Anybody thought of a Deutz diesel engine into a kombi?

[ProTouch]

Hi guys

I'm pretty new to this forum. I have recently acquired a bay window kombi that I'll be restoring.

Its a late bay with the 2lt twin carb engine. In the week or so I'll be doing the clutch so I should be driving it soon

Anyhow, I was looking into a possible diesel conversion in the future and I came across the (magirus) deutz air cooled diesels. I've googled, but no one has done such a conversion. They are well spoken of Ito reliability and they have been placed in a lot of other vehicles mainly the American F100 pickups and the like.

Has anyone thought of doing this?

If so which model will be a suitable fit and will the stock gearbox handle the power, (probably have to be re geared)

Cheers
Q

[Dawie]

Two major problems to overcome:

1) Weight,
2) Torque is to much for the vw gearbox, and gearing not ideal.

At one stage i did consider this, and my idea was to use gearing to speed up/double the engine rpms before shaft enters the gearbox. This would also halve the torque. A bit difficult to explain. It is torque that break gearboxes, not power.

Those massive heavy USA vehicles have heavy gearboxes in the truck class and many rear diff ratios are cheaply available for them, that is why Deutz conversions are so successful on them.

By the way, there was a guy in Holland who fitted a Deutz aircooled 3 cylinder into his Cadillac.

The Deutz 912/913/914 series engines is mostly used for conversion of USA type vehicles. They are roughly 1 litre per cylinder. Like most engines which uses a cast iron crankcase, they are heavy.

The BF6L914C (6cyl turbo with intercooler) weighs 510 kg. The 3-cyl normally aspirated is around 270 kg. The beautiful F8L413 (V8 12 liters) weighs 800 kg. BF12L513CP (V12- 19Litre turbo intercooled) weight-1300 kg.

There is also a smaller oil cooled Deutz engine- BF4L1011 - weight around 250 kg.

[Drusky]

Thanks Dawie, that was most interesting. What I found fascinating about the Deutz engines, and this may be true of other designs, is that they (probably just the big ones) can be rebuilt on the fly. Shut down cyclinder 1 rebuild while the other 11 cyclinders carry on, or at least that's ehat I undestood from my interweb wanderings. Smaller models can also be rebuilt 1 cyclinder at a time. Not while running I think... that functionality is for big maritime versions.

[Tony Z]

I dont know so much about being rebuilt on the fly but many engines are capable of having the fuel pump "lifted" to a cylinder to "switch it off" and run on the other cylinders. The big marine engines also have the option of lifting the piston, bolting it up on the crosshead and removing the con-rod (blocking oil supply to the big end to keep pressure on the other big ends) or removing the head and piston but keeping the crosshead and conrod attached, using blanking plates on the scavenge space (area under turbo pressure) and exhaust.
No-one is crazy enough to pull an engine apart with bits moving.... also it would seriously disrupt the cooling air flow to the other cylinders in the case of the deutz.

[ProTouch]

Thanks for all the replies. It's certain you guys are well read!

Is there any other aircooled diesel options more in line with fitting to a kombi?

The end idea would be an engine that can run on WVO (waste vegetable oil) biodiesel et cetera.

Lastly are you guys familiar with the LDT 465 engine. It was fitted to US army trucks and could Run on diesel, avgas/jet fuel, kerosene, heating oil and petrol! Reportedly even on old engine oil and transmission oil. Phenomenal.

[riaanj]

Two major problems to overcome:

1) Weight,
2) Torque is to much for the vw gearbox, and gearing not ideal.

At one stage i did consider this, and my idea was to use gearing to speed up/double the engine rpms before shaft enters the gearbox. This would also halve the torque. A bit difficult to explain. It is torque that break gearboxes, not power.

Those massive heavy USA vehicles have heavy gearboxes in the truck class and many rear diff ratios are cheaply available for them, that is why Deutz conversions are so successful on them.

By the way, there was a guy in Holland who fitted a Deutz aircooled 3 cylinder into his Cadillac.

The Deutz 912/913/914 series engines is mostly used for conversion of USA type vehicles. They are roughly 1 litre per cylinder. Like most engines which uses a cast iron crankcase, they are heavy.

The BF6L914C (6cyl turbo with intercooler) weighs 510 kg. The 3-cyl normally aspirated is around 270 kg. The beautiful F8L413 (V8 12 liters) weighs 800 kg. BF12L513CP (V12- 19Litre turbo intercooled) weight-1300 kg.

There is also a smaller oil cooled Deutz engine- BF4L1011 - weight around 250 kg.

Holy-moly, some of those motors weigh more than my whole car!
Would be interesting to see if an (lightweight) aircooled diesel conversion is at all possible, I wanted to buy a bus and do a diesel conversion with the 1.9TDi/2.0TDi Jetta motor, but the problem is the management system, I'll probably have to transplant the whole computer box (plenty $$$$$) as nobody does aftermarket EFI/MFI systems for diesel motors.