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I know, I know, I know, old topic...

And the car I'm going to talk about here wasn't offered with a diesel in North America (or at all, I think...) Therefore, it won't be the donor for such a project. But, it would be the inspiration.

My idea comes from the Alfa Romeo Milano's drive system.



The car has a front engine, and RWD.

Here's the thing.

It has a rear transmission.

The driveshaft runs directly off the crank, to the transmission.

Here's my idea.

Put a VW TDI in the nose. That's by far the easiest source for a modern sub-2.0L turbodiesel engine in North America. That's not something too unconventional.

Now, for the unconventional part. Rather than adapt a Suzuki or Toyota tranny to the VW engine, I would use a VW tranny. No, there wasn't a VW RWD tranny.

But, there were VW longitudal FWD trannies.

I would put the longitudal tranny in the BACK of the car, and run a driveshaft.

A couple of positive side effects of this: larger footwell, and better weight distribution (the latter is why Alfa Romeo did it in the Milano.)

Think it would work?

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1986 Volkswagen Golf | 1.6L NA diesel | 5spd manual | now a parts car
1992 Mazda Miata | 1.6L NA gasser | 5spd manual

Inspiration, detirmination, and persperation....if you have those and a donor you can make it work. Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it cant be done, it just means that it hasn't been done before.

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I'll keep an eye out for you!

To err is human...
I am more human than most.

Check out the builder's log section. Pete Gossett is doing a similar build, but he is using the 1.8 from an old GTI mated up the the drivetrain of a Porsche 924. The 924 is front engine, rear wheel drive, with a transaxle mounted in the rear. The rear mounted transaxle is rumored to be the same as the ones that came in the Audi 5000s, but this is something I have yet to see proven. Since the older VW diesels, the mechanical injection ones, share the same bolt pattern as the VW gas engines, it would be a very feasible swap. As to the newer electronic injection TDI engines, you would need to fab up an adapter plate, but the new engines have loads of potential. For about $1k in mods to the injectors and fueling, you can triple the power and still have low end torque.

-Andy

Actually, I thought that the VW inline-fours all shared the same bolt pattern, and it was just electronics that were a royal pain... I know I've read where an ALH (early Mk4) TDI was mated to an 020 (75-96, IIRC) trans...

Anyway, I'll go read that thread. If the trans is the same type as in the Audi 5000, even better - there were Audi 5000 diesels, so finding the correct gear ratios might be downright EASY.

FWIW, I would probably use a 1Z (96-97 Passat, 97 Jetta) or AHU (98-early 99 Jetta) engine, or a pre-2000 ALH engine (New Beetles being the best source, as Jettas and Golfs were only offered with it for half a model year). Those engines have no immobilizer here in the US, and therefore don't need the instrument cluster to work.

I wouldn't be doing this build soon (too busy fixing up the 85 ), but I'm just gathering info for now. Putting things together on paper, and then eventually, I'll build.

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1986 Volkswagen Golf | 1.6L NA diesel | 5spd manual | now a parts car
1992 Mazda Miata | 1.6L NA gasser | 5spd manual