Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:54:17 -0800
Reply-To: Matt Thyer <matt_thyer@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Matt Thyer <matt_thyer@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Introductions
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Howdy Folks,
I wanted to take a moment to make your online acquaintances' as well as
introduce myself and my new Vanagon (as yet unnamed). Last weekend I made
my way down to southern California to pick-up a 1983 L Diesel. I took
delivery after looking the vehicle over and then drove it about 2000 miles
back up to central Washington State. For the most part the vehicle is in
pretty good shape. It's been through about 50% of a Westfakia conversion
and my plans are to strip it down and then complete a custom camper
conversion.
Presently I have three persistent problems that I need to address:
Minor Diesel leak from near the fuel pump: There appears to be a slight
leak somewhere near the fuel pump/injector unit. Right now this means that
a small amount of fuel is being spilled on the engine. For obvious reasons
I'm going to take care of this one pretty soon.
Shift box and bushing are crappy: The biggest and most annoying problem here
is that you have to hold the stick in 4th gear when traveling at speed.
Otherwise the stick shift pops out of 4th. I'm pretty certain this is
caused by wear on the bushing, but feel free to offer up advice as you feel
necessary. Additionally, reverse is a pain in the rear end to find. This
is most likely the result of worn shift box parts as there's some play in
the stick, but once you find it the gear works great.
Poorly designed air intake for the added diesel turbo: The last owner
installed a turbo blower on the engine. It's really nice, it turned a
diesel slug into something with a little more oomph behind it. That said
the aspiration requirements of the turbo exceed those of the engine before
the turbo. With the turbo he installed a large cone filter right above,
drum roll please, the exhaust. The solution here is going to require
customization. I figure I can take one of three options:
1) Figure out a way to cover/protect the cone and get it to draw
from the air channel up the left side of the bus.
2) Run a snorkel channel up the left side of the bus and put the
filter at the end of it.
3) Replace the 1.6 L diesel turbo with a 1.9 L diesel.
The last is the most expensive and while it has certain advantages, I'm not
convinced I want to incur the downtime or cost of the conversion. No strike
that, all things considered that's a lot of money and time. I'm pretty sure
I don't want to do it that way. The first and second solutions are nice but
will probably require me to figure out a customized solution for aspiration.
I'm a can do kind of guy, and if you have any suggestions please feel free
to offer them up.
Rough calculation on the way up from SoCal is that I was getting around 31
MPG. That's freakin amazing in my book. Tuned and running without a fuel
leak who knows what I'll get on the highway? I don't think I've been this
excited about a vehicle for a very long time. Once I've got the mechanical
under control I'm going to spend some time in the garage carving out a light
weight pad of comfort and organization. I'm still looking for a good name
for it too.
Best regards,
Matt Thyer
Ellensburg, WA
