Date:         Wed, 8 Mar 2006 09:35:23 -0800
Reply-To:     Matthew <mpteleski@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Matthew <mpteleski@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      Re: Tiico Parts Availability?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Folks, as a former tiico owner & self mechanic, i have
first hand experiene with the tiico. Bob has heard my
woes and is speaking from a bit of a different
perspective than me, but is pretty much correct. Many
people are very happy with the TiiCo engine, and TiiCo
continues to sell boatloads of these things.

First place, the TiiCo company is providing a sevice
that is otherwise not available; a vw "turn key"
solution to the wasserboxer. What scares most people,
i suspect, away from the subie, tdi or homegrown
conversion is the amount of extra work that is needed
to get the parts, fab stuff, make stuff, etc. The
tiico is appealing as it is *marketed* as a drop in
solution. (which it really is not, but that is a
different story).

I purchased mine is dec of 01 and had it running by
superbowl weekend 02. I sold the complete turnkey
engine, installed, in early summer of 04. I put
somewhere between 35 and 45K on it. In that time I had
a few little problems, but nothing major. I am super
anal about preventive maintaince so was able to catch
some potential disaster before they happened, like the
plastic timing belt tensioner that was failing.

My reason for selling the engine was mostly for my
moral beliefs: i don't want to support a crude oil
based economy.  I was also involved in a rape-seed oil
press and biodiesel manufacturing facility. (the guy
running the facility got gready and stopped giving
away the BD, even though i put in about 120 hours of
custom machining, welding and circuit design,
including the materials. I got 1 "tote" of bd, 275
gallons).

Except for a few unique parts, the engine parts are
totally available. The parts list is on the Tiico
yahoo group's page.  Bob is right- the block started
life as a 1.8. The head is new and is form an Audi 80
(i think), so all head parts are available. The
pistons are from a 5-cylinder audi/vw engine, and i
forget the crank's original home. The fuel rail is
from the A2 line, and the water pump, & timing belt is
normal too. The oil pump and pan, coolant hoses and
engine mounts are from a diesel vanagon. Unique to
this engine is the Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP)
sensor, intake manifold, exhaust manifold, ecu and
custom wiring harness, throttle cable and the exhaust
headers. Maybe more that i left off.

What still bothers both Bob and me is TiiCo's
unwillingness to fix or improve upon the weak parts,
which Bob mentioned. (alternator bracket is
"homemade", exhuast headers break often, MAP sensors
die like County Fair Goldfish)

Thanks for the bandwidth
-matthew
86 syncro westy 1.9TD Former TiiCo
86 syncor singlecab (to be a diesel soon)
82 diesel westy 1.6td FOR SALE soon
72 Type II Riviera





> Date:    Wed, 8 Mar 2006 01:03:56 -0800
> From:    Robert Keezer <warmerwagen@YAHOO.COM>
> Subject: Re: Tiico Parts Availability?
>
> The Tweako parts you want are only available if
> you have bought a Tweako.
>
> Parts and service for the customer are pathetic.
>
> It's a Audi engine bored to 2.0.  It has a weird
> tweakable fuel injection system that makes you
> rely soley on Tiico (or authorized centers) for
> help with when it fails.
>
> The Tiico doesn't go far enough - by now it
> should have refined the boondoggles ,  but they
> havent.
>
 <snipped the rest>

"Racing with the wind and flirting with death
So have a cup of coffee and catch your breath"

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