'58 Karmann Käfer Kabriolett & Ghia

There might be 1 or 2 open vacuum ports that need blocking?
I presume you tried backing out the mixture screws to fatten it up?

Has this engine run properly with any set of carburettors? Could the valve clearances be slightly too tight, keeping an/some inlet valves open, causing the coughing?

Wax on, wax off
Engine in, engine out.



After failing to get the motor running properly in the car, I'd thought about handing it off to my pal to look at, but since he hasn't been falling over himself to get in touch with me about picking up the car, I finally got annoyed enough to pull the motor out again and have a go myself. I'd built this up as if it was going to be a bit of a nightmare job, based on how much time and effort fitting up of all the parts and getting the engine in the car had taken. But it was dropping a fair bit of oil, which needs looking into and it's also very difficult to see what's going on with it in the car, as there's so little room. There were a couple of other good reasons that made it worth doing, one being my idea that it will be much easier to take the motor to someone to run and tune on a test stand, than it is to take a whole car to them. In the end (predictably) it wasn't that bad of a job at all.


I did have to drop the exhaust, which is six nuts to undo and had the usual struggle to get the back of the car up high enough to get the motor out from underneath it. Teetering piles of wood r us. I'm definitely going to be shopping for a low 3t jack, with a decent bit of lift height. Although I hadn't wanted to, I ended up pulling the tar board sound deadener off the firewall. It was taking up too much space that I really need to get some air into the cooling fan and my breather box was also rammed hard up against it, so it had to go. Same for the side parts, as they made adjusting the carbs absolutely impossible.
I took the opportunity to clean the firewall. Funny to think nobody has laid eyes on this paint since 1958. It polished up pretty well.





Next job is to strip the fan shroud off the top and see if I can see any obvious source of oil.
Also I have bought a Karmann Ghia.

I'll take a look at those. Cheers. It's still a fresh motor, so at least I'm not trying to look past half an inch of crud all over the thing.

Fiat 500's have the same kind of pushrod tubes.

I've never been able to get them completely leak free.

Until I fitted a set of spring loaded ones on my current one.

Not period correct for the era of your build, but because they are hidden from view you may consider them anyway.

New toy...


Had a lot of work done - has an Okrasa twin port head/twin carb kit, rebuilt gearbox - but hasn't been driven much in around ten years. Drives pretty well, though the tyres drag the front arches something horrible on full lock. Who said fat b*st*rd? Wants more anti-roll and better shocks I think and the steering is a little stiff.
Not sure which way I'll go with it. I have some nice Porsche wheels and front disc brakes that would go on it, but if I can't find a way to stop the tyres rubbing, it might have to go back to stock height.

Thanks Alex.
Seems there are a couple of things that are not helping the tyre rub. The wheels are some 356 looking rims with a worse offset than stock and the drop spindles sometimes push the wheels out too. Just standard VW 4" wheels would probably help, but I'd need to fit bigger tyres for the TüV, so i'm back at square one.
I have some 4.5" Fuchs wheels that will work on the front, with a huge back spacing, but I'll need to fit the matching disc brakes too, which means different spindles. Since my front beam isn't lowered, I'd probably have to fit an adjustable beam, as stock ride height combined with Porsche wheels isn't appealing. But then I don't know how the TüV will feel about all that and I want my Historic status H number plate. In theory it should be ok, but it ends up being at the discretion of the tester.

Had some fun and games so far. Went to visit my pal about an hour away. Sat in some horrible traffic jam for about an hour and the car was ok, aside from the idle being a little low. I was way less OK, getting boiled in a black car without even a fan to blow air at me. My pal said we should go and see his friend, since he runs a VW workshop (SGS Aircooled, Waltham Chase) and he'd for sure like to see the car. We got there just fine, but then - of course - the car won't start. Well, if you are going to break down, there are worse places than in front of a VW workshop.
The guy was looking at it and we started to notice a few things. The coil was cracked and dripping oil. We figured someone must have left the ignition on, until he got a jolt when trying to tighten the distributor up. Whoever fitted the points/condensor had managed to lose the insulation to the distributor body, so it was permanantly live.
While this was going on and the engine was running again, I spotted fuel dripping from the carbs. Once we started on those we realised they weren't even bolted to the manifolds properly. It looks a lot like whoever refitted the engine forgot to tighten up any of the carb bolts, since you have to remove them to fit it. The spark plugs were so black, I thought we'd be needing a chimney sweep.
Got it all sorted, starting on the key, but even afterwards it wasn't running too well. It actually goes really well for a 35hp car, but it isn't super happy on a steady throttle. It can occasionally start to stumble a bit. Give it some gas and it's fine again. I've fitted a new fuel filter and ordered some new plugs, so we'll see if that makes any odds.
It's very moody about starting too. We went across town to a couple of shops. On leaving, it started basically on the key. At the first stop, it was ok. The last place, nope. Had to bump it. None of this bodes particularly well for the forthcoming long drive to Germany.

After some fairly heavy rearranging in my workshop, my measurments were - luckily - accurate and both cars did fit inside, with a little room to spare. I do need to have a serious clear up and organise things session. Prob some more shelving wouldn't hurt either. Getting abandoned project vibes from the Bug, wedged in the corner like that. :-(



Front suspension - After looking online, I found that CSP, up near Hamburg, have adjustable front axles for sale, complete with TüV approval paperwork. Quite pricey though. I figured I'd see what turned up on the small ads website and really lucked out, as two days later, one turned up. It was 45 minutes away from home, less than half the new price and still with the CSP stickers on it. That meant I could get new paperwork for it. I arranged to go and pick it up.
I figured the seller would be some fellow hobbyist, since an early VW adjustable front axle isn't the sort of thing you end up with otherwise, but it was much better than that. The guy had a workshop, with a number of modified VWs. We were chatting and he said he'd got lots of things through the TüV with no problem, much of which I thought were verboten. Also that he'd registered imported cars previously too. Seems like he's going to be the guy who can solve a lot of my problems.

The current problems of too low and rubbing tyres are down to the spindles (drop spindles tend to be wider and they're too low) and the rims. I can solve a lot of this with the new front axle beam and stuff I have had lying around for a very long time and never used - namely Porsche 356C front disc brakes and some 4.5"x15" Porsche Fuchs wheels, which have a really large backspacing. I bought all this kit way back, as I was going to put it on the Beetle, but I couldn't bring myself to do it in the end. Anyway I have it, it solves a lot of issues and I might as well use it on something.

First world problems. The 4.5" Fuchs wheels are a bit rare, being only used in 1967 and only on the 911S. They're the first Fuchs wheels used on the 911. I have a pair of 5.5" from 1968 to go on the back. I'll need to do something with the wheels before I fit them, as they were polished probably 30 years ago and are pretty ropey by now. I went online and found out there's a guy a couple of hours away, who's the king of restoring Fuchs wheels, right down to the correct re-anodising. Early Porsche restoration prices being what they are, I took a deep breath and emailed him, asking how much it'd be to make all four wheels look like the 1967 style, which are differently painted. He replied that (of course!) those are the absolute hardest ones to restore, as they have both gloss and satin anodising on them and it was 500 euros a wheel. Ouch. I mean I'm not saying it's unfair, and it's not mega money until you multiply it x4. I'm sure it's a ton of work, but I hadn't planned on spending quite that much ie: nearly double what I paid for the wheels. Same problem to paint them all in the later scheme. Cheaper, but still 320 a wheel.

Pic from his website...top work...


Not really sure what to do now. I was wondering about trying to mimic anodising with paint somehow, but I can see that costing nearly as much and it might come out horrible. The other thing I might try is paint them to look like tarnished magnesium. Should be relatively easy and it's a different look.

(FYI: Fuchs means fox and is pronounced the same as books. Not Fewshes or Fuschias or anything else you may have heard. It's also not a plural. One Fuchs wheel, lots of Fuchs wheels. But never one Fuch wheel.)

I can't say I'm not tempted. They do look amazing, but blimey...that's a lot of money.