Who made that?

[Olivier Auvray]

Some days ago, the boss of my favorite machine shop called me about a 356 engine .
As usual, he wanted that I supply him spare parts for this project and he asked me to come and to check it!

Today I went there and I found a pre A engine in different boxes: the owner had taken it apart.....

First, I took the engine case: I wanted to identify it! And I saw something in lifter's holes. During few seconds I thought about broken lifters but it was not broken lifters!
I found 4 aluminium plugs and I thought: why did they put aluminium plugs? I decided to remove one and I found that he had a special shape.......

Few seconds after I had a funny idea: this is a 2 cylinders engine, not 4! holes were plugged to save oil flow & pressure ! I called the shop's boss and explained my idea; he told me: "we must check the crank and if you are right, we'll find plugs on it!"

And......................Bingo: we found plugs on crank too!


We decided to call the owner and he told us: "this engine is not complete, I found only 2 connecting rods, 2 pistons, 4 pushrods/lifters/rockers!".

1) Anibody has already seen something like that?
2) This engine is coming from a car bought in USA, if somebody knows details about engine/car, let me know! a mechanic can't forget that!
3) I think that this job was done many years ago when the value of a pre A was low and parts too expensive or no longer available!
4) in any case the mechanic was "smart": he didn't forget to use plugs for oil flow/pressure!

[John Ward]

A long time ago, I was very heavily involved with SCCA solo events.
A kid came by and wanted to reclassify his car to run in the under 1000c.c.
class. He had made a 2 cyl VW and it ran like stink.
This might be the same kind of deal.

[Jim Nelson]

Just when you think you've seen it all, there's always something like this that comes along…..

[karl schuenemann]

Do I remember seeing adds for a kit or plans to convert four cyl. motor into two cyl. air compressor, in the vw mags? Without the power stroke maybe splash lubrication would be sufficient?

[Wes Bender]

A compressor made from a VW or a Porsche 4 cylinder engine still needed the pushrods for all four cylinders to function properly. It needed a new camshaft with opposed lobes though.

Wes

[James Davies]

Crazy! Hopefully you'll be able to remove all the plugs and return it to its former, um, glory.

[Ivan Fuller]

It may well have been used in a TQ (3/4) Midget speedway/dirt track car. I think the limit was 800cc and there were a few "1/2" VW's that were very successful here in NZ in the '70's & '80's. They cut the heads in half and bolted a cover over the removed cylinders. Ran methanol and very high compression. Quite bullet proof for the time. No spare Porsche engines in NZ but in Europe/USA? Up against Norton 750 twins and the like.
Once the Japanese bike motors started coming that was the end of the British & German power plants.