As I said in my last post, no I have no 4 or even 2 post lift.
I do have a mobile engine hoist and two engine hoists of the tradtitional variety.
Although I am used to taking conventional engines and gearboxes out and have done them working in an ordinary double or even single garage, I have never taken a VW beetle engine out.
Obviously I have read up on it and I do understand that it should be relatively easy as long as you know to basically support the engine from underneath then lift the rear of the body and chassis up in the air. Or lower the engine to the floor.
BUT being a Speedster, this isn't possible.
Only with a 4 post lift, two or three guys who can take the weight and a ton of fiddling, as this is what the garage had to do as one bolt threw them and they couldn't see how to undo it. The bolt was on the top connecting the gearbox to the engine, more or less, could have been to the torque converter but whatever it was they had to take the whole engine-gearbox assembly out in one. Then they discovered the "bolt" was in fact just slid in there, nothing to undo at all. They replaced it with a proper one.
From then on, they just put it the engine back in then the gearbox/torque converter assembly. If I have to take the box off, I will have to raise the whole car on ramps and axle stands, big ones like I use for my Land Rovers, and take it from there. But it is amazingly tight. Also, to separate the clutch from the box I think I have to drain the oil and fiddle about inside the box. Not really sure.
I have given some real thought to getting the clutch to release and I have come up with a couple of ways of doing this. It is obvious that the clutch plate is now the right thickness, or if not, can only be off by a couple of thou. So I am going to play with how the diaphragm can is mounted, to see if I can move it further away from the gearbox, this would automatically move the arm in the right direction. If I cannot do that, I could separate the mechanism, i.e. the bottle screw and the parts it screws to, and saw off a couple of mmm here and a couple of mm there to enable the arm to pull just that bit further to free the clutch off.
What is really annoying is knowing I could do that without having to even move the car from where it is parked, outside on the gravel drive. But to shut the squeal up, whatever it is, I am more or less sure I am going to have to get the box, clutch, etc off. And I cannot get either into the garage or even to the garage door as the garage is still full of stuff for the kitchen and utility room which I still have to finish, (I recently chipped a bone in my thumb and am not really supposed to do anything much in the DIY line for a few weeks). In front of the garage are 2 Land Rovers deliberately left there blocking it from intruders when we are in France. Now they are blocking me! Neither will be easy to start, one hasn't started for 2 years at least!.
I also don't know anyone with experience on Beetles except the garage that fitted it originally and he was difficult when we asked him to do the clutch change at the beginning of the year. He didn't want to do the job as it would have blocked up his lift for a week or so and he no longer does the sort of work he used to do. So we got an offer to do it from the other garage and when they got stuck they rang the specialist and he started off awkward with "that was my job" type remarks , which none of us could understand. Although in the end he did become very helpful, emailing then digarams that I didn't have.
So now we have the clutch-plate, and especially if I can get it to release properly, the specialist might be more willing to take it on again and get the job finished, but having already paid £1500 to have it ferked up by the non-specialists neither I, nor the wife, whose car it is, want to have to spend yet more money to get it sorted. She is more willing to throw money at it than I am but then that is more me being bliddy stubborn and hating to let any car get the better of me.
Plus I also have to tune it back to how it was when I took it to the garage. The bloke there thought it sounded awful so he employed, completely unknown to us, a tuning specialist who apparently works on Beetle specials all the time and does dragsters etc. But the bloke didn't realise that the rattly engine, when warm, makes a lovely noise so didn't need touching at all, and the "tuner" tuned it cold, so it started and ran fine until it got warm and then it became a death trap as the usual flat spot just off tickover, (twin Webers) came in with a vengeance. In a manual car there are solutions to it but in an Autostick it really is deathly trying to pull onto a roundabout with a dying engine.
So watch this space! Maybe after Xmas I'll be able to get back to it.
Have a lovely Christmas!
john
