Come on, someone fill us in - what happened to Amazers kombi at Valla ?

I keep reading about it as references in other threads and posts, so can someone please give me the full story ?

It would probably be better coming from Amazer himself, but I'll tell you anyway, because I was there....

We picked Chris up at Wollongong, towing his race fastback on a tandem behind his turbo kombi. The motor in the kombi is a stock 1800 with a Weber and a Golf/Beetle/Passat turbo. It towed so well that I was having trouble keeping up with him in my freshly reco'd 1800 (with no centrifugal advance), except up the big hills where Chris slowed down to alleviate some pretty bad pinging.

Just before Kempsey Chris noticed something was wrong, so we pulled over at KFC for a tappet adjustment. Chris knew straight away that something was seriously wrong, but decided to continue on to Valla anyway, still towing at 80 kmh up the hills!!

Chris pulled the engine on Friday and removed the heads to find that both of them were totally f$%^ed, on cylinders #2 and #3.

Jeff Unwin managed to get some reco heads on Saturday, and the rest of the day and Sunday morning was spent hunting down a torque wrench, gaskets, etc.

The rebuild commenced Sunday afternoon around 4pm until around 3.30am, then Chris was back at it by 7.30am Monday morning, finally getting it all back together and running by around 2.30pm.

We left Nambucca at about 4pm, but the kombi wasn't doing so well. Jeff had enlarged the jets, so Chris knew it wasn't that, but he suspected that the carby wasn't responding to the change in boost pressure, so he decided to remove one of the inlet pipes, allowing the motor to run in atmo mode.

This worked for a while, but his kombi seemed to be getting slower, until he decided that it was late, he (and his family) were tired, and he probably wasn't going to make it home anyway, so he stopped for the night just short of Newcastle.

I haven't spoken to Chris since then, but I've noticed in the posts that his bottom end now needs a rebuild. Not the best news, but at least hopefully he hasn't stuffed the new set of heads. I'm sure with a bottom end rebuild and a check over of the turbo system he'll be back on the road in one very strong kombi. :thumb

I'll be the dummy and ask the question : what makes the heads end up like that ?

Leaning out?

all of the above

and it still pulled hard !!!!!!!!!!!!!