Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 11:04:07 -0500
Reply-To: "Jim. Felder" <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Jim. Felder" <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Vanagon Diesel Advice
In-Reply-To: <39f001d4fea2$27bfdf30$773f9d90$@busdepot.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Ah, me, always the contrarian. Since I was not on the list until just after
I got my 1.6 NA diesel Westy, I didn't think of it as dangerously slow
because I had not been advised as such. I have had slower cars. I thought
of the Westy as a car, a vehicle, that required a little special skill to
get around in (but that would apply to a number of the cars I've had). And
that was sixteen fun-filled years and hundreds of thousands of miles ago,
during some of which time the car was my only car. Yes, if you need gobs of
horsepower to simply get yourself from one place to the next, and you need
all kinds of tech to tell you what lane you're in and where the corners of
your car are at any given time, you will be disappointed and I would say
off the bat that this car is not for you in that case. But if you want a
fun, reliable hauler that's easy to work on, and you have the savvy to
adapt yourself to the car, and it's what you want, then why turn it down?
In the end, I did add a turbo to my rig, which was already a five speed,
and so not quite as slow as some of them come. Like it. In fact I love it,
but I could go back to NA if I had to. BTW I always got over 100K on my
engines with full camper and kayaks, and I never retired a VW diesel
because of the bottom end but then I build my own.
Jim
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 10:42 AM The Bus Depot <vanagon@busdepot.com> wrote:
> > They are really only a city vehicle. Grossly under powered for any
> highway
> > driving I owned one for many years that I installed a 1.6TD engine in.
> > Even wIth the turbo and larger tires, it still wasn't great on the big
> > highways. I normally cruised around 55mph/90 kph.
> >
> > The 1.6L is heavily stressed and tend not to last very long in that
> > configuration. I averaged about 50K kms between bottom end changes with
> > the turbo. Fortunately the van has a massive cooling system to help
> cope.
>
>
> I concur, the US spec diesel Vanagons are very slow. You will notice it
> particularly when trying to accelerate to highway speed coming off an
> on-ramp. On a diesel Westy or a fully loaded Vanagon you may sometimes
> find yourself driving on the shoulder of the highway trying to gain enough
> momentum to merge into traffic. I would not recommend buying one without
> driving it first to see if the sluggishness is something you can live with,
> unless of course you are open to an engine swap.
>
> Ron Salmon
> The Bus Depot, Inc.
> www.busdepot.com
>
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