I love the VW 1.6l diesel engine. My first car was an 82 Rabbit pickup (Caddy). I loved that truck and it got 50 mpg on the highway which was great for a teenager who was normally broke. I then went through a series of diesel vw cars, Rabbits, Golfs, and Jettas. Then I got married and started having kids. It got to the point where my 81 diesel Jetta (which I still own) just didn't have enough space. I saw an ad in the paper for a 85 Vanagon and went to look at it. The rest of history. Several years later I had a customer drive in with a diesel Vanagon Westy. All of my positive experience with the VW diesel engine came flooding back to me. I asked the guy if I could take it for a spin. That was one of the biggest let downs I have ever experienced. The van had a fresh engine in it, and the owner was saying how good the power was once he put in the new engine. It was worse than the worse underpowered dog I have ever driven in my entire life! You could hardly get it going. Pulling out onto an uncrowded street seemed risky. I was very disappointed. Since then I have driven many other diesel Vanagons. They have all been the same except now I am not so disappointed since I know what they are like. I even installed a 1.9l NA diesel this summer in place of a 1.6l for a customer. It swapped right in and is supposed to have more power, etc. It seemed similar to me but the engine wasn't broken in when I drove it.

So while I love the VW diesel engine, I really couldn't own a diesel Vanagon. The power is just too low to be safe. You may get 30 mpg but is it worth it at the price of no power, no power steering, no A/C? With the current diesel prices probably not. If you turbo the engine you gain some HP but you lose mpg. So now we are getting 25 mpg on the highway and we are still not getting close to the power of a stock waterboxer (even a 1.9l). The engines are under so much more stress in the Vanagon that they don't last as long. I have had diesel VW engines go over 300k miles and still keep going strong. In the Vanagon they last around 100k miles if you don't "flog it" (Bob Donald's phrase that I love to use).

I know that people are excited about bio diesel and running on cooking oil and the Vanagon diesel is a perfect platform for either of these. However I still like my 2.1l waterboxer. It has plenty of power to get me up and down the East Coast (through Virginia without sweating) and it gets around 20 mpg on the highway. I just rebuilt it so it should last a while.

If the van is already a diesel keep it that way. If you are thinking of converting, unless you are going to go with a TDI (expensive) I wouldn't bother.

Hope this helps, Ken Wilford John 3:16 www.vanagain.com

dj wrote: > Is the 83 water cooled diesel a good motor? > >