VW over heating

[B-2]

I have a ? for any one that rides were it is really hot in the summer, & is using a VW engine & pulls a trailer. I am building a Trike to pull a 1937 Tear Drop trailer. I am in South East TX so it gets hot most of the time, we want to take it on the road. I am worryed the VW engine will over heat pulling a trailer.
Thanks Bill

[Loner]

If your VW engine is; 1) retaining stock fan and tins, and 2) a 1600 with the offset oil cooler in the tin, then I doubt that you would ever see any overheating so long as the trailer is a nominal weight (<1000 lbs). Remember that you've dropped about 1500lbs of the vehicle weight by converting to a trike. Also the VW gearing is quite low so the fan speed will normailly be kept reasonably high.

If you want to build in that little bit of extra cooling, you could add an external oil cooler that will bolt on to your existing oil cooler base and adds a small oil radiator that you'd mount in a high airflow area (like over the fan inlet on back of the stock housing). That is an affordable (under $100) bolt-on mod that will add a lot of extra cooling for the oil system. You might also add a spin-on oil filter base while working on that area. That won't add any noticeable additional cooling, but will be a worthy investment for your motor maintenance.

I've pulled lots of heavy towables with VW trikes - including a wooden 16 ft Chris Craft boat - and never had any overheating issues so long as I was using some type of stock cooling tins. Don't get suckered in to the myth that a trike can run without cooling tins - it can't and will overheat at some point.

[Rsw]

Can you put to big of a cooler on one where the oil pump wouldn't be strong enough?

[vwmaniac]

If your VW engine is; 1) retaining stock fan and tins, and 2) a 1600 with the offset oil cooler in the tin, then I doubt that you would ever see any overheating so long as the trailer is a nominal weight (<1000 lbs). Remember that you've dropped about 1500lbs of the vehicle weight by converting to a trike. Also the VW gearing is quite low so the fan speed will normailly be kept reasonably high.

If you want to build in that little bit of extra cooling, you could add an external oil cooler that will bolt on to your existing oil cooler base and adds a small oil radiator that you'd mount in a high airflow area (like over the fan inlet on back of the stock housing). That is an affordable (under $100) bolt-on mod that will add a lot of extra cooling for the oil system. You might also add a spin-on oil filter base while working on that area. That won't add any noticeable additional cooling, but will be a worthy investment for your motor maintenance.

I've pulled lots of heavy towables with VW trikes - including a wooden 16 ft Chris Craft boat - and never had any overheating issues so long as I was using some type of stock cooling tins. Don't get suckered in to the myth that a trike can run without cooling tins - it can't and will overheat at some point.

MYTH?????

[Rsw]

Is it alright to mount the oil cooler over the air inlet of the cooling tins??

[vwmaniac]

I mount mine near the rear of the shroud, where the air fan is into the shroud, and works well.[Is that where you are talking about?]

[KDHUFF]

never done it that way. seems you would be sucking warm air off the oil cooler into the engine. maybe even blocking air from the fan. but like I said I have never done it that way so I dont know. so for those that know would that be the case?

[3WHELAR]

VW maniac is correct extrernal oil coller is fine where he suggests i have mine mounted between the crashbars and the torsion bar plate area on the left of the trike no problem there and stones rarely get there so it is in the open air and pretty safe.It is extremely efficiant, and recently I towed a trailer full of bricks to the refuse station with no noticeable heat rise .

[B-2]

Thanks for all of the info guys I am still in the building stage. I have just never owned a VW so was worryed about it over heating.
Bill

[92 eyes]

B-2, If you are still building I would suggest you be cautious about how you get cooling air to the engine. One fo the trikes I owned had a big beautiful cargo box in front of the engine and it caused a dead spot in the air flow so the air coming off the engine recirculated into the cooling air intake and caused the engine to run really hot. I discovered this by pure accident when I happened to smell the engine. If you look at many homebuilt trikes you will see many have a storage box sitting in front of the cooling air intake.Go look at a VW Bug and you will see that they went to great lengths to get fresh air to the engine.

[Rsw]

Talked to a guy today and he said timing is very important in keeping one cool.