Date:         Mon, 3 Apr 95 17:50:41 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         jag@cs.rochester.edu
Subject:      Re: DIESEL VANAGON QUESTIONS

On Fri, 31 Mar 1995, Susan & James Kramer wrote:
>
>   Recognizing that those early 80s Vanagon Westfalia's have been politely
>   described as under powered, I'm curious to know just how woeful the little
>   Rabbit engine is pushing all that weight:

> 1) How long does the engine last, or better phrased, how much shorter is
> the life expectancy than in a Rabbit?

The previous owner of my 82 Westy had the engine rebuilt at 70k miles,
It's still doing fine at 115k now. Saw a claim in the "most miles"
thread on r.a.vw recently claiming 170k miles on a diesel vanagon.

> 2) After the 5 minute acceleration lead-up, at what speed can the Diesel
> Vanagon cruise comfortably on level highway?

55-60 is nice and reasonably quiet when it's level. Uphill is noisy.
VW allows you to modify the injection pump settings for improved
performance (see Bentley's vw golf-jetta diesel manual), but I haven't 
had a need to do this.

> 3) What are people's actual experiences with mileage around town and on the
> highway?

I usually get at least 26 mpg mixed driving, 30 mpg highway, and up to
33 mpg doing "scenic cruising" (driving nice country roads in 40-50 mph).

On Fri, 31 Mar 1995 James N Gagliardi wrote: <jg6r+@andrew.cmu.edu>

> 3.  Fuel injection is 100% mechanical so you can re-pipe the intake and
> exhaust and drive in up to 3 feet of water without risk of flooding your
> distributor.  (CAUTION,  in high compression diesel engines, water in
> the intake is bad...).

Too bad there isn't a mechanical override for the fuel shutoff solenoid.
Then it could be pushed to a start with a completely dead battery.

> 4.  Glow Plugs.

Well, I guess I forgot about these. My engine doesn't want to start
at all without them (Rochester temperatures).

> 5.  Free oil slick in your driveway. 
 
With synthetic oil mine leaks a bit also. Haven't tracked down the
source of the leak yet. Used to curse the previous owner of my house
for the permanent oil stains on my driveway, until I discovered I
was replenishing myself...


Let's keep this diesel thread going! I'm new to this list, but I looked at
the archives, and couldn't see any diesel flaming, so I hope potential
diesel haters will allow some religious freedom.

I used to drive heavy trucks and busses for college money, and came to
like the big diesels in these. Now living off a graduate stipend I find that 
my diesel VW Westfalia camper gives me a lot of vacation pleasure per $, both 
invested and spent on fuel. 

The vw-diesel doesn't have a good quality reputation compared to "real"
diesels, but that's true of other diesels built from gas engine blocks as well.
(Old's attempt comes to mind). Compared to a gas engine it seems 
to give give it's owners many (trouble free?) miles though.

For the grad student low budget, big diesel wannabee it may be the best
option.

BTW is there a VW diesel mailing list?

/Martin

--

Martin Jagersand                 email: jag@cs.rochester.edu
Computer Science Department             jag@cs.chalmers.se
University of Rochester          Fax:   (716) 461-2018
Rochester, NY 14627-0226         WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/