Date:         Fri, 1 Mar 96 11:08:00 +0100
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         verbeek@the-hague.stbv.slb.com (brian verbeek)
Subject:      Re: Mexican Busses (I made a bit LONG)

> The Mexican Vans use the Rabitt based engines.  These engines are reliable
> and easy to fix.  parts are available and reasonable.  Since VW had the
> rabbit in the van, I still do not know why they spent the money to engineer
> the Waterboxer nightmare.
> 
> Dennis.

Yes, why? lets look at it, i like these things :)

A water cooled boxer engine is nothing new, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Subaru, Jensen
and Ferrari all have or had them. It's not so strange for VW to join them, after
all, nobody ever made more boxer engines than VW.

Also, they designed it around the T1 case, i'm sure that kept the cost
significantly lower than a whole new design.

It seems obvious that VW wanted to get rid of aircooled engines, but the
Transporter/Vanagon engine compartment was designed to house a flat engine, so
again, a water cooled boxer engine would be the solution.

Then we have the VW owners. Like other many car makes, VW has their own breed
of customers. I've read a market research report but i can't remember it well
enough to type some of it here. Anyway, VW had problems creating a worthy
successor for their legendary Bug, and, their attempt to go upmarket with
their T IV was also not as succesfull as they hoped it would be. The K70 was
also not a big seller. The Santana was not a big hit either, although it's
now being produced in China for the Chinese market. Of course, the production
numbers for the T IV, K70, and Santana might still be more than average, but
were not of VW magnatude. VW realized that they could not change things as
drastically or fast as they'd like. They had to retain that hard to describe/
analize image of reliability and the succesfull VW's all had to earn their
place, they were not just *made* succesfull.

Now i understand why the Wasserboxer was made, if VW would have known the
problems of it they would have done something about it. I guess they thought
it was the thing, they took their most popular engine ever and cured its
biggest problem: the cooling system (and things like Hydr.lifters, flywheel
mount) Besides, the diesel engine they used in the Transporter/Vanagon is
tilted sideways, maybe there's a reason why VW thought that wasn't possible
with their gas engine. I'm aware of the fact that some people converted their
diesels to Golf/Jetta gas engines, and that seems to be OK, but as we all know,
OK is not good enough for VW. The 1800 in the Mexican Busses might be mounted
in a more upright position (?)

There's still another thing, the intermediate engine, the CT engine i posted about.
The CT engine was an uprated T I engine for the Transporter, 50 Hp, Hydr. lifters,
oilfilter, T III like cooler location, T IV looking fan housing of sheet metal.
It was available from the first Transporter in '79 to December '82, a few months
after the introduction of the Wasserboxer. The Wasserboxer was simply the next step.

And yet another thing, probably most of us have seen it, the in Germany popular
911/930 cooling system conversion, you have a machine shop cut your T IV case, (on a
T I you just buy a new generator stand or something) then you let them turn a 911
generator/coolingfan to a smaller diameter and buy a new fiberglass shroud and pulley.
This solution provides *much* more cooling air to the engine, weighs much less
than a stock VW cooling & generator system, makes sparkplug changes a snap, can't rust,
is easier/faster to mount and uses a lot less fasteners: Why didn't VW see that???
Of course, one would have to use twin carbs or dual throttle body injection, but
that's doable.

And a question: Is the Wasserboxer case still magnesium, or is it aluminum?

Now you're here, on the bottom of this post: long eh :) -dono what got in to me,
thanks for listening,

Brian.