Steven,

Thank you for enlightening me from an engineering stand
point.............with positive info from you like that, you are going to
change my opinions of engineering pinheads out there that say things cannot
work without putting forth the effort to test....just crunching data on
paper.

My brother, heaven help him, is an EE, Masters degree.  Over the years,
there have been many electrical things that  I have found to work that he
says no way....Such as when you have poor reception on your TV rabbit ears
and you get a damp cloth and put on the end of a rabbit ear and your
reception improves to clear as a bell..........argued  that there was no
correlation between the wet rag and the improved
reception..................however actual testing proved otherwise.

Here is a man that has done the conversion and says it works well.  I do not
have a diesel van, but if I ever get one and the tranny is going south, I
should not hesitate to put in an air-cooled tranny armed with this info.

Steve, don't get frustrated with the naysayers...........thanks for sharing
the info.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Denis" <NotaJeep@AOL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: aircooled transaxle with 1.6NA diesel

> In a message dated 1/17/02 5:46:56 PM Eastern Standard Time,
mdlind@rica.net
> writes:
>
> << Having the same torque at the flywheel at any given road speed
>  would not translate into having the same torque at the wheels with
>  two differently geared transmissions. >>
>
> Don't do it then..I think I've covered this reallly really well.
>
> I KNOW all this  ratio crap (I said crap...can I say crap?) I'm an
*engineer*
> for herbie's sake!..
> HOWEVER the air-cooled tranny works QUITE well in the diesel van..
> Instead of going buzzing around like an escapee from the Luftwaffa,
> "arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhh!" you drive it like a trailways
> bus.."Hoooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.."
> NOBODY who has not tried it can tell you how well it works/doesn't and
it's
> NOT a big deal to undo if you DON'T like it!
> I'm done with this subject (insert cheering here)
> steve...
>