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Date:         Tue, 1 Nov 2005 00:04:28 EST
Reply-To:     FrankGRUN@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Frank Grunthaner <FrankGRUN@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: 3a conversion questions
Comments: To: bungeegull@hotmail.com, TDI-conversion@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Sam,

Good to hear from you and glad to see that you are making good progress. I've taken the liberty of copying this one sided conversation to the list in case others might be interested and I have so little time to participate in the list lately.

On the issue of the oil pan trap door baffles, you know that I consider them essential together with the windage tray and a properly sized oil pick-up tube for any performance I4 (gas or diesel) using the 50 degree pan. I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures and would suggest that you let Alistair post them on his website to keep all of this material available. I chose not to weld the baffles to the pan because of my concern for stress cracking from improperly annealed Al. Just a precaution though. Please feel free to share the oil filler adapter drawings, just ask them to acknowledge the source. Remember, as I use the adapter, I modified the oil level indicator from the Porsche 944T and added it through the filler adapter. Just for the record, I use the JX oil level dipstick as well as the level indicator on my TDi conversion. Brought it through the Alternator mount.

On the exhaust, your reference to guskers (!) is very good. For a NA engine there is no better manifold than the Audi 80 dual. The flex joints are essential. However, for a turbo, I would go to the Audi 80 single. For the TDi the stock manifold is a good start from the engine block. In all cases, I like a quiet tone (silent in the limit) with minimal back pressure. Rely on the cam for torque. I use a 2.5 inch ID exhaust but run it forward to the gas tank region, into a pair of highflow mufflers (in series) then out to the passenger side rear through a resonator and out. The back pressure is low, the exhaust gases are cooled and the flow is substantial. In particular, I always liked the multilayer heat shields (actually dual wall) used on the Porsche turbo exhaust, so I use heat shields liberally in the engine compartment.

As to the Audi intake, I went from turbo to intercooler to intake with short pipe segments on the exhaust side of the engine. With heat shields, I never indicated a problem. For the turbo Audi, I used a G60 throttle body and intake shroud casting. Did some smoke experiments with the boroscope and found a turbulent tornado in front of the throttle body. Looked good to me. With the TDi, I still run the SAAB intercooler horizontally under the drivers side air intake with a Dawoo radiator fan for forced air cooling. The lines to the TDi intake (seemingly missing the EGR plumbing) fit well.

On the oil filter mount, I use the dual filter unit with builtin external thermostatically oil cooler leads. I designed an adapter to add the dual filter unit to the standard oil filter/cooler flange. But as I indicated some time ago, while I Europe, I found the longitudinal filter/cooler mount for the AFN TDi engine. I added the dual filter adapter to this mount and found the room to mount two of the ultrahigh capacity oil to water coolers to the two filters. So I maintain excellent water to oil coolant temp stabilization together with the external Audi oil cooler stack from the 5000T, mounted in the passenger air downdraft with forced cooling.

I can't get back to the Vanagon TDi project till early December, but keep me informed,

Best,

Frank Grunthaner


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