[Vwdiesel] 944 Diesel

[William J Toensing]

When I lived in the LA area I knew a man by the name of Ed Felt in Long Beach who specialized in diesel conversions. This was back in the late '70s, early '80s.He had bought a container of new British Leyland diesels of various sizes & was transplanting them into various cars including one Porsche 924. His favorite car for a transplant was a Mazda RX2 & RX3 since he could buy like new ones with bad rotary engines for a song. He would fabrocate new bell housings to mate the existing transmissions to the BL diesels. A supervisor of mine had bought a Chevy Vega with a BL diesel from him. He also put his diesels into some Ford Pintos. Whether Ed Felt is still around, I don't know. I also heard of a Tony Campana who ran Hot Rod City in Torrance, CA. Heard he specialized in early '50s Cadillac & Olds OHV V-8s in other cars. Once in a quest for a 100 MPG car, I heard he transplanted a Kobota 3 cylinder diesel which he turbocharged,into either a small Mazda R-100 coupe or a NSU rotary coupe. I heard it had the preformance of an older 26 HP VW from the early '50s before the more common 36 HP VW, but he obtained 102 MPG at 50 MPH. If anyone reading this can add to this info, let us know.