Date:         Wed, 1 Sep 2004 10:03:54 -0400
Reply-To:     "Lastfogel, Darren" <dlastfogel@PLYFORMS.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Lastfogel, Darren" <dlastfogel@PLYFORMS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Double cab for sale/engine longevity
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Sorry Jim I meant BenT. For myself I am with you I never push it over 70 MPH
I try to drive and listen to the engine to the music thst its singing.

Darren
Lowell MI

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Felder [mailto:felder@KNOLOGY.NET]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 9:07 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Double cab for sale/engine longevity


Not this Jim. Never over 70.

Jim

On Sep 1, 2004, at 7:54 AM, Lastfogel, Darren wrote:

> Jim wrote he has done 90 mph in his vanagon HOLY CRAP are you insane.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Felder [mailto:felder@KNOLOGY.NET]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 10:31 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: Double cab for sale/engine longevity
>
>
> Well, there goes THAT theory.
>
> Jim
>
> On Aug 31, 2004, at 9:27 PM, BenT wrote:
>
>> Jim,
>>
>> I consisitently drive my 87 GL at 80mph most days. I was even spotted
>> doing a 90mph 12 hours trip to SoCal last year. Nothing special. It's
>> a basic GL van w/o the middle bench. WIde tires. SA brakes.
>>
>> The astounding thing is I got 386,000 miles on it before the original
>> headgaskets started an exterior leak. Still had good compression.
>> Alas, that WBX is making way for an inline-4 VW.
>>
>> BenT
>> http://members.aol.com/bentbtstr8/myhomepage/index.html
>>
>> On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 20:47:08 -0500, Jim Felder <felder@knology.net>
>> wrote:
>>> After talking to my local vw mechanics a while back, I concluded that
>>> the vanagons they had in for frequent engine replacements had one
>>> thing
>>> in common: drivers who thrashed the engines. That of course stands to
>>> reason for any car, but 70 mph seems to be the magic number for
>>> vanagons. I was looking at an 89 syncro on its third engine. We
>>> talked
>>> about a dozen or so other customers who got 80K miles or less on
>>> their
>>> engines, and the anecdotal evidence was that the drivers of those
>>> vehicles reported commonly driving way over 70 mph. The syncro had
>>> commonly been driven 80. Other customers had driven faster than that,
>>> and had come back for replacement engines more frequently.
>>>
>>> These replacement engines came from a variety of sources, including
>>> ones rebuilt by the shop.
>>>
>>> My 90 has 192K miles on it. It doesn't burn or leak anything. It runs
>>> strong. The heads have been out once to replace the rubber gasket,
>>> but
>>> no valve job has been done. I NEVER drive over 70. Maybe for just a
>>> minute or two while passing, but the van has never been 80 at all,
>>> ever.
>>>
>>> My mechanics were remarking that the other long-lived engines had
>>> drivers who reported driving similar slower speeds.
>>>
>>> There may be plenty of evidence out there to the contrary, but it
>>> seems
>>> to me that when the VW engineers placed that green area on the tach,
>>> they meant it. Maybe there is a threshold rotational speed above
>>> which
>>> the centrifugal force and inertia of the rod is great enough to
>>> ovalize
>>> the journal hole.
>>>
>>> Anybody else? I realize that I and others may just have luckily
>>> gotten
>>> a better balanced or otherwise better-fitting engine. But just asking
>>> around, it seems that speed kills these things.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>
>