Have a motor from a guy who is about 75y.o. now and he built it in the early 80's put it in his standard 69 bug and told me he blew off v8's at traffic lights in it.Anyway this engine has a roller crankshaft so that means it has rolling bearings instead of the usual ones.
Is this better and why?
It has been sitting for a while too scared to run it,not sure if it will do harm.

My two cents worth.
They are beautiful cranks but are prone to Twisting out of true.
I would pull the motor apart and have every thing checked , polish off the surface rust.
Take Very special note of the Oil squirters which should be set up to spray oil over the roller bearings from the oil gallery.
If this has not been done then ask on the forum.
Dont drop the clutch or set motor so that it will ping... They rev real nice.!
make sure the cam is able to work at upper revs.......:thumb

Have a motor from a guy who is about 75y.o. now he built it and put it in his 69 bug and told me he blew off V8's at traffic lights.Anyway this engine has a roller crankshaft so that means it has rolling bearings instead of the usual.
Is this good or bad and why?
Has not run for a while,probably not good.

Had a pic with this at 49.2kb told me to do it all again!what!...don't get too close to that 50 mark now..

Frog

I merged yr posts for you.

The roller crank. If you get it and need new roller bearings for it then i think you will have problems finding them.

According to the experts they were never designed to spin fast only susposed to be for low revs.

Also finding someone to realign the crank again might be a problem, as the crank was built in several pieces and bolted together.

Sounds like it's going to have to come apart,just what I thought in the back of my mind would have to be done.
Thanks for all your help,hope it's not too bad on the inside.

that is a strange looking header on there. seems to have a non merging collector point - almost square.

What sort is it do you know?

It's a nasty Brazilian Kadron exhaust, good for a stocker. (if you can't find anything else)

Hi

They only have roller big ends, they use stock mains that have groves cut in them and oil is squirted onto the big ends from the groves. I used to own an 82mm one, I got scared about reported failures and sold it to Peter @ Bob Wyhms about 20 odd years ago. Peter new about my fears but still fitted it and it is still running today. They were made by SPG in Germany and the early ones were great, the later ones did appear to give problems after the company wound down operations. In the old days a 82mm roller crank with 88 mm bores was the hot ticket, its what a lot of the rallycross Beetles used to run.

1302Steve

My brother has one.
It was in the Klaack motors race beetle which John now owns.
It got twisted when it pinged a lot from racing with a fuel problem.
We got Hank down at Albion Park to fix it all up for us.
He Pinned it.
Must admit that we havent run it since.
One day ........... we'll get something together for it.
-
We use to rev it to 7 thousand.

oh yeah!!!!!! rev it out babeeee!!!