After 15 plus years, our mechanics have seen many problems. Some keep popping up over and over, we hope sharing this advice will help improve your vehicle's safety and performance.

A common repair spot on the volkswagens we service, constant velocity joints provide consistent drive shaft speeds regardless of the operating angle of the joint. We prefer rebuilding the c.v. joints ourselves, as we've seen problems with rebuilt c.v.s like different drive axle lengths, and the boots coming off.

When driving a vangon that is new to you, we recommend that you DON'T use the trip odometer. If it has not been used regularly in the recent past, the button could push the pin that holds the numbers in place, causing damage to your whole speedometer. A speedometer is a costly rebuild!

One costly problem we've seen quite a bit of is the use of cheap aftermarket oil filters. Especially in Vanagons, this mistake can be deadly to your engine. We recommend using Mann or Bosch oil filters for Vanagons. Both these brands have a pressure relief valve that allows oil to bypass the filter in the event that it becomes clogged. Filters that don't have this bypass valve can cause a loss of oil pressure which can delay hydraulic lifters pumping up and even cause serious engine troubles.

Your air-cooled engine’s compression ratio can greatly affect it’s performance and longevity, yet it is often overlooked during engine rebuilds & custom engine work. The compression ratio has to do with the volume of space in the combustion chamber. Commonly, this space is left too small (due to machined cylinder heads) and as a consequence the gas is compressed too early and the engine suffers from pre-ignition. This adds a lot of resistance and heat to an air-cooled engine.

Air-cooled engines typically run better now if the compression ratio is set a bit lower than factory specifications due to the lower octane, higher quality gas available. This is best for a dependable engine for many thousands of miles. For custom engine applications, we can increase the compression ratio to adapt to after market upgrades and modifications. This delivers a high performance, yet reliable engine.

Another problem we often see with air-cooled engines is poorly tuned carburetors. As professionals, we prefer using and recommend Solex carburetors as opposed to the more popular Weber carbs for our air-cooled Porsche® engines. Solex carbs allow for more precise adjustments, enabling fine-tuning not offered by Webers. For our air-cooled VW® engines, we recommend Empi Kadron carburetors. Not only are they less expensive than Webers, we find them easier to tune and they stay tuned longer.

Stay tuned, we are adding more tips regularly.