The donor engine - the trusty 1600DP from our beloved and now scrapped '72 Super Beetle. This is the very same engine that took us all over the East Coast of Canada and the northern States.
Here it is (naked) with its cooling tin removed, after pressure washing, degreasing, and wire-wheel polishing.
Here's some of the chrome engine tin.
The start of the build-up. The rest of the components went in with little trouble.
Here is the first shot of it installed in the chassis. My clearancing of the transmission was not sufficient. I had to go "old school" and turn the engine over (first by the crank pulley and then with the starter) as I tightened it to the tranny. This let the flywheel cut away at the soft magnesium. I later removed the engine and cleaned up the mess.
Here's another shot from behind.
This shot shows the bowden tube and clutch cable (note the EMPI cable shortener). A new main seal, clutch, and pressure plate were installed on the freshly-machined flywheel.
Here's a shot of the shifter and parking brake installed. These will need to be adjusted before they will work perfectly.As I mentioned, that's it for the Speedster for a while. The rolling chassis is a little incomplete, for the record... I need to rebuild the carburetor, free up the distributor advance mechanism, and set up the accelerator pedal and cable. For your reading pleasure, keep checking back at the Home Renovations section of www.ad-libs.ca for updates over the next month or two...
