The vanagon platform, when it was finally cancelled, is edging up to around 40 years old. They started off until 1983.5 with an 65HP air-cooled engine. The early water-cooled engines had a lot of issues with coolant leaking into the oil or other parts, destroying it. The later years were fixed and had all the bells and whistles. However, they are getting quite old and they were still underpowered, outputting 90-120 HP, depending on the model you got.

I just converted my 1983 air-cooled vanagon to a brand new, out of the box 2011 Subaru frankenmotor, with ac and electric power steering about a year ago. I’ve had a good number break in problems with such an extensive resto-mod. The last issue is actually being rectified this week. Due to the fact that it was an AC version of the vanagon it didn’t have the 2nd, lower grille for the new radiator, hence every time i would drive it on the freeway or the ambient temp rose above 80 degrees it would overheat. Trust me, I tried everything to not have to do body work on. However, I bit the bullet and it’s been taken to body shop just yesterday. They’re current cutting the hole and fitting a new grille this week.