Club 80-90 Forums

I've just bought a 1.6 jx diesel powered Westie.
It's soooo slow though that it's taking the fun out of driving it.
The thing is, just before I bought it it had £1800 spent on a new head, injector pump etc etc etc so I want to keep the engine.
Can I buy the tirbo parts off of a 1.6td and simply put them on my engine?

A 1.6 JX is a turbo engine!

Ok, well I have the non turbo 1.6 diesel whatever the code is for that

If it is a CS then no. The CS block hasn't got the oil squirters for cooling the pistons inside.

Rats.
Thanks for the info, is there anything else that can be done to it to make it a bit perkier?

Just sit back and enjoy life in the slow lane. I ran a CS for thousands of miles - trips around Britain up and down mountains on 2 month trips.

karlito wrote:Rats.
Thanks for the info, is there anything else that can be done to it to make it a bit perkier?

Fit a 1.9 1Y or look towards a future TD or if you really want your cake and eat it, a TDI (this is the holy grail IMO) making a Diesel Westy how it should have been from the factory.

A 1.9 1Y conversion (non turbo) is the simplest option but still pretty slow though.

I own a 2.1 MV petrol and it drives beautifully....26MPG isn't so bad given that it has reasonable power and we can wisper in the cab to each other at 65mph.

Martin

Best advice is to relax and enjoy the journey if you want to get the value back on whats been invested on the engine.
Tdi set up is 3 k to 4 k plus done properly.

Did the westy come with a non turbo engine.
What year is it

I just run into the same thing and understand your frustration. Engine conversion is a big decision and is expensive... 4k plus as mentioned before.

The engine it was on mines had nothing wrong... but we still decided to do it. I'll give my reasons so that might help you to take yours:

1- Improved cruise speed. Ours could do 60mph on flat roads. That is pretty much what big lorries can do which is a bit annoying as you feel you are always in the middle. No to mention on hills... we would sometimes had to go on 3rd to reach 45 or 50... . Not good enough for what we are used to.

2- Conversion will increase van value. If is done properly the market value will increase, hence the conversion price will partially be covered by itself

3- More reliable engine. A newer engine will be more reliable than a 30 years old one.

4- Easier to fix. Finding parts for a newer engine is way easier than for the old ones, and cheaper as well.

5- Better MPG . Ours was doing 20mpg, with the new one we were told we could do 30 mph. That would save us a lot of money as we are planning to travel a lot in the next months. Again that would cover some of the costs of the conversion

There other bits that I didn't mention like ... quieter engine... easier to find mechanics and so on and so forth.... All and all for us is a win win. The only cons I see is that you have to spend some money and that you are definitely modifying a van so is not original anymore. None of those are an issue for us.

Hope it helps!

Juan

You'll get used to it with time and relax I did

Thanks for all the help guys.
I think a tdi is the way forward, the van came with a 5 speed 6 rib box, so I'm guessing that could be used?
I've found a ahu (?) complete engine for sale locally.
How much fabricating and fiddling is involved in fitting this?
Once it's in, is it a case of getting an auto electrician round to wire up the ecu?
I've got a lot of experience with beetles and bays, but not so much with t25's...

Its a big wiring up job. You can buy a ready made loom from syncrandy....which should help a lot.

You need to think about engine mounts, rerouting airbox, intercooler or chargecooler, immobiliser and keys, accelerator pedal....its fly by wire and a host of other technical stuff.
And a gearbox rebuild

Converting to AAG petrol engine is worth thinking about. Its the simplest as it has a lot of parts in common with the diesel, plenty of power, could always be lpged and would then be cheaper on fuel.

Ok, tdi sounds like a hell of a lot more effort than I originally thought!
Don't really want to convert it to petrol as mpg isn't great and LPG tank takes up a load of space.
1.9 1y seems to be the winner by the look of it.
Are they better than the cs?
I don't need it to fly, but it needs to be able to keep up with traffic !
Are these turbo able?