> 
> Hi, I was given an 81 Vanagon L. I drove it all the way from Mass. to
> south central PA. It's a 2.0L gas motor that seems to have a leak
> between one of the cyl. and the head.The local VW specialist said it
> would be very expensive to repair. It's not a camper or anything, but
> just driving it home we've kind of bonded. :) What I'm wondering is if
> you've ever heard of anyone putting a deisel int a van like that? I just
> got rid of a freebie dasher (79) that had the motor mounted one way, and
> now have a rabbit (81) that looks like it has the same motor, but
> mounted the other way.(valve cover front to back vs. side to side)
>    The van is real nice other than the motor problems, but has had the
> entire interior removed and plywood put down from the back of the front
> seat back. I kind of had high hopes of turning it into some type of
> camping vehicle (not sure how equiped). Got any ideas!?
>    Thanks for your time. I've really enjoyed your site. 
> 
>                                        Jim
>                                  jimchamp@innernet.net
> 

If you have a diesel engine you need a few things from a diesel
vanagon (check your junk yards):

  Bell housing
  Oil pan, oil pump (or at least the lower part of the oil pump 
					with the pickup tube)
  The motor mounts and beams.
  Transmission (it has different gearing)

I think the easiest swap is to buy the whole engine+driveline
from a crashed Diesel vanagon and swap it as a whole package.

Fixing your gas motor would not be very expensive either if
it's just the head gasket and you do it yourself. 

There are several email-lists with VW bus/vanagon owners:

For VW diesel discussion:

	vwdiesel@pas.rochester.edu 

For Aircooled bus/vanagon:

	type2@home.ease.lsoft.com

For watercooled vanagon:

	vanagon@lenti.med.umn.edu

The latter may move soon. For subscription information (you need to
be subscribed to receive responses on these lists) see:

	http://www.automatrix.com/~skip/volkswagen/subscribe.html

Note to replying listees: please cc to: jimchamp@innernet.net

Good luck,
Martin Jagersand
--
Martin Jagersand                 email: jag@cs.rochester.edu
Computer Science Department             jag@cs.chalmers.se
University of Rochester 

        Slow down and visit the VW diesel Westy page:
          WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw
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