I found a web forum specialising in all watercooled volkswagens. On the forum, i found a guy who wrecks all sorts of watercooled volkswagens. I put the word out, and he found me a 1.5l diesel engine out of a 1979 Golf GLD, which he was willing to get rid of for $350 with transmission.
The engine had apparently had the head rebuilt very recently, with new rings, and a reconditioned injector pump. The bottom end had not been reconditioned, and after running for only a couple of hours after the rebuild, it had grabbed a main bearing on the crankshaft, meaning that the crankshaft would require either grinding or replacing, and the main bearings replaced.
This is where i came in. I took the word of the guy who sold it to me that it was a good engine, and set about getting it in running order. Not quite as simple as it could have been, because for a start, i couldn't afford $350 at that point in time, so i had to go grovelling to Adrian, who lent me the cash for the sake of science. :) (much to the grizzling of his wife ;))
I firstly stripped the engine, and cleaned it all up.
Then i pulled out the crankshaft, where i found some serious marking on the no 2 main bearing, and some scuffing of a couple of the bearing journals on the crankshaft.I decided i would need to either grind the crankshaft, or get a new one.
Luckily, i have a spare golf LS petrol engine at home (in central NSW), and the crankshaft out of the 1.6l engine is exactly the same as the diesel engine. That's a perfect example of efficient engineering by Volkswagen. They don't design a new component, if a suitable component already exists in their inventory.
Well, i recognised that it made sense to replace the crankshaft, main, and big end bearings, and all bottom end seals. It would cost me about $200 to get all these parts. I finally saved up enough cash to buy them, and at that stage, i was starting writing my thesis for my Mechanical engineering degree, so there was a lull in proceedings of about 12 months.....
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