Connecting Rod Assembly

I continued working on the connecting rod assembly. After loosening all of the fasteners I cleaned the mating surfaces and installed the bearings.

Next, I decided I wanted to check at least one of the journals for clearance. I purchased some plastigage online and proceeded to assemble the first rod on the crank with a piece of plastigage to check the clearance. The clearance is expected to be between .002″ and .0025″.

When I disassembled the rod from the crank the plastigage showed just under .002″ and more than .015″. This seemed appropriate and I did not check the remainder of the clearances as all of the parts are new.

I applied white lithium grease to all of the bearings and assembled the rods to the crank. I followed the directions in the assembly manual to keep all of the anti-rotation notches at the bottom of the crank. This resulted in the matching numbers also being towards the bottom of the crank. I did some research online and found that having the anti-rotation notches to the bottom is what is expected when assembly a VW type 1 engine.

I assembled all of the connecting rods to the crank and torqued the nuts in four steps to the required 29 ft-lbs. I then put the crank and rod assembly back into an extra large freezer bag with some desiccant to absorb moister and put it away for future assembly.