one vanagon guy had a 5 cylinder mercedes diesel ..
with home made bell housing .. for a while.
way, way to large and heavy an engine for a vanagon.

Can't really see a small block Chevy either.
I think the Oettinger waterboxer 6  is pretty rare and not a normal option.

oh heck ..we didn't cover air-cooled Porsche engines ..
right ....a 911 Six .
They'll work and have been put into vanagons.
along with matching Porsche 5 speed trans too I think.

what I consider 'normal' is around 2.2 liters ..Overhead Cam ..
and .4 valves per cylinder is nice to have......and knock sensor
igniton.   , and I do like that subaur engines fit within the original
VW Bus/Van concept ...rear mounted, aluminum, oppossed four cylinder
engine.

and there are Turbo Subaru engines in vanagons if one really wants lots
of power.
The 2005 Turbo Forester Subaru  5 speed vanagon I worked on was just a
screamer.

scott
www.turbovans.com

On 5/14/2012 5:22 PM, David Beierl wrote:
> At 07:37 PM 5/14/2012, Jon Durham wrote:
>> As best I can tell, to get more horses, there is a 2.1 WB, a 2.2 WB, a
>> Subaru, and a Ford engine to replace my 1.9L engine in my 85 Vanagon.
>
> Plus various four-inline gasoline and diesel VW engines, not just one
> Subaru but at least three including a 6-cyl, theoretically at least
> an Oettinger 6-cyl WBX.
>
> If you get the Bostig (Ford) conversion, they very much prefer you to
> do the install yourself.  And of course they have both a normally
> aspirated and turbocharged version.
>
> I believe Sudhir put a 283 Chevy in his, but it proved to be a bit
> much for the transmission.  And when the '79s first came out, Porsche
> put one of their 6-cyl engines in one and used it to take engineers
> to conferences with minimum transit time.  Plus the South Africans
> were selling them with a five-inline engine instead of the WBX.
>
> For Subaru stuff, suggest you join the subaruvanagon Yahoo group,
> read some archives and hang around there for a while.  It's a tightly
> focused group.
>
> Yours,
> David
>