Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 16:12:10 EDT
Reply-To: KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Subject: Subaru was: 2.1l engine for sale too $900.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I spoke with the guy for about 30 mins about the conversion since I had
considered and investigated it before deciding the 5-cylinder was the way to
go. However I know that all people are different and that maybe some folks
want to go the Subaru way and that's OK by me.
Anyway the Subaru swap sounds really good when you talk to the folks at
Kennedy Engineering about it and the price for thier kit, and the parts looks
good. However, as I found with my 5-cylinder kits, no conversion is cheap.
It is either costs money or it costs time (time= money for those of you who
don't know). In the guy that I spoke with case it cost him lots and lots of
time. He got a motor for around $1000 and he said the wiring harness was a
nightmare. The whole thing took him several months and finally he had to
take it to a local Subaru shop to get it running. Then he had a problem with
some coolant lines catching fire.
All in all when you do a swap like this you are on your own. You get the kit
and some sketchy instructions from Kennedy (some things aren't included in
the instructions) but you are essentially a test case. You turn your van
into a test vehicle. You experiment around with what coolant hoses to use,
where to route them, how to route your wiring harness, your intake setup,
everything.
Now you drive the van a while. This part falls off, that part breaks, it is
a test van after all.
The final result (after sinking over $6000 into the conversion) is that the
guy is happy with the end result (would you admit it if you weren't?) He
says that he would like to re-gear the tranny a little though as the engine
makes it's power in the higher rpm range and the van tranny is not geared
quite right.
I chose the 5-cylinder swap over this one because of two main factors. One
is has been throughly tested and is the OE setup in South Africa (VW thought
it was a good idea). Second it keeps the van all German and all VW/Audi.
Now you can take the van to a VW dealer anywhere on the road and get it
worked on because they are actually more familiar with the 5-cylinder engine
than they are with the waterboxer.
That's my 2 cents on this subject. Anyone else who has done a Subaru
conversion is encouraged to speak up on this topic.
Thanks
Ken Wilford
Van-Again
John 3:16
