It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time...

The Plan

After picking up our car, we were faced with the task of getting our rally car with its "lumpy" camshaft to pass NJ eimissions standards. So, I came up with the bright idea of going to a junkyard and pulling a stock camshaft from a 1.8l VW engine. Never mind the fact that we didn't have a cat and our fuel system had been modified to run all rich all the time, this seemed like a good starting point. Once we put the stock cam in, we could work on getting the engine to run leaner and therefore cleaner.

Valentines Day weekend, Eddie, my girlfriend (Carolyn) and myself spent Saturday at a u-pull-it junkyard under the Bayonne bridge on Staten Island. We locate a Jetta with the engine code (GX) that our '85 Golf should have (the code on our engine is unreadable). Upon looking inside the car, Carolyn says, "I have a bad feeling about this car; I think someone died in it. Look at all those air fresheners!" and points towards the dozen or so air fresheners hanging from the steering column. Eddie assures her that this is normal for Staten Island. We get to work removing the camshaft while Carolyn removes a passenger's side mirror from a nearby Audi to replace the broken one on our VW.

The most difficult part of removing the camshaft was getting the timing belt cover off. We wound up just tearing it off with some pliers. Perhaps this is why our car doesn't have one. With that out of the way, we remove the valve cover and bearing caps and set the camshaft free just as they announce it's time to close. We gather up our tools and pay $40 for the camshaft, the mirror and some other bits and pieces we picked up.

After leaving the junkyard, Carolyn's Saturn (of the 4 cars owned by the three of us, this is the only one with a back seat...) developed a vibration from the front, passengers side wheel. We think it's just some mud in the wheel so we continue home. While stopped at a traffic light on Rt. 1, the tire deflates. As it turns out, it wasn't mud, but a nail. We pull into the parking lot of a Barnes and Noble where we mount the spare and Eddie gets a mochachinno. A mile or so down the road we stop at a tire shop to see if we can get it fixed. The hole can be patched but since Carolyn lives in Maine and will be driving home Sunday, we elect to get a new tire. This added $90 to our expenses for the day... While there we chat with the owner about the new state inspection and tell him about our car. He seems eager to see it, so we tell him we'll bring it in once we replace the camshaft.

The next weekend we attempt to install the new (stock) cam. The old ("lumpy") cam comes out easily, but when we try to put in the new cam we notice something peculiar: five bearings where there should be four. A quick review of the Bently A2 service manual shows that only the diesel heads have five bearings and all the 8v gas engines have four. Wierd. Sure enough, the camshaft we have does not fit because the diameter of the shaft is too large to fit in the extra bearing. Okay, we put the old cam back in and put the car back together again.

Here is the junkyard cam before installation

A close up of the extra bearing

At this point, if we were lazy we would have given up, realizing we didn't know what we were dealing with. If we were smart, we would have done some research into finding out where our cylinder head came from. Being young, naive and fearless mechanical engineers, we came up with our own solution: all we have to do is get the camshaft machined down to the right diameter to fit in the bearing. Sounds simple enough... So our friend Josh introduces us to Glenn who runs the machine shop at our school and he agrees to machine down the cam for us. He's even excited about seeing the rally car, and we promise to bring it in and show him sometime.

A couple of weeks go by, so in the meantime we work on repairing the skidplate that came with the car. It is made of plastic which broke at a bend in the skidplate. We performed a temporary fix just so we'd have some protection for the next rallycross and started coming up with a design for a real aluminum skidplate for Sawmill. We found some scrap sheet metal in the shop near Eddie's lab and bolted two pieces (one steel, one aluminum, we call it a "composite" skidplate...) to the two pieces of plastic skidplate and bent the metal by hand. The finished product doesn't look too bad, but it probably won't hold up to a strong impact.

Here is our temporary patched-together skidplate

We picked up the camshaft and decided to install it the Saturday before the East Durham Rallycross. Okay, it's probably not a good idea to mess around with the engine right before an event, but it seemed so simple and there was a limited number of weekends before Sawmill. The camshaft fit fine and I held my breath as a started the engine for the first time. It didn't start well, but then again, it never starts well. After some coughing and complaining it warmed up. The idle wasn't improved all that much, but when I took the car for a spin around the block I immediately noticed that there was a lot more power at 3,000rpm, but above 4,000 it trailed off. This is just what we expected; peak power was definitely down, but it was somewhat more drivable.

If it Ain't Broke...

I got out of bed at 4:51am on Sunday, Mar. 19th in order to head up to the rallycross in East Durham. I remebered being worried about upsetting my neighbors when I started the car at 7:00am before the last rallycross. This time I was too tired to care when I started the car at 5:30am. I picked up Eddie and we were off; first stop the Wawa for some breakast.

Our first dissapointment of the day: the Wawa was closed. I assumed they were open 24 hours a day, but as it turns out this one opens at 6am. Oh well... Breakfast would have to wait until we hit exit 21 of the NY Thruway around 8:30. We picked up some drinks and gassed up before heading to the rallycross at the East Durham Irish Arts Center.

We arrived at the rallycross at 8:45am; plenty of time to unload the car, walk the course and get through tech. We had just had our annual tech inspection the week before, courtesy of Ed Brennan so everything was in order. During the first two runs we both practiced left foot braking, and were amazed at how well it works. We got to ride together so we critiqued each others driving. The stock cam didn't deliver as much power as the "lumpy" cam, so we couldn't power out of turns like we did at the last event. We were pretty happy with our performance, and you can see the results here.

Eddie at East Durham

Getting in line for the first run of the day

Erik at the wheel

After the first run. Notice this side of the car has the broken mudflap. Notice also the location of our stuff. This prohibits us from pulling forward out of the parking spot as Erik found out the hard way... On the bright side, the skidplate performed well when it hit the spare tire...

The cleaner side of the car

So, everything was going well until we started up the car to get ready for our third run. The engine started making a clacking noise, which prompted Brian, a Jetta owner who we met at the Wall Stadium Rallycross, to remark "She's angry! Sounds like a lifter; maybe more than one." At this point, we should have shut her down and taken off the valve cover to see what was going on inside our cylinder head. If we had, we would have seen the lobes of our cam slapping against our solid lifters and smashing them to pieces. Instead, we just looked under the hood and noticed a small amount of oil leaking from the cam seal (we didn't replace the seal on the junkyard cam, figuring it was only going to be in there temporarily), so we assumed we were just low on oil and our hydraulic lifters weren't getting fully pumped up. You see, with the whole cylinder head mystery, we never thought to check if we had solid or hydraulic lifters; we just assumed they were hydraulic because, according to our manual, only the '85 and '86 diesels have solid lifters. But remember, we weren't supposed to have five bearing caps on the camshaft either...

Instead of investigating this clacking further, we hurry to get in line for our third run. After I cross the finish Eddie says I was too restrained. It wasn't me that was restrained though; our car was seriously down on power. Things are not looking good. We decide to call it a day, pack up our stuff and head home.

Erik and Eddie's Bogus Journey

Erik and Officer Quigley

We went about five miles down the NY Thruway before the engine quit with a big puff of white smoke out of the tailpipe. I pulled onto the shoulder and we got out to assess the damage. The first thing we notice is one of the fuel injectors was blown out of the head and is sitting on the intake manifold. We immediately get out the fire extinguisher. Much to our surprise, the fluid on the manifold is not gasoline, but coolant! We get out the socket set and remove the valve cover to find coolant under there too, along with pieces of valve lifter. I try tuning the crankshaft with the ratchet, but it only goes back and forth about 90 degrees. We then take out the spark plug of the same cylinder that blew out the fuel injector and find the tip of the spark plug is gone, and the cylinder is full of bright green coolant! This was probably the exact moment we realized our hopes of making it to Sawmill had dissapeared. Even if we could get the car running by then there wouldn't be any money left in the budget for the entry fee, lodging, etc...

On the side of the Thruway

That's definitely not good!

With our triangles set up, we put everything back together and sat on the bumper to wait for someone to stop. A few rally people drive by, and finally a State Trooper stops. He's really friendly and we tell him our whole story about the camshaft. He radios for a tow truck, and Eddie takes a picture of myself and the Trooper before he drives off.

A few more rally people drive by as we wait for the tow truck. Finally a flatbed arrives, and winches our car into place. While the car is tilted, coolant streams out of the tailpipe! Driving down the Thruway, someone in a passing station wagon takes pictures of our car. It was nice to know our car looked good enough for other people to take pictures of it. The tow truck driver drops us off a motel at the next exit before taking the car to his shop. We gather up our stuff in the trash bags I always bring along to the rallycrosses in case it rains. He says we can catch a cab to Kingston where we can get a bus to NYC. The woman at the restaurant calls for a taxi and the driver says he can get us to the bus station to make the 7:30 bus to the Port Authority. She tells us a story about her car breaking down on the Thruway, but halfway through the story we realise that "breaking-down" to her meant getting a flat tire...

Eddie and half of the tow truck operator

Getting winched onto the flatbed

Eddie gathering our belongings in trash bags

The taxi arrives, so we hop in his minivan. This guy drives like clockwork; we picked up a woman along the way and dropped her off at her job at K-Mart right on time for her to begin her shift at 7pm. Along the way, we learn about the politics of the local cab industry, as our driver talks about all the buisness he's been stealing from his arch-enemy Wayne. He even just hired a new driver who used to work for Wayne and hates Wayne as much as he does. Just before we get to the bus station, we stop to pick up a guy who needs a ride to a bar. Interestingly enough, he looks more like he needs a ride home from a bar. I can't imagine what he was like by the end of the night, but at least he has the sense not to drive himself.

We make it to the bus station with 15 minutes to spare, and buy our tickets just as the bus starts boarding. During the ride, we start to plot our return to retrieve the rally car. We decide the best way to do it is to rent a U-Haul truck and tow dolly and drive it back ourselves on Tuesday. The longer it sits at the shop, the more we're going to get charged in storage fees.

From the Port Authority we walk down to Penn Station to catch a NJ transit train down to Princeton. We have to wait about half an hour for the next train, and we were lucky enough not to get thrown out as we looked rather ragged carrying our belongings in trash bags... The train takes us to Princeton Junction where we take the Dinky over to Princeton. Eddie tries to call his roomate to pick us up, but he can't remember his own phone number and the Dinky almost leaves without him. Instead, I call my lab and get one of the younger students, Tingfeng Lu, to pick us up. By this time it's after 1am so he's the only one around.

Eddie at the bus station in Kingston, NY

Erik in Penn Station

The next day I reserve a U-Haul and Tuesday we drive up to Catskill, NY and tow our car back to Princeton. The tow was uneventful; the only challenging part was parking the truck and tow dolly in our apartment complex. We give up trying to manuever the full rig, and roll the trailer by hand. Now there is yet another car in front of Eddie's apartment which doesn't run...

Getting ready to tow the car home

The next weekend we perform an autopsy on the engine and remove the cylinder head. Sitting in the #1 cylinder we find one of the valves! The valve is bent and the piston is gouged pretty badly. The scraps of metal from the broken lifters must have jammed the valve open allowing it to collide with the piston. The impact must have stretched the head bolts enough for the coolant and oil to mix with each other. After a week or so of weighing our options, we decide to just get a junkyard engine instead of working with what we have. We haven't taken the bottom end apart to see if the crankshaft and the connecting rods are salvagable. The head is definitely shot, as is one piston. The cylinder walls appear to be okay, so maybe the block isn't destroyed. Anyway, we located a low mileage engine for $300 including shipping, so it's on it's way from Nebraska as I write this. The plan is to perform the engine swap this weekend (April 15th).

Oh, as for the mysterious cylinder head... If you know anything about VW's, particularly the A1's, you probably allready know that what we had was a '83-'84 Rabbit GTI head, also found in '83-'84 Jetta GLIs, 83-87 Sciroccos, and 1983-87 Cabrios. We should have found this page before we blew our engine! We're going to stick with the same engine type so perhaps someday we can still use our "lumpy" cam.

Stay tuned for details on the engine swap and getting our car back on the road!