funny jim............I *guess* you are talking about diesel rod bearings.
you haven't used the word 'rod'  yet in two references to diesel engine
bearings.

yes, they are under tremeendous strain and stress all right.
although, I have not found the crank and rods to be weak at all in vw
diesel engines - perhaps people who go pushing boost and fuel delivery
rate, and injection timing and bigger nozzles in the injectors - trying
to get a lot more power out of them than VW inteneded- yes, they might
be having rod bearing issues. And at some point over fueling probably
gets fuel into the oil, reducting it's ability to protect engine parts.

but in the 1.6NA's, 1.6TD's and 1.9TD's I've owned and
driven.............the rod bearings are about the very last thing to
fail or be an issue pretty much.
They should have their oil changed more often too.
Oil gets contaminated by what gets past the rings from the combustion
process. The pressures being so high in a diesel - the oil gets dirty
faster than in a gasoline engine - only makes sense to use extremely
good oil, drive it nicely, and change it freqently.......that would sure
help.
but stock..............I've not seen any weakness in VW diesel rod
bearings.  More a factor of how it's operated I'd think.
scott

Jim Felder wrote:
> Right, the little diesel wears out all its bearing very un-uniformly,
> no doubt because of the tremendous strain of three times the
> compression ratio of gas cars.
>
> Jim
>
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Scott Daniel - Shazam
> <scottdaniel@turbovans.com <mailto:scottdaniel@turbovans.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     I know, I  wrote that because you wrote :
>
>
>     " I have seen a couple of the main bearings, and they look fine.
>     Cam bearings, however, were showing copper. It was copper
>     uniformly, not the way that you see the 1.6 diesel show copper
>     part of the way around when the bearings wear out, but solid copper."
>
>     Reading it quickly looks like you are referring to copper showing
>     on diesel cam bearings,
>     but you must be referring to copper showing on diesel rod
>     bearings, though that's not completely clear.
>
>     scott
>
>
>     Jim Felder wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>         There are no cam bearings in vw diesel engines, unless
>>         someone retro-fitted a set to save a head.
>>         The cam runs in the aluminum head  on VW diesel engines, with
>>         aluminum cam bearing caps.
>>
>>
>>     Right... this is a waterboxer.
>>
>>     Jim
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>     I
>
>
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