Engine Removal Day

Finally the weekend for the engine swap arrived, with my brother Kevin coming from Colorado to help me. Saturday morning I drove the Vanagon into the garage. We removed the engine, installed the new starter [from a VW TDI engine, with an adapter] and prepared it for installation.

The weather was fantastic. Although it was near freezing when we started working and probably never got higher than 50 degrees, the sun and lack of wind made it feel very warm. Perfect weather for such a project








The old engine is at top, the new engine at the bottom. Since the new engine was a Japanese Domestic Market [JDM] model, the manifold could be slightly different. Therefore, I will use the existing manifold...after cleaning it. However I can do that later...it won't hold up the installation.





The red dot is the water outlet for the radiator. In the original engine, it faces the front. However, a reversed coolant manifold
changing the outlet to the back, reducing the amount of piping to carry the coolant to the radiator.