I am having pretty good results and reliability with my conversion project.
For me the type IV engine was an expensive headache. So of course I created another headache - albeit a little fun also. It took about three months of spare time but it is up and running. The adapter plate & flywheel by Hecker Enterprises, the pressure plate & starter by Kenedy.
Wow, I'll actaually have REAL heat this Fall!
Mark
Yes, It ALL fits! Both hatches close. By the way, no more piling the sleeping bags over the back on trips to "make it less noisy." The V6 is quiet - until you floor it!
Not everything is perfect. The 3.8L inherently has a little vibration. I however, did not match the new flywheel as I never did have the original balanced flywheel for the motor. Nevertheless, the additional vibration is a small price for the increased power and reliability.
Note the abscence of that annoying piece of metal that required a post '72 bus to be jacked half way to heaven to R&R a motor. I took a deep breath and with a sawzall made the cuts. Welded in new metal, made a new stronger piece that would be bolted on ( not pictured ) and when all was said and done it would take only 30 minutes to install the new motor. The bus remained on the ground.
You can plainly see the cobbled up exhaust system ( hey, it was free ) and the some of the welds need a finishing grind before the paint job in the Spring.
The radiator is a NOS rabbit type with fan and thermoswitch retained. The frame and cage are of course homebrew. The fan cycles on & off pretty regularly. It works OK for now, but I believe I will upsize the radiator soon.
Stock tires to be replaced with taller ones. Transmission will be on its way soon, regeared for off road as well as interstate travel. Long Enterprises has the task of creating the beast. I'll be switching to a '76 case but retaining the old bell housing for the high powered starter.
Newer radiator and smaller fan will reduce the profile a bit.
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Last edited by MAF on Sat Jan 31, 2004 9:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I started out with a real junker camper that I have over the course of
about 10 years slowly restored to a quite good physical condition. I paid
$500 for the beast. It was orange and ratty, but at the time the motor was
OK.
In between jobs about 6 years ago I did a complete physical repair and
restoration. In & out , virtually everything came off the camper and was
either cleaned , repaired or replaced. The motor was still good at this
point.
I made a few trips with the restored Westy. From Cleveland I went to
Bemus Point, NY, Dayton , Ohio several times and down to Athens, Oh. a
couple of times. By this time the motor started acting funny. Not Brenden
Frasher funny, but more like 'hey whats that smell in the refrigirator?'
kind of funny. Valve adjustments became a regular thing. The FI was long since replaced by a Weber carb and the case was leaking in several places. The long, slow spiral had begun.
I dealt with this for about a year and then in May I was on my way to the
Dayton ham radio convention like I have always done for 18 years. Well, I did not make it more than 30 miles form the house and I noticed a lot of
smoke that was proportional to my throttle position. Crappy heads.
I returned home and packed up my Rabbit diesel pickup truck ( God bless that thing ) Thats how I made that trip. The bus would be idle except for brief trips to Home Depot for drywall or plywood etc.
Next April I found another type IV and had those heads rebuilt. The heads for the original motor were real expensive. I was
hoping to put this new motor in and drive off into the sunset. Well, once
again off to the Dayton hamvention. I got as far as Ashland, Oh and KABOOM! Smoke, oil, clatter and dismay. I nearly rolled the damn bus pulling it off the road.
I was totally freaked out! I wanted just to abandon the piece of poop!
Five years of mediocre horse poop in an underpowered, hippy van - what was I thinking?? Well, a buddy of mine convinced me to have it towed home and just sleep on it. OK, I had a tow truck scrape it off the side of the road and on a flat carrier. Back to Cleveland for a $195 ride. Nuts.
Then another type IV comes my way. A good deal - 1979 2 ltr for $150. Solid 120 lbs all around four cylinders. It went in with realistic hopes of just getting it to move as I plotted my revenge on the Type IV motor!! HA! HA!
As I wrote on the Shop Forum, I found the type IV engine to be an
underpowered , unreliable and very expensive nusance.
I had heard of guys putting Corvair motors and the like in busses. Lots of
power etc. I had never seen it but I was able to find several examples of
similar conversions on the web.
If you saw any of the links I posted on the Shop Forum thread then you saw just about as much as I had to go on. One exception to this was the Vortec V6 powered 1972 camper. A fellow named Dave did that conversion, however his page disappeared. I was smart enough to copy the entire site prior to its demise. I can send it to you as it contains a fair amount of information.
OK, lets get down to the NUTS & BOLTS...
THE ENGINES. There are a bunch of different motors that will fit in the
compartment. And Kenedy Enterprises makes an adapter plate for just about all of them - no kidding. I went with one of Dan Hecker's adapter plates basically because I talked his ear off when I began the project.
Dan makes a real good product.
AIR COOLED. You can put a type I engine in for that matter. They are cheap,easy to rebuild and parts are readily available. Corvair motors have mucho huevos but are getting somewhat rare and the parts are equally scarce. Furthermore, you have to modify the trans since the engine runs backwards to the type IV.
WATER COOLED. Here you find the options opening up. Lots of good adapter plates and motors available. Of course we now introduce the element of water - specifically the placement of the radiator and the routing of the lines to feed it. Toyota T3 - a four cylinder from the 70's as used in the '72 bus called Roadcow ( the website for roadcow is still up.) Pinto , Capri , Mercury, honda etc, and a bunch of other 4 cylinders will all fit. These are 70's / 80's motors with carbs and are typically about 1.6 - 2.2 liters. They work OK without a transmission mod. They can take the high revs that you will be turning at 70mph ( my trans is geared so that at 70 the motor turns 4300rpm - yuck! More on that later.)
Then there are a several examples of V6 engines out there. One was the
Vortec as used in Dave's Camper. Ford , Chevy, Olds, Pontiac and my
favorite - the Buick 3.8 Ltr. I know personally that in the placement of the
my motor, everything closes - the motor hatch on the top and the rear hatch both close.
There are some V8s that will fit also. The Aluminum Buick and the subsequent British Leyland version of the same motor. Good examples of these can be found on the Wild VW's site .
Basically, you can shoe horn just about any motor as long as you can either purchase or make an adapter plate. I promise you - You will be making everything else....
So during the winter snows of last Winter I decided to take the plunge and
make a camper that was reliable and would have enough power to get out of its own way.
I would decide to go with the 3.8 for reasons of it reliability and ease
of parts acquisition. Oh yeah, I was given one of these motors that only has 30K miles on a rebuild. That knocked of anywhere between $300 to $1500 off the price 0f the project
After that long chat with Dan Hecker about adapter plates I would plunk down some $400 for an adapter plate, flywheel and hardware kit. Now, as it turned out I had placed some junk on Ebay that I hoped I would get maybe $40 for. As it turned out the final bid was a whopping $460! Cool, free adapter kit!
Now with motor and adapter plate handy I could begin the conversion proper. Depending on the year of your bus you may or may not have that pain in the ass rear splash plate. It showed up in 1972 and on busses and was a bolt on affair on '71 & earlier. The older busses are nice because to pull the motor you remove the splash plate and simply remove the motor without having to jack up the bus. Well, I own a '75 and after becoming familiar with this immovable bar more than a couple of times, I was not in any mood to keep it around any longer.
Before you pull the old motoer make sure the bus can stay where it is for
several months. I'm not kidding. Think ahead about what operations you want to do and plan for any common traffic in the area. For me, I parked the bus with the rear facing the garage just outside of the door. I cleared out the garage expept for my torch and some tools. I put up a work bench and moved a stereo out there.
OK, the bus is in place, the work space is secured and you have the motor and adapter plate stuff. Your are as ready as you'll ever be.
Are you a post '71 owner? Then you must be thinking about hoaw much you care for that splash plate. I had no desire to struggle with that heavy Buick motor while the bus had it ass in the air 3 feet! Neither do you? Good!
A sawz all is real handy now. Get a good blade on it make two cuts and
remove the splash plate. I can send you a more detailed photo of what I did.
Remove the engine and get it out of the way. Make sure the fuel lines are
closed off. remove the battery , the F.I. crap and just about everything
else. You won't need that blower motor for the heater that never worked
either. In effect you strip out everything in the engine compartment.
With either sawz all , grider or a torch cut all the unnecessary sheet
metal from the engine compartment. You will be surpised how much metal was for forming a seal to the old type IV. Soon the engine compartment looks bare except for a few wires.
Now is a good time to repair the battery tray. Also, weld in some metal to
cover up the void left open by the removal of the splash plate.
Clean the engine compartment with Gunk and a pressure washer. When the compartment is fully dry you can then paint it. I used Rustoleum white and applied it with a brush. It went on thick and did not run - well it ran once.But all the open cuts are sealed off and the whole thing looks pretty good.
Now paint the aluminum adapter plate if you want. Bolt on that adapter
plate!
Bolt on the flywheel and put on the new disc and the pressure plate. You
can pretty much use a stock 212 mm disc. But the pressure plate should be about 185lbs strength for the Buick that I am using. Kenedy makes the
pressure plates. They can supply you for just about any application. You are ready to fit the motor in.
Things will be a little bit easier if you have access to a transmission
jack. With the motor on the jack, carefully roll it in toward the
transmission in the engine comaprtment. Line everything up and bolt it in.
You can actually release and remove the jack. I am really surprised at how much the VW trans can support. The motor is in. Now to complete the front mounts.
I struggled for a while with how to mount the motor. I came to the conlusion that the stock mount is OK for my 3.8 ltr. I used motor mounts from a 86 Nissan truck just because I had them and I like them better than the buick mounts worked. With some stout angle iron I made brackets and gussets. I fitted the brackets to the mounts and made some brackets to connect the mounts to the stock VW crossmember. After grinding the welds. I gave it a good couple of coats of rustoleum black. This took about a week of soul searching, welding and grinding. It should take you about two good days. Bolt in the cross member with bigger bolts.
I was very pleased to see that VW engineers allowed for much larger
crossmember bolts than are stock. Also, you will find that the bolt holes
are fitted with a continuous piece of pipe. It makes everything quite
strong.
THE STARTER. The stock VW starter motor does a pretty good job of turning over the stock VW motor. But for a real good laugh try turning over your new motor with that stock starter. It just does not work. So of course Kenedy has a solution. A very small and light weight reduction starter that really does a great job turning over the 3.8 ltr in my bus. It costs about $180. They also supply an adapter cone so you use a VW diesel starter. It costs about $40 but you have to find the diesel starter and put it together. Its up to you.
Connect the fuel line. Wire in the ignition.
THE EXHAUST. Is stirctly up to you and depends on your motor. I cobbled up and exhaust system using exhaust pipe and a junk pile Cherry Bomb muffler. It sounds great. And does not look to out of place. I will revise it in the spring to employ a dual exhaust utilizing a pair of Cherry Bombs.
The motor is now in and starts up. Guess what? That was the easy part!
RADIATOR
Now on to the cooling section. There are several examples of how a radiator is placed on a formerly air cooled bus. Road Cow took a novel apporach and stuck a couple of Pontiac radiators in tandem on the roof of his '72. He built a homemade shroud and ran the cooling pipes down through the air intakes. Bear in mind this is OK for a '72 camper because it is the front of the camper section that pops up. The back part is stationary and is perfect for this kind of modification. In the case of my '75, it is the back section that pops up; therefore, placing the radiators up top was not an option for me.
I decided to just stick it out front. To accomplish this I needed to first
select a radiator and then mount it. I went with a NOS '77 Rabbit radiator
that has a fill cap on it. It ran me about $50. Solid brass. I made the
mount out of emt conduit, bed rails and expanded metal. Ground it clean and (you guessed it) gave two coats of Rustoleum white.
The pitures show more or less how it all goes on. I think however, in the
Spring I will refit with a bigger radiator. More on this later.
Now to connect the radiator to the motor. This is where it gets weird....
You must now make room for the pipes or tubing that will recirculate the
cooling water.
Crawl underneath and with swaz all, grinder or torch, remove all the old
heater crap. I started out with the idea of copper pipe. Well, it was an
expensive mistake. Now I am a real good soldered and have sweated a bunch of copper pipe. But I ended up with a bunch of leaks. I eventaully used a hose made by Goodyear. It is called 'horizon' and is available in several diameters.
I bought 50ft of the stuff for $45 at an industrial surplus warehouse here
in Cleveland. If you have to buy it new it costs about $3 / ft. Still
pretty cost effective. You may have to spend $100 if you buy it new. But
that stuff is strong. At 190 deg F it has a burst pressure of 200 lbs. But
the reality is that I don't see why PVC would not work! I just found this
good deal on the hose.
Too keep the hose in place I used conduit clamps - the kind that hold
conduit in raceways. #4 clamps cost about 60 cents each at Home Depot . I think I used ten or maybe a dozen of them. The clamps bolt to more pieces of bed rail that fit within the two frame rails. Invest in a couple cans of undercoating and make it all nice and black there.
Now, the horizon hose does bend but it does not bend all that much. So to
make a transition from the radiator to the horizon you will probably use
generic flex hose available from the local auto parts store in lengths up to
18". You can either try your luck with soldering up some copper pieces or
get what is called a ' barbed mender.' The mender is a device used to connect two pieces of tubing. Depending on what engine and radiator you choose you will probably have tp match up different hose sizes. I had to mate 1 1/4 inch to 1/1/2 on the radiator to the hose. Now may not seem like a lot but but it will become apparent that you will have to deal with this. My fittings accepted both of the sizes so the transition was easy.
Finally, you will probably need a bunch of hose clamps. Find them cheap
like at a flea market or order them online like at Harbor Freight Tools.
Auto parts stores seem to rake you over the coals when it comes to the
little pieces like hose clamps.
Now the engine is mounted and the cooling system is tied in. Run a length of #10 wire from the battery to the front for the cooling fan. You will also
need to supply the relay to turn on the fan motor. Also, make sure that
there is a fuse or circuit breaker at the battery feeding the suuply wire.
You don't want an accidental fire because of a short.
I also added an expansion tank from a Rabbit in the cooling system. As you fill the system you will soon learn about bleeding out the air from the
system.
If you do not you will find that your temperature guage will swing wildy as
vapor excanges with cooling water. This can also impede the correct flow of water. So the trick is to make sure that there is no air in the system. If
you can route your cooling hoses such that they are no higher than the top of the engine.Also, air will rise and consequently will always try to settl ein the top of a loop. So if you can eliminate any loop like one that might form as you connect the hose to the top of the motor, you reduce your chance of collecting air.
I start by opening both the radiator and the expansion tank. I then fill
detatch the upper hose on the radiator and connect it to a garden hose. I
then fill the system under pressure from the garden hose. It takes a while
for all the air to be blown out of the system. Remember you will be dealing with about 25 feet of tubing. I cap off the radiator and make sure the expansion tank is at a good level.
INSTRUMENTATION. I have all electric guages except for the vacuum guage . A water temperature guage ($45 ), oil pressure ( $52), tachometer( $3 - flea market find) and a vacuum guage ( $19 - on Ebay)
FUTURE STUFF/
TRANSMISSION. The transmission will be regeared with a new differential of 4.5. 4th gear will be dropped to 0.7 3rd will be dropped also but I am still thinking about which of the availble ratios to use. The differential will be also strengthened by using enhanced spider gears. Now to use the new starter I need to retain the old '75 bell housing ( post '76 starters have a longer nose.) But according to the guys at Long Enterprises, the bell housing will bolt right on. The whole trans with all the goodies shipped to me in Cleveland will be right about $1800.
15" RIMS To further lower the engine rpms it is necessary to increase the
tire size. I am looking for a total tire height of 29". The new size is
only 5 inches taller than the stock tire. The result will be that at 70mph
the engine will be turnng 2600 rpm. Good eh? The VW rims are 112mm 5 bolt - I believe that many Audi rims are this size. Also, certain mid 80's Mercedes rims will fit. I will be buying a couple of these next week to verify that they do indeed work.
EFI The engine in the bus now is carbed. Real simple. But I have always
liked the power and reasonable fuel economy of fuel injection. But FI
electronics can be a real drag since documentaion is typically sparse. Well
there is this thing called Megasquirt - a do it yourself, open source, open
forum, multi port, electronic fuel injection system. Megasquirt.org .
If you have never done this before it will probably take you several months.
Can you weld or use a torch for cutting? I taught myself before I started the project.
Do you have a real drill press? It was very valuable for making various brackets
As far as cost is concerned I never kept a total - I just did'nt want to as the bus project was a labor of love ( or insanity.) And it will cost at least another $2500 fot the trans and tires.
But add up all the numbers I put in my long post and then multiply by three and you probably will be close. But it did not happen at once. The money was spent over a period of several months. The cost of the trans is just reality and will be of course shelled out in total.
I did this project 'on the cheap,' and it was not cheap!
And no, it does not 'take up any space inside.' Remember reading the part where I said both hatches close? Yup, it all fits. I just had to make the air cleaner myself. Trust me, I was surpised abeit elated, that it did indeed fit in the engine compartment as well as it did. Look at the picture of the engine compartment - there is a ton of room to move around the sides. I gets close up top - about 2 " frrm the bottom interior engine hatch. But you can put in the plugs and check the oil real easy with the interior hatch removed.
Just goto some of these links and look around to get some ideas of other possibilities. This stuff is not rocket science - just time consuming. But it will be something that you built. Enjoy!
Brad, you need to get your head out of where it is and READ! A friend gave him the engine, he clearly sais that, right near the beginning! I have to agree with the other guest, if you can't even get a basic bit of info out of this thread, don't even touch a vw!
isnt the buick that you used and the 3800 the same motor? hhhmm grandma is thinking about donating her 89 bonniville to the schools.... that would be sweet in the back of a ghia
