Vanagon Question
 

IIRC the later Vanagons came with watercooled engines and pretty good fuel injection. Which years were they made, and do the engines bolt up to regular VW beetle transmissions?

yes, although im pretty sure the flywheel, clutch and TO bearing arent the same. think you'd need to do your homework to figure out the correct combo to clear the bellhousing. You'll also need to figure out a way to mount a radiator and get airflow to it. mid 83 is when they started

In my opinion, it's a waste of time. Get a Type 4 or build a Type 1 into something bigger and better.

I was thinking of the liquid cooling for use in some kind of dune buggy affair, prefering liquid cooling to air cooling in some applications. I'll look into the problems carefully prior to investing $ though.

Call Lucas at GoWesty. They sell nice water cooled engines with a little extra HP, and Lucas will know everything you need to know.

Thanks, that looks like a very good resource. Vanagons of that vintage appear to be reasonably priced too.

Looks interesting, so far.

Glad to be of help. Lucas used to build off-road race cars with driver Craig Watkins at the highest level of off-roading, back in the 80's. He's a great resource.

If no one answers my Vanagon question, I'll be calling him too.
See http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/274001-towing-vanagon.html

Are the engines in the late '80's similar to the '83-85 models? And, not least, is the EFI L-Jet or some other system?

Very cool, the GoWesty 147 page catalog is available as a .pdf download, and is chock full of details on Vanagons of every year. Worth the download time.

Pat,

The website has a lot more info than can fit on the the catalog, so more perusal of the website is worthwhile.

Have you thought about going with a Subaru motor instead? Plenty cheap from the JDM, probably a bit more power than an old VW water pumper too.

No, I haven't. this is just idle speculation, nothing may come of it, then again...

The reason for thinking VW Vanagon is tranny to engine compatibility. Would the Subie engine bolt up without an adapter?

You might look around a bit, Subaru turbo engines mated to bus trannys are a hot ticket in the dune-buggy world. Check out any Hot VWs mag, they are all over the place. I dare to say that you'll definitely need an adapter, but there should be plenty of kits out there.

http://www.nmcollector.net/buggy/fugitive/adapter.htm

Thanks, I'll do that. I think it might be fun to acquire an old, unfinished or somewhat neglected Meyers Manx SR and finish or rebuild it with something more interesting than an aircooled, carbed VW engine. An EFI Vanagon 2.1L engine, or something from Subie would work nicely I'd guess.