Buying Big End bearings/shells

[Oily Fingers]

Yooo, as the title says,  goin to start building up my Eaton charged G40 engine very soon, and i'm goin to get new sheels for the bottom end.  But the main question is,  do VW still sell them or is it a trip to an engine machine shop and get some made up?

joel

[jez1272gt]

VW sell them at a cost however the quality is very good and probably the advisable option if building a 'good' engine. If you dont wanna spend the cash then there are others available through ECP or GSF but i think that you might need to by two sets to get the oil way in both shell halves.. sure someone can shed some light on this...

[Daryl]

I got new shells etc last year at vw. For the shells nuts and bolts and a thermostat housing mine came to 248.98. I was hopeing to get piston rings aswell but i got told they do not do them anymore.

Hope that helps.

[giorgio]

I got new shells etc last year at vw. For the shells nuts and bolts and a thermostat housing mine came to 248.98. I was hopeing to get piston rings aswell but i got told they do not do them anymore.

Hope that helps.

I got rings on order from germany last through my local dealer

[giorgio]

Not sure but I would assume the shells come as a matched pair. Not sure if its the case or if there will be that much in it

[benh999]

get the main shells from GSF if they still sell them

just make sure they've got half with an oil groove, then buy two sets.
bin the shells with no grooves in and you've got a complete set for much less than VW will charge for the same items....

rings are same on the G40 as any non GT (i.e. 3f) engines as far as i can remember.

Just curious, If you require the oil way to be in both bearings why do GSF only supply pairs with only one oil way?

[Tommo]

they have set dimensions....... hence you can buy bigger ones for when a crank has been ground etc......

I think he is on about them being matched dimentionally as a pair of shell halves. I know this is done in production but not sure if aftermarket bothers with getting things that close.

[bbspolo]

ive got a set of rings here sat on my desk!
well i have 3 sets as i had 2 sell phill a complete set and a spare!
£23 each set (one set one cylinder) i can get more

[Puncharado]

I picked up my bottom end rebuild bits off my buddy this evening. Even with his very favourable mates rate (he works in parts dept of local dealer ), the price was still a bit of a shock! And I still need to buy all gaskets/seals, water pump etc, I didn't fully realise how expensive even my relatively standard rebuild would be. My mate really helps though (he got me into VWs in the first place!), so I tend to buy pretty much everything genuine. GSF etc. would have more of my money otherwise!

[Nick_S]

You can get a botton end gasket/seal kit from VW, works out a lot cheaper than buying the seperates. You even get the nearside crank oil seal in there, which is obsolete as a single seal from the dealers.

[jez1272gt]

You can get a botton end gasket/seal kit from VW, works out a lot cheaper than buying the seperates. You even get the nearside crank oil seal in there, which is obsolete as a single seal from the dealers.

How strange that the seal is obsolete in single form!! Surely if they still make them its no hardship to sell them singularly!!

[SamG40]

There are a lot of strange things in the VW parts world. For instance if you ask for a PCV for a Corrado VR6 they say you need to buy the entire pipe assemble as they don't sell it separately, but if you ask for it for a Sharan VR6 they do.

[Puncharado]

When I spoke to the bloke in the engine builders this afternoon, he was saying that he once worked on a VW engine (he couldn't remember which one), and couldn't find replacements or any info on the main bearing cap bolts. Apparently according to VW they were never available as a service item, and they told him that if the bolts had been loosened then the only option was a new short engine! He eventually found out that it was because whoever produced/assembled the engines would not release the torque settings for the bolts! Crazy. Anyway, he said that he checked some reference material and basically used his own judgement and experience, decided on a torque setting and re-used the old bolts. He didn't know if it was ok but it never went back to him anyway!

[Puncharado]

I'm not talking about my engine though, just some engine he said he'd rebuilt. He's got all the info on the PY engine in his own reference books.

[PeteG40]

probably a mk5 16v engine - they are like toffee... with blow by the rings at about 60-70k miles.  vw say not to rering them but to replace the bottom end/