tank ok, panic past

Fuel tank interference resolved-ish, ready for welding mounts.

I took a look through the Bentley manual and figured out what was sticking over the flywheel: part of the cooling system. Above the flywheel are 2 different bits that stick out. First is a cooling pipe (outlet flange, according to Bentley) with 3 glow plugs sticking out of it. This, I believe, was to help get the engine warm for cold temperature engine starts. The glowplug bit is attached to a pipe fitting that bolts to the engine. Coolant passes from within the engine (water jacket) out through that pipe. The coolant is then optionally warmed before passing through the EGR cooler. An alternate route for the coolant is to the top of the radiator. The bugger in the system is the pipe that sticks straight out from the glowplug thing that routes to the EGR cooler. In the Bentley drawing, the glowplug thing isn't there, so its a little confusing.

I am going to look into 2 different alternatives to resolve this. First, I'd like to try to re-route the connection from the block to the outlet flange. I think with a small stretch of pipe with a 90* bend in it, that whole operation can be moved around to the side. This should be relatively easy to do, once I source parts.

Second, I want to see just how important the EGR cooler is. I can see how the high heat of exhaust gas entering the engine would be bad. My real question is "how necessary is the EGR in my install?". I mean, I'm going to run BioDiesel, and that produces considerably less pollutants than regular diesel. The aircooled engine I pulled out was probably a bigger pooluter than this new engine will be without the EGR and without the catalytic converter. Lastly, this bus does not require smog testing.

Technically, I could pull all the smog stuff off this engine and drive perfectly legally. Ethically, though, I'm struggling. The whole point of this project is to embrace the "leave lighter footprints" concept and removing all of the pollution control devices seems to fly against that. I'll talk with Justin the TDI magic-man and see if he has any strong ideas. At this point, though, I am leaning very much in the direction of removing the smog control devices.... if I can confirm my suspicion that the pollution produced after its removal would still be better than the old aircooled engine when running at least b50 (50% BioDiesel / 50% dinoDiesel) as I must in Winter.