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Ben , I do not know if your engine is weak or normal since this is my first VW, I have not had the opportunity to dirive other air cooled in order compare my car with others. The only Vdubs I have ever driven was a serious baja bug my brother had and this was offroad and a friend's Brazilia down in Mexico , with airconditioning always going,l top speed was 80. I guess you have to ask more than one car owner to findout if your car is the normal running one. My tunning of engine guts probably made this possible. My compression is modest and is at 105 to 110. This was after I increased it months after my rebuild from 80 to 90 lbs range. I will give you the inside story on my rebuild a little under two years ago: Mine is automatic so my thrust against the crank and the case does not exist. The fliud in the torque converter makes it kind of self balancing. My crank , rods, pistons are balanced. In addition to this I had the torque converter balanced at a tranny shop, flexplate and fan assembly was balanced at a shop too. I am a very cheap guy when it comes to this . I looked for the cheapest places to balance these, bought a used balanced crank that was reconditioned and rebalaneced that too. My dad told me that balance it the key to the engine's well being and the universe, so I followed in his steps. Rings and piston/cylinder are stock 1600, heads are the cheapest Brazilian ones. The cam is the original stock one, deep dish, lifters were reground and retempered , so I am told, I use swivel rocker adjusters, my oil pump is a big Brazilian one for the deep dish geared cam that just barely fits under the crossmember mount and fan shroud, I think it has 32mm gears, if I measured right , the bearings for the cam has double thrust bearings. The bearing clearances were tighter than original VW specs , this is very bad when no oil filter is installed , so I later installed an oil filter, lots of good filtered oil pressure. These cars have bigger max clearances for bearings than the water cooled cars I own because of the unfiltered oil design. I made tighter bearing clearances by getting the old balanced crank and oversize bearings on hand and told the non vw guy to recondition all bearing journals tight to proper bearing specifications. Clearances are as tight as a new watercooled engine. One odd thing I did do was scrub the new cylinders for almost one full day with detergent soap and a plastic dish scrubber. This was to remove the microdiamonds that are used to cut and polish the cylinders during manufacturing, this diamond/carbide material stays well imbeded in the cylinder surface. A race car guy told me about this so he told me to clean then inner surface like you have never cleaned it before. Companies that sell stock stuff , usually do not clean these but the high end race guys that charge you an arm and a leg sometimes clean these so the guaranteed part may work as advertized. Guess what ! After washing 4 cylinders all day in the same bucket , lots and lots sparking powder residue was left at the bottom of my now dry bucket, it was a half a small spoonful of this, not to mention the same stuff that went out with the water. This would work as sandpaper for your rings and cylinders. I installed a head temperature gauge to monitor head temps at all times, so far my heads have never overheated from all the torture, ...yet. I siliconed all tin edges and spaces to make super airtight tin. I disassembled all EFI componetents and cleaned them. Replaced my shotty injectors and ' tuned' my pressure sensor to 'proper' mixture. Later added extra sump for more oil capacity. Later I replaced my oil cooler (some people did not like this) with a junk cooler with cheap fans then with a large mesa cooler with a large powerful fan. The cooler-air outlet and the plumbing area was blocked off with homemade aluminum tin and silicon , this is air tight too. This last tin mod was made to enhance airflow to the #3 cylinder/head area instead of having cool air blow over and into the oil cooler and then out the front cooler vent. The aluminum German oil cooler is actually far superior than any design you can get off the catalogs, that is why the steel mesa cooler requires a large fan to cool properly. The only cooler in the market that is similar in design but far exceeds the original VW coolers are made by Earl racing . With the money you would pay for these, you can buy another type 3 car. Prices range from 300 dollars to 2000 dollars. These are used for those 3000 horsepower dragsters and gasoline powered airplanes. I am saving money for the cheaper one , maybe in time for Christmas. I have done other things that might have enhanced the durability of my engine. People may not agree with me on this but I highly recommend if you do this to filter your oil . I added those engines addidtives to my semi synthetic oil . I used Duralube. I did not like to use Slick 50 or any additive with teflon solids suspended because the material may accumulate and stick your rings into the piston. My impression is, that it lowers the friction thus lowers the engine temps. I understand if this is added to a car without a filter, major damage could result because of the hard gunk falling off the case walls and grinding the bearings and/or rings down, eventually lose oil pressure and if you are mean to your motor, eventually lose a rod. Maybe one or all of the things I have done enhanced the performance of my typically factory spec engine and low compression. This was not done in one day it took time on and off for a year to finally add the last thing, which was the mesa cooler and fan. I see no earthshaking modifications in my engine. Almost forgot, I did install one of those BugPack dual quiet muffler systems with header. Seems to make my car work nice but quality sucks, I have a long litany of welds and support enhancements and the cheap metal it is made of, is still cracking and splitting open. I know , I may not have answered your question but at least you know the difference between my engine and yours. Maybe your engine's speed characteristcs is the result of unbalanced stock engine or lean injectors etc... I wouldn't know if your engine is weak but it maybe because it is factory stock. LEON MARTINEZ 1969 SQUAREBACK EFI/AUTO SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA ------------------------------------------------------------------- Too much? Digest! mailto:type3-d-request@vwtype3.org Subj=subscribe