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Date:         Tue, 2 Sep 2003 13:39:38 -0700
Reply-To:     Damon Campbell <damoncampbellvw@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Damon Campbell <damoncampbellvw@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      2.3L road trip to canada (actually made it!)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I am writing a little 2.3L engine status update due to the request of a couple people who are interested in how it is going.

Well, so far, my first engine build is a moderate success. It has gotten me up to canada, which still pleasantly surprises me. Power is good, only dropping to third gear when cresting pass around Mt. Shasta. This is with a van literally loaded head to toe from the drivers seat back. Ask pensioner, he saw it (nice guy, btw... good tomato farmer, too). I still need to totally clean up the wiring as i had a small grounding problem causing some at-speed shuddering. I also developed an oil leak at (i'm pretty sure) the main seal on the pulley end. I also have yet to 100% tune up the van for optimal running.

Running/coolant temperatures seem normal (usually around .07-ish on the digitool), but i think oil temperatures might be on the high side (i don't have a gage yet to verify this). Oil pressure never dropped below about 3psi at idle (that was after steep inclines like shasta)... and i was using a straight 30W dino for now.

I also discovered that i need to run 87 octane gas to prevent the little bit of pinging i was getting at WOT. If i were to do this again, i would have had the heads opened up to maintain CR instead of the pistons getting shaved down, increasing deck height.

Looking at the O2 readings have shown that the ECU has been surprisingly able to keep it about stoich - consistently hovering around .5 regardless of load. Tightening up the AFM spring a ton helped that out.

My only lagging problem has been a noisy lifter. I've set, and re-set, and had other people re-set my lifters, have run MMO for the last 50 miles (half a bottle), either mann or mahle filters since day one, and still the ticking remains. Any ideas on this would be helpful, really...

Not quite sure what else to say besides i am holding back my accolades until i get the engine tuned right (ran out of time). There are some minor hesitations here and there, and i've noticed my temp2 sensor giving erratic readings (even though it is brand new). My guess, however, would be that a person more experienced with WBXers and engine building in general would get better/more immediate results than myself.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have more specific questions,

-Damon

===== '84 Westy (Sparky) w/2.3L WBX (woo hoo! my first engine build works!)

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