Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:28:28 -0800
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: The real story about the invention of the WBX?
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
here's my thoughts on it :
Yes on needing to go to water cooled for emissions reasons.
I also think they just wanted to stay with the original design concept and
layout .......
which is rear engine, aluminum block , opposed four.
I can't really guess which is more inexpensive to make.......and inline cast
iron block four, or an opposed aluminum block four cylinder engine.......
Bit is seems to me that a cast iron block inline four would be plenty cheap
enough to make for a manufacturer. ....and cheaper to make than an aluminum
block engine.
there is the factor of having all the experience and tooling for making
opposed aluminum block engines........perhaps they wanted to take advantage
of that.
But one does wonder.......
was it 'internal politics at VW' ............or just stubbornness about
keeping it an aluminum opposed four engine.......
or crash considerations...
or more likely .......acceptance in the European market.
Perhaps they felt that hard core VW owners would not accept a Vanagon with
a tilted over inline four iron block gas engine.
But I'll be building mine after I pick up my 'new' 16 valve 87 jetta 1.8
inline four .........123 hp, 5,800 rpm, .....CIS-E fuel injection.
Should make a nice vangon engine .......and I hear they get better fuel
mileage than waterboxer engines.
PLUS............a REAL head gasket !!
just few too many projects ahead of that one though.
haven't heard anything for a while. but there is/was a conversion shop in
Sacramento , Ca............. doing 1.8 T engines into vangons.
that's inline four 1.8 ........with FIVE valves per cylinder ! and
turbocharged.
Scott
turbovans.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Jakob Andersen" <jayjay@ZORCK.DK>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 12:46 PM
Subject: The real story about the invention of the WBX?
> Hi,
>
> We are trying to find out what happened inside the heads of Schults
> and Heinz (VW engineers that we cuss about when working on our cars
> ("That day Schultz said to Heinz over lunch "Fit, too tight a fit? No
> Heinz, we will place the bolt there - no problem -if people need to
> work on that part they will allways have taken the front half
> apart")) - on the day when they decided:
> "Lets convert the CU to water-cooled - it will be real easy, done
> quite fast, and a good stable conversion - instead of just using one
> of our great inline.-4 engines"
>
> So my basic question to this list - does anyone know about why
> VW decided to create the WBX, instead of changing to inline-4 in 1983?
>
> Here is what I have found so far:
> "The switch to water-cooling for the boxer engines was made abruptly
> mid-year in 1983 because VW could no longer make the air-cooled
> engines meet emissions standards"
>
>
> Happy driving
>
> Jens Jakob