I never thought I'd find it but I figured VW MUST have researched and prototyped a pushrod flat 6 sometime in their history. I've been googling on this subject for sometime, but never quite hit the right combination of keys until this morning (literally after a dream last night). For those of you who know all about this engine, please excuse this if it's redundant, but it's just too tempting to look at this engine as a potential VW swap.. afterall.. it's "Factory".
VW was developing the WasserBoxer 4 cylinder, and had a 6 cylinder variant also in the works. Market Research suggested that it was not worth the tooling/ development for the 6 cylinder, so VW sold the design to Oettinger. The Vanagon experts can chime in but as I understand it, Oettinger built a "Tuner" synchro Vanagon, and offered two versions of the six.
I understand the engines use all the same moving parts as 4 cylinder in terms of valves, pistons, pushrods, rocker arms, etc. Not much more info on the web, but am interested if someone has the whole "Story".
Thanks
Brian
Now there's something my wife would LOVE to have dropped into "her van" - or 88 2WD Westy!
.... then the neighbors will call her "the wheelie lady"!
I wonder what HP & TQ that sucker turned out?
... with our stock 91 HP 2.1L wasserboxer 4 we'd get 18-22 mpg on the highway & 12-18 in town, & I would expect this to be lower, but at least you'd have some zip!
So far she wants a GoWesty 2.4 or 2.5L built-up wasser-4 with 110 - 115 HP & better TQ than stock for the "next engine" if/when this one dies.
I can't speak to this much newer water cooled engine, but if I remember correctly Porsche design and test various prototype variants of a six cylinder engine for the original 911 six in the early 1960's including a pushrod version. I think there are photos of these in "Excellence Was Expected".
Are you going to rebuild and drive this engine? Cool look.
Have a look here
http://www.wbx6.com/
Basically a corvair upgrade, with the hindrance of a water system.
Still cool as hell, but I LOVE my corvair engine, and you cant beat the price.
to get the connection to the teener:
back in 2006 I visited the Salzburg Oldtimer Fair and there was a ravenna green teener, that was a "experimental car" from Oettinger
guess what - it had an old watercooled flat six in it
the guy told me that the car was the 1st and only prototype car that had this engine in it - and he had all the paperwork and constructive information with the car
I can't remember all the details he told me, but I found two old photos:
Attached image(s)
There is a guy in the Fatherland who rebuilds these, i will see if i can find his details...
What a great find. Thanks for sharing this. VW sure dropped the ball in regards to the Vanagon and this engine could have solved a lot of ills, although it sounds like the same abomination of cooling and exhaust systems that plague the wasserboxer4 was carried over into this engine. Oh well, fortunately Subaru stepped in and did proper development on horizontally opposed engines for the masses.
I disagree, Terry. But, you are entitled to your opinion. From the factory, the engine may have had some issue, but they are easy to rebuilt, correct, and run. I have one in my bus that has been "modified".
Brian, the listed tq limit on the 901 is 300ft/lb....however, the amount of time it takes to apply that tq matters as well. All at once would = kaboom.
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