I've been thinking about getting one to mess around with. How reliable are those old air cooled 1600 and up vw engines? They look like a blast to drive because of their open air design.

anyone here have one? What do you like about it? What do you hate about it?

 

I have little experience with sandrails/dunebuggies (prefer bugs, bus' and ghias) but those old aircooled motors will last forever if you make sure to do the routine maintenance on it. I personally dont see any stock aircooled VW powered anything being THAT fun to drive (partial to high performance aircooled motors)... but itd be a good place to start to learn the basics of the aircooled drivetrain. I encourage anyone to tinker with aircooled anything, theyre simple, fun and easy to learn; plus if you do the work yourself can be fairly inexpensive, regardless of what some people will tell you.

 

Do they overheat very easily? I assume only if you are setting stationary for long periods of time, but I've never been around any air cooled vehicles. I'm looking for a toy that I can use in a pinch if I have trouble with the Audi and I'm looking for a rail buggy or maybe a motorcycle or something. Thanks for the input Magoo.

 

Good thing is they dont over heat easily assuming the cooling system (the fan and associated tins that direct the air over the motor) is in proper working order. Keep in mind that the aircooled bug was was relatively unchanged for around 60 years and VW produced over 21 million of them, they had to be a little bit reliable. Just change the oil and filter/screen religiously; adjust the valves every other oil change and it should stay running. A good book to get and read is 'How to keep your volkswagen alive', Id recommend it for anyone looking to learn but not get overwhelmed with info.

 

Being an air-cooled enthusiast, I would definitely encourage some one to buy a rail buggy. I just recently finished building one and I have to say it is a total blast to drive on the street or out in the woods. Its pretty amazing the beating you can put on these things and they just keep going. As far as reliability is concerned, as G-Magoo stated, keep up on maintenance and such and they won't let you down. An added bonus is how easy they are to work on, there is access to everything and its all really simple. My rail has only rear brakes, no front shocks, and a home made(by me) wiring harness, and it works great lol. Plus parts are (usually) fairly cheap. Buy/build one and join us on some rides.

 

Do you ever get hassled by the cops?