Club 80-90 Forums

Why was the DF Waterboxer engine only 59 bhp

Just out of spite, really.

Cam, carb and inlet are the main differences to a DG that reduce the power.

VW policy was "don't give them too much power, they will break the drivetrain" so the vans were woefully underpowered to get a long service life.
Even though you had to thrash the thing senseless to get anywhere, which somewhat defeated the point.

Poverty spec panel vans didnt need big engines , its was all about price really wasn’t it .
they had to replace the CT engined vans with something just as hard work 

I suppose it's only the same as the 75bhp 2.0 Caddys. Identical engine to the rest of the range, artificially limited to under half of it's design power in order to tick a box for fleet buyers who don't want anything that their drivers can thrash about.

They were all at it, my 2.0 talbot express with 58bhp had the same carb as a 1100cc citroen ax!

Unfortunately it's a lot more work to convert a DF to DJ power than the 3 minutes required to turn a 75bhp Caddy to a 192bhp Caddy.

silverbullet wrote: ↑Yesterday, 13:48 VW policy was "don't give them too much power, they will break the drivetrain" so the vans were woefully underpowered to get a long service life.
Even though you had to thrash the thing senseless to get anywhere, which somewhat defeated the point.

The precursor to the Volkswagen emissions scandal