This early aircooled Volkswagen Vanagon came to us with a partially installed Subaru 2.5l engine conversion out of a 2004 Forester. The owner and his helpers got it about halfway along and ran into issues, so we have been tasked with sorting and finishing the installation. The first step was to inventory everything we had and start figuring out what we still needed. One of the big issues the owner ran into was that this conversion is normally done to the later water-cooled Vanagons and the kits are built for those conversions, not the aircooled. We don’t have a secondary opening for the radiator (or even a radiator for that matter!) and a lot of stuff just isn’t quite right, so there will be a lot of research and head-scratching to be done.
The engine was partially installed and the custom mount plate for the exhaust had been set up on the front of the engine. (You have to remember that this is going to be set up like any other rear-engined VW and the front of the engine is considered to be at the back of the car with the gearbox in front of it).
Looking over the custom exhaust system with catalytic converter from Rocky Mountain Westy.
The engine, partially installed but still missing some vital bits.
Starting to sort out the wiring harness that was cut from the Forester.
