Thank you for taking a look at this short tutorial by Vic Ahmed.....it tells you of the mods that need to be done to the ABL 1.9 liter Long-blocks to make them compatible with US-spec 1.6 diesel or 1.9 diesel applications. This particular series of pictures show one of our new 1.9 ABL Long-Blocks being prepped and modified for installation into a 1981 VW Rabbit (Caddy) Pickup truck. Pretty much the same mods would need to be performed for installation into most other 1.6 diesel applications such as Vanagon Diesel etc. Most of this involves the mounting points for the "VW Rabbit" Style of water-pump commonly used on the 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 Diesel engines as well as the N. American-spec 1.9 diesel engines. The ABL engines utilize a different kind of water-pump housing which is NOT compatible with the "VW Rabbit" style of water pump. While the Upper two and the lower rear-most water-pump mounting points are the same as the "VW Rabbit" style of water-pump, the lower forward-most mounting point is not. Therefore this needs to be ground off almost flush with the block surface as shown in the following pictures. This is quite easily done using an air-powered abrasive cut-off tool. The end result is that now your water-pump mounts to the engine block using three of the four original bolts it came with. We have performed over a hundred such conversions and put tens of thousands of miles on many of those, and found no adverse effects as the result of this modification. The water-pump housing itself is strong enough and possesses enough structural rigidity to withstand being held on by three bolts instead of four.

Step # 1: Looking at your new 1.9 engine from the water-pump side, cut off or grind off the raised threaded cast-iron boss which is the lowest one on the left (closest to the timing belt side) as shown in the picture on the right.