Having just posted about my recent experience during the rebuilding of my
engine, I wanted to relate what we found when taking it apart.

My 82 Westy had a 2.0 aircooled GEX rebuilt engine, installed about 60k miles
earlier by a previous owner. I have all of the records from PO's on this
vehicle going back to 1983. The engine still had the GEX paint and stickers
on the crankcase.

This engine was a piece of junk to put it mildly. If GEX still builds them
this way, I'd recommend staying far away from GEX engines.

The crankcase comes from VW as a matched pair of halves. GEX built this
engine using two different non-matching halves. It wasn't even align bored.
Main bearings weren't shimmed and were oval.

The crankshaft was reground to 25 thousands under. The 2.0 crank main
journals are none to big to begin with. Being undersize certainly isn't
expected to be long lived.

Cylinder barrels were thin, not the heavier ones provided by Mahle or other
VW suppliers.

The heads were in very bad shape. Head gaskets on two cylinders had been
sucked in because bolts were stretched. Where the gaskets vacated, the heads
were eroded badly.

The oil pump was not the VW heavy duty bus pump and had been sealed up with
JB Weld or similar.

The Vanagon (and more so the Westy) puts a tremendous strain on the engine. A
shortcut rebuilt engine just won't last. I guess GEX just wanted to put out a
cheap product.

Ken Korn
82 Westy
Austin, TX