Ha, ya. It was a LOT of work. LOL.

Hindsight is 20/20.

In past emails, I posted my reasons for doing this swap. And IIRC, I
posted some possible advantages. My only "regret" is the lump in the
engine lid. If I had a shop, and wanted to blow some dough on a spool
gun and another tank for my MIG (aluminum welding) I'd get serious
about addressing that while keeping the engine at 15�.

But hey; if what I did helps someone else intent on doing this (i.e.
ABA in a Doka) then more power to them. Motronic does away with the
AFM and is a reliable system if done right; it's been used in
production of many many VW's.

Even for someone like me, who had even less fabricating experience
prior to starting my swap (like nearly zero experience) but has *some*
experience now, I'd suggest that copying the DV carrier bars is not a
simple matter. The angles are likely crucial as space might be tight.
One tip in that regard though is that one could sleeve the parts
before welding. I know a lister over on thesamba did this. Not sure if
for those reasons, but he was successful in building those bars.

Neil.

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Don Hanson <dhanson928@gmail.com> wrote:

> I recall when you began with your conversion, Neil...and asked for advice,
> maybe?  I vaguely recall asking you why you were choosing to do something
> different, to put the motor in there at 15deg. when factory parts existed to
> install it otherwise?.   You also began with an air cooled Vanagon, didn't
> you?...Well, you pulled it off in the end, but man, you did it the hard way!
> (IMHO) grin!
>    As you went along, you did get to learn to weld and to wire a motor and
> you probably know as much as anyone bout the Vangaon cooling systems now.
> But to this day, I wonder why you chose to do a 15 degree motor mounting
> with the interior bump and all that extra work of building custom engine
> mounts, etc.
>
>    I would think, even if a person couldn't actually find and buy real VW
> factory used diesel parts to install an inline in the standard way,  it
> would be much much easier to just copy the factory stuff from another van or
> something.   The bars are pretty dang simple and the mounts are still
> available and not expensive.
>

>   ..... Also
> lucky is the Digifant wires plugs and hoses from a WBX almost plug right in
> to the inlne gas motor and make it run just fine....

> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:34 PM, neil n <musomuso@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And to be clear, if someone were to ask, I'd suggest they NOT do a 15�
>> install.

-- 
Neil n

Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca

'88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p

'81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco"  http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/

Vanagon VAG Gas inline-VR Engine Swap Group:

http://tinyurl.com/d7gd5ej