Tonight was the first time I've had the Syncro out at night since changing a
few things to try to lessen the smoke cloud following me. Before the recent
changes, power was great, but at the expense of higher (than it should be)
fuel consumption. EGT was up to 1450 F. under full boil on hard climbs. All
that was changed was the defective aneroid diaphragm, and a much heavier
spring for same was added (actually from a 2.0 5-cyl. TD). The great news is
that smoking is greatly reduced, even under full boil with headlights behind
me, the smoke is about 1/3 what it was. Normal cruising, where it smoked all
the time before, is now almost nonexistant. EGTs are down to 1250 at full
boil, power is still great, un-wastegated turbo (KKK K24) pulls 18psi in the
cool night air. Even seems the fuel gauge is going down slower. Very pleased
with the results! The only downside is that there seems to be a loss of some
torque on long climbs, although when accelerating through the gears,
horsepower feels stronger than ever before. I need to get this 'monster' on
a dyno! Seat of the pants driving puts it at more HP than a stock TDI,
torque about the same as TDI. Well see how well it does when it hits the
mountains in the NW next week!

Karl Mullendore
Westy Ventures
1987 Westfalia Syncro 1.9TD
1986 Adventurewagen (FS, $6000)