TheSamba.com :: View topic - New bay window owner/Watercooled Conversion

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:09 pm

chazz79 wrote: You have to use 15 inch wheels to get your gearing within reasonable range. I have 205/75/15 tires that are @2 inches taller than stock. I also had to get a 6 rib trans to get the taller gearing. With these changes my highway rpm is @3500 at 70mph. With the stock tires and a 3 rib trans I'd been at 4500, and no watercooled engine will live long running like that for hours on end. My whole install is pretty low profile and 100% reversable. The ecotec is a pretty good option but doesn't make a ton of low end torque stock. Most were coupled to automatics so no one knew of that flaw. If you ever drove a manual trans cavi you'd know they're lame down low. They do respond well to turbos though.

You'll love your bus more when you're done! My bus has a full camper set up and gets close to 20mpg. I hope to improve that by doing a efi swap soon enough.

Thanks for the help with tires. I'm torn on what I want to do, because I really want to lower the bus to make it easier to get in and out, but do want taller tires to help some with the gearing.

I'm not too concerned about the torque of the ecotec. I figure the gearing will take care of that. All I really want to do is tow my buggy on a small open trailer, which hopefully will be less than 3000 lbs total. The factory rated the westy at 2600 lbs trailer wt when equipped with trailer brakes. I figure doubling hp and torque and adding disks to the rear should get me safely to my figure.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:14 pm

Towards the flywheel end of the engine there is an aluminum box that hangs on the exhaust side. This is a large junction point that has temp sensors and the heater core bungs on it. Out of that box there is a 1.25" tube that wraps around the back side of the head to the intake side of the head. This tube is in the way. On the flywheel end of the head there is a large triangular protrusion that I believe serves as an egr mounting point. It's usually blocked with a plate on most cars I've seen, but it's a cast part of the head that will extend into the fuel tank area of the bus.

If you have an engine from a j-body (cav or sunfire) you can't use the head at all. The intake cam drives a power steering pump off the back (flywheel side) end of it. I suppose you could get a plug made for that or check to see if a company is producing it yet.

I love the engine and would've gone with it but I didn't want to do irreversable damage to my bus. The thing weighs 100 lbs less than the cast iron lump I went with and makes 50hp more. Add in that the injection system is easily adapted and it may be worth the added headache.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:17 pm

As far as the PS pump, we made a simple block off plate out of 1/8" aluminum and siliconed it in place. No issues in 2 years of high strung buggy abuse.

I know what you're talking about with the water inlet, but I can't see that getting in the way of the bus sheet metal? Now you have me wondering. I'm going to take a look.

I'll cut the bus engine bay if I have to (I'm already planning to make the rear "apron" removable to make engine R/R easier). I would hate to cut any more than necessary though.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:20 pm

I had a typo in a previous post... pre 2002 units are not to be used. They have a good deal of oiling issues that were addressed in 2003. The 2002 and earlier engines can be used but you should replace all of the timing components and update the timing chain oil squirter. You will just have to live with the smaller oil galleys of the earlier design (not a problem since you aren't going for high horsepower).

To get around the J-body head issue, just find a saturn head. They don't have the cam driven power steering pump.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:27 pm

I forgot the exact year of my motor, but it was 2004 or so.

OK, I went and looked, and I see what you're saying about the firewall.

I see a removable panel on the firewall, I'm assuming behind that is the gas tank? I better wait on ordering the adapter. I'll go measure my friends buggy to see how far behind the bellhousing that sticks off, then pull the 2.0 out of the bus and see how much room I have. This changes alot :(

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:34 pm

Don't let me discourage you. That firewall only offers @1/2 inch max before you hit the tank when it's removed. You could Have the tank and firewall modified to clear that area. You'd lose a bit of fuel capacity but it'd beat having to go with a dedicated fuel cell. Anyone good with a tig torch can do it and provide leak free results.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:36 pm

Yeah, that's alot of cutting and welding on something I want to be able to drive anywhere. I know there's an ecotec in a split bus, I'm currently searching the forum for info and pics on the issues he found.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:37 pm

looks like a good bus, cant wait to see it come back to life

Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:52 pm

The reliability issue is why I went with the 2.3l. It's a little boring but parts are cheap and on the shelf anywhere you go. It also fit without any cutting. The cradle I built allows it to drop out within 2 hours and maintenance hasn't been an issue. I've been working out bugs and making my harness a bit more professional. I'm almost 100% on the cooling system. I'll add a full write-up with plans for my belly radiator set up when I get it finalized. That's the only thing I've done that is impressive enough to warrant others copying. The rest has relied on trial and error too much to make suggestions to others on. I haven't been more than 30 miles away from the house and only have @500 miles on it. My confidence in it grows with every outing and soon enough I'll be doing some distance traveling.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:00 pm

Which one of your two threads on the same subject are you going to use? Use one and dump the other.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:04 pm

As you can see, I've done that. This thread is for the build of my bus and thus the motor conversion. The other thread was a technical question about clutches. Since that thread got sidetracked into the ecotec conversion, I copied his post over here and we've stuck to this thread ever since.

Thanks for your concern though :roll:

Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:07 pm

OK, it's midnight and raining here, but that didn't stop me from going out and taking some measurements :lol: (I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight without some info).

The back of the motor has the cooling tube (metal) and hose (rubber) coming off, as well as the EGR mount (blocked off on my motor).

The tube only sticks off about an inch from the bellhousing mating surface. The rubber hose and clamp sticks about 2.5" past the bellhousing. Figuring the adapter is at least 1/2" thick, so that means I'll need 2" behind the motor to clear the hose. At worst, I can pull that metal tube out, or cut and weld a different one on that re-routes the hose another way.

Also, out of curiosity, I measured the overall engine bay length. The number bantered around for the ecotec is 21" overall. The engine bay from firewall to latch is 26"+, so I should have plenty of room length wise.

So I think I can make the ecotec work without major surgery. I'll have to get the adapter and get the motor in to see if the exhaust manifold will work (it will point the exhaust outlet directly to the left side of the bus about halfway up the engine). I'm hoping to have room in the stock engine opening to put a "U" on that and get the exhaust to exit.

Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:09 pm

chazz79 wrote: I've been working out bugs and making my harness a bit more professional. I'm almost 100% on the cooling system. I'll add a full write-up with plans for my belly radiator set up when I get it finalized. That's the only thing I've done that is impressive enough to warrant others copying.

I would GREATLY appreciate you posting your setup and findings on cooling systems. I'm in central Florida and plan to tow with it, so I obviously want LOTS of cooling. I think I'm ahead of the game because I have an all aluminum motor designed to run at 210 degrees.

FYI, before getting back into VW's, I built a turbo 2.3 mustang that made 300hp and 380 ft lbs at the back tires. 21 lbs of boost on 93 octane gas. I'm pretty familiar with the 2.3, which is why I decided not to use one ;)

Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:27 pm

Mr. Unpopular wrote:
Thanks for your concern though :roll:

I wasn't concerned about you getting info. I was concerned about others unnecessarily wasting their time. :shock:

Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:32 am

Another thing you'll appreciate about the ecotec is that the alternator will be the only belt driven accessory, unless you chose to add A/C (if so have all the accessories installed when mocking up). The alternators start out at 95 amp and go up from there.

this is the view from the bottom of my radiator skid plate. My fans mount underneeth a pull from above. Air is driven through the front scoop, through the radiator and then through the belly pan. I'm modifying it right now to incorporate a radiator that will require few hose connections, making for fewer points of failure.

The current radiator has connections that are a little inconvenient. It cools well but I'll be using a vw a3 radiator that has uniform sized inlets that will both be at the rear of my radiator pan, putting them closer to the engine.

Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:57 am

I was reading your thread last night and saw your setup. Do you have trouble controlling water temps at all with it?

I was going to do something similar, but I was going to put the fans on top of the radiator, build a scoop at the back of the radiator to stack air up around the core, then use the fans to pull air through. I figured I'd have an air dam going from the front of the radiator to the body to keep a low pressure area by the fans. Hard to explain.

One thing is for sure, I want it to work.

Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:32 pm

Most of my problems arose from the current radiator having smaller inlets than my tubes coming from the engine. I had to improvise a bunch of adaptors and it really looked like crap. It would sit and idle fine but the fans ran quite a bit. They never ran when moving so I know the scoop idea was effective.

The A3 radiator is a dual pass unit that cooled the vr6 (2.8l) just fine. There isn't a radiator cap to worry about and it has a bung in it for a fan temp switch. The drain petcock will act as a nice bleed valve. I'm hoping for better results but what the hey, it may just be another 200.00 experiment.

Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:55 am

Well, yesterday I took the plunge and ordered the 228mm adapter kit from Kennedy. After discussing with my wife, we decided to try to have the bus drivable for the Pasco Bug Jam weekend which is in November.

I'm a full time nursing student, and we have a 3 week break in August before the final semester. Knowing how crazy our final semester will be, I want to try and do most of the work on that break.

The next (first?) step is to get my garage organized so we can pull the bus in and start working on it.

Oh, and the bus now has a name. Regis. We have a chain of banks around here called Regions Bank. They have bright green in their logo. My wife always says she wants things painted Regions green. Sage green is close to that green.

Mon Jul 11, 2011 12:22 pm

Last weekend my wife and I spent 2 days cleaning up both garages and condensing my vast collection of VW parts (junk?) so we could have room to bring Regis inside. We wanted him out of the sun and rain not only to protect him, but so I could start on the engine swap.

So this is what some of my garage looks like.

And like many before me who don't buy Bentley's, think their fuel lines look "OK", love their fuel filters sitting right over the distributor cap, and run with scissors, I purchased wooden furniture dollies from Harbor Freight to make moving him around the garage much easier. These are rated at 1000 lbs each and were $11.99 a piece, so if they didn't work I wasn't out alot of money.

Finally, here are a couple of pics of the modified interior. Obviously the counter top has been added, but I'm confused about the cabinet itself. I'm not sure if this bus should've had a stove or not, whether that cigarette lighter is stock, and why the spare tire door doesn't stick out a few inches past the other doors.

Here is a breakdown of the M-Code plate.

Mon Jul 11, 2011 12:42 pm

Good job getting Reeg under cover. I wish I had garage space like that!

Still diggin' the green and yellow plaid.