Dangerously organic!

Loving your Diesel VW Westfalia - and running bio!

Anyone who knows me knows I love Westies. And, sometime in most conversations, I'll confess that I am "looking for a Westie to replace Fred, the one I sold". Today, I found an '82 Diesel Westie on craigslist. Well, the owner, John, is now a Zoobird even before I've had the chance to look at the van. How cool is that?!

Meanwhile, I found a cool site devoted to diesel Westies. In it, this email appeared:

Testimonies to the virtues of the Diesel Westfalia

Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 17:00:28 -0500 (EST) From: James N Gagliardi

People have been talking a lot about 5 cylinder vanagons previously about diesel to gas conversions. I think people have missed the boat. I think A gas to Diesel conversion would make much more sense. Does anyone know how long of an engine will fit an the Vanagon engine bay. I have an 81 audi 5000 diesel which is slowly rusting away. If I could only find a vanagon to stuff it into. Diesel vanagons are too slow for some people, but I think a 65hp 5 cylinder would make a big difference.

Diesels are more fun. Below zero winter mornings aren't any fun with a gasoline powered automobile. Getting to buy fuel next to 18 wheelers has a certain romantic appeal. Slow speeds let you enjoy scenery more. You can always use Kerosene/Heating Oil in a pinch. Diesels also have lots of secret features.

Diesel cars don't explode as easily.
If you get bored you can turn on the smoke screen feature by retiming your injector pump.
Fuel injection is 100% mechanical so you can repipe the intake and exhaust and drive in up to 3 feet of water without risk of flooding your distributor. (CAUTION, in high compression diesel engines, water in the intake is bad...).
Glow Plugs.
Free oil slick in your driveway.

===

So, getting right to the point of this discussion, I wonder if any of you have experimented with biodiesel in a VW engine...and how you predict the VW Westie diesel will do on bio...

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Martin on September 13, 2010 at 7:03pm

well i dont think you should put the old audi engine in the westi
if you want a reasonable diesel engine in the weste there is the 1,9 AAZ turbo diesel from the vw 3
with more airpressure ond the intake (i'm sorry i dont know the expression in english)
and a good adjustment you can get it up to 110 hp
you could also take a audi 6 cylinder with 2,5 l and 150 hp but thats more complex because the aaz fits plug and play and the audi engine needs new engine holders and another gear box (i would suggest the porsche G 50 )
to the thing with the bio diesel
i don't really know what you mean with bio diesel because in germany we have biodiesel there is no problem to run any diesel with it
but if you want to run it on vegetable oil you have to change the injection timing of the injection pump so it injects earlier and in the first weeks you will have to replace your dieselfilter very often because the vegetable oil takes the dirt out of you fueltank.
but with this configuration you can only run a mixture of 50 % veg oil and 50% diesel
to run on 100% veg oil u have to change more like get a pre heating system and more but that takes to long to explain here
so long keep your westie running!

RSS