Club 80-90 Forums

Evening,

Despite only just acquiring my van, it is something I have had in the back of my mind for a long time. My intention was always to end up with a vag tdi engine in the back - having had a long string of golfs and audis, I really like both the pd and non-pd 1.9s. My thoughts were that a water cooled diesel t25 would be the best starting place for such an endeavour...

However, for various reasons, I have ended up with an air-cooled petrol van...

Whilst I am not unhappy with this, I was wondering if there was a definitive thread or guide for what needs to be done to go from an air-cooled to a water cooled power plant. Presumably radiators need to be added, but also heater matrices, and the like, along with removal of the existing heat exchangers...

Anyway, it's not something I want to rush out and do, but I do wonder whether it is still worth keeping in mind for this van...

Cheers
Mark

No thread that I am aware of..
and it is a lot of work.. as you say.. all the cooling and heating system needs installing.. (heat exchangers are on the engine)

The base van needs to be in good nick to go to all that effort and all the components need purchasing.. I would have thought it would be better to get a water cooled van to start with really..
Ideally you want to get hold of a watercooled diesel scrapper that's got lots of tinworm so you can get all the parts you need and have ref points for all the bracketry etc...

A donor WBX would be handy for all the coolant bits. I believe there are some air cooled vans running around with watercooled engines without opening up the lower nose section and adding the second grill. The stock cooling system seems to be more than up to the task of cooling a TDI engine.

Did one earlier this year, AGG into Aircooled. Only agreed to do it because we had a donor WBX van for all the parts.
Body mods were:
New lower front panel
Radiator top mount bracket
Rivnuts in chassis for bottom rad mounts. (holes already there)
Reshape the hole in the top of the central turret. On the Aircooled the heater box bottom vent bolts to it, on the wbx theres a large oval grommet that the coolant pipes pass through.
Block off the vents in the centre just behind rear seats.
Cut extra holes in rear cross member for water pipes to pass through.
Modify engine bay panel on right side to accept water pipes.
We kept battery in original place at front to save engine bay space and rigged up the air filter on to the original Aircooled intake vent box. Otherwise you'd have to remove it to fit the diesel battery tray.

Ended up changing the whole vehicle loom to get rid of the early bullet fuse box.
Whole heater box and cables need to be swapped.

On the whole not too bad, I'd do another but again only if there was a donor to hand and the Aircooled van was exceptional.

There is a web site called http://www.boxerswaps.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and the guy has done a photographic step by step for air cooled to water cooled. I used him while doing mine.

I bought the hoses for under the van from a UK hose specialist after researching what would be durable and easy to fit under the van. The radiator and cowl with fan came from a breaker along with the blower motor assembly with matrix make sure it comes with the heater hoses. Fan speed control switch. Worth changing the fan speed resistors while you have dash in bits see brickwerks for this.