Excessive black smoke, 1.9L Gen 5 Vanagon conversion

[furman]

I own a 1990 Vanagon GL with a 1.9L gen 5 engin built by FAS. On a recent van club excursion, drivers in vans following me tell me that my van spews out a lot of black smoke when I accelerate and downshift. Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to correct this? I am not experiencing any power loss.

 

[TDIMeister]

Is the engine a TDI or IDI (code AAZ)?

 

[furman]

TDI

 

[oilhammer]

Too much fuel/not enough air. Could probably be tuned back a bit. I don't know what "5th gen" means. The Vanagon is the third generation of Volkswagen Transporter (often called a T3).

 

[furman]

Thank you for your input. Yes, the van is a T3 with a Jetta gen 5 TDI engine

 

[oilhammer]

Yeah, still don't know what that means. TDIs came out in 1991, we got some in 1996.

I'm going to take a guess and say that you may have some form of EA288 engine? Which is sometimes called a Gen 3 CR TDI.

For us, Gen 1 would be CBEA/CJAA, Gen 2 was CKRA, and Gen 3 was CVCA/CRUA.

All of these are 2.0L displacement.

We also had PD engines, both 1.9L (BEW and BRM, both PD100) and the 2.0L BHW (PD136).

The VE engines were all 1.9L, the ALH which is the newer style block, and the 1Z/AHU, both the older style block. All of those were VE90s.

 

[furman]

I think the gen v is the engine builders 5th generation of this engine build. This is a cut and paste of the engine builders (FAS) description of the engine.

GEN.V 1.9L TDi Diesel Conversion
Volkswagen 1.9L TDi Pumpe Duse Diesel Engine with Drive by Wire
150 HP @ 2550 RPM | 250 ft.lbs. Torque @ 2250 RPM

I had issues with loose intercooler piping earlier during my ownership. I'll check all the air intake system. The van went into turbo lag on my last test drive.

Thanks again for your input

 

[oilhammer]

OK, so the "Gen 5" thing is meaningless to anyone besides these FAS people, whoever they are.

Is it possible it went into limp mode? A drastic loss of boost pressure would cause that, but usually it cuts fueling back so much that it can't smoke, either.

I suspect you may have a couple possible issues happening. If they cranked a PD100 up to 150 hp, and then bolted it into a brick, it may be tough to not have it experience some black smoke. I'd want it tuned back down to something more benign. I mean, even a stock PD100 is 5hp more than the most powerful T3 engine they ever sold here, and it has some 50+ more torque to boot.

 

[furman]

The van is going to a mechanic today. Thank you for your input