what does the heat exchanger in a vw engine do?
Heat exchangers are liquid intercoolers; usually cools the charge by cooling the intake manifold. Mainly for supercharged cars but I suppose you could do the same in a turbocharged vehicle.
If you are talking about an old air cooled VW, they heat up to give you heat in an old bug or van
Lets assume you are talking about the old classic bug. The Heat exchangers use the exhaust gases to warm up some tubing under and alongside of the engine. This has two effects 1) It removes heat from the engine.. since the engine is air cooled, any time you can remove heat from it, the engine runs better and is more efficient 2) The tubes/pipes get hot.. The engine fan also pushes fresh (outside) air thru THOSE tubes and then into the car if you open up the respective dampers (the levers on the tranny tunnel). THe hot tubes warm up that air and so the inside of the car heats up but does not get any of the exhaust gasses that the engine produces. It is a pretty efficient system in moderate climates and the inside of a VW bug gets quite warm. (In Cold weather or snow the efficiency of the air cooled engine is sometimes TOO good and the tubes never warm up enough so you will hear a lot of griping about cold bugs in the snow). Did that answer your question?? .
