Short question to the VW/924 gurus out here...

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Hi!

Short question; do the Audi TDI lumps share the same bell house pattern as the 924 Audi engine? What about the gearboxes? Are they sort of interchangeable? I know the oil pans are different, that's a smaler issue

Thanks for any hints! VW is not my playground, my knowledge is very smal and I know there are a quadzillion different engines & gearboxes about... Which is confusing, to say the least

Cheers,
Jan

[dubmeister]

Does the 924 not have a transaxle ?

[shin2chin]

Audi 5 cylinder engines are the only ones that come close to being ''bolt in'' but still require a fair bit of work. The drive train isn't up to much of a power hike and with the cost involved its cheaper to buys 924s or a 944.
People in the states have fitted V8s but I imagine that the handling is pretty curse word.

[TurboDieselWeasel]

May 29, 2014 11:23:21 GMT @automatik said:

Planning to rape another coupe with some tractor engine?

Who, me? As if I would do silly things like that...

[RobinJI]

May 29, 2014 12:08:12 GMT shin2chin said:

Audi 5 cylinder engines are the only ones that come close to being ''bolt in'' but still require a fair bit of work. The drive train isn't up to much of a power hike and with the cost involved its cheaper to buys 924s or a 944.
People in the states have fitted V8s but I imagine that the handling is pretty curse word.

Basically what he said. Nothing's a 'bolt-in' swap from the VW stable, with the closest being the 5 pots (Which I think might mean that the 90deg Audi V6/8's are close too? not sure if that applies to the V6 diesels?) This might make a 5 pot diesel from a T4 or Volvo 850 an option, I thiiinnkk they're similar to the 5 pot petrols in terms of bolt patterns.

However, a handful are starting to get the 1.8t 4 pot petrol engines thrown in them, which fit identically to the 4 pot diesel engines. This is done using a bell housing cut off a FWD golf/a3/leon etc box, and then a very simple adapter plate between the torque tube and the bell-housing. Add a transit clutch plate and it seems to be a relatively straight forward swap in there. Obviously you'd need to make up mounts etc, but if you used an engine from an A4/6 or Passat then the engine's already set-up for longitudinal mounting and should only need some simple fab to get it in.

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Hi!

Excellent! Thanks a lot for this information! I figured something like "if there's an engine, there's a geabox and if there's a gearbox there's a bell housing" I did not realise that these have a torque tube and extended input shaft for the gearbox - this makes things a bit easyer I guess So a 4-pot VAG TDI lump should be doable?

Oh the temptations... There's a rather cheap yellow 944 kitted 924 quite close to me and I keep looking at the ad and scratch my chin...

I've worked on quite a few of these lately - they seem to be rather rott-resistant and very simpel, mechanically. Though I'm yet to drive one.

Cheers,
Jan

[duncanmartin]

Shells were galvanised from 1980 onwards. IIRC, the front suspension is basically Mk1 Golf, and the back is super beetle. There are bits that are becoming unavailable/scarce (eg parts for the dogleg gearbox in the Turbo), but it's mostly pretty good. Dashboards often split at the demister slots and are expensive to replace, so most people put up with the cracks. The 924 owners club is a good resource, though they might not be too impressed if you were to take a good original car and chop it about.
The S has power steering, but the NA and Turbo don't and the steering is quite heavy at low speed (could be worse if you put a heavier engine in). Generally, they are good fun to drive though.

Cheers
Duncan

[RobinJI]

I was about to link you to a build thread of a guy putting a 1.8t in a 924, but since I last looked the forum's changed so you have to be a member.

Yep, rear mounted transaxle with a torque tube through to a clutch up front. The mounting between the torque tube and bell-housing's pretty much 4 bolts in a square and a couple of dowels if I remember right, so crazily easy to adapt other bell housings onto. I looked into fitting a 1.8t into one a while back but decided I couldn't part with the Scirocco so didn't bother in the end.

[ChasR]

They may be galvanised but they do still rot. Sills are the main weak point on these, possibly followed the front mounting point of the rear beam. Admittedly, for the era they are not too bad it has to be said (say a MkIV Escort which in comparison is quite poor on the rust front).

[TurboDieselWeasel]

If you've owned a Merc, no rust will scare you anymore

It's a common missbeliev that galvanic treatment will prevent rust - but it certainly slows things down The four we have at work are from southern italy, that has certanly helped. But there's virtually no rust on any of them (we have two early Turbos in same red/white colour combo btw. ).

Thanks for all the input! I'm thinking pretty hard right now...

Cheers,
Jan

[TurboDieselWeasel]