has anyone got a marinised vw golf engine

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seasofcheese

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i am considering to marinise a golf engine. parts are cheap and abundant all over the globe, two men can lift it, easy maintenance, practical on fuel/power, they run forever.. and engines cost next to nothing.
anyone knows which water pump and heat exchanger suits this little beast?
what gearboxes/ adaptors could be used with it?
many thanks
 
Ask Lancing Marine,sounds a good plan,you must make sure it can pick up oil out of the sump when heeled,might need a deep sump. Ford and Peugeot are others to consider,the heat exchanger may cost more than the motor cheers Jerry
 
i looked into this a bit before fitting an engine to my boat. I think there are downsides to doing this. apparently some of the marinsed mercedes engines are prone to overheating, as they rev higher for longer periods. Proper marine engines are `long stroke` and rev alot lower around 2600 rpm, where car diesels rev alot higher. I`m no specialist in this, but feel its probably better to get a `proper` marine engine. when i say long stroke, a marine engine is typicaly taller than a marine engine. I`m sure someone here will correct me, but for reliabilty i would not marinse a car engine. My perkins 4236 gives out 85hp ( 67kw) of power at about 2600 rpm. A vw diesel engine may give this at 3500 rpm and is not designed to run at this rpm for extended periods. As said, others here may correct me, but think i am correct! :)

also, not sure what boat you have or what engine you want, but surley its cheaper to get one already marinsed? I needed to fit an engine into my vessel, i had a choice of a 2 year old 85hp ish volvo penta complete for £2000, or a perkins 4236 ( old but reliable ) for £500! Advice was to go for the perkins due to cheaper parts. surley if you look around your`ll get one already marinised, save the hassle! As for spending thousands, i put a wanted advert on boatsandoutboards.co.uk and got a bargain! Good luck
 
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see this

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/diy-marinizing/auto-engine-marinization-650.html

is an interesting thread above, hopefuly helpul to you.


i copied and pasted part of it for you, here goes:



I've found this thread to be especially interesting, especially the parts of it that deal with the power ratings of the engines. I'm much more familiar with diesel engines than with gasoline ones, (such that I can quote the spec's of some of the more common ones without having to look them up). So, the examples that I will site pertain directly to diesel engines, but the exact same principles apply to gasoline engines. In fact, I?ll use the CAT 3208 as an example, since it is a V-8 diesel very similar to a large gasoline engine. (636 cid)

The harder you run an engine, the faster you will wear it out. It really is as simple as that. Every engine therefore has many different power ratings, depending upon how hard you plan to run it and how long you want it to last. If I were to tell CAT that I was going to put the engine into a small commercial fishing trawler that was going to run 3500 hours pre year, for example; then they would tell me that the 3208 was good for 150 hp. They would derate the engine so that I could not get more than that much power out of it. If you were then to ask them for an engine for a high performance recreational boat that was not going to be used more than 300 hours per year, then they would tell you that the same engine was good for
435 hp.

What?s the difference between these two identical engines, that they would have such a different rated power? Chiefly this: In both cases CAT wants for the engine to last at least as long as the warranty. Since I?m going to put a whole lot more hours onto my hypothetical boat than you are, they will derate mine in order to achieve that objective. In another example, I was once going to put a CAT 3412 into an air boat. My customer wanted the most power for the weight and the cost, but was happy with an engine life of at least 1800 hours. This is a very unique case, in which CAT was willing to rate the engine at 1000 hp. On the other hand, a friend of mine maintains a fleet of work boats with this same engine in them. He runs them at about 500 hp and gets 50,000 hours between overhauls.

CAT has five different power ratings published for each engine. (If you present them with a special case, you will learn that they actually have more ratings than that.) These ratings go from "A" for continuous duty to "E" for highly intermittent duty. In this example, the A rating for a 3208 is 150 hp; whereas the E rating is 435 hp. Gasoline engines have a similar ratings system, except that the DIN and ISO standards for "automotive power" ratings will give you a slightly higher number than most "highly intermittent" ratings. In other words, it is the peak power you might use if you were passing uphill. It is certainly not the amount of power that you can expect the engine to put out for any significant period of time.

We are currently building two boats, both commercial fishing work boats; and are about to buy an engine for one of them. It will most likely be a Cummins B5.9 in one of its many versions. This is the same engine Ford used to offer in their pickup trucks, and Dodge currently offers. Cummins is telling me that they will rate it for
150 hp in our boat, but it is rated at 220-250 in its various automotive applications, and it is offered in a 300 hp version for recreational marine uses that do not exceed 300 hours per year. To put this into perspective, a pickup truck running flat and level at 75 mph without a trailer will require about 50 hp. The same truck with perhaps a 10,000 lb. gross load would require most of the 220 hp. The same engine in a 25 foot sport fishing boat would probably cruise at about 200-230 hp.

There is a difference between the way commercial truck engines and car engines are rated. (A pickup truck is a car for the purposes of this discussion.) In the case of a diesel truck engine, they are rated pretty much at the power they are operated at. In a gasoline car engine, however; they are rated much higher than you would ordinarily ever use them. I know of another example that illustrates that point nicely. They are two almost identical 35 foot sport fishing boats that typically run over a 100 miles off shore together, where they troll for deep water fish. One has twin Cummins 6B5.9 engines salvaged out of pickup trucks and converted to marine use. The other has twin 454?s, also salvaged out of automotive service and converted. All four of these engine are rated at 250 hp, or within five percent of it. These boats normally stick close together all weekend, until it is time to run home; at which time the diesel boat will beat the gasoline boat home by about six hours. The difference is that Cummins recommends that the diesel boat back off of maximum rpm by only 200; whereas no one is going to run a gasoline engine that hard for that long. That captain backs off about a thousand from maximum rpm. To exceed that speed for long periods of time causes cooling problems. This is very consistent with the way the engines were designed to operated during their first lives as automotive engines.

To sum it all up, an automotive engine will typically run at 20-40 percent of its rated power. (In this case, I?m using "automotive power ratings.") It will only exceed these limits under highly unusual circumstances. If you put the same engine into a recreational boat, it will typically run at 60-80 percent of its rated power. A commercial diesel truck engine typically runs at about 60 percent of its rated power. (Flat, level, 75 mph, maximum legal gross load.) That same diesel engine installed into a recreational boat will often run at up to 95 percent of its rated load, with bursts perhaps as high as 105 percent. If these same engines are installed into commercial work boats, then their service lives would be more similar to the truck or the car. It is all a matter of how long you expect to run your engine before replacing it or overhauling it.

All the numbers I quoted in this article are from my memory. If I were at work, where I have all my reference books, I would have checked them more carefully. They should be fairly accurate, and are certainly good enough for the comparison purposes for which they were intended. Since the same engine is sold in so many different versions, you would certainly want to check the OEM specifications on your particular engine before making any critical decisions based upon these numbers.

From: Rick Morel The above really says it all. I'm more familiar with auto engines used in aircraft, but this is very much like marine use. Except it's a lot easier to drop the hook and look for a tow than start looking for a possible landing site! Know what the prop on an airplane is for? To keep the pilot cool -- turn it off and watch him sweat!

Aircraft engines are much derated for reliability. The old Continental
65HP was used in racers at about 120HP, for a life of a couple hundred hours instead of a couple thousand.

VW engines have been used a lot. In the car, they're rated at about
60HP for the 1,600cc. In planes, if they're derated to 40-45HP, they seem to last forever. If used at 60HP a few hundred hours. Then there are the "high HP" conversions, claiming 85 and more. The life of these seem to be in minutes!

My brother used to build dragsters years ago. He'd get 1,800HP out of Chevy 454.... for three drags. About 30 seconds.

I think someone mentioned a Subaru engine in this thread. The
4-cylinder and 6 have been used on gyroplanes with good results. I forget the spec HP rating for the 4, but used at about 50HP makes for a very reliable and long-lived engine.

To maybe put things in some perpective, the VW is rated at 5,200 RPM, if I recall right, but is set up in aircraft for 3,800 RPM take-off and about 3,600 RPM cruise. The Subaru 4 has I think the same spec RPM, but is used at 4,000 and 3,800.
 
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There have been several attempts to marinise Golf engines, first by Petters and then later by VW themselves. Failure in the market place.

Misleading to use "spares available everywhere" as a reason. Rarely is there any problem with base engines as in typical marine applications they never run enough hours to wear out. Apart from the early naturally aspirated engines, automotive engines have far too much power for their displacement to suit auxilliary use, so they have to be run at low revs . The one similar engine that has been popular is the Ford 1800cc, but mostly for canal and motorboats as for a sailboat auxilliary it has to be restricted to about 2600rpm and low speed running leads to bore glazing problems.

The most important thing to look for in a marine engine is the cooling system and being fitted with a gearbox that allows the engine to run in its operating range. Look at all the up to 40hp or so engines on the market and they all run at up to 3200-3600 and cruise at about 70% of maximum (ie around 2600). The specific power output is typically 30hp per litre, compared with a Golf engine which is well over 50hp per litre for even the lowest output. The base engines used in most marine engines (Perkins, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Yanmar etc) are designed for industrial use running continuously in the 2500-3000 rev range and with a design life of typically 8000 hours, which is 50 years of a typical sail auxilliary use.

Kept warm and dry in a modern boat, used regularly and oil changed frequently plus ensuring the heat exchanger and exhaust is kept clear, they will last a lifetime. Many charter yachts in the Med have run over 10000 hours with no problems. Engines die from lack of use and neglect, not from too much use.

False economy to try and put together your own marinisation. If you intend keeping the boat, invest in a proper marine installation.
 
One thing you can do on a relatively high revving engine is to slightly oversize the prop. Whilst this may hold back the engine a bit. it does produce the speed which you want, and without wearing out the engine too much.
Some modern diesels tend to rev like petrol engines, whilst other ones are slower revving but with more torque. The latter are better for marine use.
I would look at the power output in torque terms for the VW lump, then size a hypothetical gearbox, and then a prop.
3500 rpm sounds lot for a diesel engine, and I agree that a normal car would expect to cruise at 75mph at say about 2600rpm, and that would be what I would aim for in real terms.
That said, another poster has made good point, that if the engine is doing a few hundred hours per year that is very different to 2500 hours per year on a fishing boat, in terms of wear and tear. and if the engines are that cheap, you just change the lump and keep the marinising kit
 
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