My 91 Syncro Westy has had a SOLEX carb for the past 7 or so years after an engine box fire melted all of the FI pieces. The Solex has worked fine at times and not so good at times. Also I could not find any jets for the Solex and rebuild kits were hard to come by. The Solex is jetted for a 1600cc beetle. I decided to buy a NEW Weber DFEV carb and I was very fortunate to be able to by a real VW intake manifold from a carb’ed European van. I had to have an adapter plate made to mate the two and I was ready to go. I was fortunate that my PO mechanic was on a trip and was able to stop by to help. Everything went smoothly and the van started right up and with a few adjustments to the idling screws, it was idling perfectly with-in a minute. Of course the proof is in the driving. It ran/runs PERFECTLY. I have never been so happy with the driveability of the van. I used to have to rev it out for each shift, but now I can pull smoothly from 1800 rpms in 3rd or 4th gear. I just returned from a 5 hour drive and my first tank of gas shows 20 mpg (11 L/100kms) at highway speeds of 65 mph (115 kph) at about 3600 to 3800 rpms. Not bad for syncro westy at highway speeds. Anyway, I just wanted to report on this. I will now start fiddling with the jets to see if I can get even better performance and fuel economy out of the new Weber carb. A caveat for any Americans who might be tempted to put a carb on: Check with your pollution standards folks first, as carbs may not be legal for your van in your state.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.