Dave, I have not ever had this particular problem on a VW engine, but I
did on my Jeep Wagoneer LTD. The distributor shaft sheared, and it was not
obvious, but it got out of time and wouldn't start, backfired, and
afterfired a lot. Finally pulled the whole thing out, and that was when I
found the problem.

I don't know how the shaft assembly is made up on your machine, but a
close look at the entire distributor assembly sounds warranted.

John Rodgers
"88GL Driver

Animal wrote:

> Please help, or at least confirm that I'm screwed.
> Yesterday I spent the majority of the day trying to get the new
> engine in my 80 westy cranked.
> It is a 2 liter air-cooled engine that I pulled down to the pistons,
> put new rings and heads on it and reassembled. Nothing was done
> inside the case and the engine was running when originally pulled for
> poor compression.
> The problem. It would turn over, spin, try to fire, then backfire and
> blow all the vacuum hoses off.
> When this would happen I would then put number one back at tdc and
> find that the  timing had shifted 180 degrees so number three was
> firing in the number one spot.
> So I pull out the distributor, turn the gear back, put it all back
> together and try to crank again.
> It spins, tries to fire, then once again blows off the hoses.
> So, silly me, decides that if the engine really wants to have three
> at on then who am I to argue.
> I move all the wires, retime it for what would in theory be number
> three but is now in actuality number one, spin it again.
> It tries to crank, blows off the hoses and now has shifted 90 degrees.
> I'm frustrated and not sure what is going on.
> Do I have an expensive paperweight, or is there some way to correct
> whatever is going one without having to disassemble the entire engine.
> Onward thru the fog
> David Conner
> terrapin@halifax.com