Well... I'm probably one of the few folks in the USA that have had over a 100 Vanagons (T3s) go through their fingers (and that doesn't include all the customer Vanagons I've worked on since the '80s), and the WBXer "blow up" is not at all a common occurrence.  

Back when Vanagons could be had for a song, the most common issue was emissions failure.  Very few were "blown up" WBXers.  Probably 5 or fewer.  

In reality, the WBXer design was a huge step forward, reliability wise, than its predecessor.  How many air-cooled VW engines went 200k miles?  Whereas, it is not uncommon for a well cared for WBXer to exceed 200k.

Haters hate and will always deride those who do not adhere to their philosophy.  Perhaps we should ad the WBXer to the no-no list...  

Politics... Religion... WBXer...   All are now off-limits!    ;-)

Cheers, 

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Don Hanson
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2015 7:48 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: 2.1 L WBX Overheat -1991 Carat

See?  "Deniers"

   It does not matter how many times the subject of WBX engine reliability comes up, there are plenty who simply LOVE the WBX motor for some reason that I have never heard adequately explained.

  There's probably no data collected on how often a WBX blows up compared to any other engine..If there was, I would suspect there would still be
people with their heads in the sand, buying up WBX motors...   But really
people....when a popular product has a really notoriously bad reputation for lots of ongoing problems and weak design features, when we just read half a dozen posts about all the bad things that get sent out with rebuilt WBX motors, when the Rap is SO BAD on a product....why would you suppose everyone else is always WRONG about it, and your particular encounter with this product, that will certainly be different.....?