So true. It's those silly engineers.....making things 'theoretically strong
enough' .......rather than 'darn sure it's plenty strong enough, if not
overbuilt some' as MBZ traditionally has done. 
  It's the striving for better fuel economy, lower emissions, less weight,
more content, keep the price in check etc....they undershot the goal on that
engine for sure. I find many german-desinged things 'too theoretical' .  VW
did pretty good on the entire vanagon chassis/body I think though. 
  Of course all new models and designs can need some tweaking sometimes, to
correct unforeseen weak areas.  One would assume subaru will put millions of
test miles on this new engine before releasing it to the public. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Allan Streib [mailto:streib@cs.indiana.edu] 
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 1:41 PM
To: Scott Daniel - Shazam
Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Subaru Boxer TURBO Diesel

I do not have any such information.  I wrote it that way, however,
because it's my belief that it's almost a certainty that any "first"
production model will have design weaknesses that do not become
apparent until the product is in actual use.  The severity of these
problems vary, might be annoyances or might be as bad as the "rod
bender" 3.5l diesel engines that Mercedes Benz built in the early
1990s (this from a manufacturer with no small amount of experience in
building diesel engines).

"Scott Daniel - Shazam " <scottdaniel@turbovans.com> writes:

> I have this 'flaw' ...( among many ! ) ..I take written things very
> literally.
> By writing 'mistakes they made' , as in past tense, do you have real
> information that Subaru's  first generation TD engine has problems ? 
>   I would expect subaru to have them pretty dialed in by production time.
I
> would think the head gasket area would be touchy, or need extra
engineering
> to make it very solid there. 
> Scott