Sunday, November 20, 2011

The Mercedes is running and the Vanagon is in storage...

The title of this post says it all... but as usual, I'll say more.

As per my last blog post, the Vanagon made it home after Transporterfest, but only courtesy of a AAA tow. My long-term plan is to do a Subaru EJ22 engine swap. I've been around the original VW waterboxer engine since my parents bought their first Vanagon in 1985, and have owned my stock Vanagon since 2003. So, this isn't a snap decision. I've seen these engines fail more often than they work properly.

I didn't want the van to rot in the driveway while I saved and made preparations for the engine swap, so my goal has been to get it into the garage. In order to do that, I needed to move the Mercedes out.

The problem with that is that the Mercedes hadn't been so much as started in the better part of two years. I've been working on it bit-by bit - bodywork mostly up until this point. Thankfully, I'd been maintaining the battery. Still, I had to do a marathon of maintenance before the car would start:

After the Mercedes finally started, I took a chance and started the Vanagon. Amazingly, it wasn't completely dead. It was weak, noisy and smoky, but drove into the garage under its own power:

So, as it is, I'm currently trying to sell the Mercedes, for two reasons. First, I need to start raising money for my engine swap. More importantly, I just can't have two big projects sitting around. The Vanagon was my backup car. It's my project now. As such, I'll need to get something a little more roadable for a backup car.

3 comments:

  1. Honda
    civic ecu upgrads
    have popularly had their OEM engines traded out for more powerful versions that are still optimized for the size of this particular model of car. The K20, an incredibly powerful engine replacement, is among the most popular, though the B18C is also a common choice. Engine swapping allows for a driver to maintain the body and build of his car while giving it more horsepower output potential and better engine responsiveness, essential components to making a Civic race-ready. Though this type of modification is best kept to experienced or expert-level tuners, it is an important one to consider.

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  2. civic chips for cars have popularly had their OEM engines traded out for more powerful versions that are still optimized for the size of this particular model of car. The K20, an incredibly powerful engine replacement, is among the most popular, though the B18C is also a common choice

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  3. I find it more than odd that the two of you are both commenting in regard to Honda tuning, as I do not mention Hondas at all in my blog post. Also, Justein Clark, you may want to be a little more careful with your plagiarism. You very clearly copied and pasted from Munir's post above yours.

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