Club 80-90 Forums

Hi All,

I suppose this is a cautionary tale about trying to mix early and late systems.

My van is a badly converted 1983 panel van, and I tried to fit a 1987 DJ complete into the engine bay with early cooling system and exhaust.

The exhaust is not a problem... it all fits nicely.
I understand that the early exhaust loses about 10 bhp compared to the later exhaust.

The plumbing on the other hand does not fit.

The air-filter housing and the air-flow meter both take up the same space as the big fat early coolant pipes.

The water pipes fitted



The air filter housing fitted
Note the white hose clamp in the photo.



So now I am thinking that I will have to convert to later cooling pipes.
Oh joy.

Strange, the 'block' so to speak is identical, 2nd oil pressure switch aside, so why can't you just use all your existing water pipes?

I've been running a DJ in an early van for years with the early cooling system and early exhaust, even managed to plumb the oil cooler cum warmer thing in.

Lpg and carb.

shepster wrote: ↑27 Jul 2025, 07:27 Strange, the 'block' so to speak is identical, 2nd oil pressure switch aside, so why can't you just use all your existing water pipes?

I've been running a DJ in an early van for years with the early cooling system and early exhaust, even managed to plumb the oil cooler cum warmer thing in.

Lpg and carb.

is your air box in the stock position or did Steve fudge it a bit to enable a blow back valve and the lpg intake plate to be fitted without stressing the elephants trunk ? A pic might help Robsey see how it has been achieved

My '83 van was originally air-cooled and I fitted a DJ engine in '89. I found that the gearbox and engine mounting bar on mine were positioned further forward compared to the donor vehicle. The fitting between the air filter and cyclone filter also didn't allow them to meet up; I had to make a custom one. The expansion tank had to be moved backwards about 40 mm in order to comfortably reach the bleed ring.

E D I T:

I've looked at engine layout pictures as I always thought that in my case the difference was because of air-cooled versus water-cooled. That I can now confirm.

Look at the following image: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/2176558.jpg It clearly shows that your air filter housing is too far forward because it is different from the one in the image. In your case the mounting point on the right must be moved backwards to accommodate the housing.

The air filter housing is in the stock position...

The two fingers in the bottom casing locate in the rubber grommets in the side of the engine bay.

The gearbox is the original and fitted in the original position.
The engine is mated up in what I presume is the correct position.

I am just wondering if I need an earlier airbox, which I suspect will be a USA or early Euro spec GW / DH set-up.

I tried my early trunking, which sort-of fits a bit better, but not well enough.

I do like a challenge, but my brain aches -

have you got the early elephants trunk 025 129 967 A ? Looks like differently angled - Heritage have them

VW only built 437 DJs with the early set up in July 1985, from August they were 1986 model year with the later air box and water pipes

finding the early airbox won't be easy, can't even find the part number for it now, there are 7 deleted variants, suffixes A,B,C,D,F,H and J

it might be suffix H, here's One on German Ebay

and here's a suffix D

the air flow meter was different on the DW, and DH but I don't know if there's a physical difference between them and the DJ version

Thanks Aidan,

Yes I have the early elephants trunk and early plenum chamber from Brickwerks.

I bought them thinking the early set up would allow the cross-engine cooling pipe to fit, but there was no real benefit so I swapped back to the later versions.

On the later (DJ) set-up, the idle air control valve and hose fill any potential gaps for the cross-engine pipe to pass through.

The rectangular casing in both of your links look promising.

Aidan wrote: ↑27 Jul 2025, 08:26

shepster wrote: ↑27 Jul 2025, 07:27 Strange, the 'block' so to speak is identical, 2nd oil pressure switch aside, so why can't you just use all your existing water pipes?

I've been running a DJ in an early van for years with the early cooling system and early exhaust, even managed to plumb the oil cooler cum warmer thing in.

Lpg and carb.

is your air box in the stock position or did Steve fudge it a bit to enable a blow back valve and the lpg intake plate to be fitted without stressing the elephants trunk ? A pic might help Robsey see how it has been achieved

Original I believe, its the flat type of airbox.

so you have a 2.1 but running carb, so not the same as Robsey is trying to do

I still have the DF carb and manifold, but that would be a bit pointless on on a 2.1 engine.

The manifold ports on the DF are very small, and thus restricts air-flow into the cylinder heads.
The engine would feel strangled all the time.

Aidan wrote: ↑28 Jul 2025, 06:52 so you have a 2.1 but running carb, so not the same as Robsey is trying to do

He only mentioned water pipes, what exactly is he trying to do?

Install a later 2.1 DJ with fuel injection into a 1983 bus that originally had a 1.9 DF in it, as opposed to fitting a 2.1 block into a 1.9 DG van and running it with carb and lpg using the carb mostly as a throttle body for the lpg system as with yours Paul, so the problem now is trying to find a way to fit the later 2.1 air box with air flow meter as there really isn't enough space - there is a factory install solution, as VW did fit the DJ into a very small number of vans in July 1985 with the early water pipes, but finding all the parts for one of those is needle in a haystack job as those vans were very rare and may not even have included any in rhd and shipped to UK, and 40 years on most will probably have been scrapped and their engines already reused, maybe in installations like yours run on carb, which was very much a thing 15-20 years ago when Steve was doing cheap lpg installations and there were tens of thousands of vans being broken for parts every year across the planet; even then you'd still want a van that was being fully broken for parts rather than the usual 'rip (often literally) the engine and gearbox out, remove any easily removeable and saleable cherry parts, then crush the rest and send the scrap to China' model that most non specialised breakers employ. Now there are fewer breakers period, and even fewer specialised T3/T25 dedicated ones still at it.
I would have advised changing to the later thermostat housing and water pipes as that would have been simplest, but even that would require the complete set of pipes from the later 1986 MY on set up, and modern pipes (if avaialable) are not as good quality as the original stuff - a lot of which were actually made in the UK by Avon Rubber Company

There may be a way around this...
Or two ways.

1 - cut and shut the air-flow meter mounting moulding from the DJ air box onto the side of my old DF air box
(Assuming it is ABS, it should weld quite easily - far easier than waxy polyprop).

Or

2 - my friend who owns the unit where the van resides has offered to 3D print me an air box to suit.

Another option is to try and move the airbox backwards. I effectively did this by shortening the oil breather pipe and rotating the boot between the throttle body and AFM. This raised the airbox slightly, which was accommodated by my custom-made fitting between the airbox and cyclone filter. I, of course, had no fittings to support an airbox and had to make my own. They ended up exactly where I wanted them.

The gearbox and alternator positions indicate how much further forwards the engine is positioned in an air-cooled engine bay.