Am I nuts? I mean I know I am but that's beside the point. I've just had the engine back out of my baja and apart again for the...at least 10th-15th time since I got it. I've rebuilt and fixed broken engine parts twice. I've replaced the case, rings, bearings, heads, rockers and multiple other parts. I've fixed vacuum leaks, Oil leaks, blown fuel lines, blown oil lines, blown heads, cracked/araldited up cases, and dodgy modified parts like the dizzy. I've learnt a shitton of stuff in the short time I've had it, even though it isn't tuned properly yet, the interior isn't finished and I've only made the wiring safe not tidy. At the end of the day it's spent more time apart and not running than being driven and it's supposed to be my daily driver because the Kombi's worn out. Tomorrow night I'm meant to put it back together after trying to fix another major oil leak but I'm having major thoughts about turfing the turbo for now and going back to N/A with the fuel injection. I mean I love the power and torque that the turbo brings but with my luck and with the way it's gone so far I've come to the point where reliability is worth more to me than a 1000hp. I mean if I had the time and money and I wasn't having to drive it everyday I'm sure I could eventually sort out all the kinks but I'm just sick of getting nothing else done cause I'm working on the engine fixing the same problem again.

So tell me, am I nuts?

You just need a subaru engine that was designed to work with a turbo.

It sounds as if the setup was done pretty half arsed to begin with so was mots likely destined to fail anyway. It also sounds like that engine has had a very tough life before you. At the end of the day M8, most of that stuff you have fixed could have happened to anything, turbo or not if its been well thrashed.
Leave it there M8.. Itll shit you off the very next time you ask it the question and you have to rev its guts out to get the job done rather than just let the mid range torque do it for you in a higher gear.
Turbos only work when you demand them to and in a light Baja on the street, thats not that often!
My 2 bobs.
L8tr
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Quote:

Originally posted by Baja Wes You just need a subaru engine that was designed to work with a turbo.

i'd say go with what you think is right for you if that means ditching the turbo ,ditch it and enjoy your baja for what it is

Just don't ditch the whole baja.... thats bad. I nearly did it once, these guys bought me to my senses. You cant beat reliability though, I do enjoy my baja a whole lot more since i ditched the webers and got kadrons. No more tuning problems

And hey it don't seem to be running that bad.... I have seen you driving up newnham rd a couple of times last week while i was walking! I live in the house with the work in progress kombi in the carport if you have seen it.

Nah I'm not gonna ditch the baja, just maybe the turbo. For now.

It runs ok when it is running, it just needs finetuning cause it's a bit rich but I'm beginning to think I'm gonna wear stuff out from removing and replaceing stuff all the time while fixing other stuff!

I'll keep an eye out tomorrow morning, I'm travelling along that road twice a day now since I'm now working at Holland Park Auto Electrical on Logan road. It's a much better run from Redland Bay than to Bulimba and back every day.

Feel free to drop in if you see me out the front... I'm always up for a bit of gorking at other peoples bajas! Are you an auto electrician? If you need your interior tidied up drop in one day and give me a look, I'm an auto trimmer and have a workshop under my house. always keen to work on vw's...

hmmmm. I might just do that.

what kind of boost where u runing and what setup?

admittedly ive only built one turbo vw but that was enough to find out that with no form of charge cooling and no extra oil cooler the vw engine doesnt cope well with any decent amount of boost, blowers are a different story tho

I've decided I'm keeping the turbo for now. It'll piss me off if I let it beat me.

Hey Joel, it's currently running 10psi of boost. The engine is a 1915, CW crank, mystery turbo cam, performance scat heads, ratio rockers and fuel injection. The oil cooler is about three or four time that of a standard beetle one and there's also a old school truck style intercooler on it that I wanna change.

For now I've got a lot more tuning and tidying up to do. Thanks for the help guys.