Where can I get pre-cups?

[sdwarf36]

Mine are all cracked-one pretty bad. I did a site search but never saw anyone give a actual answer. Are the availible new anywheres? If not, someone have some decent used ones they'll part with?

[Rabbit on Roids]

from what i remember reading, they are available, but not very easy to source at all... might be looking at a new head if all else goes bad and you cant find a set of cups.

[mmitocky]

sdwarf, I just bought some of these from Italy!  I found a company that sells them from an aftermarket company called "Sonax".  Here is the Italian company's website:

 http://www.eurocartogliani.191.it/EN-FrameBase.htm

Go to Download: Catalogues on the LH side of the site, and open the Engine Parts "Master Catalogue" up.  Somewhere midway down in the catalogue are the precombustion chambers, you can reference your car and the cup dimensions to get the part number.  Unfortunately you have to order 4 at a time, and mine (for the 1.6L) were about $26 a piece...AND you are ordering from Italy, so shipping ended up being about $60, for a total of about $160...and then my bank charged me $40 to wire the money over, so it ended up being about $200, not exactly cheap.

The ones I got were not exactly like the VW ones.  First off, they are magnetic, which means they are not an Inconel alloy, like the cast VW ones allegedly are.  The site says they are austenitic steel, which still has a high nickel content.  I am not worried about them not being inconel at all, as a matter of fact it makes them easier to weld with a high alloy filler rod without cracking, (reason why I did in a minute), and they should be able to cope with the stresses just fine.  Secondly, as you can see in the picture of the ones I recieved, they are machined with slightly different geometry than the VW ones....so If you were to use them as-is, I would probably run all 4 so that you had the same combustion chamber volume across all 4 cylinders.  I am replacing only 1 in my 5-cyl Audi head, and so I cc'ed the volume of one in order to compare it to the stock one, and it was 5 cc's more (I think, I do not have the numbers in front of me).  Because of the volume difference, and the different bowl shape and outlet shape (see pics), I welded the inside of mine and machined a bowl-shape into it...and altered the outlet slightly to match the VW ones.  

Overall I think that if a large company is manufacturing replacement pieces for so many diesel engines in Europe, where diesels are so prominent, I would trust in the quality of their parts.  But again, they are a little different, so I might consider running 4 new ones together.

I will probably have 3 left over (if I dont ruin the one I am working on), so if you want to buy them from me, you are more than welcome, because I will not need them.