SOLD my 1986 T4 SR5 $1200 Welcome new owner

[TURTCEL]

You bring up a sore subject with me EliRush. I did a post on this forum about my old Westy that I will never regret getting rid of. A cool idea but other than it...SUCKED. I had an '83 1/2, the first year for the water cooled engine. Haha, you speak of the devil himself when refering to the VW heart. The original 1.9L died in 95 degree weather on my way to an awesome festival. I counted at least 20 VW vans at the festival when I was there. My Westy, dead at the bottom of the hill waiting for a tow...after the festival of course. I had friends in a super cool '72 Econoline camper van that saved me on the road and took me to the fun.

Without having to get into all the horrible memories of my life with the Westy it was an interestingly sad day when it went...for a split second. Probably actually more sad to see the 13k dollars of repairs that I had put into that damn thing in only a year and a half only to have sold it for exactly half of that 6500.

I only paid $500 and a pretty cool old adult tricycle worth about $150. Not a bad deal I thought....B.S. a terrible deal in fact.

Screw the Westy...a T4WD and a tent from now on for me.

I think I may have just cried a little...I really want that 13k back....Haha.

Peace

[EliRush]

LOL...you aren't alone, man. Every time I hear of the most horrible VW Westy stories, they are ALWAYS post 1980 Vanagons. The one that took 3 engines was an 81, which was the 2000cc air cooled motor with "updated" square head design. Ick. I told the guy I GAVE it to, that I wanted him to crush it to abolish the demons back to hell. I had a 76, 81, and 85...the 76 was probably the best of the lot. I always thought those Vanagons would make good electric conversions. They make horrible gas powered vehicles. Toyota even got that right with the mid-80's shuttlecraft...instead of bad weight distribution and controls and hoses going the length of the vehicle...they just put the motor in the middle. VW owners always have the most bizarre issues...even new.
Saw someone cram a GM 2.8 V-6 into a Vanagon and he never had an engine problem after that. heh

[dlb]

i'm in on the VW/westfalia hatred.

we bought an '82 air-cooled a few years ago and resurrected it from years of sitting in the woods, unused. limped it home, rebuilt the top end of the engine, all the brakes, all the camper stuff, etc. etc. etc. took it on some great road trips but it's just a piece of crap. gutless due to way too small an engine for such a heavy vehicle, super prone to overheating because of the engine working so hard, lousy mileage because of the same thing, no stock temp gauge!! and petros hates on the tercel having non-vented rotors but those vanagons have non-vented rotors, which is the second dumbest thing they could do. the dumbest was add a ton of weight by camperizing the van and still stick with the non-vented brakes. unbelievable. and endless electrical gremlins. my wife was very fond of it because of childhood nostalgia and camping with her folks in one but after the damn thing stranded us for a few hours with its inexplicable random flooding a few times this last summer, she finally gave up on it too. we bought an '87 ford econoline camper with a straight 6 in it. been lovely to work on so far, and very reliable. it's night and day.

the VW forums are nuts too. those guys are loyal to a fault and get all uppety if you even suggest that maybe VW should have designed something differently. once i suggested they divide the forum into different sections so it was easier to search the threads and within a few days the thread was locked down by administrators because of how worked up everyone got, calling names and whatnot. the only thing worse than that forum is their lousy vehicles.

btw, i have an '82 air-cooled westy for sale if anyone is interested.

[ARCHINSTL]

Bwa-Ha-Ha!
I served 13 years in a '69 VW Bus. It ate engines like they were Oreos - I think 3, maybe 4, of them. And 99.9% of the 120K miles I put on it were just driving in suburbia; virtually no Interstate miles.
And talk about rust? You could SEE through the holes in the sides of the body. Worse than ANYthing from that era from Japan.
The '83 SR5 that replaced it was SUCH a pleasure - and the youngest daughter did not have to stand up in the front to scrape frost from the inside of the windshield.
Tom M.

[EliRush]

Hey dlb I'll take the van if you give me a couple hundred bucks...and pay for the tow. lol You can sort of tell how good a car is by how angry the owners are on the boards...happy owners make for happy forums, eh?

btw my 76 was orange with green plaid interior...called it the Tard Cart. heh The problem you were having with the 82 was probably the FI 'potentiometer'...VW's back then had ridiculous designs for their FI systems, starting with mechanical systems that would fail at a soft breeze. Lots of guys would replace them with webers, and sometimes they would cut holes on the hood for them to stick through...or just leave the hood off. Gah! My 81 had a rigged up heater core bolted to the outside quarter panel to serve as an oil cooler.

Dear God I hate those vans.

[danzo]

About 10 years ago I was hoping to take a long trip from Dallas up to Alaska and back in a Westy with a few friends. Glad that never happened, and maybe we'll eventually do it in a T4!

My grandfather, an aircraft mechanic, bought a '70 Squareback automatic new in Germany. He and my grandmother drove it around the Old Country for a few months, then had it shipped to Dallas and drove it until they couldn't drive anymore in the late '80's (which corresponded with my Opa's age). This also corresponded with my teenage years and resulting vehicular abuse (friends jokingly called the VW "the roadster"). I put that car through it paces but it never broke, guess it had a better engine than a Westy. We sold it in near perfect condition with 92k miles on the clock to some slacker for $600. It broke my heart to see it on the road half-wrecked about a year later. That was a car that my T4 reminds me of quite a bit - quirky but very useful.

[TURTCEL]

Well danzo one major factor in why that little square back does better than a Westy is how much weight difference there is between the two. That little car prob did pretty well. My friend had a square back for a long time with no real probs other than the common VW electrical issues, specifically the charging system. He sold it to a coffee shop for 800 and they put 23k into it with all custom mechanics and paint. Big mistake because once all the money was invested by them in became a real POS. Always having issues, the coffee shop even called us to look into fixing it for them because the rebuild shop couldn't figure it out. We fixed the elecctrical issue to the charging system for them ourselves. Hahaha...sorry, I don't mean to laugh at VW problems especially since I have been there before myself and don't want to bring bad karma to me by laughing.

Peace

[EliRush]

That weight was probably a major factor, and the fact that it didn't have "water jackets" on it. Subys also have those beetle motors with water jackets ("heads"), and the CL is littered with cheap Subys with blown heads. Before I bought my T4 I was looking into getting one of those cheap Subys and fixing the heads...cheapest quote was $3000!!! For a $600 car!

Why oh why do they not make these little T4s anymore is a mystery. Such a good car.

[dlb]

Bwa-Ha-Ha!
I served 13 years in a '69 VW Bus. It ate engines like they were Oreos - I think 3, maybe 4, of them.

that brings me to another point. every time i see a vanagon/westfalia ad, they all say 'engine rebuilt xxx km ago,' but how often do most cars need a complete engine rebuild? it seems most westy owners rebuild the engines every 5 years. that should be a clear sign of piss poor engineering right there. it's a joke. compare it to how many tercels are still on the road with their original engines today.

[TURTCEL]

Guess that is why you see so many conversions being done on these Westys still. Popular for the Suby motor (still has head gasket issues) and the TDI conversion seems to be becoming the king of the mountain for Westy swaps.

VW actually did a pretty good job on their TDI set up. These engines do not require a computer so that is what makes them an pretty decent swap. A lot of work though.

Just SAY NO TO WESTY.

Peace


Peace

[EliRush]

Lets hope the westy folks don't find this thread! LOL
I, too have seen the westy/suby/VW engine swap...and the coolest was the TDI Syncro. Still...seems like a lot of trouble just to make something go down the road. I was interested in an old westy diesel (82 I think), and laughed when the guy SELLING it was shaking his head at me when I expressed interest. WTF? Also saw a veggie conversion done on a westy diesel...at a shop...broken down...

[keith]

I had a Fiat once, it makes the Westfalia and Subaru head gaskets look rock solid for reliability by comparison.

[Petros]

I think the air cooled VW engines were good for 60k to 75k miles, so new one every 5 years would be about average miles per year. There once was a time not that long ago that trying to sell a car with 90k miles on it was tough, it was assumed the engine was about shot and needed replacement. Now that would be considered low miles! Except on a VW of course.

[EliRush]

My Dad would always tell me that same thing about 50's and 60's cars, that they were only good for 100k then you had to get rid of them. When I was learning to drive (80's), he also said that V-8s were more reliable than four cylinders because they spun at lower rpm's. I tend to agree...my old Camaro was indestructible, even more than several Japanese cars I owned. I think the iron blocks of domestic engines made a huge difference, too. I recall an Iron Duke four banger I had that just would not die. Now everything is aluminum, so times have changed.

Satan made the Vanagon, yo.

[TURTCEL]

During the 50's and 60's automobile maufacturers were still trying to solidify their dominance over the competition. Domestic or import either way the name of the game back then was to build the most reliable car or truck on the market so that the comsumer would invest in your automobile and know it would last a long time.

Now days since the market has been established automobile companies don't need to make a name for them selves. Nope, they just need to make a car that falls apart after 10 years. As well as make it impossible for the average guy to be able to work on his own car. Cheap plastic crap and less dependable vehicles is the way of the road now.'

And as for 50's and 60's cars only lasting around 100k miles is most likely due to the amount of muscle machines that companies were producing back then. Pretty much factory race cars, hence the beginning of the age of stock car racing (eventough it has been around well before that, this was its real birth era). And gas was 25 cents a gallon...who cared, pedal to the metal. American Graffitti highlights this point, all hot rods in that movie.

For a car back then to get 100k with the hard driving they took was pretty dang good. And as far as the RPM's being a reason for motor longevity is relative. Bigger engines are designed to run at lower RPM's while smaller 4 cylinders and 6 cylinders just like today's modern engines are designed to run at higher RPM's. Just look at the red lines...not really much different now days. It all comes down to driving style and maintence, and that has never changed.

Peace