Orphaned Engine

On Jul 21, 6:55*pm, cavelamb himself wrote:

Not at 260 pounds.
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Seems a tad high but it really doesn't matter; beggers can't be
choosers. It is available, dirt cheap and reliable. Determine it's
CG and it is reduced to a box on the drawing, waiting to be made
practical by the designer.

The Wright 'Flyer' grossed about 750lbs with Orville onboard. Wing
span of 40 feet. Wing area over 500 square feet. Yet it flew
moderately well (in 1905) with only 12 horsepower. Since those days
we have enjoyed quantum leaps in materials and aeronautical knowledge
-- we've more than enough information to build a reliable airplane
from materials commonly available in the average town. Drop the
bureaucrats out of the equation, solve the logistical problems of
where to build and to fly, and you own the sky, de facto if not de
juri.

Here in the western United States on any winter weekend you can see
hundreds of flying machines doing their thing over the myriad of dry
lakes. Many of these are substantial machines with real aircraft
engines but most are not. Yet they all fly and incidents are low.

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:55:19 -0500, cavelamb himself
wrote:

wrote:

Snipped out all the good stuff...

I wish they had made a 6 cylinder bug engine, with decent heads. That would
be a much better aero engine, me thinks.

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They did. It's called the Corvair :-)

-R.S.Hoover


Not at 260 pounds.


IMHO, the best 80 HP VW engine is the Rotax 912.


They CAN fly at 235. quite possibly less.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

wrote

Types? They number in the low HUNDREDS, from the basic beetle or Type
I to some NATO aviation support vehicles, Type 338 and higher.

WoW ! ! ! I had NO idea, about all of that!

Since the Type 1 used SIX different engines over the years, and ALL of
those included variations, the type vs displacement thingy is a handy
way to determine if a person is just running their mouth or if they
actually know something about VW engines.

When you say 6 different Type 1 engines, is that difference defined by
displacement, or is there some other designation to differentiate among the
Type 1 engines?

But that has little to do with converting a VW engine for flight since
you should base your build on all new, universal replacement parts.

Are all of the Type 1 cases the same?

Thanks for all of the info, by the way.
--
Jim in NC

On Jul 22, 1:12*pm, "Morgans" wrote:

When you say 6 different Type 1 engines, is that difference defined by
displacement, or is there some other designation to differentiate among the
Type 1 engines?
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Mostly displacement. The original (ie, late thirties through about
1943) was not designated in so far as I know but with a disignator,
possibly because it's spec changed so frequently. But the E-type
engine (1943) became the 1100, then the 1200, 1300, 1500 and 1600.
Within that group of engines were a number of variants some of which
appeared on the logo (1300S) although most did not.

The fact the same basic engine was used in the Sedan (ie, Type I), the
Transporter (type II) and the fastback (type III) is what compounds
the foolishness. And then you ran into all of the variants specific
to type, such as the fuel injected engines.

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But that has little to do with converting a VW engine for flight since
you should base your build on all new, universal replacement parts.

Are all of the Type 1 cases the same?
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Only if you're talking about the Universal Replacement Crankcase.
Special mounting lugs were installed on the rear of the cases used in
the Transporter, some fuel injected cases did not have provision for a
mechanical fuel pump, the threaded boss for the oil pressure switch
wandered around a bit and so forth.

As a point of interest, the State of California represented a market
larger than all of Canada -- large enough for VW to produce a number
of variations specific to SoCal's smog requirements. Those of us
living here are familiar with those engines whereas a VW mechanic from
another region is liable to have never even seen one.

For the most part, the internals stayed the same. All 1300, 1500 and
1600 engines used the same cam, for example (the 'Transporter Cam' is
a myth). But by the time you got out to the heads you are looking at
dozens of variations, all built in significant numbers. This is where
things begin to get serious because the chamber volume and deck height
must be identical across all four jugs. Try running a pair of mis-
matched heads and you could ltlrash the thing on the first hill.

In my blog I've spent some time talking about blueprinting the parts.
Aside from simply checking them against the spec, blueprinting is
needed to ensure you end up with a collection of parts that are
compatible.
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Thanks for all of the info, by the way.
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You're welcome. But you can find it all in the official manuals. And
in the popular manuals I've mentioned in the TULZ series of articles.
Great Plains offers a manual and video specific to flying
conversions. What you won't find are the lurbrication and durability
mods -- the HVX mods -- that allowed us to turn the VW in something
that could run flat-out for 24 hours. When those mods are
incorporated into a VW converted for flight you end up with a more
efficient, cooler-running engine. However, all of those mods appeared
on the 1700 and later engines (ie, the 'type 4')l and are found on ALL
modern-day engines. Retro-fitting them to your engine simply brings
it up to date.

-R.S.Hoover

On Jul 21, 11:47*am, erik wrote:

How about something more on the Type 4?
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Mostly because I don't consider myself qualified on them.

I've converted a couple for flight and done my share of repairs on
411's and the like, but I've never had access to enough cores to do
much in the way of experimentation.

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Most info on this engine seems
to be " That is what the VW engine should have been"

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True enough. It incorporates all of the HVX mods, for example. Plus
hydraulic cam-follwers. And it has already been converted & certified
as an aircraft engine by Porsche. But it fails the test of Critical
Mass: There aren't enough of them to trigger the investment &
experimentation that leads to a race-winning combo. Mark Stephens
devoted a lot of time to the engine's initial short-comings (bad valve
seats, head seals, sodium-filled valves, etc) and fielded a number of
race-winning cars with this engine. But having tooled-up to produce
reliable heads and so forth, found the market simply wasn't there. My
conversions of this engine were limited to the aviation-specific
items: The engine mount, prop-hub, cooling system and so forth. For
the mechanical components, I simply bought the parts from Stephen.
The be fully qualified on the engine I would have tooled-up to do ALL
of the engine-work in-house. That's the only way you can certain of
the quality of the work.

-R.S.Hoover