I know a lot of people may think putting a vr6 in a little old mk1 might be silly, but when i picked up a pretty solid mk1 with no engine for 40 and a complete running VR6 vento for 350!!! It just had to be done!! I picked the mk1 in january and it was sat in my shed till july untill i got the VR6 and finished my college course, but in august out came my angle grinder! Having read up a little on this transplant before i got stuck in, i decided to use the complete VR6 subframe as this would give me bigger brakes, no problems with drive shafts and wider track for better handling. Much thanks goes out to the vwcaddy forum for all their usefull info, as some of the guys on there have done this swap before. On to the swap. Well basically, i started with this empty engine bay And i have transformed it to this This is what it now looks like with the VR lump dropped in I got loads of pics of what i have done if anyone is really interested. Just wanted to see what people thought really!!! Thanks for looking
Great work! As per David, get it finished! A VR in a Mk1 isnt a very silly thing to do anyway, they weigh about the same as a 20VT once you've plumbed in the intercooler, turbo and all the pipework anyway!
V nice, Nothing wrong with a mk1 VR6 if its done properly with the subframe like you have done. They get a bit wobbly withought. Good effort. Best car, best engine imo.
I was waiting for the old, it wont handle comment!!! Thanks for the encouraging feedback, i thought everyone would hate it being a 'big old heavy' VR lump. I was saying i had other pictures, these are all of getting to where i am at now, with the engine in ( i took loads and loads of pics of everything!! just for my own benefit really). Its really quite involved getting this far, with lining everything up and gettting it to look right. I wanted to try and keep the subframe install as standard as looking as possible. To do this i decided that the best way of acheiving this would be to use as much from the vento as possible. So i used the mounting points from the vento. This is how i butchered the chassis legs from the vento!! How the chassis legs looked on the subframe The original mk1 wishbone legs After i took an angle grinder to it!! The first offering up, a little choping required me thinks! I then decided to seperate the parts of the chassis legs, to in engine bay mounts, and rear mounts under the car Front Rear I wanted for it to look right, so where i cut out the old bit, i plated the holes left (bottom right corner of pic) and added a piece of seam to make it look like it was suposed to be there. Before And After All cleaned up and painted!!
Well i have been a bit busy. I have ripped out the interiors of both the mk1 and vento. As i will be putting the mk3 dash in the mk1. Although at the moment i wanted the pedal box and servo from the mk3. So i cut out part of the mk3 firewall to mount the servo and hydraulic clutch in the mk1 like this To mount it like this I also am going to use the ABS unit to give me better stopping. I mounted this one like this With this all in place, the pedal box offers up quite nicely. With the pedals in a very close position compaired to the orignals.
