Talked to Eric at BAT in Sarasota Florida. These folks do all
     kinds of oil related stuff, speciallizing in foreign built
     engines, and smaller US iron(alloy?). Mostly they do racing
     systems, but lottsa other stuff too.

     Dry sumping an Audi engine: He's pretty sure they have already
     engineered the proper pump, and was ready to work with us on
     the Vanagon 50 degree tilt/oil pan problem. He cautions that these
     applications typically are belt driven, ok in a racing engine that
     gets a complete going over after each race, but not suitable for
     someone who never looks into the engine compartment. They can look
     at the possibilities of a gear driven pump. Since the Audi is
     not a super stressed engine, he figures the pump might be a $5-600
     dollar item, whole system with pan, hoses, etc $12-1500 per engine.

     Also discussed the possibility of using hot oil to heat water
     for a Vanagon running an aircooled 911 engine. Took him a minute
     to shift gears, but he was up and running with it and mentioned
     the rectangular oil/water heat exchangers in the catalog.  Three
     hundred bucks for the whole system, plus of course the 3.2 911 engine
     ($7500 plus or minus) and another $2000 or so to MSDS. So yer
     talking ten grand for this one, but I'll bet its nice and you CAN
     have heat!

     So then I called MSDS, and talked with Marty himself.  On the
     heat topic, people in "cold climates" have done two things.
     The first is using an oilcooler to heat the heater water, which
     we just discussed. Incidently, the operating oil temp of his 911
     Syncro, in town is 190-230 degrees. The second option is to
     incorporate a Mercedes 500 preheat system, essentially an electric
     water preheater originally designed to warm things up before the
     engine starts. No doubt this uses lots of amps, and was probably
     not designed for continous use, since once the engine is up to
     temperature, waste engine heat keeps the toesies warm.

     We talked transmissions a while. He maintains that syncro
     transmissions have an design flaw that causes failure between 80K
     and 140K miles. He described it as a bearing problem, but got a
     little evasive when I pressed for details, saying that he
     has developed a solution,  clearly he feels this is proprietary.
     Transmission modification instructions are included when you buy his
     911 kit, clearly he expects you will be facing an rebuild sooner
     or later.

     Incidently, I called for the Kennedy Engineering catalog as well.

     Thats all for now folks. Post comments to the list, which I read off
     the Web; mail sent direct to me may bounce, but copy me anyway.

     Later

     Tom F.
     90 Syncro Westie
     87 Syncro GL
     90 Audi 200 TQW
     tforhan@hr.house.gov