Aircooled VW Vanagon Subaru conversion

We have been tasked with finishing a Subaru 2.5l conversion going into an early aircooled VW Vanagon after the owner ran in to problems getting things sorted out.

  • Adding water cooling

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    eclecticalan

    A big issue with adding a Subaru engine to an aircooled Vanagon is the complete and utter lack of water cooling (obviously). We did some research and opted to install a later factory water-cooled Vanagon radiator in the front of the van. We didn’t have any of the mounting hardware, but we found one place…

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  • Securing the engine and digging into the project

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    eclecticalan

    The conversion kit comes with a fancy new crossmember/cradle for the engine mounts which had already been loosely installed, but some adjustments had to be made. Due to the swap being installed on an aircooled vehicle instead of water-cooled, a custom plate had to be fabricated (using directions supplied by the kit designer) in order…

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  • Taking over the project

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    eclecticalan

    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…

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