On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Fredrich Hesterberg wrote:

> Mr. David,
> You say one thing in your message that is important.
> You talked about a Ford.
> This is the reason why the troubles you said  happened.
> Not good to compare to even a Vanagon.

--> I don't think it makes that much difference.  Around here Chevys are
known for bad rings (they burn a lot of oil).  Every vehicle has its own
set of problems.

> Vw went bad with the thought of using an old design engine and just
> using water in the heads and cylinders.
> They should have built a new whole engine.

--> I think a more important problem is they created an "orphan" engine,
only used in this one vehicle.  If they'd used an engine that was already
in use in one of their other cars, they would have had the benefit of more
engineering time, and parts would be much easier to get.  (This is one
edge the diesel has over the WBX -- lots of VW cars used that same
diesel.)

             _ _
  __ _ _   _| | |  | David M. Brodbeck (N8SRE)              Ypsilanti, MI
 / _` | | | | | |  +-----------------------------------------------------
| (_| | |_| | | | @ cyberspace.org
 \__, |\__,_|_|_| "Geekdom is fantastic at being AGAINST something, and
 |___/             it's hopeless at being FOR something."
                                      -- Andrew Orlowski in The Register.