Keep Rollin', Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

The spring cleaning fixed my problems with the filters clogging up.  However, I think because of all the extra dirt getting to the engine it clogged my fuel injectors as I was losing a lot of performance (I use that term loosely).  Around the first of June I took out all the injectors, cleaned them up and replaced the injector heat shields which were rather dirty.

Upon refitting the injectors and taking the first drive I immediately noticed an increase in performance (a strong headwind no longer slowed me down).  I'm still running a mix of veggie and motor oil but I've increased my veggie oil supply so I'm rolling mostly on it now.  I'm hoping to secure enough of a supply that I can someday own a 1/2 ton pickup with a full crew cab and not run out of oil.

More on that subject later.

Spring Cleaning

I've been going through fuel filters very quickly ever since I did the engine swap.  I decided that it was time to clean the drum that I heat my oil in.

It took a couple of hours but long story short there was about 2 inches of muck in the bottom of the drum.  I still have to clean the spare tank in the back of the rabbit to complete all of my 'spring cleaning'.  My goal is to finish cleaning and make a batch of grease tomorrow after work.

Hopefully this will fix my fuel filter problem :/

Finally, a fuel up

I fueled up last week for the first time since I've been running on grease with the new engine.  I went over 1500 miles on just over 9.2 gallons of diesel.  This gives me an efficiency roughly equivalent to 163 MPG. 

I'm back in business.

Finally... What you've all been waiting for

So I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures from the engine swap.  I'll embed the pictures I took, and give links to Facebook albums for the pictures that others took.

The swap in its entirety took the whole weekend.  I started around 4 PM on that Friday and the car didn't pull out of the barn until 7PM that Sunday.  However, the car was running by 7PM on Saturday night... Sunday was more for buttoning everything up and fixing leaks.

The swap went about as well as it possibly could.  One of the major snafus was that the new water pump had the incorrect hub for the pulley from the engine.  We had to cut the hub off the new pump, beat the hub out of the old pump, heat up the hub and press fit it onto the new pump!  That kept Josh busy for several hours on Friday night and Saturday morning.  One other thing that kept Donnie busy for a few hours was switching out the motor mount on the transmission side.  It was press fitted into the mount... Donnie burned the rubber out of the old one and cut it out of the mount.  A trusty vice and a few hours was all it took to press the new motor mount into the bracket.  There might be a couple of pictures of that event :)

On Saturday morning, Bob spent a lot of his time taking apart the shift linkages so that we could clean everything up and replace the bushings.  Once he had all the linkages off the rabbit, we discovered that there were no bushings on the linkages!  We put the new bushings where they were supposed to be and I can't believe the difference it's made in the feel of the vehicle.  Shifting is so much tighter which really helps in taming those ponies!

If you told me 3 years ago that I would be performing an engine swap I wouldn't have believed you.  It was definitely a stressful project but through the help of great friends, the support of a wonderful wife, and entirely because of a great God, it was a complete success.  The rabbit runs better than it ever has.  There is so much more acceleration through each gear, and top end of each gear is a lot higher.  I have been averaging 50 MPG (was only averaging 38 prior to the swap) and have put over 2000 miles on the new engine since the end of January.  I recently switched back to running on vegetable oil (technically, I've been running on fuel oil since I'm trying to get rid of it before it gets warm) and have put over 800 miles on less than 5 gallons of diesel.  I'm anxious to start eating through some of the reserve fuel I have in my garage (I don't know where to store all of it!!) but it looks like I'll be eating through it slower than I used to (aww shucks... :P).

Thanks again to Josh, Dad, Donnie, Bob, and all those that came out to help (or in Jonathan's case, just eat our food).  A special thanks to Donnie for letting us dirty up his very clean barn.  Thanks to my wonderful wife Liz for her support and patience for this project and vehicle.

Jonathan's Photo Album:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=6192&id=100000599640058

Donnie's Photo Album:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=39381&id=1638841109

Pictures and content coming... I promise

I know I've promised pictures and comments about the engine swap... that content is coming... I promise!!  It's been a long couple of weeks and as soon as things settle down next week I'll post all of that stuff.  In the mean time...

The engine is running great!  It's fully broken in and I just switched to grease this week.  I'm still fixing some small leaks (there was a coolant leak, and still a couple of oil leaks) but that is to be expected.  The engine starts like a dream (even in 9 degree weather, sitting out over night) and runs really well. 

Dang...

I haven't had time this week to post my pictures and description of the engine swap but I plan too... I swear!! Today is a simple post about me being rear-ended this morning... Things seem to be fine but the rear bumper is smashed in on the driver's side.  Don't know if I can 'stretch' it out or if I need a whole new bumper.  Information on the rear bumper is sparse on the internet... hopefully my hane's guide will give me some answers?

P.S. I'm OK, I have a little crick in my neck but other than the bumper there appears to be no damage done.

Rabbit v2.0

The engine swap was a complete success thanks to the help of some great friends.  It took the full weekend to make sure everything was tightened down per spec but I was able to drive it home Sunday evening.  I've been driving it for 3 days now and I have more power, better acceleration, it starts better than it ever has, it runs smoother... the list goes on.

I'm in the process of downloading the pictures I took and when I get that done, I'll load some onto the blog.

Getting Anxious

I took another trip to Autozone to pick up some more parts (AutoZone and autoanything.com are where I've bought all of my parts for the engine swap) but they lost my order.  I now have to drive to Donnie's and get the receipt as I already dropped those parts off at his place.  No biggie as AutoZone has treated me very well the past couple of years, just a bit frustrating.

Only 7 more days until 'Bugs 2.0'!

Purchasing my Parts

I’m in the process of purchasing the parts I will need in order to make this engine swap possible.  A lot of gaskets and hoses with a few pumps and other goodies thrown in.  The rabbit decided to stop starting in my garage but I’m lucky enough to have great friends that let me borrow their unnecessary vehicles in order to get to work.  I didn’t realize how much fuel I go through to get to work!!  I’ve already bought $32 in gas this week and I’m probably going to have to fill up again tomorrow.  I can go a good 3 weeks (around 1,000-1,400 miles) without buying fuel for the rabbit.  I now remember why I started this journey in the first place.

Getting Excited

My engine was completed yesterday and will be shipped out on Monday. I'm starting to round up all of the tools I'll need and will start getting them to the barn where the rebuild will happen.

I'm praying that the swap goes as smooth as I hope it will. I'm getting extremely excited especially at the prospect of having a reliable vehicle that performs well!!

The fix to my problems?

After finally performing a compression test I've decided to replace my engine with a rebuilt one. Chances are my piston rings are shot and a couple of local shops quoted me at least $3000 to rebuild my current engine. I found a place on the internet (http://www.vwdieselparts.com/index.html) that rebuilds my engine (1.6L) and will ship it cheaper than I can get it rebuilt. I have some friends lined up to help me swap the engine which I only expect to take a couple of days.

I have no reason to believe that running alternative fuels is what caused the damage. Looking back on the purchase of the vehicle I'm not convinced that the engine was rebuilt as I was told it was. Knowing what I know now I would've asked a lot more questions about the vehicle.

I'm famous!

I was asked to submit an article on my experience with my VW Rabbit project and it was published in Nexus Magazine!

Check it out http://bit.ly/86Y34Q

Look for "Do it yourself" Biodiesel VW Rabbit

Keep on truckin'

It's been a while since I've posted but a lot has happened. I've been battling starting issues on and off since early October. Too many variables were changing too fast to verify what was causing my issues. Some days the rabbit would start fine, others I could barely push start it.

After a rough week battling extremely low temperatures and days of not starting I was about at the end of my rope. I haven't been running on veggie oil since my issues started. I started using a block heater (went to install one to find that one was already there), I had the starter replaced and fixed a couple bad glow plugs but that didn't seem to help my issues. I finally brought the battery in for testing and it tested bad. It was barely a year old but AutoZone warrantied it out and that solved my problem for about two days.

The symptoms pointed towards a glow plug issue but they all checked out fine at 1.3 ohms (no starts even after letting the block warm up). I decided I was going to let the block heater work its magic for 3 hours before I would try to start it the next time. After those 3 hours were up, it started like a dream.

After arriving at work today, I immediately plugged it in (previously, I plugged it in about an hour before I had to leave which I don't think was enough time to warm up). I went to lunch and she fired right up as well when I left to go home.

I have high hopes that as long as I can find an outlet to plug into, I should have minimal difficulties this winter; but that is yet to be seen. I will try to update more if anyone out there is having starting issues with a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel.

Success is Sweet...

The new injectors and glow plugs appears to have solved my problems for the moment. It runs smoother, I have more torque and more horsepower (at higher RPM). I'm running a full tank of diesel through it before I start running on grease again. I want a good solid baseline to compare the future against.

I'm hoping to get quite a bit more efficiency out the engine too (those injectors were pretty dirty). Before I could get 48 mpg on diesel (not sure what the efficiency is on grease). I'll post once I get the numbers.

Ooh I hate that rabbit...

Over the last two weeks, I am slowly accumulating parts to change my injectors and glow plugs. Autozone didn't have all the injectors in their warehouse, so I've basically bought one injector every other day for the last week or so. Tomorrow, I should finally have all my parts to perform the maintenance on Saturday.

On Tuesday I took out a glow plug to discover that it was basically melted (you know, one of the glow plugs I just installed a couple of weeks ago). Now, I have to look at replacing the glow plug relay (another $50) so that I don't fry all of these glow plugs. I'm not sure why they would melt like that... but the hunch is the relay is bad.

So if all of my glow plugs are fried, that explains why I can't start my car. I don't want to install $60 worth of glow plugs to have all of these fry in the next couple of days (especially when to change the injectors I have to take off the fuel injection pump.

I'll post the results after Saturday.

Dang, why can't this be easy?

I'm officially having starting troubles again. I need to check my compression but I don't know why it was starting fine right after I replaced the glow plugs. They can't be bad this fast, can they?

Back in Business

My starting issues proved to be glow-plug related. I guess I didn't realize that glow plugs have a relatively short life. They only lasted bout 10 months or so.

I'm now starting without issues. It's been cold lately and I've started it successfully at 55 degrees. That's encouraging to me for the winter. I think my starting troubles last winter were due to me not purging long enough. With my longer purge cycles, I think this winter might be much more enjoyable.

Still having starting trouble...

I have been having starting issues since mid-June and I haven't been able to figure it out. I'm purging longer than I ever have, and even after I run on diesel (to work and back) I still have trouble cold starting. If the engine is warm (or it's 80 + degrees outside) I have no troubles.

I need to check compression on the cylinders and make sure the glow plugs are working.

Running on empty?

I don't believe I've mentioned this on the blog yet, but I am officially running the rabbit on used motor oil (as well as vegetable oil). I wasn't able to find enough vegetable oil (driving 1400 miles a month for work will do that) so I did research regarding other alternative fuels for diesels. Turns out, the rules that govern the use of vegetable oil apply to motor oil. It is simply the viscosity at lower temperatures that you have to work around.

That being said, I think I have been extremely successful in this venture. I've been running on motor oil since the middle of May and have seen no major issues. The one minor issue I am fighting with has to do with my starting troubles. I believe I am not purging long enough to get the motor oil out of my engine (as motor oil is designed to lubricate, thus making it difficult to flush completely out of the fuel system).

I've been purging much longer recently and having a little better luck starting, but I'm still having trouble. If I drive on diesel for a bit (after purging) then I have no difficulty starting. Since I have a plentiful supply of used motor oil, my decision is to continue running on it. However, I go through diesel faster as I have to purge longer. I might try diluting the motor oil a bit to see if that helps.

Cleaning Injectors...

So I've been having quite a bit of trouble starting lately. My hunch is that the injectors a dirty but I'm not sure. I used some fuel injector cleaner in my diesel and that helped for a few days but I'm back to issues starting. Today, I used Lubro-Moly which is supposed to be a high-powered cleaner. We'll see if it starts in the morning...