Ya'll may recall that I have an '82 Diesel that was free. It made an
atrocious skreech, skreech, skreech, skreech when the motor ran. It sounded
terminal. So tonight I finally pulled off the oilpan to find...
Enough bronze shavings to cast a statue with. Then I peered up, rotating the
motor with a 17mm socket. The cylinder walls looked shiny and unscored, but
that is a very preliminary judgement. The crazy thing was this: the big end
bearing cap on connecting rod #2 (second from the back of the van) looked
funny. All the other rod ends were nice and wet with oil and are smooth and
metallic. #2 looks like someone sandblasted it with iron oxide, and it is
bone dry. Furthermore (those of you with tender stomachs might want to skip
this part) there appeared to be a little bit of thin metal, like a piece of
aluminum foil, stuck between the con rod end cap and its next door neighbor
crankshaft piece. I got out the trusty 14mm and, on further inspection found
that this foil is in fact steel or iron and it is literally being extruded
from where there should be bearing. I was able to pry some of it away. It's
awful.

I have a friend who will sell me an apparently good dasher diesel block
(minus head and accessories for cheap, so I am not without hope. I do have a
few questions, however:
1) Did #2 get oil starved somehow? It seems odd that this would only happen
to one con rod. I guess engines are pretty complex systems and some
randomness might have accumulated into a local problem...? Or is #2 a design
problem?
2) I am very poor (and even more lazy), and I wonder if there is some way I
might just, you know, emery cloth that particular piece and put in a new
bearing?
3) If you are appalled by #2 and insist that I use the dasher engine, is
there anything I should be aware of as I do the transplant? I will use my
own head, and I wonder if bronze shavings made their way upstairs. That
would be bad.
4) Anything else?

Daniel Snow
PhD Student
UC Berkeley

'82 Vanagon Diesel
'78 Puch Maxi Luxe Moped
'72 Motobecane Mobylette Moped
'01 Xootr Scooter

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