Well, my 89 Golf Gti 8v has been sat for a while with a BAM 20v conversion underway and i've nearly completed the work......however i'm just not feeling this as a real challenge. Loaaaads of folk have done it done it well - I'm not bothered about that too much however my enthusiasm has wained. Made the regretful decision to pull the lump and gearbox out and go for another new start. The new member of the 'family' last year - my Porsche 996 has well and truly put an end to any drive pushing me to build a fast petrol golf. I got a real sense of achievement carrying out the engine conversion of my Caddy from knackered SDi, to a complete working 1.9TDi with electric steering etc etc. I had thought about taking the van to the next stage of performance and I located a low mileage 2.0TDi with DSG donor vehicle - for the right price. The benefit of acquiring a complete car is that every single part can be at your disposal if needed. The engine had taken a whack and it had been pushed back - basically I had to fit a replacement inlet manifold, and egr valve. Once I had the engine back in place on a new mount, I found the turbo was noisy - closer examination discovered the cold side had pushed into the steering knuckle bulge in the firewall and broken the flimsy ali neck. Out with the turbo, and a new core was ordered - all fitted and reinstalled and all cushty. After a few weeks of deliberation and chewing the idea over - plus some online research I concluded that the golf would have a new heart and a modern one at that. It's early days but i've made a start with in depth research using ELSAWIN, and alot of online reading - seeing who else has managed to graft a DSG transmission into a car not designed for such advanced technology. Turns out a guy in Germany has done this with two Corrado's - one is basically an R32 (mk4 Golf) engine and tranny - which is old tech really but a great job none the less. The other one is a G60 with a DSG......now that whetted my interest. No real information out there and all roads of research seem to lead back to his website which has scant detail. Further reading uncovered a guy in Croatia on Ed38 with "TAS v6" as his handle - He took a perfectly nice 1.0L Lupo and mated it with a Seat Leon FR (2,0TFSi DSG). I unpicked his build thread and it seemed like alot of hard work - basically the Lupo became the Leon in every other way than body. He even hacked the ABS and engineered new chassis parts to support the new mechanicals. In no time at all he had ripped it all down to start a more interesting project.....installing the Leon gear into a Mk1 Golf. Well he's managed it - and it's a great achievement! Inspired by such a brazen, balls-out attitude, I decided my idea was just as daft as his but nevertheless a worthy challenge.
In theory, the engine, transmission, instruments, wiring, modules and controls do not know (nor care) what tin box they are mounted in. Once you get your head around this and forget all the misconceptions about what can't be done - it's plain sailing (haha!). My mission was to find out what the donor car can live without, and what it needs to work as I want it, in its new body. The donor car is a high spec L&K octavia with plenty of gizmos, but an hour with vagcom and a print out of the fuse assignments, allowed me the code-out almost every module that would be superfluous including ABS. The DGS transmission has an integral wheel speed sensor picked up internally from the differential. What was on my mind initially other than of course the engine transplant, was how the steering, stalks, key and brake/throttle will happen. A chat with Tas-V6 about his work, was interesting - he has taken the top end parts of the newer column and adapted them onto the old steering column. This is Job1 for me - if I cant get this to work, then I have a problem. Comparison of a couple of spare columns - Mk5 and Mk2 Golfs Old column and stalks.. Donor column stripped of lock barrel and plastics. Old column barrel cut away and bearing support machined down to desired size... New column meld of old and new temporarily in place... Stalks and lock barrel test fit... The old column splines are same design as new, so modern wheel could fit if required..... The aperture in the mk2 dash for the column squib housing is offset to fit the ignition barrel the right. I can see the dash needing a little trim here but not a great deal. Next up - pedal controls.
Wow ! I'll be watching this with interest. I would love to drop the New Polo GTI engine with DSG in my Mk2. Maybe one day ? As above, you were saying about the new and old column splines being the same. So could I easily fit a new style Golf steering wheel in my Mk2 ?
Richard - provided it's the "large spline" model (iirc 1986->) then yes. You can buy a spline adapter if you have the smaller spline in any case.
There is a seat cordoba mk1 in Poland with r32 DSG swap. Try finding it on FB or google ,,genowefa garage" should come up as well. Good luck.
Joe - yes, that's kind of it in a nutshell although might not be strictly daily. To best of my knowledge this engine/trans variant in a mk2 might be the first of its kind - although don't quote me. Just had a look at the location for the Mk2 Golf power steering pump on the donor engine - looks like aspiration hoses run through there. I have a fabia VRS power rack that uses a remote electric pump - might see if this could be adapted.....the all-electric octavia setup just isn't suited physically from what I can see.
Thanks for this mate. The benefit of the Mk4 Golf platform R32/DSG is that there wasn't much canbus (might not even be any!) - and this makes the electrical side more straightforward. Don't get me wrong - it's still a great achievement for them, however it's not quite the same deal as later cars.
I will be watching this closely, although I'm not a diesel fan. I've always liked this kind of builds.
Brake pedal assembly removed from donor - two 8" long bolts fasten right through the brake MC flange, through servo into the pedal mounting plate. The brake pedal switch is a mk2 item test fitted into the donor pedal. Earlier Mk5 platforms had this switch however the later models went over to a sensor mounted on the brake mc itself. I may well have to cut the bulkhead firewall and take some of the mounting plate over to the Mk2 to ensure it bolts-up nice and secure. That's as much as I can do on the brake pedal for now until the engine is out of the way. More items in my cross-hairs.......... DSG gear stick The only part of this which is actually mechanical is the park lock which is cable operated and locks a pawl into the diff to stop the car rolling away. Effectively this stick could become anything you like - such as the rotary selector on the lambo's..... The stick is effectively a 'module' and talks down the powertrain canbus to the engine and transmission, instruments etc. Anyways - more bits to consider.... Instrument cluster... Hazard light switch... Light switch and dimmer... Hopefully all these items aren't going to be too tricky to integrate - prefer to keep it looking relatively "stock" so going to attempt using the original Mk2 Golf switches purely to get the correct signals needed for the Power Control Module to switch the lights. Will code-out the filament cold-test to avoid any hassle but even so I am still going to have to wire the donor loom into the original Mk2 lights......all of them!
Good luck. I'm going to try doing this with as little items as possible. I replyed to the dsg thread.
