Vanagon Restoration

Background

I grew up with my parents driving a 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon around town. I have a vivid memory of my mom frantically inflating a flat tire with a bike pump to get my brother and I to school on time. Needless to say, I have something of a love hate relationship with Vanagons.

When my brother and I were in High School, we bought a Vanagon of our own on an auction site for $400. My brother reupholstered the front seats and did a lot of cleaning on it, and later on we transplanted a Subaru EJ25 into it for some more power and reliability. It was somewhat forgotten when we each went of to college, but this year I found the time to collect the loose ends.

Engine

We found a lightly crashed 1997 Subaru Legacy that was in good running condition in western Wisconsin, and bought it and drove it to our home in Saint Paul. We pulled the motor, and spliced the wiring harness to make it compatible with the Vanagon. We ended up accidentally frying the ECU, so we purchased a MicroSquirt tunable ECU. This ended up being quite the learning experience.

Wiring Harness and Tuning

When I started work on the van this year, the first thing I did was organize the wiring in the engine bay. I soldered a few connections, added a bluetooth sender from the ECU to a tablet mounted on the dash to monitor vitals, and added a few relays. I then mounted some controllers so they weren't floating around, and added conduit around various bunches of wire.

I have a MicroSquirt standalone ECU in this van, which is really cool. It lets you tune air fuel ratio, ignition timing, and an array of associated parameters. It does require a lot more knowledge than using the original ECU, most of which I didn't have when I started. The biggest hurdle was getting a clean, noise free signal from the crankshaft and camshaft position sensors. Without this signal, the ECU loses sync with the engine and it has no idea when to send fuel or spark.

Using an oscilloscope and other diagnostic tools, I came to the conclusion that for the trigger wheel I was using there was simply too much noise in the system for my cheap aftermarket ECU to piece through. In the end, I got a different crankshaft trigger wheel with a hall effect instead of VR sensor. That did the trick.

Exhaust

When my brother built the first exhaust, he did it in about four hours the night before a camping trip with a flux core MIG welder. It wasn't his finest work, to put it mildly. I bought some stainless steel headers on eBay meant for a turbo Subaru, and mounted them on the Vanagon engine backwards. I then TIG welded a full stainless steel exhaust system including pie cuts, two resonators, and a muffler. The new exhaust is much quieter and more stylish.

Swing Out Bike Rack

My end goal with the build was to drive the van out to California so I could use it when I'm at Cal Poly. Naturally, I wanted to be able to carry my bikes, extra gas, and extra water. I designed and built a swing out bike rack with two jerry can mounts.