Cars that could yield boat engines

[cap10ed]

I averaged 40 mpg going home through the mountains with the TDI about 520 mile per tank with some reserve.. I reset the read out from metric to USA for the ride home . That being said my conversion factor for the trip down is way off some where. The good news is my old Pilot AWD on a good day down hill with the wind was 350 miles. 520 is about 8 hours of driving. The dog raised hell about that around the 4 hour mark. When looking for conversions I always look to the tractor world to see what small package is out there. Now if your building a 60’ boat there might be more wiggle room on choices. Did the Pathfinder VW Marine diesel ever make a dent in market share in the USA. Here is an article talking about the VW Pathfinder.




Design, Operation, and Overhaul of Pathfinder Marine Engine
written by: Willie Scott • edited by: Lamar Stonecypher • updated: 2/8/2011
The Pathfinder Marine Diesel engine was a 50hp 1.6 liter VW industrial diesel engine formerly used in the VW Rabbit truck, where it gave a reliable economic service. It became a very popular engine with the fishing boats of Canada; some of these boats are still reliably propelled by a Pathfinder.
The Rabbit Diesel Engine
The Volkswagen Rabbit pickup truck diesel engine was designed and produced in the VW factory in Germany and was the forerunner of the Pathfinder Marine engine. The Pathfinder was produced at the VW Factory and later for over 12 years at the VW Marine works in Germany. It proved a very reliable and economical diesel engine quickly becoming a very popular choice of engine among the Canadian fishing fleet and the sailing-boat fraternity.

This is an article on Marine Engineering and focuses on the design, operation, and overhaul of Pathfinder Marine Engine. We begin with an overview on the origin of this marine diesel engine, moving onto the design and operation of the VW Pathfinder.

Overview – Volkswagen Pathfinder Marine Engine
The Volkswagen Pathfinder Marine Engine was a marine version of their 1.6l Rabbit pick-up truck diesel engine. This engine was designed and built at the Volkswagen plant in Germany initially for the VW golf, to compete against the then voracious Japanese car market. The Golf was to become a very popular car, still the choice of many people today.

In 1979 the Rabbit Pickup was introduced, using a 1.6l, 4 cylinder diesel engine that was reliable and economical. Having a heavy payload, the pickup proved to be a workhorse regularly clocking up over 100,000 miles.

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This led to the production of the Pathfinder Marine engine that continued into the 1990’s at the new VW Marine manufacturing works in Salzgitter, a city between Hildesheim and Braunschweig in Lower Saxony Germany.

Volkswagen Marine is still producing modern diesel engines to suit a variety of craft, from 40 to 265hp. A modern Marine engine from VW Marine is shown below, please click on image to enlarge:



The production of the Pathfinder has now ended, but fear not; there is a conversion kit available for the mechanically minded or marine engineers among us that enables the marinization of the VW Rabbit engine, maybe to fit into your boat.

[BeauV]

One of our daughters has the TDi Tourag (sp?) and loves it. My Admiral loves it too. It will probably be the replacement for the Cayenne when that thing hits 100k miles. Great truck/car/whatever.

[austin1972]

Wow, lots of Jetta tdi owners here. Mine's a 2010 manual, now with 73K on it. 42 mpg combined lifetime.
I never get to drive it anymore. My wife has taken over the car - the one she was against buying, saying it was too small and slow.

The one thing I don't like about the car is that I HAD to get the sunroof to get the other options I wanted.
I hate sunroofs. They all fail and put weight up high.