Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 14:32:54 -0600
Reply-To: Blue Eyes <lvlearn@MCI2000.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Blue Eyes <lvlearn@MCI2000.COM>
Organization: Vexation Computer
Subject: Re: how much interest IS there in the 5cyl conversion???
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
chris said:
"i dont know where you would get one of these. the 5 cyl
turbo diesel was ONLY
imported into the US from like '81-'83. they did not go
over real well. so
Audi never sold many turbodiesels here. good luck finding
one...maybe you
will get lucky and find a '81-'83 5000 turbo diesel in a
junk yard, but the
engine will undoubtably be thrashed with about a million
miles on it. ive also
heard the turbo diesel 5cyls were mechanical nightmares.
(the 5cyl diesels i
have seen in junkyards have half the engine in the
trunk..makes me wonder)"
Your opinion is not shared by Audi group participants.
These inline diesel motors are very much like their smaller
inline brothers with 4 cylinders except for changes needed
to make it 5 instead of 4. So far as reliability, it is
widely understood that the inline VW gas motors are much
more reliable than the waterboxers in your Vanagons chris.
Then to compare the VW inline gas motors with their inline
diesel motors, you can trace their greater reliability all
the way back to their origins. If you care to visit a
research library and look up the original SAE paper
submitted by VW to the Journal, you can read that they state
in there that the same design in the diesel is showing a
service life of DOUBLE the equivalent inline gas motor of
the same design.
I don't doubt that you saw one that had failed for some
reason, but your blanket statement about what may have been
the most reliable Audi or VW motor imported into the US
seems unjustified to me.
They smoked.
They sounded like a diesel when they idled.
They didn't have as much power as gas motors of the same
displacement.
Cold weather starting required more driver attention than
gas motors.
They cost more to buy when they were new.
But after you exhaust those complaints, I think the rest all
favored the diesels. If you found one with a million miles
on it as you speculated, it's probably ready for a rebuild.
The most I've seen on one without a rebuild, and it was
still running fine and didn't need a rebuild, only had a
little over 400K miles on it. Most American cars are
junked for reasons other than wearing out their motors. In
the case of 5 cylinder Audi diesels driving an automatic, I
suspect that's almost universally true.
John
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