Old school rocker covers

With the modified rocker geometry and the added 4 mm shims under the pedestals the OEM rocker covers didn't fit anymore. I digged deep in my parts stash and found a pair of vintage aluminium cast rocker covers from German company Beetlechoose. I think these date back to the early 90's. - Already 25 years!

I just have to modify the hardware and bolts, put new o-rings and copper washers on them and the longblock is officially done!

Rear view mirror

My mirror was some sort of automatic high speed cut-off. Everytime I reached 120 kph it flipped against the vent window due to the wind load. I tried several times to tighten the nut to achieve higher clamp forces, but the material is so weak, I stripped the thread!
Luckily, we have a huge "helicoil" repair set in our company, which I borrowed today.
This is the problem: 

 No clamping force on the spring, as the thread in the lower nut was stripped.

Here is a detail shot of the stripped thread. When I drilled the new hole for the thread the material appears to me like aluminium, super soft!

The helicoil insert is clearly visible, after re-assembly it appears a lot stronger. Tomorrow I will give the Volksback a "high speed test" to check if the mirror stays as adjusted...

Spark plug sockets

Spark plug access is ain't easy on aircooled VW's - and the 2 Weber carbs don't make it easier, but luckily NGK has a wide array of spark plug sockets. After I tested a few of them, this is my choice: 

Spa 2015: Type 3 Award + Ultra VW

After some emailing and searching on Facebook, I finally got some pictures from Saturday's Type 3 gathering during the Spa weekend:

This is me - half happy / half in disbelief when I received the Type 3 / Type 34 award. Once again a big "Thank You" to the organization team for picking my car! And "merci beaucoup" to Gregory Braham and Pierre Monneret for the pictures!

If you happen to read UK's fantastic VW magazine "Ultra VW", you might have noticed this preview picture:

I'm really curious about the full feature of my car, only a few more days - I can't wait!

Engine: final steps!

Today I picked up the final sheet metal parts from Jens - you know who... in order to get going on the final assembly stage.
Here is an overview, the parts are semi-gloss black - the camera flash is mis-leading...

On Wednesday my buddy Uwe was so kind to shorten my push rods, here is the result, after I pressed the end caps on:

8 exakt same length cro-mo push rods!

So, I started to put all those things together:

I'm stoked so far - everything fits tight, no scrapping noises - looks good...