1964 VW bus rebuild

[KOMBI NIKO]

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

Yeah, you pretty much followed the same thought pattern I did. Just for giggles, i did try reversing the air flow through the bay a while back. It didnt work out in my favor. My water temp spiked 10 mins into a test run at 45mph. I was somewhere around 205-210 and could only get it down at idle. Thats why i was thinking about a marine fan ducted to it, keeping the air flow the normal direction.

I appreciate the ideas. So few people approve of the swap in the split busses, its hard to find anyone willing to brain storm with me. Its even harder since I've strayed so far from stock with everything else. Im not looking for anyone to solve it for me, I'm hoping other people like you can toss an idea out that I haven't thought about yet. Maybe even change my thought process on it.

If you want a little chuckle, I'll tell you what I've had more trouble tackling than the ecotec swap....my intermittent, strange tail light issue. I literally spent 6 hours tracing wires and ohm-ing out wires just to find a ground wire barely hanging on to the passenger tail light haha.

[sgellis]

Duct some air from under the bus through the gas tank shelf in front of tank. Add a thermal barrier between tank and engine. Should work assuming you are blowing the hot air out the side vents... If you are pulling air in through the rads then reversing your fans should solve it.

Edit:
Just thinking you don't want the hot air going out the side vents as it will heat up the metal inside...

Add a fan to force the air from under the bus into the front of tank area. just needs to be strong enough to overcome the cooling fans pressurizing the engine compartment. Run them with main cooling fans. This should prevent hot air off the rads from getting to the tank. An inline marine exhaust fan may work.

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

I guess its about time for an update. I have been pretty busy, but today I have some down time at work.
I have almost 6k miles on my engine swap now, 2k of those are with the A/C installed and working. I've gotten some pretty impressive water temp readings, even when it was 104 outside. The one that I am most proud of is climbing a hill on I20 when it was 102 weather. I had the a/c on, already 3 hours of drive time on the interstate, and went up a fairly steep grade(alt change of 1k feet, 18 wheelers end up at 35mph at the top). At the bottom of the hill I was running 75mph @185, topped the hill at 80 @ 196. No sooner did I top the hill, the fans came on and cooled me down to 180. I think they ran for about 45 seconds to a min. My standard temps are much different in city driving and flat interstate driving. Stop and go driving while staying under 45, my engine temps are usually 178. My fans never cycle unless I sit for 4mins or longer. On 100* days with flat roads my temps are: 60 @ 180*, 75 @185*, but 85 is not very steady. It is just fast enough to cycle the fans every 5-7 mins. I unhooked them for a trial run, and after 30 mins I was starting to flirt with 205 while running the A/C.
So I believe I have gotten this whole dual radiator thing worked out...at least almost haha.
I have had two issues in the last 6k miles. One was completely my fault. I used a mix of AN fittings, pushlok, and smooth barbed fittings with clamps for my fuel lines. I may or may not have gotten confused on which was which, and left a clamp or two off haha.

The second issue is one that I thought I had already taken care of...I was boiling fuel. It only happened if the conditions were perfect, so it took me a while to actually figure out what it was. The only way it happens is to run errands in town, seriously. It has to be 80* or higher, using the A/C, and less than 1/2 a tank of gas. Start up, drive 15-20 mins, park for 10-15, repeat. After doing that 4 times, the pump starts whining, and I've got 3-4 mins to get off the road before it loses all power.
I'm still battling this, but I have found that if I pop open the deck lid every time I stop or run the radiator fans for 10min each time, its ok. While I can do this, it embarrasses the hell out of me to have to open the decklid everywhere.
I had this issue in the beginning, and it happened every time I hit 190* water temp. I created a partition to separate the tank from the engine bay, and placed fiberglass insulation around the tank. This does help a lot, however, once the fuel does boil, it takes hours for it to cool.

Now, here is why I logged on the site today. I'm trying to come up with some better options for keeping this issue from happening. Let me list the options that I know will work and some I think will work. If anyone has any ideas, I would love some pointers. I don't particularly like these options, which is why I'm still looking.

1. Move the fuel tank. --Not a very safe option, as there is no where else I would trust it.
2. Add a touch of kerosene to the tank every fill up. --Works, but SEVERELY lowers octane rating.
3. Run the fuel through an oil oiler w/fan. --Should work not entirely sure how safe. I've done it on track cars, but never a daily driver. Also unsure of air flow in the available safe mounting spots under the bus.
4. Run a metal fuel line all the way to the front of the bus, loop around and back to engine. --Maybe?
5. Same as 4, but run it to a 1/2 or 1 gal buffer tank(for lack of a better word). -- Probably would work
6. A combination of 3 and 5. --95% it would work. Almost not worth doing from the amount of work involved to try to make it work safely.
7. Find/make a better thermal barrier. I've seen some cooling looking stuff like the ceramic blankets and similar fabrics. I have no experience with that type of stuff, so I don't know if it would be useful in the heat range I'm dealing with. I need to keep the tank under 100*, and when I shut the engine off I would guess the engine bay is somewhere between 120-180*. But, if something were to go horribly wrong, I don't want it to catch fire at 300* either. Unfortunately, that narrows down more than a few of my options.
8. Use something akin to a bilge blower from a boat, draw air in from under the bus, blow the fresh air across the tank length ways for 10-15 mins using a timed relay circuit.

If anyone has any good ideas on totally different options or a way to improve or expand on an idea I have, please let me know. I'm running out of energy with all the R&D I've already done on my bus. I've got pages and pages of data/charts, from trying all kinds of things on it. Before, I was researching all of this because I was interested in installing Ecotecs in busses with the dual radiator set up. Now that I've almost got it worked out, I'm not sure I could charge what its worth to install it for people.
The difference between throwing one in and driving it, vs installing one and knowing ALL the variables is over 400 hours. How do I know? I'm almost at the 400hr mark in my logs, and I still boil fuel about once a month.

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

Alphafab does make a few different kits that are top notch, however they were way out of my price range. It would probably save some time to get everything from them all at one time, well most of everything. Even their most complete kit wouldn't have included everything I needed. Not including my a/c, heat, or time involved, I probably have $2500 in my swap. Seeing as how I spent $2400 on my last air cooled engine build, I consider this a win. If I need a replacement engine, I can easily pick one up for $400-600, and these engines easily last 150-200k mi.
They aren't the only ones to buy parts from either. If you search around, you'll probably find 5 or 6 people selling adapter plates and wiring harnesses. There's no reason you cant do the wiring yourself. Pretty easy and straight forward if you get a wiring diagram (but can be quite time consuming) .
Anytime you're doing engine swaps, you'll run into issues. I've ran into a couple so far. Nothing show stopping, but definitely irritating. I decided to run a MAF since this is a daily driver. Problem is I couldn't run the stock intake with maf, so I made my own. Even though I did everything I could to mimic the stock pipe, my MAF numbers were skewed. It didn't raise its head until I hit 5k rpms, the computer didn't know what to do with those values, so it completely cut fuel like a rev limiter. That took a day of playing with to take care of. I had a fuel pump issue because I used the original strainer in the tank. Whenever it would get low, it would start sucking air in with the fuel since it stuck up about 4 inches from the bottom of the tank. Unfortunately it burned up the fuel pump, but it was under warranty.
I'm sure the more miles I put on it, the more I'll find little issues that need to be worked out. I have about 200 miles on it now, so I trust it a lot more than when I first fired it up.

[mandraks]

[BarryL]

Does it bolt right up to the VW bell housing?

[mandraks]

i think it is great that there are people out there who tackle this kind of thing on their own. At the same time it seems like the same wheel keeps getting reinvented that way. I have seen so many modern engine upgrades starting in the 80s. Type 4 engines, Porsche 6 cylinder, vw diesels and turbodiesels, waterboxers, Ford V6 engines, now the subaru boxers, the ecotec kits. I have seen a split deluxe with a bay frame swap and fuel injected 1.8 liter boxer and a catalytic converter, smog legal! I think all of these are great since they all address the same issue(s). I personally would want to stay with VW gear, just because . I like boxers, so those would get my vote before i would get into an inline 4 or a v6. back then faster seemed to be important to me. Nowadays reliable does it for me. Any of these conversions does both. Still i find myself shopping for a 36 horse or 40 horse bus. what to do

anyway, good work, enjoy, and post more pictures
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regards

Uli

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'53 3-Fold Oval, L35 Metallic Blue, looking for a narrow hatch panel

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

You can find pictures of them everywhere. Just Google ecotec engine. Chevy, Pontiac, and Saturn used them in a lot of vehicles. There are different versions of it, but they all look about the same.

[BarryL]

Do you have a link or a photo of that type engine just sitting there not installed?

[69Weekender]

I'm usually the guy who hates engine swaps that take away from the air-cooled tech but I have to say, this is awesome. Unbelievable work.
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Mitchell
ISO any California Road Runner Camper parts or info
1989 Dodge D250 5SPD, 1967 Sportsmobile, 1969 California Road Runner: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=646780
Past:
15 Tacoma, 01 Honda Insight, 06 Beetle TDI, 77 Toyota, 96 Geo Metro, 06 Tacoma, 04 GX470, 13 Jetta Wagon, 05 Jetta, 96 Corrado VR6

[williamM]

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

I haven't hooked it up yet. I'm trying to decide on a compressor. The stock compressor is a variable displacement and I don't feel like trying to make the ecu run it. I'm going to run dual evaporators so I can't decide what size to run either. A/c isn't my strong suit, so it's probably going to take me a month or two. I do have the rear heater set up already, next on my list is the front heater. The rear heater heats the whole bus when it's 40 degrees outside but it's a little chilly around my feet. If anyone is good at piecing a/c systems together, let me know.

[Pinetops]

Looks like a pretty clean install on the engine. Did you hook up A/C?
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"A rolling bus gathers no rust."

[junichi]

Killer. Who wouldn't want a reliable, fast bus that can be daily driven with confdence?
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1964 Kombi- http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=640048
Sold: 1985 Transporter Doka,1978 Westfalia, 1975 bay x 2, 1986 syncro vanagon, 1965 beetle, 1980 vanagon, 1967 deluxe bus, 1988 golf

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

The vanagons are ugly as sin. I'd drive an old ford or chevy van before I wanted a vanagon. But you're also talking much later technology from factory. I wanted a split, but now that I have kids I need something that doesn't have to be worked on every weekend or two, and is comfortable to travel in.

[mandraks]

[williamM]

CAKE is good. but had a few failures with the diesels and only 54 hp but more weight- had one throttle setting--WOT- didn't need a return spring.
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some days I get up and just sit and think. Some days I just sit.

opinion untempered by fact is ignorance.

Don't step in any!

[JsOiNmAmToHnAsN]

Point me in a direction of where I can buy a split bus with a water cooled inline 4 cyl, A/C, liquid heat, and self leveling suspension, and I'll be over it like a fat kid on cake.

[mandraks]