I'm not sure I get what you're saying... but it's late, or it could just be
me (!). I had an '80 Rabbit diesel, and I remember somebody telling me at
the time that those engines weren't really diesels from original design but
were 'converted' from the gas I4, much like the way GM converted the 350 to
a diesel (we had one of those too, and it sucked), though apparently VW had
much better results. Maybe that's what he meant.

That car gave me some weird problems... it was my first VW and seems to me
now to be kind of typical of VWs of that era... ran pretty well when it ran
but was susceptible to odd faults. For one thing the vibration from the
diesel kept breaking other things like mounts and exhaust pieces. You
haven't lived until you've had an accordion pipe in the exhaust on one of
those things break at full rev- I thought the earth had opened up and was
gonna eat me.

I was driving a female friend home in one of those amazing southern
thunderstorms one night (it was a dark and stormy night... ahem) when the
thing just died and wouldn't restart. We had to walk back to my house about
two miles in this storm (the upside was that we had to take our clothes off
to dry 'em... ok, TMI). Turned out the timing belt had snapped about 20K
miles before its time. I got it back in the garage with the help of a
mechanic/racer friend that proceeded to explain to me the particulars of
diesel compression and interference, etc. I took the valve cover off and he
reached in and pulled out a piece of the cam about four inches long. He said
'here- have a souvenir'. I still have it... makes a good paperweight. After
deciding the pistons and crank had survived I took the shortcut of just
replacing the head. I didn't realize, and the guy at the yard didn't
realize, that there were different displacements so I wound up with a 1600
head for a 1500 block, IIRC. The chief practical difference apparently was
that the oil drain hole at the top of the block is about the size of a penny
and the hole on the head was about the size of a nickel. I didn't even
notice but somehow I got 'em lined up and it didn't leak- I think now the
head gasket was for the 1500 and that sealed it off.

I put about another 50K on that thing after that until it died one night.
Turned out the #2 cylinder wall got about a 3" vertical crack in it right
over a water passage. The thing was trying to run but it blew out an amazing
amount of noxious thick white smoke until it finally died, which didn't take
long.

The body of that thing is still sitting out in the field behind my parent's
house. I look at it now and then and think of that 40+ mpg and wonder if I
should resurrect it. Then I wonder if I really want to. There's a diesel
vanagon in a yard here with the drive train intact... I was thinking of
pulling it just to have for a conversion, or sell- I suppose I could put the
engine in that Rabbit and hold onto the mount and such... hm. What to do,
what to do?

Cya,
Robert

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Collum" <collum@VERIZON.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: anyone know how the 1.8 TDI compares to past VW diesels?

> It's as much of a "ground up" diesel as the Vanagon diesel was a ground
> up diesel.  The 1.8 TDI NBs (New Beetles) came that way from the factory
> and the engine is a diesel no matter what it's put into.
>
> The NB TDI owners I know swear by them (I have a 2000 NB 2.0 gas model).
>
> Mike
> Houlton, Maine
>
>
> Wil Haslup wrote:
>> I looked at a new Beetle diesel with the 1.8 TDI engine the other day.
>>
>> Is this a gas converted to diesel or a "ground up" diesel?
>>
>> They put this engine into the Jetta and Passat and I haven't seen any
>> bad press on it.
>>
>> Anyone have any thoughts on it or how it compares to old school diesels
>> in VWs?
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Wil
>>