Brent, thanks for your detailed answers.

In my previous post I said that I didn't think it would be easy to use
a high capacity oil pump. I was considering putting a "racing" high
capacity oil pump in my Vanagon, but couldn;t figure out how, since
the vanagon has a different pickup tupe, and the pickup tupe is integral
with the (bottom of) the housing.

In email Tom and Alistar suggested the following which I would like to 
share:

---------
>From: Tom Carrington <Tcarrington@relitech.com>

>The pickup tube is integral with the oil pump housing on the vanagon,
>so it seems unlikely that this would be easy. 

Martin:
Not really. I am converting my diesel Vanagon to gas, and i am using the 
86 Golf oil pump with the pickup from the diesel Vanagon. The pickup is 
an integral part of the cover, not the actual pump body. Turns out the 
pump from the '86 actually has larger gears than the one on the diesel 
engine, so i assume the '86 has a higher capacity.
---------

>From: Alistair Bell <ui775@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>

Interesting comments Martin,

I've got an '82 westy that was diesel and then converted to gas 3 years 
ago. I've put 35k miles on it with now problems and am very happy with 
it. but when it come time to think about another engine I am thinking TDI.

Just a quick comment...

> The pickup tube is integral with the oil pump housing on the vanagon,
> so it seems unlikely that this would be easy. 
> 
 Of course I had to retain the diesel oilpan and pump when I did my swap, 
but the original oil pump had an annoying habit of the press relief valve 
sticking shut - resulting in v. high cold oil press. The valve is in the 
pump casting, sealed by a plug. Rather than drill and clean out the valve I 
used a standard short dip tube pump and brazed on an extension. It 
worked fine. Just a thought, the pumps can be modified. 

--------------------

/Martin
--
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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