Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1999 22:41:38 -0700
Reply-To:     "Bruce J. Wilbur" <bjwilbur@MINDSPRING.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Bruce J. Wilbur" <bjwilbur@MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject:      Re: Audi 2.3 l conversion report (long)
In-Reply-To:  <000801bee9fe$f0362d80$77240d3f@loi-bear>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi Pat:

I too was surprised.  I don't think that this amount of wear would be
typical for a maintained Audi with 78k mi. on it.  When Detlev and I saw
that the engine and accessories looked "well used" I agreed that a rebuild
made sense.  It made me wonder how many miles were actually on the engine
or if the car had received poor maintenance.  I guess the other possibility
would be that it had many very short in town trips or other "severe
service" use.  I have heard only good things about how Audi motors hold up.
This experience would bias me towards using a donor car rather than hoping
donor parts from a wrecker would be as hoped.  I think there was a thread
on this 4-6 mos ago and the conclusion was that whether or not to rebuild
remains an individual decision.

Best regards,

Bruce Wilbur
'87 Westy syncro

Pat wrote
>Bruce, your comments on the Audi engine surprise me.
>I have never seen the inside of an Audi 5 with 78k miles, they are too new
>to open up at that point.
>The last motor I took apart was a Turbo 5 with broken timing belt and bent
>valves.  The valves impacted the pistons and bent the stems.  The pistons
>were fine, only had to be polished.  The cylinder walls looked brand new,
>with visible factory cross hatching still intact.  This motor had 160,000
>miles on it.
>My Quantum had 150k miles on it and looked much like the turbo Audi inside.
>These motors commonly go 200-300k with no major problems.
>
>
>> would be good to rebuild the engine.  I am glad it was done because the
>> engine showed much wear including deep grooves in the cylinders and out of
>> spec pistons.  The rest of the engine needed rebuilding as well.