Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:23:52 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: -Now Engine Conversion - doing your own soobie wire harness
In-Reply-To: <ccafde090803111302g87b9daxc182f2dd7724df0@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Well, that is cute, a 'jdm vanagon grill'.
And....the amount of mis-information in the vanagon world is appaling.
One guy said his wife didn't like their 82 Diesel Westy because it didn't
have power brakes ( but it did have a 98 Soob Impreza engine ) .....and of
course all versions of vanagons have a vaccum booster and front disc brakes
- I see it all the time....I'd even venture to say there could be more
mis-information in the vw world than in other car genre's...but that's
stretching it too.
Heck, there was a guy local to me with a Diesel Westy on craigslist
advertising it has having a TDI engine. I could see I the pictures it was a
regular TD engine, not a tdi. When I corrected him on that, he said 'I just
said it was TDI so people would know it was a turbo engine' and not a stock
1.6NA, or something silly like that.
From what I gather in japan they make it really hard to keep an older car,
like the registration goes up dramatically or something, so they're usually
getting a new car every few years. Of the few JDM engines I've gotten they
all seemed like they had 50K max on them.
I thought you're a very savvy knowlegible guy Ben. I think we chatted on the
phone recently- over that Benz 309D, right ?
What I'm getting at is how can you say this ? :
You've seen one Subie
conversion, you've seen them all.
Given that there are a lot of really bogus home-done hack Subaru
conversions, and there are fantastic factory looking elegant ones too, and
everything in between - . So nope, I sure can't say 'seen one, you've seen
them all.' Not even slightly.
I could say though, 'seen one hack conversion, you've seen all hack
conversions.' That I could go along with.
Here's fun one- an OBD-II conversion with two 02 sensors, and one goes
pre-cat and one post-cat, right ? Some guy had it so one O2 read pre-cat
off the left bank, and the other read the exhaust pre-cat on the right bank.
There is a lot of really goofy work done.
I could go on for pages about the hack work of all kinds I've seen
over the years on vw's - like a speedo cable brazzed to the front wheel
bearing cap, for example. It's hilarious really. Most of it I couldn't
even come up with, with a gun held to my head.
Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
BenT Syncro
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 1:02 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: -Now Engine Conversion - doing your own soobie wire harness
On 3/11/08, Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:
>
> Japanese domestic market.
> A made-for the Japanese market engine.
> They always are pretty low miles too, about 40K>
It always cracks me up when something like a Vanagon part gets advertised as
"JDM". For example one ad for an SA grill said, "JDM grill and lights for
your Vanagon." The same guy was also selling US-spec rectangular headlights
as "JDM aerodynamic headlights. Not a cheap sealed beam."
On that note, who documents how many miles those so called "JDM engines"
have? Do you just operated on blind faith that the vendor is being truthful?
Oh I almost forgot, that Subie converting Vanagons is akin to a religious
experience for some.=)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got one of those too Subie thingies too. I worshipped
at the Altar of the Perpetual Openhouse which made enough dough to buy
someone's almost turnkey conversion. Damned thing burned tranny seals on a
regular basis until an oilcooler was installed. I also lost time trying to
add PS & AC. No one can tell me that it wasn't a painful process to figure
out why my AC compressor was sizzling hot after I hooked up the Subie parts
to the VW system and took it for a test run. The compressor got so hot that
we had to pour water over it for fear of causing damage to adjacent
components. The steam came out for 5 minutes. All that time spent sorting
out problems definitely cost me money in the long run.
Praise be the Subie. Hallelujah. On the other end of the scale, my inline-4
VW conversions were fairly well sorted and relatively painless. My local VW
shop was even happy to do my regular service. I can't say the same about the
low-mileage Subie conversions that were sitting in line for
engine replacements. They were waiting for the shop owner to force one of
the mechanics to work on them. They all eventually went home happy with
their new JDM engines. For how long, I don't know. You've seen one Subie
conversion, you've seen them all.
BenT
(Mike Miller's JDM illegitimate Grandson -- Jack Da Miller) HAR, HAR, HAR.
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