2002 Audi Allroad ALH Conversion

I bought a 2002 Audi Allroad with a great body and nice interior with 142K miles on it. My goal is to put an 1.9L TDI ALH engine into it. The plan is to buy a parts car with a 1.9L ALH and strip the engine, ecu, harness, turbo, etc... to put into the Allroad.

The 6 speed manual should bolt directly to the engine no problem, just need to make some engine mounts and get a lower profile oil pan out of Europe.

The plan is to get it running to make sure there aren't any major issues before getting to invested.

Once running, pull the engine, rebuild it. Rebuild the transmissions with some taller gears that will play nice with the TDI and put a new Turbo, Injectors and Tune on the engine so that it will pull the 4K lbs of Allroad around nicely.

Should be a practically new drivetrain on a really nice body that gets ~35 mpg that can off-road and pull a small trailer no problem for around $10K that has cheap insurance & registration rates!

Feel free to add advice, but please don't use this as your soapbox...Thank you!

I will add pics and updates as we go through the process...

Huge thanks to Bryan at Tullin Concepts / audis4parts.com for making this project a reality!

Just bought a 2003 Jetta for a Parts Car...161K miles...now to ship it to Tucson and get this project going!
EDIT - Apparently I have to figure out how to post pics. Got set up on Photobucket and now I can put the photos in of the car. This is from the Tullin Concepts / audis4parts.com garage.



Looks like it probably hit a deer or something like that. Advertised as not running, but from the top the engine looks good.

Alright…so we got the project rolling.

Got the car on the lift and saw the reason that the car has no oil.



I've never seen a hole in the oil pan like that. Our best guess is that it happened during towing and probably not when the engine was running. We wanted to make sure that we had a good engine before putting it into the Allroad so we swapped out the oil pan, put in a new battery, checked fluid levels and turned the key…it fired right up! We strapped down the hood and took it for a quick drive to see if the other drivetrain parts are ok.

Everything went well and we appear to have a good drivetrain. Now to take things apart.



Radiator off and everything looks nice. Much better condition than the 02 Jettawagon with 240K on it that I just sold!



Engine and transmission are out. Now we have to get the rest of the necessary parts out.

Gas pedal, Wiring harness…etc

You know you can get a proper tdi 6speed from user Frans for a great price and any other euro only parts you may need his prices are great to! Look forward to your progress.

I wonder how it'll compare to the V6 tdi version we get over here as in I wonder if the ALH with a bit of tweaking will have the same sort of power/grunt.

I'm hoping that with a nice tune we will turn out similar HP/Torque to the V6 TDi with better fuel economy and reliability.

We got the engine bolted up to the O1E transmission that came in the Audi for a test fit...




Looks like a nice fit.

Now we are sourcing a 1.8T oil pan to clear the subframe and a clutch/flywheel...

Great project. I look forward to following along. May I ask if you had considered a 2.0L PD from a Passat donar?

Make sure you use a late case, that case pictured is an early model, which lacks a few provisions for the later shifting assembly and the axle heat shield.

i'll be watching this project, something I would like to do as well

Awesome! I'll try to keep my eye on this thread! I love AWD!

yeah that's on my list of conversions as well...

what mounts are you using?

Just got back from vacation in Colorado (snow is good up there right now!)

nitec said:

yeah that's on my list of conversions as well...
what mounts are you using?

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Planning on using BHW mounts from a B5.5 Passat TDI as suggested by Scott02 or having some mounts fabricated.

Scott_DeWitt said:

Make sure you use a late case, that case pictured is an early model, which lacks a few provisions for the later shifting assembly and the axle heat shield.

Click to expand...

Good catch - that's just a extra case we had laying around that we used to make sure everything bolted up right. We may be contacting you Scott about a European O1E so that we can get a better gear ration for interstate driving.

I just ordered an oil pan that will have clearance over the subframe to mount the engine longitudinal and now we are trying to decide which clutch to order.

I think that the ALH spec clutch will work fine, but the guys at KermaTDI are checking to see if using a 240mm flywheel would be in our best interest. Any thoughts?

Just got the Allroad trailer hitch in from Justin in PA…he has the original factory hitch manufactured periodically. allroadhitch(at)gmail(dot)com



This thing is beefy and has a rated tow weight of over 3300lbs! Thanks Duchess for helping model this for us.

I'm excited to get the clutch and oil pan so we can keep this swap rolling!

Thanks for the nod...

Is your allroad a 2.7biturbo or 4.2L, automatic or manual?

Two VITAL items I will bring up.
1.) The power steering line from the pump to the rack needs changed with the engine OUT of the allroad.
2.) If your allroad is a manual, install the clutch fluid line from the master cylinder to the slave with the engine OUT of the allroad, and even then it took FOREVER to install snaked around/under the brake booster.
...unless you're buying the baller ~$60 SS flex line.

Hi Scott02,

The Allroad is 2002 2.7L twin turbo manual...

The donor car is a 2003 Jetta TDI automatic...

Thanks a lot for the tips...we'll be in contact sound like you have some great insight!

Got some parts in…

Motor Mounts, Clutch, Starter & Oil Pickup


The new oil pickup installed


Oil Pan Back on - Seems like not much room for the motor mount with the Turbo and Starter in the way.


New Clutch Installed


Engine and Transmission all put together


Mounted to the Subframe, except for the passenger side motor mount…


Notice the Driver's Side motor mount with a bit of a modification to avoid the accessories…


Passenger side with Starter installed…

We out some power on the starter and it turns the engine over nicely. Once we get the passenger side motor mount fabbed up we will be ready to put it in the car and start getting all of the hosing together.

Anyone have a recommendation for an EGR delete? Seems like we can make everything a bit simpler around engine by getting rid of all that unnecessary junk.

what clutch/FW package did you go with?

If your using the gas starter your going to burn up the starter, and the wiring. The diesel models had a more powerful starter a larger battery and larger wiring. A number of people doing this swap have had starter/wiring issues.

That clutch/flywheel appears to be 1.8t stuff.

The longitudinal TDI cars also had a heat shield on the starter.

We bought a cheap 1.8T clutch here to get the project rolling.

Right now we are just doing a proof of concept. We want to get this thing rolling then we will go back and do a bunch of upgrades...
240mm clutch from Whitbread Performance Innovations
Bigger Turbo - Thinking Borg Warner S7
Injectors - undecided
EGR Delete
Tune the ECU

I can't wait to see the progress on this!

How were you able to get that AWM oil pan on there with the ALH a/c compressor in the way? Or, did you use another code pan?

Hope things are going well. Patient waiting for an update.

Got married last week so I've been a bit busy, but we have made some progress.

Got the passenger's side motor mount fabricated and installed. Looks like it should work nicely.


That was the last thing keeping us from installing the engine and transmission into the car.

Sure a lot more room to maneuver around this engine than the 2.7T…

We have sent the ECU off to get ready for install and ordered an intake cleaning kit and race pipe so that we don't have to worry about the EGR…

Now we can start working the pipes and hoses and should have this thing rolling pretty soon…then we can tune it up and get it driving nicely!

Thanks for your patience…life events a making this a bit slower than we anticipated!

I just bought a clean 2002 6spd allroad last week and I am planning on doing a swap at some point. Really looking forward to see how this turns out, may be a good template to follow.

Subscribed. Watching with interest!

what ecu are you using? also what oil pan did you use?

We are using the ECU from the Jetta and used an oil pan from a 1.8T (make sure you get the one with the same bolt pattern). We also had to change the oil pick up to work with the new pan.

We are currently working on the wiring harness. Found a couple a diagram for the Allroad and for the Jetta and now we are just cutting it down so that we are powering the minimum. We plan on adding cruise control and other fun things once we get it running.

This is definitely the most intimidating part of the swap so far!

Dirty_Al said:

This is definitely the most intimidating part of the swap so far!

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I bet. I too have an allroad (01) and a Jetta (1z engine), so this is quite interesting for me to see how this works out.

did you make your own passenger side mount because you wanted to use the stock turbo? otherwise I thought 1.8t mounts work fine no?

Checkout RyanP @ Darkside Developments for your EGR delete parts. He is a vendor on here.

Great project!