I recall when you began with your conversion, Neil...and asked for advice, maybe? I vaguely recall asking you why you were choosing to do something different, to put the motor in there at 15deg. when factory parts existed to install it otherwise?. You also began with an air cooled Vanagon, didn't you?...Well, you pulled it off in the end, but man, you did it the hard way! (IMHO) grin! As you went along, you did get to learn to weld and to wire a motor and you probably know as much as anyone bout the Vangaon cooling systems now. But to this day, I wonder why you chose to do a 15 degree motor mounting with the interior bump and all that extra work of building custom engine mounts, etc. I would think, even if a person couldn't actually find and buy real VW factory used diesel parts to install an inline in the standard way, it would be much much easier to just copy the factory stuff from another van or something. The bars are pretty dang simple and the mounts are still available and not expensive. Going at it this way, it's likely that most anyone who could change out a WBX motor could also do the swap to an inline gas VW (1.8liter) without learning new skills or becoming frustrated and giving up. Maybe a bit of 'head-scratching involved, but nothing here too complicated......It's when you start to 're-invent the wheel' by choosing to use another manufacturer's motor and EMS, or deviate into other VW systems that you increase the degree of difficulty for an engine swap. Lucky for us, a lot of the inline four VW blocks have the same castings motor mount as the diesels and they bolt right in just the same way. Also lucky is the Digifant wires plugs and hoses from a WBX almost plug right in to the inlne gas motor and make it run just fine.....makes for a pretty simple swap, should one want/need to get it done fairly quickly and inexpensively.
On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:34 PM, neil n <musomuso@gmail.com> wrote: > And to be clear, if someone were to ask, I'd suggest they NOT do a 15º > install. In fact, even if they had the tools and skills, I'd still > suggest they go the 50º route with DV parts. ...... unless they had a > Doka. ;) > > Neil. > > On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:12 PM, neil n <musomuso@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >.... my guess is the project would have stalled and died. Thankfully it > > still runs and pretty good at that. > > > > On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Jim Akiba <syncrolist@bostig.com> > wrote: > > > >> ..... Also just because another > >> guy did the thing you are trying to do doesn't actually mean you will > >> have the same experience unless you can guarantee a pretty high level > >> of consistency, > > > > -- > Neil n > > Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca > > '88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p > > '81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco" http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/ > > Vanagon VAG Gas inline-VR Engine Swap Group: > > http://tinyurl.com/d7gd5ej > |
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