Hi John & all

>  Helmut says the new South African van gear boxes have improved torque 
>handling to reliably accept the higher 5 cylinder motor loads.  Are these 
>improved torque rated SA Kombi boxes available with 5 speeds?  I can

I don't know about this at all.
 
>imagine an unhappy situation in which only the four speed like your 
>father's received the redesign impovement funds, leaving the 5 speed 
>unimproved and safely applicable only to the 2.1L gas motor.  Could you 
>check into this?

My father's van has the normal (older, in this context) box, as has most of
the V6 conversions that I know of, so I would assume that the standard 4
speed box is strong enough.

>standard is also used in SA, but here, vehicle left and right terms 
>always assume a view from the driver's seat.

Front is Front, etc, John Muir.

>  You said, "(Of course the sliding door is on the left hand side of the 
>vehicle.)"  "Of course" to you perhaps, but not so "of course" to 
>American readers.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that drivers 
>travel on the left side in SA, whereas they travel on the right side in 

Of course. American readers know that we drive on the right, i.e. left :-)
side of the road. Thence the 'of course'.

>that.  I'd definately prefer to run the exhaust to the curb side and keep 
>the two plastic water drains and the under-kitchen propane tank just as 

Since the exhaust comes out the left side of the engine (when installed in a
van) you'll need quite a bit of spaghetti to get it to the US curb. Over
here it's easy...

>Everything looks stock up to the point where these two pipes feed into 
>the Y."  It surely does sound like Audi/VW decided not to spend any 
>research money on developing another set of exhaust manifolds for these 
>installations.  But then, perhaps it was decided that having the exhaust 

I don't know what VW/Audi did in their installation. I'm talking about a
conversion did by a local mechanic, and I'm referring to what he used to
shoe-horn the Audi engine in there. VW might well have made up custom stuff
for the 5 cyl Kombi, but the point is that stock Audi stuff can be adapted
fairly easily.

>plumbing is messy enough.  Contemplating the addition of a turbo and 
>inner cooler really brings visions of a plumbers' convention.

Or a cross between Heath Robinson, Rube Goldberg and Brazil (the movie).

What I would say at this point is, stop talking about it and just do it.
Write down what you do and take lotsa pictures. You're bound to pick up
problems along the way, no matter how thoroughly you try to suss things out.
But it'll be worth it in the end :-)

W
--
Wouter de Waal        Phone : +27 21 683 5490
Development Engineer  Fax   : +27 21 683 5435
CCII Systems
Kenilworth, South Africa