Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 19:56:30 -0700
Reply-To: Simon Reinhardt <simon@FARRSIDE.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Simon Reinhardt <simon@FARRSIDE.NET>
Subject: Re: Wasserboxer reputation (Long)
In-Reply-To: <f05100305ba1849236411@[203.167.180.20]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Hear, hear!
I'm the classic example of someone who diagnosed and tuned the engines
in all of my old beetles by ear, nose, and 3 feeler gauges, and they
ran just fine for years afterward.
Then I got into the A1 VW's, and now I'm pretty good with those
engines, too.
THEN I got a Vanagon- as I started digging into the wasserboxer, I
actually got offended by some of the design "decisions"!
But yes, they're just another watercooled engine. Honestly, the only
real difference is the split case.
My friends who are legitimate mechanics all agree that the main
difference in modern engines is the computers and the various sensors.
Other than that, anyone who measures carefully as he builds an engine,
will have no trouble switching from a 25-horse aircooled to a 24V VR6,
and everything in between.
Just my two cents. If I didn't like the VW inline-4 so much, I'd have a
Type 4 engine in the syncro right now...
Of course, the other side of the coin has already been mentioned- most
of these engines are at the end of their service life. Look at the
average engine in any bus produced up to 1979- they just plain don't
last as long as the same engine installed in a bug.
Is anyone actually surprised by this?
So of course, it's unfair to think that the wasserleaker is going to be
trouble-free: not only is it perennially over-worked, but there is
definitely some funk built into it's design, some of which is easy to
misunderstand, as an earlier reply to this thread indicated.
All that being said, I stand by my initial impression of the WBX,
formed when I was putting a head on one last May- It's as if the
faithful old Boxer design group, slaving away in Wolfsburg lo these
many years, had been told that they were going to be fired in a year-
and then were given an additional slap in the face, in the form of an
assignment to design a WATER-cooled boxer before they left!
Well, what sort of engine would YOU design under those circumstances?
I'd say we got it...
-Simon
On Saturday, December 7, 2002, at 06:18 PM, Andrew Grebneff wrote:
>
> Oh come on! The WBX is merely a beetle engine modified to take
> watercooled top-ends. It has ZERO high-tech in its design and has
> serious design flaws in its headgasket mating surfaces. The
> propensity for breaking conrods is also a design flaw.
>
> ANYone competent at watercooled engine repair would be perfectly
> suitable for work on these engines. I'm sure most decent aircooled
> mechanics are good at watercooled work as well.
| 
