On the Fun Bus, I had to replace the valve covers last year. They rusted out
and the pin holes started leaking oil. The last time the valve covers were
off was back in 1989 when VW did that re-torque the heads recall campaign.
Now has 247,000 miles on it. I just did a NY to Florida trip last
thanksgiving. Of course my other '87 did need head gaskets at 127k. Head
corrosion did them. Road salt. One head was corroded so bad an exhaust stud
fell out. Head done with engine in van. Worst part was the exhaust system. I
know of many vans that have gone over 200k on the original engine.
Definitely do-able.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Rob
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 4:43 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: conversion -Opinions Please

At  1/20/2007 01:09 PM, Dave Vickery wrote:

>Conversions are justified if you want more power, not reliability.  The
>engine might be more reliable but the conversion and related things will
>have you tinkering on it every weekend (really) and I wonder now whether I
>like working on my van more than going places.

I have to disagree with this statement based on my experience.
18,805 miles (plus, my speedo didn't work for almost a month) on my
Subaru 2.2 conversion. The engine had 130,000 on it when I put it in.
I had to change the head gaskets on the Subaru engine, I should have
done that when I was putting it but I didn't. That works out to one
weekend working on the engine since last May (8 months) and I did
that with the engine in the van. That's a touch better reliability
than I had with the 2.1 that came with it <g>.
FWIW my '87 Vanagon drives like real car merging on to the freeway
now, even merging up a hill.

Rob
becida@comcast.net

With a '91 Subaru 2.2 in an '87 Vanagon in western Washington.