Back in the early 80s I am sure VW thought that these motors were great
and that adding water cooling would be fairly simple seeing how they could
steal parts from the now proven Diesel engine.� They didn't drive
them for 250.000kms to find out that the heads would leak and really, what
car manufacturer wants something to last that long - VW really wishes our
vans would die so we would buy new ones right?� Look at the Beetle er
um Porsche 911 today... flat six and water cooled.� Many people will
argue that the sole left the 911 a long time ago, but this is the true
evolution of the boxer engine.� The only great air-cooled boxer
remaining today is the BMW R1200 series and technically these are oil
cooled engines... the last air head was in the mid 90s.

David
Marshall
VW Adventure Driver and BMW Adventure Rider
 
http://www.hasenwerk.ca

On Tue, February 10, 2009 12:46, Jens
Jakob Andersen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> We are
trying to find out what happened inside the heads of Schults
> and
Heinz (VW engineers that we cuss about when working on our cars
>
("That day Schultz said to Heinz over lunch "Fit, too tight a
fit? No
> Heinz, we will place the bolt there - no problem -if
people need to
> work on that part they will allways have taken
the front half
> apart")) - on the day when they decided:
> "Lets convert the CU to water-cooled - it will be real easy,
done
> quite fast, and a good stable conversion - instead of just
using one
> of our great inline.-4 engines"
> 
> So my basic question to this list -      does anyone know about
why
> VW decided to create the WBX, instead of changing to
inline-4 in 1983?
> 
> Here is what I have found so
far:
> "The switch to water-cooling for the boxer engines was
made abruptly
> mid-year in 1983 because VW could no longer make
the air-cooled
> engines meet emissions standards"
>

> 
> Happy driving
> 
> Jens Jakob
>