Date:         Tue, 2 Oct 2007 23:10:59 -0700
Reply-To:     Kyle Davis <davis_family_46168@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Kyle Davis <davis_family_46168@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      This just HAS to be a new question...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hey all,

     From personal experience (and list lurking and
ebay hunting) powerplant transplants are pretty common
in the vanagons...  A majority of them are well
documented 2.1 in a 1.9, air cooled to water, diesel
to gas, vw to suby, vw to porsche, vw to tiico, gas to
tdi, etc.

     I also remember reading about an electric bus
(not vanagon) so I can presume gas>electric.

     This brings me to my next question.  Did anybody
ever consider going halfsies with that last one, ala
Toyota Prius or Honda Insight style?

     The most bizarre conversion I've heard of was VW
to Ford 2.8 liter v6 (somewhere, Ben Pon must be in
shock, or rolling over in his grave.)

     I would dearly love to tell the oil industry what
to do with high gas prices and convert the westy into
total electric, but a few things hold me back.

     1.)  Practicality.  The westy is basically a
fully-laden with camping gear bus.  An electric motor,
no matter how many batteries feed it, just may not be
able to do much with that.

     2.)  Cost.

     3.)  Safety.  Excessive electricity around lpg
may be an inherently Bad Idea TM.

     4.)  Getting back to 1, it gets reasonably cold
here in the midwest, and my research of pure electric
cars mentioned using hair dryers as heaters.

    So, how feasible would it be to meet in the
middle?  And, I'm not necessarily saying bolt on a
prius or an insight, or even a ford escape hybrid
engine into this solution, or suggest that that would
even work.  I guess I am just wondering if anybody has
tried this, and, if so what measure of success or
failure they were able to obtain...

Kyle



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