VW 1.6/1.9 = Dodge 2.5L bellhousing clarifications

So I remember reading before, and browsing randomly it again came to my attention, that apparently the Dodge 2.5L 4cyl in the Dodge Dakota is just an upsized VW 1.6 and thus a Dodge bellhousing can be used in a RWD application.


Since I was back to considering minitruck swap options this leaves me a few questions...

Does this apply to all Dodge 2.2/2.5 engines in general (right back to 1980's K-car stuff) or is it specific to the Dakota RWD application? Like could you bolt a VW 1.6 or TDI 1.9 right in place of any K-car 2.2 or 2.5 too including FWD transmissions of their time auto and stick? (this is more for curiosity's sake than a specific plan)


Then I guess the RWD/4WD Dakota bellhousing would let you connect to even the later NV3500 or AX15 and all v6/v8 dodge automatics I assume? (since I see listings of 31RH thru 46RH)

I do not think you have the correct information.

While ChryCo did use Volkswagen engines in the Omni/Horizon through 1981, the transmissions that they used were mated to those engines.

The ChryCo in-house 2.2L/2.5L engines are their own, and while they do share a basic arrangement with the Volkswagen engines in their basic layout, they do not share any parts nor dimensions. Actually, lots of SOHC engines of that era were arranged in a very similar fashion.

Usually the transmissions' casting (or the bellhousing, if it is a separate piece) is modified to mate to a specific engine if it is from a different manufacturer or different design.

I am looking at the Alldata picture of both manual bellhousings for the Dakota (the V6/V8, and the 4 cyl), and they are both completely different from one another, and both completely different from an VAG engine.

I keep seeing all your threads, I really think you need to give up this idea of cobbling together a North American 4 cyl TDI as a tow vehicle.

Use common sense. Buy a pickup or van or something, and use it when you need to tow or haul something, and use the little Volkswagen to get around every day when you are not dragging something behind you. That's what I do, and it works fine. My tow vehicle stays nice, doesn't break the bank with fuel costs, and my Golf happily chomps down the miles of daily driving my person to and from work every day.

Pickup trucks are CHEAP here. You can find a decent used one for $5k that'll drag a 5k pound trailer around without a hiccup and won't tax it much at all.

oilhammer said:

I keep seeing all your threads, I really think you need to give up this idea of cobbling together a North American 4 cyl TDI as a tow vehicle.
Use common sense. Buy a pickup or van or something, and use it when you need to tow or haul something, and use the little Volkswagen to get around every day when you are not dragging something behind you. That's what I do, and it works fine. My tow vehicle stays nice, doesn't break the bank with fuel costs, and my Golf happily chomps down the miles of daily driving my person to and from work every day.
Pickup trucks are CHEAP here. You can find a decent used one for $5k that'll drag a 5k pound trailer around without a hiccup and won't tax it much at all.

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They even make new fancy mid-sized trucks with 4cyl turbo diesels that can safely tow 7700lbs, if he wants safety and TDI fuel economy.




I promise I'm not biased.

^ nice truck.

Yes, it means buying a new vehicle. But it will WORK. It won't take months or years to put together with a good chance of never really getting all of the bugs sorted out. ABS will work, stability control will work, cruise control will work, all the instruments will work, the on board diagnostics will work, and it will look and feel and work like an OEM installation because it IS an OEM installation. It probably isn't going to strand you at the side of the road.

GoFaster said:

^ nice truck.

Yes, it means buying a new vehicle. But it will WORK. It won't take months or years to put together with a good chance of never really getting all of the bugs sorted out. ABS will work, stability control will work, cruise control will work, all the instruments will work, the on board diagnostics will work, and it will look and feel and work like an OEM installation because it IS an OEM installation. It probably isn't going to strand you at the side of the road.

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Heck even the $5k number mentioned before can get a clean 1/2ton fullsize but I guess that's not the attitude to have in this particular section

Original poster is wanting to do a conversion for the wrong reasons. "Getting a certain job done as cheaply as possible" is a wrong reason. If you have to butcher incompatible stuff into sorta working together, it will ALWAYS be cheaper to do it some other way that doesn't involve doing that.

Not for nothing but QuickTD has a point. Wrecked vw tdi 2k, nice ranger, S10 or your choice small truck probably 2 to 3k add around 5k on the high end for the swap. You still come out 40k cheaper than a Colorado diesel and you won't need to put deff fluid in it either. Don't get me wrong I would love a diesel Colorado but the price on those is a bit steep. There is a guy in my town with a Cummins 3.9 in a ranger and I bet it can pull with the best of them.

Sad little souls like me in the low rent district have to build our dream vehicles, rather than just buying them outright.

Zeitgeist said:

Sad little souls like me in the low rent district have to build our dream vehicles, rather than just buying them outright.

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You're not getting the whole picture with just this one thread. The op has been asking about cheap hp and towing potentially unsafe loads with not enough vehicle to control it. He mentions wanting to tow 10k more than a few times which is well above what should be towed with a jetta or ranger/s10. Not saying it cant be done with a small truck but if one needs to ask if it can be done then they are probably not the kind of person who should do it. The recommendation of buying a used 1/2 or 3/4 ton truck for towing while keeping the jetta as a dd is a very valid an cost effective solution that is much safer and reliable than what op is proposing.

The responses here aren't to say don't do a small stuck tdi swap, I'm finishing up a tdi ranger swap my self. However I wont be trying to tow almost 3x the weight of the truck with it, that's what the cummins is for. that's what most of the comments here are saying, be reasonable. If buddy wanted a to tow 5k then sure ill bet you we'd be saying go for it. Just not with the weight he's been saying and with the mindset that has been portrayed in the many threads he's started.


Go faster summed it up nicely with his post.

He's started a staggering 34 threads, vast majority of which have essentially the same pie-in-the-sky theme of a TDI powered tow vehicle. I'd lost track of how many until I looked.

I generally agree about the folly of building a 1.9L tow vehicle, but offering a ~$30k vehicle as a plausible alternative is going a tad too far...hence the comment.

Oh I agree, which is why I offered up (probably in several of his threads) the idea of what I do, and daily drive a TDI (Golf), and have a reasonably capable pickup (F150) for the few times I need to tow something heavier than a couple thousand pounds. Sure, the Ford barely gets 15 MPG, but who cares if I only drive it maybe a few hundred miles a month? And you can pick up decent used pickups for $5k.

If the original poster is only wanting to tow these heavy loads occasionally (which appears to be the case), then the tow vehicle need not be a $40k new vehicle, and it need not have a diesel engine. It DOES need to have the legally required tow ratings and hitch capability for both safety and legality.

I have a couple of friends who both tow 5ft by 10ft enclosed trailers with (gas engine) 4 cylinder manual transmission Ford Rangers.

The other counterpoint is that a late model Colorado, diesel engine or not, works fine as a daily driver.

I suspect if I were to massage a 2.5L AEL or similar high output fiver in my EV, I could easily maintain my current VR6 4400lbs towing capacity. The EV is currently a daily driver, and a very pleasant one at that.

I merely posted the Colorado as an option for if he wants to do things safely, but then even followed that up with a $5k 1/2 or 3/4 work truck to handle towing duties at his vision of 10k pounds.

Just depends on what you're looking to do; I got the lil duramax to trim down my fleet from 5 cars to try and make it easier on storing the TDI rabbit in my driveway.

oilhammer said:

I keep seeing all your threads, I really think you need to give up this idea of cobbling together a North American 4 cyl TDI as a tow vehicle.

Use common sense. Buy a pickup or van or something,

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I've got one. I'm just always looking for better ways to do what i'm already doing, and there's also a part of me on some level that cant stop myself from screwing around on cars too.

Yet it's clear i've confused the board with what i'm doing so let me try to be more clear, in the hopes someone will see it and be less frustrated at some of my overlapping questions. (I haven't even read the rest of the thread yet I just see that this one has gone off on it's own and this issue seems to need addressing.)



Right now i've got a Saturn SL SOHC which I use as a daily driver and to tow small loads up to 1200lbs. At some point this vehicle has to be replaced, it's got 300,000 miles roughly. Possible candidates include a Jetta and Passat.

I also have a fullsize half ton chevy truck which I currently use to tow larger loads that the Saturn can't handle. I've considered putting a hitch on my Caprice instead but for right now, the pickup does the heavy hauling. Mileage is not great, thats why I ask certain questions. Other people have suggested things like "put in a 5/6 cylinder Mercedes OM6x6" and then others say thats primitive, and the VW TDI is absolutely the equal for durability at the same power levels, stock OR boosted. That a 1.9L TDI is as good or better than a 2.5-3.0L OM6x6. The junkyard prices aren't all that far off of either nor are full car prices.

I'm also the kind of person who is going to be wrenching on cars and trucks one way or another, because it's like an ongoing slow hot rodding education in mechanics, welding, fabrication, etc. So i'm going to be doing something ANYWAYS and I always have ideas percolating around in my head on what some of those future things might be even if some projects might be 5-8 years off but the paper design starts now. I'm wondering if I should make VW's my new obsession and start doing all sorts of crazy stuff with them. My last interest peaked 5 years ago and it was rekindled recently.


I think nearly ALL the confusion that people are seeing from reading parts of some topics and headlines of others is thinking that i'm always talking about the exact same singular project for every post. In reality there's about six things going on in my head and i'm trying to decide which areas of future pursuit are viable and worth doing.

Does this clear anything up for anyone?

I mean I already use a 100hp 1.9L gas powered Saturn SL as a tow vehicle, just for 1200lbs, which I thought it excelled at. If I replace it with a TDI 1.9L I dont think anyone will be complaining. The most contentious variable being discussed is how far north that weight figure can go before it's an issue, and just because i'm open to answers from all over the map (having seen other people swap it into 4200lb SUV's towing 3000lbs weight themself) doesn't mean that I have yet decided or committed to anything. It's just research.

If you're hauling occasionally something that is beyond your vehicle's limits then hire someone. If you have to haul all the time greater than your vehicles limit, then buy a new vehicle. There is totally no excuse to overload a vehicle. I don't care if you kill yourself, but leave me and everyone else out of your plot.

1. When the Saturn dies, replace that vehicle with something of comparable capability. Maybe a VW TDI (stock!), maybe something else. No conversions needed. Tow the same stuff with the TDI that you currently tow with the Saturn (it will probably deal with a little bit more, but not much).

2. When the truck dies, replace that vehicle with something of comparable capability. If annual mileage on the tow vehicle isn't much (likely), it's not worth buying something new, it's not worth bothering with diesel. No conversion needed.

Look through these conversion threads. You will find some success stores (including some pretty awesome projects!), and you will find other projects that took years to complete, and you will find other projects that never really worked out or never got completed. The number of projects that don't get finished exceeds the number of success stories. If it's a hobby vehicle to occupy your time, fair enough. If it's something you rely on, maybe not so much.

are you suggesting than an om606 and 1.9 TDI are equivalent at the same power levels???? That seems very misguided.

I would say the om606 is capable of twice the power reliably of a 1.9TDI. I love the TDI, but it has its limits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIuZyliL8ts

Probably confusing the 606 with the 617 in which case, yes the tdi is similar if not significantly better until you go nuts with the power levels. I'd love to get my hands on a om606, hard to find.

The 617 is a turd....low efficiency and slow even in a turbo package in a car


The 606....adapters, stand alone, tune...near big block Chevy torque numbers possible!


Thay would move a 1/2 ton pick up or suv

The OM617 will outlast the newer engines three to one, I would never, ever call it "a turd". In turbo form is was probably one of the best engines MB has ever made.



My 1984 W126 would get up to speed just fine, and would cruise along at 70+ no problem, despite tipping the scales at nearly two tons and only having four gears. Even after 300k miles, it still ran along just fine. Not fast, and off the line it took a full second to spool the big turbo up, but once it was going it hefted itself up to speed reasonably well considering other cars of its day and the old tech it employed.

Asside from a very pricey custom injection pump to pull out more power there is not a whole lot you can do to get more from the om617.whatever turbo.

They are slow cars. The engines weigh a ton. The only real plus is they can run veggie oil and wmo. In any swap outside a small mini truck these are well documented as being gutless. The price of parts to keep them up isn't all that great either. Power per pound the vw engines alh/bhw and similar are a better choice. There's no doubt they last forever. Just not a worthy motor for a swap unless it's an around town beater or off road/farm toy.

I havent heard or reliability issues among the om606 engines, usually when i see or read about them(usually swappes into land cruisers) they are tuned, adapted and driven. An fj80 isnt a light suv and these motors are pushing them around with ease. An om617 could hardly push an fj40 and keep with traffic. Granted many stock gasser fh40/60 and even early 80s also struggled in stock form to keep up with traffic on entrance ramps and at traffic lights.

I never had any issues, never had any wish for more power *shrug*. Sometimes finishing the race is more important than trying to win it.

Maturity has its merits. If I wanted to go fast, I'd buy a 911

BTW, the Toyota diesel in the old FJ was perfectly adequate, too. As was the Nissan diesel in my Scout II. But hey, my wife and I put over 400k miles on a 52hp Jetta... and we were never "run over" and as it turns out, 75 MPH in a 52hp car is exactly the same speed as 75 MPH in a 500hp Mustang... who knew? But I very much doubt a Mustang driven daily would still be on the road with its original powertrain at 400k+ miles.

BTW, every day (and I mean EVERY SINGLE DAY) I am cursing under my breath for some asshat in front of me to move faster... no matter what car I am driving that day. All the HP in the world won't let you phase through some idiot doing 10 under the speed limit on a twisty two lane road with 15 cars piled up behind him.

i have 99' w210 organ donor 606 car in the field (competely roached in and out but runs incredible) and an om648 complete swap on the shop floor, both were candidates for my 93' fj but now i'm going with a 4he1-tc due to it's ease of trans adaptability, and can be run computer free ...i really like the 606 for it's smooth idle and power delivery and i'm sure i could squeak more FE from the 648 but simplicity of operation, ease of install and low parts prices tipped the scales toward the isuzu

The fj never came as a diesel. The hj or bj were the diesels and those were never sold in the states, only imported in after 25 years or swapped.

The f in the fj is for the F series gas engine a gutless low end torque monster modeled after the chevy inline 6. It was the F then the F 1.5 then the 2F then the 3FE which had fuel injection. These can be "built" but for the same price or less you can have more mpgs, hp and better all around on road/off road performance with a small block Chevy swap.

The BJ is for the B series diesel and HJ for the later H series diesel engine which can also be foind in fork lifts

Thats for 40 and longer wheel base 45s. They had different codes for the later turbo engines found in the 60s, 70s and 80 series rigs. Again, no diesel cruisers were or are sold new in the U.S. and must be imported and swapped into a legal US vehicle(im sure there are some swapped vin tags out there) or wait for the magic 25 yr old b day to legally import the factory diesel cruisers and their highly sought after h55 transmission. We only got 4 speeds with no overdrive in the states due to toyota determining that we are too lazy of a country to want 5 speeds. We never got the beautiful 70 series rigs either. Plenty of them in canuckastan.

Well I drove a Toyota Land Cruiser that left the factory with a big Toyota diesel under the hood, it was LHD drive, old, restored, and sold for over $60k at a local auction. It seemed to run fine for me considering I'd never want to go very fast ON the road in something like that anyway. I think it was a 1971. The same "box" that normally had the Japanese-assembled cloned Chevrolet 4.2L or whatever (250 cubic inches?) gasoline inline 6. I think it would just be a "J40", my bad on the "F".

The 40 weighed approximately half a ton less than the fj60 with a near identical powertrain as it's wagon counter part. Early would be the 55 "iron pig", later around 1981 the 60 came out as the wagon counter parts to the more utility/military built 40. Because of the weight difference the 40 is substantially quicker but rides like a log wagon. The 25 was the first Toyota "jeep" which gave way to the 40. The Japanese reverse engineered the old ww2 jeeps then took them to the outback for R&D. What they came out with was arguably the worlds best off road off the assembly line vehicle and their longest continual running vehicle platform. Its no coincidence that your old 40(and mine) sold for such a pretty penny. The land cruiser reputation and reliability alone are the reason it's the choice rig for both the Taliban and any middle eastern oil prince. Look at any news clip on CNN that shows them driving.

The 40 series had a speedometer that went to some 80mph and was advertised as being able to do it. This is a vast improvement over the little willys jeep that topped out at 45 or so mph.

In 71 a US production 40 would have probably still been a 3 speed, at some point they went from 3 on the tree to 3 on the floor and then to a 4 speed. The rest of the world got that 5 speed. It's a real shame the epa kept those diesels out of the states. The bj60s were getting over 20 mpgs back in the 80s. That was a NA diesel as well but a B could take a turbo no problem. The 2H could but much more conservative level.

The factory 4:10 gears(in the last 2 years of production they had 3:73) and no overdrive kept hwy speeds modest. Back then 55 was the hwy speed and could maintain that no problem. The turbo diesels that came in the 62s, 70s and 80s were amazing, on power and economy. 13BT and 12HTs iirc. I never could afford to import those set ups.

I has 4 inches of lift on my 1967, front disk brake conversion with fj60 outer knuckles(larger rotors, stronger knuckles) and 4 runner 4 piston calipers with a custom manual brake master cylinder and adjustable prop valve. Paired with all new front and bushings, all new tres and jesus type alignment. Past 60 mph she was scary. The short wheel base and large/wide off road tires meant that high speed maneuvers were to ram objects as swerving to miss them meant an all likely roll over. Id use my hand throttle lock to keep speeds at 60 around traffic and 65 to 70 in clear hwy.

Truely remarkable vehicles. The B and H series motors are great motors but parts support in the US are prohibitive to making it a daily driver. Only a few crusier specialists import those 3B and 2H diesel parts although some H parts can be had through the fork lift dealers. Most parts must come from japan or from the country that brought us the trailer park boys.


My 40 had a soft top. My kid loved the opposed facing jump seats. Other than during the winter we never had doors on the rig and window rolled up. Stopping for fuel we'd always have someone say nice jeep and my kid who was in diapers would inform them it's not a jeep. Mine had a dealer factory installed pto winch. If i had a dollar for every time my sister called me to bail out her YJ from a mud hole i could have purchased a second fj.

jimbote said:

i have 99' w210 organ donor 606 car in the field (competely roached in and out but runs incredible) and an om648 complete swap on the shop floor, both were candidates for my 93' fj but now i'm going with a 4he1-tc due to it's ease of trans adaptability, and can be run computer free ...i really like the 606 for it's smooth idle and power delivery and i'm sure i could squeak more FE from the 648 but simplicity of operation, ease of install and low parts prices tipped the scales toward the isuzu

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Thats the isuzu? Hybrid aisin lans cruiser to isuzu transmission? I saw a few longbow builds on mud with his swaps hybridizing the 2 transmissions. He always had clean work vs what i am able to do with my very limited machining access and a flux core welder.