That was me who looked into getting a custom ring & pinion made for the
Vanagon automatic.  Due to the complexities of the automatic ring & pinion
the production costs are quite high.  After showing the R&P to a few
machinists, I was told we were looking at $2,500+ to produce a new R&P.
Obviously, I would have had more than one built, but the costs would not
have come down appreciably unless the number of units exceded 50.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jeff
www.vanagonparts.com

Euroteile
2301 Vehicle Drive #G
Rancho Cordova, CA  95670
916.638.9914  Phone
916.638.9916  Fax

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of Michael Diehr
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 8:31 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: TDIs and Automatic -- Custom Gears?

Given the increasing interest in TDI conversions for Vanagons, and
the demonstrated superiority of the automatic transmission :-) and
the apparent mismatch of final drive ratio with the TDI engine:

I'm wondering if there is some critical mass at which it would be
feasible to get a bunch of custom gears built?   Someone on the
vanagon list recently (forgot who) said they looked into getting
custom gears machined and it was "expensive."  How expensive?    Was
this the price for 1 set?  Would ordering 10 drop the price?

Personally, if I'm spending $5k-$7k for a TDI conversion for an
automatic, I might be willing to drop $500 or more on some overpriced
custom hardware to change the final drive ratio.   If a group of us
could get together, I wonder if we could solve this problem at a
reasonable price?