The Autopsy

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!


This is what we saw when we took off the cylinder head. Notice the valve in cylinder 1!


Another shot with the valve sitting on the block.


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.


This is a shot of the cylinder head. Notice the damaged valve guide.

Here is a blurry shot of the culprit lifter. You can see the jagged edge.

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.

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 decided to stick with the same engine type so perhaps someday we can still use our "lumpy" cam.

We located a low mileage engine for $300 including shipping from Nebraska. The plan was to perform the engine swap the weekend of April 15th, 2000. And we did! Here are the details.