Posted Tuesday, August 7, 2012 @ 05:42 PM
Hi Gino
Check out the info on the Fournieruk website: Technical>manuals>RECTIMO 1200 manual, Section 3.9. The torque for your engine is 21.7-23.2 ft-lbs. The VW engine rebuilding manual states 23ft-lb, which is 30.7 Nm. I'm pretty sure you have the standard VW 1200 engine with the original crankcase which will have 10mm plain studs. The larger Limbach engine uses the more recent universal crankcase with waisted studs and case savers but it's very unlikely that your engine has this as it's a complicated change, 1200 cylinders don't fit without special inserts. Paul Cooper's engine on his RF-4 is the only one I know that has this.
Don't over-torque the heads. 23ft-lb doesn't sound very much but the tension increases significantly when the engine warms up.
There is a specific sequence of tightening, in 3 stages of increasing torque. I'll email you a couple of pages from a very useful manual - Tom Wilson's 'How to rebuild your Volkswagen aircooled engine' which is available from VW Heritage, and probably other places and is worth it's weight in gold for anyone doing work on a VW aircooled engine. All the Fournier engines are essentially standard VW stuff.
Basically you torque the bottom row first, then the top row, to 15 ft-lb in the following sequence:
7 5 6 8
4 2 1 3
This is so that the push rod tubes are properly compressed. Then torque to 20 ft-lb using the same sequence.
Finally torque to 23 ft-lb in a different diagonal sequence:
8 2 4 6
5 3 1 7
You need a small, low range torque wrench for this. Draper do a good one. Hope this is clear.
Mike