VW cylinder head machining - increasing compression ratio

Well this guy came to the shop with two VW cylinder heads that he wanted some machining done to. The idea was to remove 2 mm from the combustion chambers in order to raise the compression ratio. Not being a specialized VW shop, or a car engine machine shop for that matter, here's one way to do it:

First, find a a big faceplate for the lathe. Somewhere there's bound to be an old one with a roughly 4" by 4 tpi mount, so make a threaded stub shaft that fits, generously loctite the threads and assemble with a cheater bar and BIG hammer. Machine a slug with a centre hole. Make it so it just fits the cylinder seats, toss the faceplate-on-a-shaft in the three-jaw, pinch the cylinder head against the faceplate with a live centre pressing against the slug inserted in the cylinder seat, bolt it onto the faceplate with suitable fasteners and it should look like this:

Big faceplate with VW cylinder head - iPhone 5s

Remove the tailstock and slug, indicate the cylinder seat and tap it around a bit if you need to, tighten the bolts, mount some scraps to balance the faceplate, and bore 2mm deep. Paint the first bore with a magic marker so you can touch off and set your dials for diameter and depth, then bore to size and depth on all four.

Of course you need to use the slug and centre on all four holes while setting up. It's so much easier when you don't have to fight gravity. Depending on how flat the faceplate is you may also have to use shims. I did not want to add that fuss so I took a skim cut after assembling the stud shaft and faceplate. Next time around though, I might have to shim since I don't want to turn the faceplate into chips. It's only so thick to begin with.

Well the job was a success and I made myself a faceplate that can go in both of the big lathes without removing their chucks. Fun stuff!

Fun stuff! Old gentleman's cow clipper...

Yup, time again for one of those fun little jobs. This old gentleman came into the shop with an old clipper machine. It had this brass adjusting screw that goes into the gear housing and pushes on a bow-shaped spring that in turn pushes the moveable clipper blade against the fixed one. On the end of the adjusting screw there is a small shouldered steel screw that holds the spring and screw together through a hole in the spring. That small screw was broken off and the gent had tried to drill the remains out.

Well, brass with a bit of steel stuck in it is not that easy to drill, so now the thing was messed up with a hole poking out the side of the brass screw. As we talked, we arrived at the price of the repair. Sadly, the size and the price of things like this seldom match. This nice old man understood that I charge for my time, and replied that this repair would be cheaper than a new clipper anyway so go ahead and fix it. Man, I like to hear that!


So, here is new screw assembled with the spring:

That's fun & done! - iPhone 4s

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures during the making of it, but it involved turning and knurling the brass stock, turning the major screw diameter, single point threading it M6x1 (IIRC) to a nice tight fit for the locking nut, drilling and tapping the end for a M3 thread and then parting off the screw. For the securing screw I took a shortcut, I actually loctited a nut on a M3 screw and then turned that into a shoulder that fit the hole in the spring. This is hidden inside the gear housing so it was function before looks on this one and it does the job just fine.


I really enjoy these little jobs that comes every now and then, especially when the customer is as nice as this old man was! Now cows, you better watch out...