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73 Kombi, backfiring and generally bad
adamstuart - July 5th, 2013 at 07:03 PM

Hello everyone

I bought a 73 Kombi and drove it home from brisbane to sydney.

It developed a major oil leak so I pulled the motor, did the push rods tubes and put it all back together again.

Just put the motor back in the car today, but when I fire it up it sounds like its back firing, moves around a lot and generally runs very rough.

On the driver's side head it is blowing exhaust, and sparked a few times. It's not coming out of the exhaust as far as I can tell, looks like it's coming out below the push rod tubes.

I torqued the head studs to 6ft/lb and then 23ft/lb.
Also had to replace 2 studs with new ones and put one back in that came loose. I double nutted them and tightened them home.

I had a play with the timing and it seems fine.

I assume the engine will need to come back out and the heads off again.

Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this?

This is the engine prefix to tell you what kind of motor it is, this is my first air cooled car so I don't know ass from elbow.

AB004063X

If anyone could help me out via the forum, or even help me out in person that would be excellent. I would happily pay via the beer economy.

I'm located in Blacktown, Western Sydney.

Kind regards Adam


silver - July 5th, 2013 at 07:17 PM

I would be checking the valve adjustment ASAP


grumble - July 5th, 2013 at 07:58 PM

Silly question but did you recheck the H/T leads are on the right cylinders? You say it has an exhaust leak below the pushrods which indicates a leak at the cylinder head and this unfortunately means that the cylinder head studs have let go in the case,these can be fixed with helicoils but ubfortunately it means another stripdown.