At 11:24 22/11/98 -0500, Pat wrote:
>I have been giving much thought to the Audi transmission deal again.  We had
>a tread months ago regarding using an Audi 5 speed trans in the vanagon with
>diff flipped.  I was supposed to investigate the possibility of such a mod.
>Well, time has past and I still haven't got to it yet.  I am proficient at
>tearing down transaxles and the possibility stills exists, but I too was
>thinking of just making a rabbit motor run backwards.  The only problem that
>has not been considered is making the oil pump feed the motor instead of
>blowing air down the pickup tube.
>Or am I wrong?  Will the pump work turning either direction?
>If not, one solution may be using an oil pump from a diesel rabbit.  I
>believe the timing belt on these motors turns the intermediate shaft the
>opposite direction of the gas motors.  For a reverse running gas motor, this
>would be perfect.
>Can anybody else think of other problems?  I think the oil seals on the
>crank, cam and intermediate shaft are directional, they kinda wick the oil
>back into the block.  Maybe I'm thinking of the air cooled motors here.
>I'll check into that.

The Alternator and Water Pump will also be spinning backwards.  I'm not
sure if this is a good thing or not for the alternator, but the cooling
will be drastically effected.  I suppose one could always use an electric
water pump.

The reverse cam shaft isn't a problem as I know of a few companies that
grind their own cams from factory billets.  I am currently looking into
getting a cam that does the opposite of all the other cams out there - give
me more bottom end power at the expense of high end power.  Sort of like
what VW did with the VR6 in the Eurovan.

>The reason all this appeals to me is that Audi 5 speeds cost 50 bucks at my
>junkyard and Audi or rabbit motors cost a C note.
>
>With all due respect to Ken, this is much more practical than spending
>1600-1700 dollars on a transmission that we know little about.  Like parts
>prices and even parts availability.  What happens if the thing breaks and
>you can't get parts for it?  If my Audi setup breaks I simply go to the
>junkyard and buy another complete trans for 50 bucks.
>
>-PSD.

Personally I would investigate making the Audi transmission go in reverse.
As there are too many unknows in making the making a water-cooled VW engine
spin in reverse.  My next question is, of one can make an Audi transmission
spin in reverse, can you make the rear differential of a Quattro function
correctly in reverse?  If so this would solve a lot of dead VC problems and
give us a much better 4x4 system.

-- David Marshall                                    --
-- 78 1.8L VW Rabbit, 80 2.0L VW Caddy, 87 Audi 5KSQ --
-- 85 VW Cabriolet, 88 2.0L VW Syncro 16" Double Cab --
-- Volkswagen Homepage   http://www.volkswagen.org   --
-- Volkswagen/Audi Parts http://parts.volkswagen.org --
-- mailto:david@volkswagen.org - Quesnel, BC, Canada --