1975 westy alh conversion

I will be starting this swap in about a month, I have read through the vanagon/westy conversions but I have some questions for the guys that have tackled this conversion. I have a complete donor 2003 jetta with 89k on the clock, the engine will get a new timing belt etc... What I am looking for is a little advice on:

Cooling system
motor mounting

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just ordered the adapter and clutch kit from kep, what have you guys done for the motor mounting? Im going 15 degree on the adapter. I dont want to mess with modifying an oil pan to work at that angle. I know I have seen the one thread where paulie fabbed up a tower and used the stock mount and then fabbed up a mount for the dogbone. Are there any other options? any advice would be appreciated.

Casey, you'll need to figure out the water line coming out of the head. It will hit the fuel tank if not modified. My conversion is a 1Z which is a little different from the ALH. I use a custom rear hangar going under the engine near the crank pulley. That hangar supports both left and right sides of the engine. It is in-front of the oil pan - not under it (i.e. rear most in vehicle). I think this could be done on an ALH also. Paulie's was unusual in how he did it but it did work nicely.

I deleted the bellhousing transmission mount and only mount the trans by the front nose cone. This has been OK for 50K miles and the vibrations are not even really noticeable. The bellhousing mount will transmit a lot of vibrations into the frame/body.

Cooling system: I am using two rabbit type radiators in series. They are boxed into the frame but my box is not airtight. If it was, I could have maybe used less radiator. There are fans but they are only needed at slow speed on a hot day. i.e. going up a windy road in 2nd gear or driving 75 MPH uphill in hot weather.

There's way more hoses than stock and I was concerned that something in my setup would break, I'd lose coolant and fry my engine. This has happened to another TDI bus guy so it is a real risk. I build a circuit to check the water level sensor. if it gets low, I get a light and a piercing loud beep.

You didn't ask, but you will NEED to regear 3rd and 4th gear both for strength as well as to drop the RPMs. I have .77 4th and 1.18 3rd and I'm also running much larger tires. This was the crappiest and most expensive part of my project. Other options exist and if I were doing it again, I would not regear but instead use am upside down TDI trans from a longitudinal mount car. This is better because it is built for TDI torque, has the proper ratios and costs much less. The down-side is more fabrication.

There's lots in my thread but the pictures got lost when the host crashed.

Here is my general advice and what I did:

1. Read about TDI conversions into Vanagons. Those are plentiful and you will get good ideas here for everything except engine mounting and cooling, which are different in your application. There is info here and also a TDI Vanagon Yahoo group.

2. Read about Bay Window water cooled conversions. All of these deal with mounting issues and cooling and the TDI part isn't relevant.

3. Yes, look at other TDI Bay Windows threads both here, thesamba.com and brickyard in the UK.

If you copy all the good ideas, you'll be way ahead. Still expect it to be a bunch more work and cost than you think.

Good luck & post lots of pics!
Mark

Here's some pics:
http://realityisreality.com/tdi/

There is one pic of the crossbar out of the bus. This wasn't quite final as we added a second support point on the passenger side. You'll see that in one of the other pictures.

Other tips:

Intercooler. Using the stock intercooler will provide a sub-optimal solution. I tried several things and am now using two Air to water intercoolers in series which are working pretty well. A better approach if I were doing it again: Someone here had posted using a VERY large air-to-air intercooler that was mounted under the bus pretty much flat. That's simpler, lighter, cheaper than what I did.

Mounting at 15*, it was not necessary to do any cutting to the bus. There is a small amount of vertical clearance -- maybe 1/2" above the top of the engine. Doing it this way, of course, you must install the engine from underneath. I had lots of help and a lift. It would be difficult to do it this way without that, so I can see why others did cutting.

Hope that helps!
Mark

Thank you very much, the information you provided will be very helpful. Once progress happens and I can figure out how to upload pictures I will get some up.