I grew up with VW diesels.  My first car was a sweet 82 Diesel Caddy
(Rabbit Pickup).  After that I owned diesel Rabbits, Golfs, Jetta pretty
much exclusively until mid 20s.  I bought my first Vanagon which was an 85
1.9l waterboxer but I really wanted a 1.6l diesel Vanagon.  They were rare
even back in the late 90s.  After working on Vanagons and driving them
daily for about 3 or 4 years a customer came by with a diesel Westy with a
recently rebuilt engine.  I was excited!  Now I was finally going to get my
favorite engine in a Vanagon.  I just had to drive it down my street to
realize that while the 1.6l was great in a small, light car, it stunk in a
large, heavy, van.  It was scary to pull out into traffic at the end my
street and there really is no traffic here.  I thought maybe it was just
that van, but since then I have owned a few and worked on several here at
the shop.  I have one customer who bought his new and keeps it pristine and
treats it really nice.  The 1.6l powerplant is just too weak in the van.
You can't keep up with modern highway traffic (65-70 mph), the engine is
being pushed to it's limits all the time so they don't have the long life
they have in the cars.  I would never recommend a 1.6l diesel Vanagon to
any person.  If you want to do a conversion and put a TDI in there, that is
a whole other story.  There are circumstances where that might make sense
and you have the power comparable to the waterboxer with more torque.

It's just my opinion but I really wanted to like them and instead I came to
almost hate them.

Ken

On Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 2:12 PM Karl Mullendore <tdiguru@westyventures.com>
wrote:

> In a heartbeat. Although preferably the factory JX turbodiesel that should
> have been sold here. Great success in Europe, but I guess the US buyers
> weren't quite 'ready' for diesels. The beauty is that every inline
> gas/diesel 4-cyl VW engine from 1974-1999 will bolt in when the original
> 1.6NA expires, which is hastened most times by heavy right feet and
> impatient drivers.
>