I disagree, and it has nothing to do with me putting ford engines into
syncros either!  But since it isn't the engineering that caused the ford
4x4 van to come apart, you can't realistically praise VW engineers for the
syncros not doing so. Ford doesn't make any factory 4x4 vans, they are
retrofits by quigley and century if memory serves in the aftermarket, and
then sold back through ford dealer channels as Ford 4x4s... so keep that in
mind... not to mention that things coming loose has very little to do with
engineering in the real world... you can't engineer a failsafe method for
making installers use threadlocker etc and a torque wrench.  I think there
is far more to scratch heads about when it comes to VAG engineering than
outright praise. Firesuit on.

Jim

At 05:00 PM 5/31/2006, John Bange wrote:
>My personal favorite pic from the collection is the one showing the Ford
>(with only 10K miles on the odometer) being repaired that's captioned:
>"The road to Scorpion Bay was 2 hours of nasty washboard. It shook this $95k
>4x4 Ford apart."
>Something like that sure makes you appreciate VW and Steyr/Puch engineering.

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