Hello,
I have been following silently for awhile now, but thought I should pipe up and introduce myself, my husband and our VWs! I am Nick and my husband and I have an 87 Vanagon weekender named Lucille (loose seal). She has 304,000 miles on her. We drove from Missouri to LA a couple months ago to pick her up and trailer her home. Got her for a great deal with bad waterboxer head gasket. Long story short two weeks later we are driving to Arkansas to pick up an ¡®82 Westie that came with almost enough conversion parts (including EJ25 with 30K miles) to convert Lucille and one of our other vans, plus loads and loads more new parts. I had the ENTIRE Vanagon full of parts PLUS we also filled the whole back of our Honda Pilot with parts.
The previous owner had purchased a Rocky Mountain Westy (now part of Van Cafe I think) adapter plate/conversion kit and then he decided to change routes and do the SubaruGears kit reverse Ring and pinion setup complete with a subi 5spd.
Anyway, I could ramble on forever about our four busses, but to the point lol. ? One thing that we did not have is an ECU/Wiring, so we went to our pick n pull and got the ¡®01 Subaru Legacy wiring and ECU. I have it stripped and all dead plugs removed. When I started this I couldn¡¯t find anyone that does the drive-by- cable harness (I have since discovered Jeff with Autoventures(?)). I have ECU pins printed and ready to guide me as well as a Vanagon Bentley manual. I have done several engine swaps over the years years, just none on a Vanagon and wiring has ALWAYS been my biggest challenge! Thankfully this isn¡¯t an ALH TDI, that was ROUGH! Lol! Any tips/advice before I start soldering? Any good write-ups or videos anyone would recommend?
Nick Clinton-Elliott (He/Him/His