Oettinger Wasserboxer the Other Flat Six!
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Newsletter of the Lehigh Valley Corvair Club (LVCC) JANUARY 2014 HTTP://WWW.CORVAIR.ORG/CHAPTERS/LVCC ESTABLISHED 1976 Inside this issue OETTINGER WASSERBOXER Oettinger Wasserboxer 1 The Other Flat-Six! THE OTHER FLAT SIX! Yay! It’s January! 4 Next LVCC Meeting President’s Corner 5 By Dennis Stamm NECC Update: 5 NY Safety Track NJACE Corvair 6 Parts Auction LVCC Calendar of 7 Events LVCC Classified 8 Ads Corvair Modeling: 8 Earnhardt Racer LVCC Officer 8 Contact Info The Fifth Wheel is published monthly by the Lehigh Valley Corvair Club (LVCC), Inc. We accept articles of interest to Corvair owners for publication. Classified advertising of interest to Corvair owners is available free of charge to all persons. Commer- cial advertising is also available on a fee basis. Please contact our newsletter editor, Allan Lacki for details. LVCC is one of the many regional chapters of the Corvair Society of America (CORSA), a non-profit organization that was in- corporated to satisfy the common needs of individuals interested in the preservation, restoration, and operation of the Chevrolet Corvair. LVCC caters to Corvair people who live in and around the Lehigh Valley Region of eastern Pennsylvania. This is a very special car club! LVCC dues are $10 a year for CORSA members or $15 a year for non-CORSA members. PAGE 2 THEFIFTHWHEEL JANUARY 2014 Oettinger WBX6 parts for Volkswagens. The relation- crankshaft blanks in its own foundry. ship between the two companies must The crankshaft blanks, which were cast The Other Flat Six! have been cozy indeed, for when the in chrome-molybdenum steel, were folks in the Volkswagen marketing de- then forged, nitrided and balanced. At this time of year, I like to sit beside partment put the kibosh on plans for a the crackling fireplace with Doggie and flat six, the engineering drawings ended Oettinger produced three different ver- Bunny and watch the snow as it dances up in Oettinger hands and, soon there- sions of this engine. Beginning in and swirls about outside my frosty win- after, Oettinger began hand-building 1986, the WBX6 displaced 196 cubic dow pane. And as soft light of dusk these engines and installing them for inches, produced 165 horsepower, and descends upon the bucolic vista of my discriminating T3 Vanagon owners 192 foot-pounds of torque. Only one vast estate, I often fall off into a gentle who wanted to blow the doors off un- transmission was offered: a beefed-up dream about the days of old and what suspecting Mercedes owners on the Vanagon automatic. Nevertheless, it could have been… Autobahn. accelerated from 0-62 mph in 12.5 sec- onds and reached a top speed of What if things turned out dif- 112 mph. Not bad for a vehicle ferently? What if Corvairs re- with the drag coefficient of a mained wildly popular? What brick! if there was a third generation Corvair? What would be the Just one year later, in 1987, Oet- next evolution of the Turbo- tinger introduced three more Air Power Pack? versions of the WBX6. A milder 140 horsepower version It would probably be a lot like with a catalytic converter, a 175 the Oettinger WBX6! horsepower version with higher compression, and finally, a 180 By the 1970s, even Volks- horsepower version with longer wagen had pretty much given stroke. These were available up on rear-engine cars, phasing with manual transmissions and out the Beetle and its variants, all wheel drive. The 180 engine first with the K70, then with displaced 226 cubic inches, the Passat, and then with the cranked out 225 foot-pounds of Golf. But VW didn't give up torque, and when installed in a so fast with its hippy vans! It T3 Vanagon, accelerated from 0 continued to refine and redes- to 62 mph in 11.6 seconds. Top ign them. speed was reported to be 116 mph. Introduced in 1979, the T3 "Vanagon" was manufactured WBX6 Vanagons were not sim- in Germany right up to 1992. ply hot-rod variants of the To meet emission control re- Volkswagen microbus. They quirements, the classic air- left the Oettinger factory with a cooled flat-four was replaced host of other performance and by a new water-cooled design: luxury modifications, including the so-called "Wasserboxer". four-wheel disc brakes, special Like its forebears, the Wasser- springs and shocks, extended- boxer was a flat-four, but its range fuel tanks, air condition- cooling fins were replaced by ing, high-end sound systems, water jackets. It became the custom upholstery and even mo- standard engine for the T3 Va- bile office electronics. The WBX6 Va- nagon. As you might expect, the Oettinger nagon was intended for sale to wealthy WBX6 engine was derived from the 4- clients and customers included King Volkswagen even considered offering cylinder Volkswagen "Wasserboxer" Juan Carlos I of Spain. Truly an exclu- the T3 Vanagon with a six cylinder engine and had many parts in common sive product, sales amounted to only Wasserboxer as an upgrade to the four. with it. It is basically the four-cylinder 700 over the production run, which And that's where the Oettinger WBX6 VW Wasserboxer with two additional lasted until 1992 or so. story begins. Although little known in cylinders grafted on to it. Oettinger the USA, Oettinger has been an after- cast the cylinder heads, crankcase, and WBX6 engines are exceptionally rare market manufacturer of performance JANUARY 2014 THEFIFTHWHEEL PAGE 3 The fancy exhaust headers are evidence of Oettinger’s A modern Corvair powertrain might have looked like this! legacy as a high-performance tuning shop for VWs. The water-cooled flat-six Oettinger WBX6. Individual steel cylinder barrels are encased in Even though this engine is water-cooled, it still has aluminum water jackets in an open-deck configuration. exposed push rod tubes! No cooling fan here! The engine was mounted in the rear, but the radiator was mounted up front. The aluminum WBX6 engine block without its cylinder barrels. The two crankcase halves are bolted together. PAGE 4 THEFIFTHWHEEL JANUARY 2014 You can listen to the WBX6 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=DcKMNv-3ekg Written for LVCC by: Allan Lacki Sources: 1. Oettinger Website. http://www. oettinger.com/en/produkte/katalog/ volkswagen/ 2. Oettinger Caravelle 3,2 Road Test, “Car South Africa” magazine, No- vember 1988. 3. Volkswagen Type 2 (T3) http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/ Volkswagen_Type_2_%28T3%29 4. Remembering the maddest Kombi. http://www.wheels24.co.za/News/ Custom_Cars/Remembering-the- The Oettinger WBX6 was basically a Volkswagen Wasserboxer engine with maddest-Kombi-20071008 5. Achtuning Website. http:// two additional cylinders. They shared much in common, including this head achtuning.com/tag/oettinger/ gasket layout. Each of the individual cylinder barrels had its own ring-style 6. Great Moments in Crappy Engine compression gasket, much like a Corvair engine. The water jackets also had History: Volkswagen Wasserboxer, their own head gaskets, one for each of the halves of the engine. And this is by Tom Anderson, March 12, 2012. http://www.sub5zero.com/? what they looked like. Coolant would seep between underneath the gasket, s=wasserboxer corrode the aluminum, and poof! A big coolant leak, and expensive to fix! 7. Vanagon 2.2 & 2.5L Conversions. http://www.smallcar.com/index. php?dispatch=pages. today and very collectible. But that An air-cooled engine with a blown view&page_id=67 does not mean they are especially desir- head gasket will simply puff its charge 8. Vanagon head gasket leaks. http:// able, for replacement parts are wick- into the atmosphere - or perhaps the www.vanagon.com/problems/head- edly expensive and they are plagued by heating system - during the compres- leaks.htm a certain issue common to the four- sion stroke. On the other hand, a cylinder Wasserboxer engines manu- Wasserboxer with a blown head gasket factured by Volkswagen, namely head can hydro-lock. While this is a risk Yay! January is Here! gasket failure. Much like an air-cooled associated with all open-deck engines, engine, the Volkswagen and Oettinger the differential rates of expansion be- Why’s that so great? Because we’re Wasserboxers have individual cast-iron tween the metals, (the barrels being having our first meeting of the new cylinder barrels that are spigotted into iron and the jackets being aluminum), year! What a great way to get out of the cylinder heads. Each cylinder bar- and the unusual head gasket configura- the house, meet your friends, and swap rel has its own ring-style head gasket. tion makes this disastrous outcome exciting stories about your holiday sea- more likely to occur. But unlike their air-cooled counterparts, son adventures! Did you get any toys for your Corvair for Christmas? Now’s the cylinder barrels are surrounded by Nevertheless, the Oettinger WBX6 en- your chance to brag about ‘em! aluminum water jackets that are cast gine has a loyal following. The fan into the crankcase halves. The water boys love the powerful sound that emits Our next meeting will take place at the jackets are sealed against the cylinder from the tailpipe of this unique flat six LANTA Community Center, (our usual heads using a perimeter lip gasket. engine. It's exhaust note reminds them place) on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 There simply isn't enough surface area of the symphony of sound created by at 7:30 PM. available for a conventional flat cylin- that last remaining flat-six motorcar, der heat gasket. the Porsche 911. But as far as I can tell, it sounds a lot like my Corvair! It’s Our Next LVCC Meeting! JANUARY 2014 THEFIFTHWHEEL PAGE 5 Presidents Corner UNDER CONSTRUCTION! by Dennis Stamm Dennis Stamm is restoring this 1965 Corvair 500 coupe! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.