I would be very interested to hear more thoughts bout putting an audi drive
train in a vanagon.  The shifter mechanism would have to be fabricated along
with a trans mount. And uh, if the trans width is different, the drive axle
length would have to change.  I'm going to the junky tommorrow to pull apart
an audi 5000 trans and see if I can flip the diff....
-----Original Message-----
Date: Saturday, February 28, 1998 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: Audi Parts in a Vanagon (Frankensteinagon?)

>>   I'm suprized that the list has not found a complete front
>>   drive motor and trans. setup that will fit, connection at
>>   the axles? It seams to me that a large buick, drive train
>>   or maybe something of that size would be the way to go.....?
>
>Well, the audi drive train (Quattro would be my preferance) could probably
>be made to fit, but you'd need to find a way to flip the differential so
>that the drive direction was reversed. This could be done on old VW trannys
>because in a bug application they went one way, and the bus used reduction
>boxes and required reverse rotation. For the audi box you might have soem
>problems with the case not being symmetrical, and having to do some
>machining, making adaptors, etc. I want to check this out sometime, but if
>someone on the list has an audi shop manual, how about measuring the
>distance (by eyeball obviously) from the center of the pinion gear to each
>diff mounting flange. If it's the same, and there's adequate room in the
>case, you could probably reverse the diff.