Cotton AeroVee 0795

[Bryan Cotton]

It's much harder to put the motor on its nose in the drill press, so I drilled all 4 plugs by hand. Actually for the small plugs I went right to the 1/16 NPT tap without drilling. But I could not get the 3/8" NPT tap started. As I was getting frustrated I put it aside until after Oshkosh and ordered some 10MM bolts so I could get the case nose down on the drill press. What I did on the other side was to use the chuck to press/center the tap into the hole as I turned it. That worked great.

Here I've bolted an angle across a couple of 10MM holes that serve some purpose on the car. I clamped a second angle to the first one. I also found some nifty large flat head torx 6mm screws from my Saturn junk box and screwed them in by the crank exit/snout.

Here it is in the press.

I clamped those angles to the table and shimmed below the screws & snout. I made the screws level with the snout.

Lunchtime over - will tap it tonight.

I'd rather be lucky than good.

[Bryan Cotton]

I've successfully tapped the last two oil galleys. Back:

Top:

I saw nothing scary in the galleys, so not sure what was causing my high oil pressure.

Doing this job in the drill press is key to making it go well.

[bvolcko38]

How did your bearings and journals look? Did you plastigauge them?

[Bryan Cotton]

How did your bearings and journals look? Did you plastigauge them?

They looked ok. I did not plastigauge them.

[Area 51%]

Are you going to re-use your cam and lifters?

If not, there is a better option for the camshaft. To begin with, the names "Eagle" and "Engle" get confused a lot. To be clear, the cam named after the symbol of the U.S.A. is a CB Performance unit. The other, well, is just the other.

Engle has a cam available with nearly identical lift/duration/overlap characteristics. Pricier I'll grant, but it's advantage is it's forged with flat spots to miss the connecting rods. The Aerovee assembly manual would have you assemble the engine with the Eagle cam, then rotate it and listen for contact between the cam and rod ends. If there is contact, simply disassemble the motor and grind the offending matter from the cam. No mention of how to actually check the clearance between the two.

My new Engle cam is sitting here awaiting employment @Area 51%

[Bryan Cotton]

Are you going to re-use your cam and lifters?
@Area 51%

Yep. I had no clearance issues in the first 270 hours.

[Bryan Cotton]

I have a set of Great Plains intake manifolds I want to try.

I made spacers. Left a gap between the front and rear cylinder. Wondering if this will help balance the mixture.

Aeroconversions parts for comparison.

[Area 51%]

Stock VW manifolds had a slot machined between the intake ports. Quite possibly for that very reason.

I figured, if it's good enough for VW, it's good enough for me. I chiseled a groove between the holes on my Great Plains manifolds simply out of respect for the engineers at VW. No digital information down to the tenth of a degree, but my plugs were all very evenly colored.

If nothing else, it sure looks nice not having a square peg in a round hole. .

[Bryan Cotton]

How far did your groove go? All the way? Any pictures?

If nothing else, it sure looks nice not having a square peg in a round hole.

Yeah that always bugged me.

[Area 51%]

It simply bridged the gap between the ports. 3/16 X 3/16 slot comes to mind. No pictures and I can't seem to lay my hands on them, but I know they are in the 10lb pile somewhere in this 5lb bag I call a workshop.