Tinwear Modifications
Now although the engine has been built, and has been run in the car, there were always a few things I had wanted to change/ improve on it. One of these was the fit of the tinwear.

A big issue was the fit of the manifolds in the cylinder tin. In the picture you can see the D ported intakes of the cylinder heads. Standard cylinder tin is just not going to fit.

The size of the manifold bases also added to the issue. I’m using vintage DDS manifolds, and as they were the base of the manifolds was not large enough for the porting of the heads (and also the cylinder tin). Luckily my good friend James at Stateside Tuning was able to get the welding done for me, even keeping the all-important DDS Logo. (Yes, the manifolds still need porting!)

So how do I make the cylinder tins fit these enlarged manifolds? Well here was my ‘intermediate solution that I used during the trial build. Simply cut them and bend them back! Not pretty, and questionable effects on cooling ability.

Now I had the chance I decided that I needed to do this in a better way. The solution was to fabricate and weld in a whole new inner section in. This took a lot of careful measurement (and a lot of time!).

Now something I had always hated about aftermarket cylinder tin (there was no point using OG tin if it was going to be cut around so much!) was that they did not include the directional air veins. Thus I added them back in.

I also decided I wanted to fit the cylinder under tin. Most people chuck these away, but VW put it there for a reason, so I thought I’d keep them too. Unfortunately as ever the fit of aftermarket tin is terrible, and finding good (and realistically priced) genuine piece is nigh on impossible!

In the end I found some genuine tin that was in reasonable condition and repaired/ modified this. (Note: The space between the bottom and top of the tin is due to the larger ports on the exhaust off the 044 heads. This was sorted later).

And the other side.

Another thing people always usual do away with is the front small pieces of under cylinder cooling tin by the pulley wheel. Again I decided to add these back in. I also made some slight improvements to this under tin by putting back steel where VW had removed it for stuff like breather pipes etc, as I was not running any of this. This is it as VW made it.

And my modifications.

Both pieces fitted (Yes i know my modification isnt shown!!).

Now as pointed out earlier, there is a gap between the bottom and top of the tin due to the larger exhaust ports. Although I could have extended the head tin down, I did not want to do this as, 1) I didn’t want to mess around with the tin anymore, and 2) the profile of the tin where they meet internally was off in places and extending the tins wouldn’t address this. Therefore decided to fill the gaps with aluminium spacers.

Here is some example of the spacers fitted. Some needed more/ less spacing than others.

Now although it is not the prettiest solution, it did allow me to address the issue of the internals of the bottom and top tin not matching together great (in places leaving step between the two). It also had the advantage of smooth the flow of air from the top to the bottom tin. Therefore I put angles on the edges of the aluminium plates to smooth the air flow.

Now there no point putting all this under tin back and making sure there a smooth flow of air if there are huge gaps where the heat exchangers would have been. (I’m running a merged system with J pipes). Therefore I fabricated some industrial shields to close the gaps. These tins are similar to those used on industrial motors that did not have heat exchangers.

Now I trial fitted the exhaust with the industrial tin and i’m glad i did, as one of the header pipes caught on it. Thus it was notched to clear.

Turning my attention to the fanshroud, I am running a SCAT 1200 style aftermarket version as with a genuine fan shroud did not clear the carbs, and also I do not need heat exchanger outlets.

These SCAT fanshrouds are not as well built as genuine VW items, and although OK, they can be improved upon. One area where they can be improved is where the oil cooler sits in the fan shroud. Poor build quality in the aftermarket item leaves a large gap where air can bypass the cooler.

Therefore I simply welded a sealing piece on the mounting bracket, which closes this gap.

And finally the fanshroud was put back on.

Now a problem with larger capacity engines with long stroke cranks is that they are wider than standard engines. As the heads are further out, this leaves a gap between the cylinder head tin and the fanshrouud. A simple solution to this was to make some aluminium spacers. I thought I’d use some nice dress washers to finish them off.

The final thing I wanted to tidy up was where the ignition leads ran. I used small brackets attached to tinwear screws (These are in the centre, its the camera angle!!).

Engine Detailing

Once the tinwear modifications were done, the engine was stripped down to a long block, and the tinwear etc was sent off to be powdercoated. So that the dust, grit etc did not get into the motor I made some cover plates.

Something that i always hated about the engine was dull finish of the case due to oxidisation. It just didnt look right with all the work i'd done on the rest of the car. Thus I decided to paint it using engine enamel.

I'm really pleased with the final results. :)

Yes I know there is much debate about painting cases, but it done now so well see.........(n.b. heads removed so that the manifolds can be match ported)

And heres the motor with a few bits bolted back on. The alternator stand has been polished and laqured to stop it going dull again.

The BERG deep sump has been also be re-installed, and fitted with a Vintage Speed stainless (shotblasted) sump plate (no longer available), and a stainless steel sump plug.

All fitting where possible have been replaced with stainless items. It was a pain getting these for the BERG linkage as its all imperial. Again the aluminium cross bar has been laqured.

The linkage is not polished here, but this photo shows the dress washers used to keep it all neat and tidy.

Even the alternator got a coat of laqure to stop it dulling!

Whilst he was painting the body Stevo also painted and polished the rocker cover. I love these.

And here’s a hint of the next engine part to get painted (Please note, this was an earlier colour match, we have now got it a lot closer).

Carbs Rebuild

The carbs were also stripped down and rebuilt. They weren’t in to bad condition, but I had to change the jets venturi’s etc, and it gave me a good excuse to detail them!!

Here are the custom made 39mm venturi's (front two) that were sourced for me By James at Stateside Tuning. You can see the quality of the machine work on these is much better than the cast items.

And here are both carbs finished.

To give them a bit of a tart up stainless fittings were used where I could, and any ali components were polished.

The adjustment screw were even replaced with stainless items.

Rather than use the standard steel tabs I used aluminium trumpet hold down rings which I got from Joe Bence. The quality of these rings is amazing, and they really finish the carbs off nice.

Here they are installed on the carbs.