Thought not for the faint of heart, the Cali Conversion was a learing experience in the world of Type IV motors. I also had a lot of fun fabricating parts the way I wanted them to be.
In order to power my limo, I decided to do a Cali Conversion, based on Joe Cali's The Type IV Upright Conversion Manual, to a Type IV motor. This was done over the summer of 2004. What you see here is the generator stand, the heart of the conversion. I drilled and tapped the bottom of the cast piece and bolted it to the plate. This allowed me to make minor adjustments when aligning the alternator to the fan housing. I later welded the plate to the stand and filled the holes in the bottom. I chose not to cut off the oil filler tube so I could use it for crankcase ventilation. I cross drilled the plate and made an adaptor out of the oil filler retaining screw that vented the crankcase via hoses to the air filters. As a side note, I tore down my engines (I had 2) and assembled an empty longblock without internals to build my tins around.
For the pulley, I made a jig for a router and slowly machined down the oil slinger. I cut off too much and had to later make shims to correct the spacing. The pulley hub was turned down to fit into the pulley, rather than opening up the pulley. In hindsight, turning the hub made more sense; but after seeing the cost of a new hub, I should have made the pulley hole bigger.
The cylinder tins went together pretty easily. I didn't make the parts that receive the fan shroud tall enough and later found out that the air flaps for thermostat control wouldn't fit. I was disappointed, but in reality this engine won't be driven that much so I'm not expecting it to get 100k miles in my lifetime.
Of all the conversions I had perused on the internet, I didn't see any that treated the pulley tin in a way that I liked. So I made this one to my liking. It is rather intricate and took half a day to fabricate, but it works great.
The breast plate tin looks simple enough. I left plenty of room for fresh air hoses and and the oil filler.
Here is the oil filler tube. I later added a dipstick to it. With as much brazing I did to seal it all up, I should have just started with a solid block of brass and drilled it out.
A simple 1" strip of sheet metal made plenty of room for the larger Type IV oil cooler.
I used the front tin from the Type IV set up to finish off the tins to seal the engine compartment. That 1 1/2" hole worked out great to exhaust the hot air from the oil cooler.
And here it all is finished. I used a great deal of posterboard and cardboard making templates for each custom piece. This was invaluable when it came to making the actual piece. I just had to trace, cut, bent and weld. I also used more of the stock tins than Joe recommends in his manual. I used the tins that bolt to the under side of the cylinder shrouds at the front of the engine and the stock thermostat air ducts that go underneath the the cylinders. This saved me some fabrication time and looks more stock.
Now then, most guys with a Type IV in their Beetles aren't too woried about heat. But I figure it might be a little cold on my way to a hockey game and I'd like to keep warm. Considering that the stock exhaust system won't even fit under the body of a Bug, I set out to modify the heat exchanger and make it fit. This pic shows how it all fits together in my current daily driver, "Beth".
I cut a good 5" off of the exchangers and had to melt off plenty of the cast aluminiun fins. Then I did some rather creative welding and porting to make the turns to line up the manifold pipes to the muffler. I realize that the #1 and #2 ports won't flow very well, but I'm not going to the races anytime soon. I custom built boxes arount the remaining cast fins for heat exchangers, but failed to photograph them. For the muffler, I welded on some hangers to support the weight of it from the bumper brackets. I'll probably go back and make it into more of a spring suspension in the future. I also shortened the tailpipe so it doesn't stick out past the fender too much.
With all of the tins and exhaust finished it was time to assemble the longblock. It is a mostly stock 2.0L with 1800 heads built by Quality German Auto and ported by myself. The camshaft is a mild performance job by Eagle Racing Cams. The compression ratio is 7.7:1. I used a Mallory single points, mechanical distributor and a Type I heavy duty oil pump.
Here is my precious in the limo. I am currently running the stock dual Solex carbs from a 1700/1800. It took forever to figure out the idle circuit, find all the vacuum leaks and synchronize them, but they run pretty decent now. Eventually I will upgrade to better carbs, but the funds need to be diverted to finishing the rest of the car for now.
Here is a close up of the ignition side of the engine. You can see the remote oil cooler adapter I made and the big fat oil pressure sending unit for the VDO gauges that will be mounted up front.
And here is a close up of the other side of the engine. You can see the crankcase ventilation tubes coming from what was originally the oil filler tube. The hoses were pinched off while I was testing for vacuum leaks in the carbs.
NEW PHOTOS BELOW - JULY 1, 2005
The only changes for the engine came from Spain. A pair of Weber ICT's replaced those old Solex carbs. I had to use the old manifolds to get the height to clear the linkage over the alternator. Fortunately the bases of the new carbs matched the manifolds.
I lied earlier when I said I didn't photograph the heat exchangers. I just forgot that I used the camera at work and they were waiting patiently on my computer there. They turned out rather clean looking.
