To the person who wrote the original post asking about the engine, I'd
like to chime in as someone who actually owns a diesel (westy) vanagon
and uses it not only as a daily driver nowadays, but who has traveled
my state where I do a lot of tourism work, including writing books and
various similar projects. I've put 60,000 miles on mine in the last
five years. I know that it's not something that everybody would be
happy with, but I am happy with it as are thousands of others. Yes,
it's slow up hills. No, you can't accelerate away from a stop sign as
fast as the (name any car) behind you. But for practical purposes,
it's just like any other car on the road... restricted by the
realities of an overcrowded world.

It gets great mileage, especially for its size. It hardly ever needs
attention, unlike the 2.1 waterboxer I owned for 18 years (the point
here is that I do know what it is like to drive a faster vanagon).
It's super-easy to work on and parts are available and relatively
cheap.

Having a five speed makes a lot of difference apparently. The five
speed transmission (1983 only) allows the little engine to handle
hills much better than the four speed. I have never driven a four
speed diesel vanagon, but I can tell you that you will be glad that
extra gear is there when you reach for it, and that people who have
driven mine and who have owned four-speeds have commented that mine is
a lot more driveable.

So, see if you can't get a ride from a listmember if you can and make
up your own mind. As I said, I've put a lot of miles on mine, and I've
never been in any dangerous situation because of it.

Jim

> dj wrote:
>>
>> Is the 83 water cooled diesel a good motor?
>>
>>
>