the motor was last used but when you reassemble the new hardware you definitely don’t want them this tight! Your crankshaft is the core of your motor and your power. When something goes wrong in here it can translate to several problems out from here and into the top end…

It’s amazing all these parts make up several thousand miles of fun and adventure!

And the case, Generator stand and barrels are going to get polished up!

The heads, intake and carbs will come from Wolfsburg West as seen here.

Update #3
We can pretty much scrap the 40hp engine tear down above. It turned out to be too late of a build date for what I want to do and, the case needs a line bore. So I’ve stripped down a 59 case (36hp) that had low mileage. It’s now at the shop getting prepped for the build up. It will use the components previously described.

Now that the engine is out getting prettied up, I can focus on the running gear. I’ve been slowly chipping away at the specifications of my project. The original style running gear was a VW pan, chopped around 7 inches to shorten the wheel base. The actual pans were removed and replaced with Alloy pans mounted on square steel tubing. Here you can see I’ve used my plasma cutter to remove the pans so all that’s left is the tunnel!
Before

After

Next up the transaxle will be removed and the tunnel will get blasted and prepped for paint!

New update 8-18-10

Well the good (and somewhat comical) news is… While eating Chinese yesterday, I cracked open a fortune cookie and this is what it said:

Life is funny…

I received my 36hp case back from the shop with Case-Saver inserts installed along with new head studs. I’ve been collecting parts as you can see below. I am going to do a final cleaning on the Oil Gallery’s and the case will be ready for the next step of installing cam/crank.

Shown below are the alloy finned Porsche drum brakes to be used at the front.

Rear transaxle/running gear removed for tunnel shortening.

Date: 2010-06-23, 6:47PM PDT
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