I know of an 'add a cog' conversion for sale....
anyone know anything about these & how successful they are?
An overdrive 5th in the KG would be great.

i know that they require a bit of body work to fit it in as the nose cone is larger in diameter, also need a different shifter

just reading an article in an old VW mag.
If its the same conversion, the box has a bigger nose cone
but the whole unit is no longer.

is that the one in hot vws and dunebuggies

be worth reading the write up on 5 speeds on http://www.geneberg.com  before you do anything. I thouthg it had some really good stuff to sat and Gene was always the benchmark. He made 5 speeds before porsche if I'm not mistaken.

I read about one by Tru-Shift in May 91
Australian VW Power.
The Gene Berg thing is an interesting read...

Are you chasing a 5spd gearbox, I know a bloke who had one for sale, cant recall how much it was though.. let me know if you are interested and I will chase up his number.

I remember seeing one for sale at Action Day last year.
thanks but I think I'm over the idea now.

5 speed would be great IMHO but just keep in mind that most kits have the standard 4th ratio (0.89, which is overdrive at any rate) as the 5th ratio, and shorter gaps in between. Unless you put a taller 5th in, it wouldnt change your cars cruising revs at all.

I have a 5 speed and it is getting sorted at the moment as it was jumping out of 4th. will get it back soon so it will be interesting to see how it goes. It means that the motor revs lower and cools slower as well. Maybe why the motor was cookde out a bit. I am going to put in a t4 motor with upright cooling if I cannot fit in the normal cooling assembly.
The 5 speed box does look pretty good stuff though and I hope that graeme from midcoast volks werks can get it together again.

tdegens: Just because a motor is running slower and cooling slower doesn't mean it will overheat easier, the VQ engine is designed o cool itself at the right rate no matter how fast/slow it's going, otherwise it wouldn't be safe to let it idle for any length of time, the harder you rev the herder the fan blows, sure, but you're also generating more heat which is why it has to blow hard, if you don't generate the heat you don't need the cooling to get rid of it. If your motor was cooked there's probably another reason, check your tinware is all there and your thermostat is working and connected properly. If there is a problem you might as well try and sort it...

...what Pete McC said is absoloutly true - have a look around for other issues, something sounds wrong....

R

Yeah but there are also some thermodynamical considerations. High torque and low speed will run hotter than higher speed and lower torque, corresponding to equal power, which means the same road speed, for instance. But the definitions of high and low are variable.

Greater air flow (not just to cooling fan), expansion cooling, lower combustion efficiency, higher combustion pressures, I don't know, there are a bunch of things which could affect it.

While testing an early eighties diesel for exhaust particulates, we noticed that this trend seemed to apply. On VW engines, this may correspond to 'lugging' the engine, which would be bad for it anyway, so you wouldn't do it. I suspect that the range over which a Volksie aircooled engine works best is quite adequately cooled, as Pete said.

Still, I like the diesel principle: heaps of torque from down low. I'd love to be able to cruise at 100 doing 1500rpm. Perhaps a fifth gear would be useful when going down gentle hills. Why have the engine hooning away at 4000rpm when it's under very little load?