81 Rabbit LS AAZ (2023: now tdi-m)

[RabbitJockey]

And on to the work on the new engine. I think there is probably a better process for cleaning and painting an engine, but i just went for it with what i thought would work best. I cleaned it with dish soap and water and lots of scrubbing, then left it dry and hit it with a wire wheel on a grinder to remove rust and loose original paint. Then i cleaned it again with purple power and lots of scrubbing. And a final spray down with brake cleaner for more degreasing before i painted it. The surface wasn't perfect bare metal but it was free of oil as much as i could get it.



Freshly painted with primer and Eastwood 2K AeroSpray High Temp Ceramic Engine Paint Gloss Red

This was a great product. I was a little upset because I followed the directions which said i had 24hrs to use the can once it was activated, and you can see in the later picture it came out like *** on my valve cover. Otherwise so far i love the product, easy to spray and the finish came out great. We'll see how it holds up once the engine is running.



I didn't like all the baremetal around the crank breather/oil filter flange area and later on i brushed on paint to cover it up.





the old oil pan had a hole in it, so after painting I installed this brand new one with new hardware.



here is the valve cover that turned out like ***. I did clean off this paint and then buy another can and refinished it.



The benefit was that since I bought another can of paint I could paint another item. The master cylinder had been leaking so the original black paint had bubbled off of the brake booster. Now it matches the engine. The finish looks better in person, I think it was still wet in this picture so the orange peel finish looks worse than how it actually turned out.

[RabbitJockey]

Here is my brake overhaul pictures. Not pictured I also repalced one of the rear trailing arm brake lines and a wheel cylinder... but thats basic stuff who cares?

My first time doing brake lines didn't turn out bad.

I replaced all the brake lines in the engine bay, and then replaced all the brake hoses with stainless steel hoses.



I cleaned the brand new master cylinder and painted it with brake caliper paint

The fluid reservoir was ultra sonically cleaned in water/dish soap, turned out great!

These aftermarket master cylinders for the Westmoreland built Rabbits have a bad tendency to leak around the grommets where the reservoir barbs press in. That was the issue with the aftermarket master cylinder that I took out. So I did two things to combat it this time around. One was I put some heatshrink on the barbs to make them fatter and press out on the grommet more to create a better seal. Two was that I removed the grommets and cleaned everything well, then put "Seal-All" sealer around the outside of the grommets and pushed them into place. I haven't driven it yet but the car is full of fluid and the brakes were bled, with no leaks so far.



For the front brakes, I cleaned both front calipers/carriers and painted them with caliper paint. This was probably a waste of time as brand new painted calipers with new bushings aren't that expensive.

Then I installed new vented brembo rotors and mintex red pads.

[ORCoaster]

I am seeing RED, RED, and more RED!   Maybe a fav color?

[RabbitJockey]

i really don't like red that much

blue is my favorite color. i actually wanted the engine to be olds gold or buick red but they didn't have those colors in the rattle cans so i got plain red. I wanted red to match the interior a little bit, which is more of a maroon color, so the buick red would have been better.

[RabbitJockey]

This covers the head porting and machine work. I really just stuck to the basics, like whats covered in the david vizard guide that's stickied somewhere on this forum. i went with a less is more, just cleaning things up type of attitude. Then had the exhaust valve guides replaced, 3 angle valve job on all the seats, 30 degree back cut on all the valves, and autotech hd dual valve springs installed.


Everything here is just a huge snowball effect over the last few years of me continually falling for the idea of "while you're in there."

i used this piece of cardboard to match the intake manifold to the intake ports. i didnt use the gasket because I didn't want to enlarge anymore than it took to make them match. In hindsight i probably would have been better off just using the gasket since it wasn't obnoxiously large and it would have made sure each port was the same shape.



I colored marker around the intake ports so i could scribe around them for port matching. I used aluminum bits for grinding out the ports, and then finished with sandpaper the aluminum bits are very aggressive, I can see why many of the experts use double cut bits intended for grinding steel .




The exhaust ports started like this, there was a fair amount of shift between the top and bottom of the port.



Here's a picture from the machine shop when they were done with the machine work. 3/4angle valve job, new exhaust guides, 30 degree back cut on all the valves, and assemble with autotech HD dual valve springs.



here is the valve job. I forget whether it was the intakes or exhausts, but one of them needed an extra angle to make a smooth transition into the seat. So one set is 3 angles, and one set is 4 angles.



Here is a comparison of a backcut valve (left) and a non backcut valve(right). This helps to improve low lift flow, and makes the engine behave similarly as if it had a longer duration cam.



Backcut valves ready for assembly.

[ORCoaster]

The redhead is dead and buried under the shed, said Fred.

Talk about grinding away at a project.  You have definitely been doing that.  Keep it going and I sure hope this makes it run like a rabbit. 

[RabbitJockey]

thanks, this has been over the course of the last 5 years, but especially the last 2 or 3. I didn't appreciate how much work I've put into it until i started uploading all these pictures.

i love the organization of these forums but i did get a new appreciation for all the newer social media apps. It is a lot of work to upload all the images and then format each post on here.

A few more posts and i'll be up to date here and all updates will be as I progress

[RabbitJockey]

Here is the start of final assembly. I coated the headgasket in hylomar spray, which i had good luck with on my old AAZ engine. It made changing gaskets really nice as it doesn't stick surfaces as much and leave a crusty mess behind. I used stock head bolts because i am brave



Timing belt cover trimmed to fit around the MK1 engine mount



This turbo has the same outside dimensions as a stock 1.6TD T3. Some grinding was required to fit this 50 trim t3 hybrid, a little bit from the intake, and a little bit from the compressor housing. I was even able to use part of the stock heatshield.



I cleaned and flattened out the turbo flange the best I could by using a file in an "X" pattern. I figured a little bit of this hi temp copper rtv stuff wouldn't hurt. You can see the heatshield here. To the bottom right of the heatshield you can see where one of the bosses had to be ground off to create clearance for the turbo.




For the transmission I replaced both axle flange seals, and installed a Porsche magnetic drain plug. So now every seal on the transmission has been replaced by me at some point in the last 10 years.



999-064-020-02 magnetic oil drain plug compatible with 020 transmissions.



Cheap header wrap on the downpipe. Mostly for aesthetic reasons. It was not the prettiest part.

[RabbitJockey]

Here is the old AAZ block. Bolted to it is the same lightweight 210mm flywheel I am reusing on the new engine. It also has a California Clutch Yellow Pressure plate/disc combo for a mk1 GTI. The picture is to show how far off the timing marks are between a gas flywheel and a diesel. On the left is the original gas TDC mark I painted yellow and on the right is the yellow TDC mark I made myself with a dial gauge and scribed into the yellow paint. I dont understand why vw would use 2 different marks, I assume the crank bolts are what's different.



Here is the pressure plate I am using, I had to swap out the "back plate", or else it would be painted yellow as thats how California Clutch identifies the "stages" of their pressure plates. The picture is to how how it is triple strapped. If you are running any type of performance through an 020 clutch setup, it needs to at least have double straps. Even NA 16v engines can tear single straps. I tore one with the AAZ engine.




Here is the antique come along I used for removing and installing the engines. It attached to eye bolt rated for 7,000 lbs or something ridiculous like that. The bolt is then attached to a 5ft piece of lintel in the attic, and that lays across 4 trusses that can each support 800lbs in their centers. So these engines are no problem.





Everything bolted together and ready to go in the Rabbit. Please pray for my 020 transmission.





Installed new nitrided lifters, these are for PD engines but will work in any of the hydraulic lifter VW diesel engines. I removed the small internal springs as recommended in this video.





I bought this SDI cam as a mild upgraded for this engine. When I installed it I noticed it had what looked like pitting on the tip of the lobes. I thought perhaps it was fine and just some pits left behind from air in the casting process. Advice from others, and me not wanting to make a bet on the life of this engine led me to buy a Frank06 performance camshaft instead.

[RabbitJockey]

I decided to use a 1g Dodge Neon radiator because it's much smaller, and this made it so there is enough room behind the condenser for me to have a radiator and intercooler side by side. So of course I had to make a fan shroud, from an old battery charger case. Fan is an 11" SPAL unit, biggest one I could fit. Hopefully the better fan makes up for the smaller radiator.




the house outlets on this rtadiator are close enough to where the original radiators landed that i can use the original vw radiator hoses.




Fan mounted with a bank of relays for the fans and AC compressor control.




Test fitting with the new shroud on, and everything fits perfectly, as if VW intended it.



Here is the intercooler I am swapping to, it's a dual pass, and an ebay special both of which are not ideal but the form factor solved a lot of headaches for me when it comes to intercooler plumbing. I wont be using that battery, but I will be swapping to one a similar size, this clears up a lot of room for the intercooler.





I added a small fan to the intercooler because it sits behind the condenser and I would still like to have working AC. I still need to build a small bracket for the intercooler to sit on.

[ORCoaster]

OK< link for the intercooler.  I would consider one on the other side of my current radiator as it would not have hot air coming through the radiator first.  Oh, and Price, is always the important deciding factor when buying an add-on product.  NOT!  But I would like to know if it is not in the link you provide. 

[RabbitJockey]

Neither of these links are the same seller that i bought from, that ad is down now.

This one is like the one i bought, it has the better flowin intercooler core with the wider bars, and this style is recommended for performance. The downside I noticed when i actually received it is that there is an odd number of "bars" passage ways, so one side has 6 bars, and the other has 5 bars. For me i think that is not ideal, but the side with 6 bars is the "in" hot side of the intercooler so it makes more sense to have more bars there, since as the air cools it will "shrink" and then go through the 5 bar side of the intercooler.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275724782222?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=gl8HY6XFTRq&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY


This one has as an even number of flow paths, so the in and out have the same number. It is also cheaper, so there are a few factors to consider when buying one of these. IMO any intercooler is better than no intercooler and even a high hp tdi is~300hp so i dont think there is a great intercooler requirement.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/145239543661?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=txnvxvwntso&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[ORCoaster]

Have you ever tried using a second radiator for an intercooler?  I have one and got to thinking, that will cool the air and I am not looking for performance as much as just a little bit of heat taken out of the injected air.  Flow seems to be good enough with a 2-inch pipe inlet.

[RabbitJockey]

i have never done that. I don't see why you would because you can intercoolers in any size you want these days for pretty good prices.

[ORCoaster]

I would like to try it because 1. I have the radiator and don't have a good-fitting intercooler.  I need one of those small ones with piping that comes and goes out the top.  I am more interested in trying it than spending money on the parts. 

OK, I will say it.  I am frugal/ cheap when it comes to trying things like this. 

I did just score a boost/EGT gauge that is from an airplane that should have cost me around 300 dollars and I only spent 50 for it.  So maybe spend some of that savings on a good intercooler?