TheSamba.com :: View topic - 1Z TDI Westy

Fri Dec 06, 2019 9:46 am

first some backstory :lol: - we bought a diesel van about a year ago after selling another long term fun car and wanting to get back into watercooled vws, but never having owned a van.
it had already been 1Y swapped prior to our ownership, though some previous owner hacks needed to be sorted out. following some cleanup i daily drove it on my 60mi commute around pdx for about 8 months.

i had dreams of putting in a tdi and ended up picking up an ALH donor - a fairly clean 1999 golf with 156k miles - from another van buddy whod been sitting on this car for a couple years but ended up going a different route on his van.

well... life happened...
we moved out of OR last spring and ended up buying a bit of a project house over the summer which blew up the van swap funds. so the ALH was sidelined.

in the meantime i ended up cleaning up the inside of our van, adding a webasto, second battery, etc and we camped in it a few times over the summer and continued to fall in love with it, but its still slow!

i originally had plans over the winter to clean up the 1Y and do my best to bullet proof to survive another couple years of slow lane travel, when we ran across a killer deal on a 1Z.

i have a good buddy whos in my shop putting together an AHU for his syncro tiptop soon-to-be-westy, and we figured between the two of us we probably had another 1-1.5 vans worth of parts to build an early TDI.
so... we picked up the 1Z setup last weekend

what we got is boxes and boxes of new and used parts, an assembled engine with a totally redone head, and a bunch of stuff from the '97 donor passat that will end up getting trashed. the guy i got it from bought his buddys wrecked '97 with 207k miles on it, and was going to put it in a volvo amazon but never got around to it.

i pulled the head anyway, itll be getting ARPs, and wanted to confirm the condition of the bottom end. all appears to be good.

ive got parts coming for a JX manifold, k03/04 hybrid, slightly bigger injectors and itll get a malone tune. ill throw on the AHU intake manifold since we have it, and its easier to egr delete than the 1Z manifold. plan is also for an air/water intercooler.

so... i guess if anyone in the pnw wants a complete 1Y (thatll come out of our van) or a full ALH swap, let me know.

will keep this updated over the next couple weeks as we finish building the motor.
in the meantime theres a bunch more pictures of the van adventures here on flickr

Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:27 am

Best of luck with the swap!

Great beagle too. Looks a lot like my old fella (rip.)

Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:31 am

Cool project. What's the story with the 124 in the background?

Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:31 am

thanks!

willy belongs to a friend, but we also had a beagle who passed away a couple years ago

Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:33 am

Zeitgeist 13 wrote: Cool project. What's the story with the 124 in the background?

the 124 is my daily driver, its a '95 e300d.
recently had a light injection equipment overhaul but still ticking along great at 265k miles. its the elusive om606 non turbo extra slow edition :)

more pics of that one here

Fri Dec 06, 2019 11:49 am

Very very nice. I daily a '90 300D 2.5t. I've turned up the pump, ported the head and deleted all the non-essential management bits. It's pretty quick, and handles well with H&Rs and a Sportline front bar. I'm as much of a 124 fanboy as I am with the VW vans. I also have an '87 300TD project with an OM606 turbo.

Fri Dec 06, 2019 12:26 pm

What trans are you planning on running? My ALH tintop has a DK (4.57 R&P) from an aircooled van along with 28.5" rear tires, and it's still too short in the gearing dept.

Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:44 pm

Zeitgeist 13 wrote: What trans are you planning on running? My ALH tintop has a DK (4.57 R&P) from an aircooled van along with 28.5" rear tires, and it's still too short in the gearing dept.

one of the few things the previous owner did right was to have german transaxle refresh a DZ, and put in a 4.57 final drive. but its otherwise stock DZ gears - which i believe are 1.23 3rd and .85 4th.

im going to stick with that - for now - probably shooting for a 1.14 3rd and .77 4th eventually.
plan is to run 215/70/16s as well so we may start with that, then do the trans depending on how annoying itll be.

Zeitgeist 13 wrote: Very very nice. I daily a '90 300D 2.5t. I've turned up the pump, ported the head and deleted all the non-essential management bits. It's pretty quick, and handles well with H&Rs and a Sportline front bar. I'm as much of a 124 fanboy as I am with the VW vans. I also have an '87 300TD project with an OM606 turbo.

awesome! i bet that flies!
if i didnt have other projects id love to fit the turbo on mine, but it runs so well as is its hard to justify tearing it apart.

theres a guy on instagram in the seattle area with a 124 wagon, manual, with an om606 turbo which is a dream combo...

Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:19 pm

I'll be curious to get your take on that trans combo. The 1Y must've been a dog with a 4.57.

The other big TDI question is which way you want to go with the intercooler install. My ALH has an air to liquid setup, but I've seen a few air to air setups that seem to work well in a T3.

This is the only linked pic of my daily I can find, since Picasa went down.

Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:27 pm

love those wheels! looks fantastic

yeah, the 1Y is not a lot of fun with the stock 14s and that trans haha its fine around town and below 50

previously - looking at records - the van had a turbo added to its original 1.6, then that was blown and the 1Y was installed. maybe it was a better combo with the 1.6TD, who knows...

for the intercooler im definitely going to go air/water.
i was happy with that setup on a previous turbo vw build, and i think given the lack of airflow at the rear of the van its the right answer...

Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:58 pm

Yeah, I tend to think that an air to air in a T3 would lack the ability to mitigate heat-soak when driving at low speeds. My intercooler has two radiators mounted in series underneath the van.

That intake kinda looks like the one I built for my ALH.

Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:05 pm

and i think it would tend to make some more room and allow for more flexible plumbing layout, as placement of the charged air heat exchanger is less critical.
my thought is to also route the water all the way to the front and place the other exchanger behind the grill.

Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:28 am

speaking of coolers -

im seeing a lot of van setups (including those talked about over on tdiclub) with both the factory oil warmer and an external cooler using that mocal plate.
usually van swapped people seem to start with the factory setup, or with the upsized v6 warmer, then eventually add a mocal plate and an external cooler when they find the stock setup to be marginal.
it figures that the stock setup wouldnt be ideal in a van duty cycle versus even a tuned passenger car.

i think the advantage of the factory warmer seems to clearly be in warmup time. as the coolant should be up to temp relatively quickly compared to the oil, and help bring everything to 200F more quickly.

but what i dont understand, is that the thermostat on the mocal plate is set to 180F, and lets say the coolant typically runs at 200F, which means adding the external oil cooler in a way it will always be trying to fight the warming nature of the factory heat exchanger.

so... why not just run an external cooler by itself?
and assume that having a turbo and piston jets, and a heavy van to push around, will help with oil warm up times over a lighter duty cycle passenger car tdi install, and then let the mocal plate work to 180F without fighting the temp differential to the factory oil warmer.

long winded way of saying - has anyway run one of these in a van with just a sandwhich plate? im tempted to do so....

this is about the only closest relevant thread I could find after quite a bit of searching on tdiclub... https://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=239089

Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:40 pm

I've long wondered the same thing. Even though I'm still running the stock heat exchanger on mine, I've never seen anything remotely like excess oil temps...or pressure losses. One caveat is that my van is typically just used locally as a truck, and doesn't see many long pulls at grade or heavy loads. I think if I were building an open roader that would see lots of steep grades, I'd run with a thermostatically controlled Mocal cooler and no exchanger. I'm certainly open to having my mind changed

Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:50 am

Zeitgeist 13 wrote: I think if I were building an open roader that would see lots of steep grades, I'd run with a thermostatically controlled Mocal cooler and no exchanger.

after thinking some more on it over the weekend, i think thats the way im gonna go.
someone has to be the first to try it, right? :lol:

Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:53 am

There is a major benefit to getting the oil up to temp faster. The stock oil/water heat exchanger helps significantly with this.

Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:30 am

Well, VAG saw fit to install these exchangers on nearly every engine they've produced since the early '80's, so they obviously viewed the added expense as a net positive.

Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:53 am

Zeitgeist 13 wrote: Well, VAG saw fit to install these exchangers on nearly every engine they've produced since the early '80's, so they obviously viewed the added expense as a net positive.

for sure, and i think running without any cooling for the oil wouldnt be ideal, as they did on the early watercooled setups.
but i know from my time hopping up 16vs, that usually adding the mocal plate and removing the warmer were some of the first things to do on higher hp builds. no ill effects on those setups that i can recall.

?Waldo? wrote: There is a major benefit to getting the oil up to temp faster. The stock oil/water heat exchanger helps significantly with this.

no doubt! and that faster warmup time is i think at this point my only hesitation in doing so.

another thought - what if on an egr deleted VE tdi the oil actually comes up to temp before the coolant, making the heat exchanger actually work in the reverse direction during warmup? :lol:

anyway, i think ill give it a go, itll be instrumented and we can all see what happens. i can always go back and add it in

Tue Dec 10, 2019 10:52 pm

:popcorn: Nice progress, looking forward to the updates. I think you'll love the swap.

G-wagen looks sweet too. 8)

Wed Dec 11, 2019 9:20 am

thanks!

waiting on parts to finish up the engine build. should have most everything here by early next week... the new JX turbo manifold and adapter show up today, along with a new TD oil pan

hopefully will have some pics to post tonight

in the meantime ive started thinning out the 1Z harness.
its too bad i caught the guys at malone during their shop move, but i guess we'll get the tune end of things sorted soon enough!