Almost there

I made more progress on assembly last week. The oil filler, intake manifold, and muffler are in place.



The muffler is an NOS one that I've had on the shelf for years. It was in good shape physically but had the usual shelf wear, scratches, and light surface rust, so it was looking pretty scrappy. I thought about having it ceramic coated, but instead decided to give it a coat of 1200°F exhaust paint. I went with Zynolyte Hi-Temp 0642 Machinery Gray, which has a matte gray finish that's close in appearance to the OEM coating. I've had good luck with Zynolyte products in the past -- they seem to be of better quality than most rattlecan heat-resistant paints. I can't find it locally anymore, but it can be ordered directly from the Zynolyte site. We'll see how well it holds up.



Here's the right side of the intake manifold installed. You can get a good view of the spacer between the heat riser and heat exchanger here. VW replaced it with a thermostatic valve for the 1963 model year.



This is an overhead shot of the right heat riser flange. Notice how the tin is assembled: the lip on front piece of tin is designed to fit between the upper and lower cylinder tin at the left screw. The tin wasn't assembled properly on this engine when it was last rebuilt.



It took a fair amount of persuasion with a wood block and a hammer to get the muffler on. Here's the right side exhaust flange, where you can see the carb pre-heater air supply pipe (311 129 511) secured by the lower mounting nut. A paper hose connects this pipe to the air control box at the air cleaner intake. This arrangement was introduced at chassis number 0032545, a week or two before this car was built. The air supply apparently came from one of the heat exchangers on earlier cars. (The VW 1500 Workshop Manual says it came from the "left side," but since it's unlikely that it actually came from the left heat exchanger I think they may have meant the left side of the right heat exchanger. Having never seen a really early heat exchanger before, I have to admit that I don't know exactly how it was set up.)



The most challenging part of the muffler installation was getting the left side heat riser flanges to line up. The lower flange had to be moved toward the back about 3/8 in. and rotated about 15° clockwise to get things to align. All manner of improvised tools and a few choice words were employed to get it done. I'm surprised an original VW part would have been such a bad fit, but then the Workshop Manual does say "the pipes welded to the muffler can be straightened if necessary." That's classic VW understatement right there.



Now I have to find my misplaced tailpipe hardware so I can wrap it up.