My old VW boss, Ron dropped in a week or so before Christmas for a chin wag and to see the 1500 'S' (among other VW nonsense here!).
I bought the 1500 'S' back in 1989 following a conversation I had with Ron. The car was owned by one of his clients and he had just given them the bad news that the engine was completely fucked out. As a result of that (more on that later), the owner put the car up for sale (or was about to) and I made the phone call to go see the car.
Luckily the advert had not as of yet been placed in the paper so my parents and I went there to check it out and amazingly a deal was done for $1000 which was pretty well every $ I had to my name thanks to my folks putting away some $ every week, as well as what I had made from working at Ron's VW workshop. It now seems like an amazing deal but at the time I would say it was about right on the money considering the car was 25 years old, had rust, had a bad engine and was generally in need of a full make over.
As I was 15 at the time, I couldn't even drive the car home which was a bummer however that kind of paved the way for it to be parked away safely and put under cover, basically until 2013 when I completely dismantled the car to every component.
I did take it out occasionally and yes it won a fair amount of awards for originality and best Type 3, but I knew all along that the car was on borrowed time and needed a lot of work.
As for the original engine being 'end of life', this was completely true even though the car had only 85,000 miles on it.
I think I dismantled the engine when I was about 18 or 19 to find the heads were cracked everywhere, the rings were broken, the oil pump worn out, the rod bearings worn to copper and the #2 main bearing was cracked into 5 x pieces - one was in 2 x pieces and the other was in 3 x pieces!
As for the crankcase, I sent that off for crack testing and the results were just epic. The workshop that checked it - Adelaide Engine Service - told me it was the worst they had seen for a long time.
Every other item bolted to the engine, oddly enough, was deemed to be in very good condition such as the carbs, distributor, fuel pump, tinware etc. All of those items have since been refurbished or made good.
Eventually I sent the crankcase off to be machined all over and the cracks ground out and welded. This seemed like a good idea at the time but within about 1000 miles, it was again cracked and pissing out oil. Live and learn!
I still have the original crankcase in the garage wrapped up and I just don't know what I will ever do with it. I suspect nothing but as it is the original to the car (0 682 209), I can't fathom throwing it away. The idea of a coffee table seems to be the most obvious but I have a genuine BRM for that!
At the end of the day I don't mind that the crankcase was junk because the idea of the early cases with their pissy little oil galleries as well as M6 oil pump studs and M10 head studs didn't excite me anyway so the results of all this are the car is now running the latest magnesium VW dual relief case with all the modern alterations - full flow, case savers, M8 head studs, larger oil pump, cam bearings as standard, bolt together rocker shafts etc. Common sense stuff we should all embrace because it's better than original.
Anyway, it was good to see Ron drop in and chew the fat. He was impressed with where the car was heading and how it was turning out thus far. A period correct performance VW 1500 'S'.
