Ed McKinley, here, new member of this new list. Getting in on the
ground floor. Imagine what our stock will be worth in a few years.
I am also in the middle of a Kennedy conversion. Putting a 91 2.2 into
an 85 Weekender. We have had the vanagon for 8 years and want to keep
it. 173k on an original water boxer engine. Valves, rings and pitted
heads repaired 102k ago. Runs like a champ but has consistently low
compression in two cylinders, one each head, varying from 60 to 90lbs
each. Plagued with air and gasses in the cooling system. Purging the
system only works for a short while. I believe there is are slow leaks
through the head gaskets into the coolant system.
Decided to do the Subaru conversion (after several serious threats from
my friend Ron Bloomquist). I have completed the wiring harness
conversion and will be futzing with the engine this weekend. New timing
belt, valve cover gaskets, cam and crank seals, before the engine goes
in the van!
Ron's experiences and help have been invaluable to me and information
from the Meyers brothers has been very helpful. They have come up with
clever fixes and tips like soldering a copper wire ring around the
copper water pipe to simulate the ridge on a water hose connector pipe
to help hold the hose in place.
I thoroughly enjoyed the wiring harness puzzle. Very stimulating and
was sad to see it removed from the dining room table where it resided
for over 2 weeks (my wife, however, was happy to see it go.) I spray
glued the blueprint to a piece of plywood to provide a ridgid work
surface that would not harm the table.
I tested continuity on every wire and used a Subaru wiring diagram to
make sure all wires went to where they are supposed to. Cross
connection continuity tests produced some alarming results until I
unplugged the computer. I was getting continuity between hot and ground
in all the shielded wires as well as others. With the computer out of
the loop everything tested fine.
Kennedy recommends bypassing the engine ground plug and ground directly
to the engine. Ron and I discussed this at length. I decided that
Subaru pretty much knew what they were doing even though I can't see
where their ground wires are going to. I have kept the eight ground
wires attached to this plug. I did splice some or all of them in with
one or two left over wires needing grounding and will ground them to the
engine creating some redundancy. That reminds me to make notes as to
what I did in case there are problems or questions later.
Hope it works!
