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Reply to "The Mice Strike, AGAIN!"

Unfortunately, none of you experts were around when I was originally building my engine (1998) OR when I converted it to Full-Flow (2003).  

Mostly, all I had was articles (glorified ads, really) in "Dune Buggys and Hot VWs" magazine and everyone was pushing 30mm Melling pumps back then.

Al wrote: "(Berg) recommended using his pressure relief cover any time a 30mm pump was used."  That's true, and I got that from his tech notices.  All the magazines were pushing 30mm pumps and I had one when I built the engine.  I actually bought Berg's complete (GB233A) Full-Flow kit, so I looked up the sales invoice (COD people never through anything away) and it says I have a "26mm pump with the outlet tapped and plugged for use with a full flow GB pressure cover".  

I stand corrected on the size, but it's still pretty deep and whatever I used for the breast plate tin (which fits a stock engine) didn't fit until I whomped the heck out of it to rearrange the bottom half.  There is a big protrusion on top of the cover for the pressure valve and the nuts holding the cover stick out quite a bit, too.   All that was fixed back when I full flowed it to clear the pump and the pulley, but I had the stack-up of the breast plate and rear tin all wrong (never saw a photo of what was right, back then, just guessed) so the creative tin adjustments went out from there as best I could.  Now, with 20-20 hindsight and a few more photos from the Interweb, I've seen what I did wrong and while it worked ok, it's always nice to get things right, right?

I'll post a couple of photos later on (it's Mother's day, after all) of what I've been up to, but the biggest thing is returning the rear tin to the original stepped shape where it meets the head tins so that the compartment heat shields make even contact all around the engine.  One side's done, and I'm finishing up the other side now.  That transition is hard because there is a 1/4" step down at the end of the metal sheet and really hard to duplicate accurately without the proper dies so a lot of hammering, trial and error, swearing, etc.......

Last edited by Gordon Nichols
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