TDE 34hp Kit

Great pic of a TDE kit on a 34 horse motor (from '65-ish)- good reference for our build as it has a fan-shroud mounted oil filter

Engle 100

What cam to choose? We have ordered a Riechert twin carb kit, which by the recommendation of Bernd (Riechert) will be a twin Solex 34 kit. So, so far the spec of the motor is a 1385cc, with ported single-port heads, and twin 34 solex carbs. We were looking for a cam that would give enough lift to fill these carbs through our sp heads, but work at low-enough revs to keep the motor drivable and not too 'revvy'. Alan at GAC Motorsport recommended an Engle 100. Here it is.

'New' distributor...

Well, new to us anyways - a nice shiny Bosch BR25, reconditioned and rebuilt with all NOS parts by Glenn Ring in the states. Glenn certainly knows his stuff when it comes to distributors and other VW gubbins. Nice job Glenn, cheers. Check his site here

Oldspeed-Register

This a good oldspeed blog, with cool parts and a really helpful forum (that's helped us out loads so far)
Link: http://oldspeed-register.blogspot.com/

Okrasa heads and carbs for sale...

Ad found on Volkszone for okrasa heads and carbs: http://www.volkszone.co.uk/VZi/showthread.php?t=420154
Dunno what the condition is like, but worth a look if you're on the hunt for some oldspeed gear - would have been interested myself if hadn't already ordered a Riechert kit and committed to single-port heads.

NOS Fram Oil Filter!

Well, here it is, our NOS Fram Oil Filter direct from ISP West, USA. They have a small quantity of NOS ones still in original boxes along with the replacement filters. To keep it all looking period correct we sourced some period style oil lines and fittings from Mr Wob (of Abarth Exhaust fame)...

Carbs...

We've been looking around for some vintage speed, twin carb options and found a company called Riechert in Germany run by Bernd Riechert wo's been making twin Solex carb kits for Porsche and VW since 1965, so he knows his stuff. He makes single and twin port kits so it's perfect for our single port based engine.





Riechert Dual Solex 34 PCI Carb Kit

We spoke to Bernd and he advised us to go with a twin 34 Solex kit to go with our 1385cc. They make up the kits to order from their stock of NOS Solex parts, then jet and flow bench them exacty to your engine set up. Nice.

New heads...

We've done some research into heads for the motor, it turns out that to be period-correct for 1965, there aren't many choices when it comes to heads for the 34hp motor. Basically, the choices seem to be stock VW heads or Okrasa twin-port heads - if anyone has any other info on other period heads for 30 or 34hp motors, let me know, and I'll post it up. Okrasa seems to be the only company making tuned heads for the VW at this time, unfortunately for our build we don't have the funds it takes to buy a pair of these babies (last ad seen $2000 for a pair - that would then need tidying up and building, probably including a valve-job, new valves etc). So we are using VW heads. We've taken the decision to go with the single-port heads from the 34hp - for a couple of reasons, one, VW made massive improvements to their 34hp singleport heads in '65 - they introduced the 373 heads (373 being the last 3 digits of the part code) which were stronger and had better cooling (due to an extra fin) than the previous 371 heads for the 34hp, and the second reason was that we had been convinced of the potential, strength and reliability of VW singleport heads by some good people, including GAC Motorsport in Aylesbury - who build tuned singleport heads for Formula Vee racing. So it seemed like a cool idea to use these year-correct heads rather than on VW twin-port heads which were introduced in '66 for the 1300, and then enlarged later for the 1500 and 1600.

Our motor came with 373 heads being a '65, but one was destroyed when the exhaust valve went, so we decided to look for another pair of genuine 373's then we could pick the best 2 from 3 to work on.
We found a good pair from a guy in Dorset who'd had them in a parts bin for the last 15 years...



The odd thing is that even though they have the same part number exactly (373 with no letter suffix, meaning they're genuine '65 heads) they have slightly different casting around the combustion chamber - seems like VW changed the casting during the year. First job was to clean up all three heads by hand with gunk and pressure washer (dirty job), then remove the valves...



Then they went off to a local engineers to be bead blasted to clean them up properly...





Nice. Next for the heads is to go off to GAC Motorsport to be ported, have a valve-job done on them and built up with new 1.1:1 ratio rockers, and new stainless steel valves (to help avoid what happened to the last ones :-) )

New Barrels & Pistons...

We are going to increase the motor to 1385cc by fitting some Mahle 83mm Barrels and Pistons - as they say 'there's no replacement for displacement' (who are 'they' anyways?). Contrary to a lot of write-ups these babies do not 'slot right in' but rather need quite a lot of machining around the skirt to make them fit. Basically they need to be reprofiled to match the 1200 pistons so that they clear the crank. Thanks to Rob for info on the machining.