I'm not sure I understand if you made the right conclusion regarding the Audi fwd transaxle, but I wanted to make a statement: Running the Audi trans if it was mounted upside down with a standard rotation engine in a REAR engine layout would give you 5 forward gears and would run on the DRIVE side of the ring gear (look at your own sketch and picture it upside down and you see that the top of the wheel moves in the opposite direction of the bottom.) The kitcar community does this to build a strong mid-engine platform using the Porsche G50 trans. On the downside, you have to come up with a new oil level to get proper oiling, but that's not a huge problem - it just involves some thinking and testing. Also, I wonder if anyone has ever done a Saab 900 eng/trans swap into a bug? That was one mid-engine front driver no one seems to know about and would seem to be an easy swap.
There is a kit to run the trans rear engine. Upside down it's made for the vanagon community. A guy over in Europe makes them. I'm running trans right side up with a reverse rotation engine. Tried to make the video easy to follow but most people I tried to explain it to in person didn't understand without a picture. To clarify. Rear engine, reverse rotation. Trans axle right side up.(only downfall will be running on the coast side of trans
@@Dirtfloorfab, OK, I get it now. I didn't know what trans you were talking about when you mentioned the VW Bus mod. So you will be going Honda then. Running on the coast side of the gear will be interesting. Sounds kinda bad, but I'm sure somebody's been down that road. Use an IR thermometer to monitor temps. I rebuilt my Volvo's rear axle 2 yrs ago and they tell you not to drive more than 15mins the first few times out. I decided to measure my temps at the bearing races and rear cover and found them over 250F. I tried thicker gear oil and temps went up more! I also had gear noise. I took it apart and made changes and brought the temps down to 180F and improved the noise issue. Oil breaks down over 250F and heat is what kills final drives, so if you keep tabs on the temps you'll learn a lot. Good luck, man! I enjoy the channel and the builds! Garage time is the best time, eh?
@@AOGDC10 it'll definitely be a Learning curve when I get back onto the project. I'm hoping that becauee the Honda doesnt produce very much torque the diff will last but we shall see how it pans out might have wasted a couple hundred bucks just to see how it goes. I do plan to have a guage to measure temps atleast temporarily and also to run very very good oil. I think if the Honda doesnt pan out I'll probably go 1.8 t mid engine. But for now I'm hoping to not have to give up my back seat
@@Dirtfloorfab Well, you'll know after about 10mins of driving. I learned that temp can climb to the moon (in a rear axle with a stock 4cyl) in short order even when you're babying it. For lube, I'd recommend going with what the factory/book recommends or what guys on forums say is best. I used an Eaton TrueTrac Torsen-type diff in my rebuild and filled it with Valvoline 80w-90. It acted like a locked spool and when it freed itself it made horrible noise after the oil warmed up. I called their tech support thinking the diff was defective. They never specified the best lube in their instructions, but the guy on the phone told me NEVER use Valvoline. He recommended Shell Spirax which I had to special order. I think it had to have no LSD friction modifiers and couldn't be synthetic. He was right! I drove it that winter and by spring time it was dead silent and has been working perfectly since. Weird! The punchline is that a non-synth, run-of-the-mill, fleet truck lube happened to be the best stuff for the diff.
So I’m digging the idea. I’ve been searching hi and low for an alternative to that $4k on the transaxle. I won’t be using a Honda series engine(ccw), I’ll be using an 8v vw engine(cw) from a mk2 gti. Keeping that in mind if I were to use your idea of the Audi/Passat 5spd would I still need to flip the trans upside down to have 5 forward gears?
@@redlinepaul410 not super firmiliar with the vw stuff but from memory vr6 was only ever mated to transverse trans right? I never knew Audi made so many longitudenal transaxle till I started doing a little research on it
No, vr6 doesnt bolt up to a audi tranny u need adapter also. I put a complete vr6 and 5spd from a Jetta in a rear tube frame with the factory subframe.0
Omg dude changing the head on any engine don't change the bore and explain how running a transmission upsidedown changes anything 😂 a ring and pinion is cut to pull together in forward ring and pinion pushes apart in reverse 💯
I'm not sure I understand if you made the right conclusion regarding the Audi fwd transaxle, but I wanted to make a statement: Running the Audi trans if it was mounted upside down with a standard rotation engine in a REAR engine layout would give you 5 forward gears and would run on the DRIVE side of the ring gear (look at your own sketch and picture it upside down and you see that the top of the wheel moves in the opposite direction of the bottom.) The kitcar community does this to build a strong mid-engine platform using the Porsche G50 trans. On the downside, you have to come up with a new oil level to get proper oiling, but that's not a huge problem - it just involves some thinking and testing. Also, I wonder if anyone has ever done a Saab 900 eng/trans swap into a bug? That was one mid-engine front driver no one seems to know about and would seem to be an easy swap.
There is a kit to run the trans rear engine. Upside down it's made for the vanagon community. A guy over in Europe makes them.
I'm running trans right side up with a reverse rotation engine. Tried to make the video easy to follow but most people I tried to explain it to in person didn't understand without a picture.
To clarify. Rear engine, reverse rotation. Trans axle right side up.(only downfall will be running on the coast side of trans
@@Dirtfloorfab, OK, I get it now. I didn't know what trans you were talking about when you mentioned the VW Bus mod. So you will be going Honda then. Running on the coast side of the gear will be interesting. Sounds kinda bad, but I'm sure somebody's been down that road. Use an IR thermometer to monitor temps. I rebuilt my Volvo's rear axle 2 yrs ago and they tell you not to drive more than 15mins the first few times out. I decided to measure my temps at the bearing races and rear cover and found them over 250F. I tried thicker gear oil and temps went up more! I also had gear noise. I took it apart and made changes and brought the temps down to 180F and improved the noise issue. Oil breaks down over 250F and heat is what kills final drives, so if you keep tabs on the temps you'll learn a lot. Good luck, man! I enjoy the channel and the builds! Garage time is the best time, eh?
@@AOGDC10 it'll definitely be a Learning curve when I get back onto the project. I'm hoping that becauee the Honda doesnt produce very much torque the diff will last but we shall see how it pans out might have wasted a couple hundred bucks just to see how it goes. I do plan to have a guage to measure temps atleast temporarily and also to run very very good oil.
I think if the Honda doesnt pan out I'll probably go 1.8 t mid engine. But for now I'm hoping to not have to give up my back seat
@@Dirtfloorfab Well, you'll know after about 10mins of driving. I learned that temp can climb to the moon (in a rear axle with a stock 4cyl) in short order even when you're babying it. For lube, I'd recommend going with what the factory/book recommends or what guys on forums say is best.
I used an Eaton TrueTrac Torsen-type diff in my rebuild and filled it with Valvoline 80w-90. It acted like a locked spool and when it freed itself it made horrible noise after the oil warmed up. I called their tech support thinking the diff was defective. They never specified the best lube in their instructions, but the guy on the phone told me NEVER use Valvoline. He recommended Shell Spirax which I had to special order. I think it had to have no LSD friction modifiers and couldn't be synthetic. He was right! I drove it that winter and by spring time it was dead silent and has been working perfectly since. Weird! The punchline is that a non-synth, run-of-the-mill, fleet truck lube happened to be the best stuff for the diff.
Spptv and this channel very cool!
Appreciate it man
Finally, wath model and year is the transmision?
So I’m digging the idea. I’ve been searching hi and low for an alternative to that $4k on the transaxle. I won’t be using a Honda series engine(ccw), I’ll be using an 8v vw engine(cw) from a mk2 gti. Keeping that in mind if I were to use your idea of the Audi/Passat 5spd would I still need to flip the trans upside down to have 5 forward gears?
You can call Kennedy Engineering for the adapter. They have adapters for audi made to fit with flywheel, clutch, and adapter plate around $550-650.
That's who I'm working with but they don't want to mess with the flywheel for one off setup. Flywheel is fairly easy to figure out in my eyes anyways
Cool, I built 73 vw bug with a vr6 and 5 spd all from a Jetta gli. Good luck with the build my friend.
@@redlinepaul410 not super firmiliar with the vw stuff but from memory vr6 was only ever mated to transverse trans right? I never knew Audi made so many longitudenal transaxle till I started doing a little research on it
@@redlinepaul410 by the way I bet that little bug would scoot
No, vr6 doesnt bolt up to a audi tranny u need adapter also. I put a complete vr6 and 5spd from a Jetta in a rear tube frame with the factory subframe.0
Omg dude changing the head on any engine don't change the bore and explain how running a transmission upsidedown changes anything 😂 a ring and pinion is cut to pull together in forward ring and pinion pushes apart in reverse 💯
Do you make happen?
Finish the Valiant please before you get too involved in the VW, you don't want to get to many irons in the fire at once.
Already have too many irons lol but yeah that's the plan just parts collecting for the bug