The old air cooled VW engine had a design flaw, the oil
cooler blocked the airflow to number three cylinder, which
caused the exhaust valve to burn. The only way to save the
valve on a stock engine was to adjust the valves
religiously. In addition to the oil and air filters, without
the valve adjustment you were in deep doo doo, and the
problem was that the valves had to be adjusted with the
engine cold. Which meant that the dealers either spent the
extra time and made certain that the engine was cold, or
they did a poor job. The best time was to do the DIY work
first thing in the morning, when the engine was stone cold.
The solution was to install an external oil cooler, and the
do it yourself ers would do just that when they were
rebuilding the engine.
Now, if you want to talk about rebuilding the carb, well,
that was fun too.
Anyway, the VW engine has no correlation to a bicycle, and
there are fewer major design flaws on a bicycle.
rob
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:25:37 -0800,
[email protected] (Mark Buell) wrote:
>Wahl, I hope thas all jus tung in cheek, as they say.
>Howevah, I will say, in an OT sort o' way, thet 56K miles
>on my VW saw a rebuild with religious oil and filter
>changes. As you infer, very expensive DIY oil changes. On
>the other hand, several other gasoline powered, and human
>powered vehicles have relied on my sometimes less than
>stellar care, and have survived for many many moons. I
>think we ken rule out the possibility that the DIY approach
>is a hidden cost.
>
>Cheers, and all in good fun; Mark
>
>If'n you reaally want my reply to pull out the stops
>mastopsrk_bustopsell(at)yahoo.com
>
>> paperclips
>>
>> for example: how many oil changes and filters equal a
>> rebuild given yawl doin' the works installation et. al.
>> yawlself?