TDI ALH to 2002 Eurovan

TDI fuel economy in a Eurovan is something I've wanted to pursue for a while now. I've been driving around a tintop Eurovan and while it's a great van the and I love the VR6, the mileage can be a pain. The trouble-prone 01P automatic in the late model US Eurovan is also poorly suited to the van.
I have a 2002 Eurovan Westfalia that seemed like a great candidate for the swap. So here we go. The plan is to yank the 24v VR6 and the 01P automatic and put in an ALH TDI and a 5 speed manual transmission.


Let me start this by saying that the information and help I’ve found online and through friends offline has been invaluable to getting any of this accomplished. If it were just me and without the internet I’d either never finish this or it would take decades. A special thanks for the help I’ve received from friends including, but not limited to: my friends Russell & Kim, Schwa, and Jason, Eurovan buddies Josh_WA and 04VWGTITURBO.



Here's a terrible photo of what we're starting with:




After lots of combing through information and feeling like I had a decent idea of what I wanted, I started looking for an engine. I got pretty lucky and found a complete ALH engine with engine wiring harness, ECU, and accessories.


The seller sent me a photo before it was removed from the donor car.


The engine was shipped and showed up in a handy crate.


For the transmission I reached out to Quality German in California. They had a DUJ code European TDI 5-speed. This is geared the same as the EWB 02B transmission.


For you gear and math nerds out there, he's what the EWB/DUJ 02B transmission ratios are:
1st gear - 3.778:1
2nd gear - 2.118
3rd gear - 1.304
4th gear - 0.903
5th gear - 0.700 (28:40)
Reverse gear - 3.600
Final drive (R&P) - 4.235
Theoretocal Road Speed @ 3,000rpm 78mph (126km/h)
(Info taken from https://www.vwt4forum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=43861)


I also ordered some of the 4 cylinder TDI swap parts from Quality German for fitment into the T4 / Eurovan chassis.
The transmission was lovingly packaged up and sent off to me here in Washington. I had to go to the UPS depot to pick it up.



Turns out they dropped it off the back of a truck and it "was leaking" so they told me to come get it. When I showed up it had been repackaged. Pretty disappointing but it seemed to suffer only minor damage so we put it in the truck and took it home.


My garage isn't tall enough to fit the van so my friends Russell and Kim graciously offered to loan me the use of theirs. I brought over the engine, transmission, a bunch of miscellaneous parts and tools, and the van all over to the garage. We jacked it up, put it on jack stands, drained the coolant, and then were promptly hit with a ridiculous snowstorm in Seattle.


Stay tuned for more!

this will be fun to watch. looks like a good start!

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but I am quite sure the DUJ is an O2B trans and has a different bellhousing bolt pattern than the ALH. Try contacting Frans at Dutch Auto Parts, he has an adapter FS for the ALH application.

mogly said:

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but I am quite sure the DUJ is an O2B trans and has a different bellhousing bolt pattern than the ALH. Try contacting Frans at Dutch Auto Parts, he has an adapter FS for the ALH application.

Click to expand...

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=5242852&postcount=1

"First off the ALH bolted to the Eurovan 5 speed transmission. It does fit!"

Sorry Debbie.

Josh_WA said:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=5242852&postcount=1

"First off the ALH bolted to the Eurovan 5 speed transmission. It does fit!"

Click to expand...

Yup! The 02B does indeed bolt up to the ALH. The ALH and AHU blocks share a common bolt pattern. The lower oil pan bolts on the ALH will not bolt up to the transmission, though.

Duh. Brain cramp. Of course their bolt patterns are the same. I guess I was thinking of the factory T4 4 cylinder mount kit will not work on the ALH?

To the OP. There are factory steel ALH oil pans available. Good for altering the angle of the oil pan.

the passenger side mount and the transmission trumpet to engine support are not directly bolt on. The rear and drivers side mount connect to the transmission.

mogly said:

To the OP. There are factory steel ALH oil pans available. Good for altering the angle of the oil pan.

Click to expand...

Do you have any links to these oil pans? I've looked around a lot and it seems there were some a few years ago but none that I can find online now. There is a steel-bottommed aluminum pan available, though.

ocelotpotpie said:

Do you have any links to these oil pans? I've looked around a lot and it seems there were some a few years ago but none that I can find online now. There is a steel-bottommed aluminum pan available, though.

Click to expand...

You can try these two guys.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=5478490&postcount=4

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=5479565&postcount=7

Thanks, Josh! I messaged them to see what they had.

@mogly if you have links to other pans/vendors, let me know!

Snow in Seattle is pretty unexpected, especially as much as we got. Between roads being crappy, having to shovel all the time, and just general nonsense it was hard to get any real progress on the van.





We set about picking up the little things we thought we'd need like cleaners, hardware, a few missing tools, and a handy rolling cart from Harbor Freight.


With the TDI loaded up on the engine stand, I confirmed that the Injection Pump was for an automatic.





This is nice to not have to upgrade to an 11mm later if I want, but also good for making sure I know what components are in the vehicle when it comes time to remapping the ECU.


We removed the intake manifold and EGR components. These were filthy so now is a good time to clean them.





With the engine on the stand, I replaced the timing components and the water pump.





Unfortunately this engine did not have a flywheel on it nor a transmission bolted to it, so getting the TDC mark correct was tricky. This was my first attempt. After tensioning everything and rotating twice to check clearance everything was close but *just* a little off. I decided to leave this alone for now until I could get the flywheel on to check a proper TDC mark.

One thing I should add - as I'm trying to catch up to the current status of the build I'm realizing how few photos I've taken. This is the first time I've tried to actually document something like this and it's been trickier than I thought.

I think if I took photo or video of absolutely everything the whole thing up to now would have taken 2-3x longer. I'm not sure how the youtube folks do it!

Things have been progressing slowly but I've done a terrible job of taking photos and updating. Trying to remedy that.

Three big bits for this swap that aren't off-the-shelf parts are: passenger side engine mount, oil pan, and the engine mating tin.

Yesterday we took some time to work on the mating tin. This basically just keeps dust and grime from getting into the transmission bellhousing since the ALH engine doesn't mate up to the 02B transmission and cover everything perfectly like the VR6 engine does on the 01P transmission.

Here's a photo of some of the transmission damage from when UPS dropped the thing. The shift clevis is pretty busted. I got a new one but I'm going to need to source a new mounting plate or bend back this one.





To make the mating tin / dust shield, we propped up the transmission so we could have a good working surface.





I went to the local arts and crafts store and bought some lightweight cardboard. Anyone who's watched Project Binky will be familiar with this CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) approach.


Lay the cardboard on the transmission and cut a working piece to size.





Next, take an X-acto knife or razor blade and trim the edges to get a proper fit.





The transmission is filthy, so if you press down hard on the template you'll transfer the bellhousing pattern onto the cardboard.





Here's the template held up to the engine for size and fitment check





Tools needed: razor, sharpie, cardboard.





I didn't get any good photos of this part, but I bought 16ga aluminum sheetmetal at the nearby hardware store. The template is about 10" x 14" at the widest point so I got a large enough piece of aluminum for coverage. I laid the cardboard out on the aluminum plate, transferred the pattern, and used tin snips to cut the material. Some fine tuning and multiple fitments tests are required for this to make sure everything goes smoothly.


With the aluminum cut out I wanted to accurately mark the bolt holes for drilling. I used a transfer punch in the bolt holes.





Insert into bolt hole so that the punch sticks just proud of the hole.





Then we laid the aluminum on top of the bellhousing, placed a block of wood over the hole, and tapped with a hammer. This transferred the holes neatly to the aluminum.

From there I used a step drill to cut the holes to size. The bottom two were a little larger because of the pins in the block for aligning with the transmission.


Russell brought the mating tin outside afterwards and painted it.





You can see the lower right bolt hole was too large for the template. I didn't anticipate the hole being larger so it was a little thin on that side. This won't be an issue because of how the tin is mounted and the function it serves, but we may go back and make another one of these to get it "right". We kept the paper template so the hard part is done.

The engine as it sits right now.



We scrubbed it a bunch and removed the turbo for cleaning.

My friend Gabriel was gracious enough to loan me the ALH timing belt tools for over a month so we got the engine properly timed, buttoned up all the timing covers, bolted up the valve cover, and installed the near rear main seal. Just one of many instances where this project went much more smoothly because of help from friends.


After making the mating tin we had the transmission in a good workable spot so we decided to swap the taller 5th gear in.

Here's another shot of some UPS induced damage. I picked up a new transmission cover at the nearby salvage yard. Any 02A or 02B pan works.




Josh_WA has performed this 5th gear swap before and loaned me his little handy kit for needed tools and modified gear pullers.




This procedure is documented fairly well in other places online and I mostly snapped reference photos so we kept things straight during the swap.


Old 5th gearset shown after removing pan





The selector removed and the near gearset and washer on the right. The new small gear is smaller than the old one so you need a smaller replacement washer.




What the selector looks like when you incorrectly pull the outer ring off.





Selector parts and gears removed.





How it looks with everything pulled.





New gears installed and selector reinstalled.






It's best to read all of the guide and watch the videos on this. I knew what we were getting into and I still got tripped up on reassembling and installing the selector.

It's also a MAJOR pain in the butt to torque down the bolts on the gears with the transmission sitting on a bench. We had to install bolts into the CV joint cups and use bars to prevent them from spinning. There were two of us and we barely got it done. Another two sets of hands would have been useful. If I did this again I might wait until the transmission was installed on the engine or in the car.

Oh, for posterity: The 5th gear I swapped in is a .658 gearset. The VW part number for this is 02Z311158A

It's good for 02A, 02B, and 02J transmissions (and probably others).

You can get the sets on eBay for pretty cheap but sometimes they can be of poor quality. I recommending buying from a known seller to make sure you get quality parts.


EWB/DUJ 02B transmission:

Stock 5th gear: 0.700
64.73 MPH @ 2,500 RPM
77.67 MPH @ 3,000 RPM

Modified 5th gear: 0.658
68.86 MPH @ 2,500 RPM
82.63 MPH @ 3,000 RPM


Basically this new gearing allows me a lower cruising RPM and better long distance fuel economy at 65-70MPH. Not bad for $125.

Looking good... you'll have to help me when i do the shift forks on the 6spd for my wagon.

That 5th gear will be real nice for hwy cruising.

If you take your time and are careful it's pretty straightforward. But without a guide or video I could see someone really messing it up.

Some light duty work in the garage today.


Now that the new 5th gear is installed it's time to put on the replacement transmission pan and refill with gear oil.

I opted for G52 gear oil. Your mileage may vary.





There's a retaining clip you peel off on the outside of the lid. Then you pull up.




Twist off the cap and you have a built in funnel. Pretty handy.




Here's the fill plug removed. There's a drain plug on the opposite side of the gearbox. These are 17mm and usually pretty tough to get off. I needed a long breaker bar. Soak in Kroil beforehand, naturally.




The fill process.





All done. Reinstall the fill plug and wipe up any residue.




It should take somewhere between 2.1L and 2.5L.


Transmission with gears replaced, new cover and gasket installed, and now full of gear oil.




This process is the same for all 02B transmissions and should be the same or similar for 02A, 02J, 02C, etc.

After reading Josh's writeup on his AHU swap (http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=443865/) I was expecting to have to drill out the A/C connectors on the donor ALH A/C compressor to fit with the Eurovan lines.


But turns out - they're the same!




Pretty happy to not have to crack it open or drill anything. I'm not sure about other years, but my guess is that any '99-'03 Eurovan - and possibly earlier - will work out of the box with any MK4 A/C compressor from a Golf or Jetta with an ALH. Definitely good news for future swaps as well.


Next up was modifying the filler neck to accommodate the larger diesel pump nozzles.

The normal diesel nozzle is a 15/16", as opposed to the 13/16" for the gasoline nozzles. I also wanted to be able to use the high flow diesel nozzles, which means boring out to 1-3/16"

I opted for 1-1/4" because it was slightly larger and more easily available in drill sizes.


We eyeballed a good starting point and cut off the extended neck.




Not bad for a first crack.




Our mark got us to about 1-1/8", so we threw the step drill on and bored down to 1-1/4"


Then a bit of sanding to deburr the edges.






Happy with this size now.




We did a bunch of sanding to clean it up nicely. I have it in my car and plan to go to a fuel station with a high flow nozzle to test fit in the wild before reinstalling it.

I should also note - this plastic bit sits between the filler neck collar and the filler neck. Most people just yank it out and throw it away. That would probably totally work.



Lastly, my replacement front shocks came in so we took the shock plates with a wire wheel to clean them up nicely. You can probably guess which one is the before and which ones is the after.





New shock installed with bumpstop and cleaned up plate.




The tape is to label the driver and passengers sides so I don't get them mixed up.


And that's all for today.

I guess that fill neck update came with the facelift. The 93-95 did not have the extension off the back of the fill neck. Just a little bit of metal to deflect any splash back.

Also time to find a nice "Diesel" sticker for the fuel door. In case you are in OR you know.

Yeah the differences were interesting. Mine didn't have the metal plate on the end like yours did.

Good call on the diesel sticker!

Finally getting around to updating the thread. Sorry for the long delay.

All of April and a lot of May I spent doing non-van things and traveling. Anyone who's taken on a project like this knows that sometimes the time gets way from you and it takes a lot longer than you expect.

I found a pick and pull junkyard not too far from the garage that had a 1993 Eurovan with a manual transmission. I was hoping to grab a bunch of shifter parts from it but unfortunately it had no drivetrain. I didn't find this out until I showed up.



What it did have was two decent condition ABS axles. The inside CV joints from the VR6 axles don't fit on the 02B transmission. I picked up a set of Canadian diesel axles from a friend but I didn't realize that they were missing ABS rings on the outer joints.

These axles will need to be rebuilt. The boots are torn. The joints are probably intact so I can most likely dismantle, clean, regrease, and reboot them.


My friend who had the Canadian axles happened to have another manual van with some shifter parts. I was able to grab the shift linkages from him and a few odds and ends for clutch parts and some of the OEM grommets to make the install a little cleaner.




Around mid-may the van was sitting like this.




Drivetrain and messy garage.




I wanted to get the transmission mated up to the engine but first we had to install the oil pan. That means we need to modify the oil pickup tube for the new angle the engine will sit in the chassis.

The AHU oil pickup I got did not fit the ALH engine. So we set about modifying the stock pickup.

We found a flat spot that was a good candidate to get a clean cut and used a plumbing pipe cutter to score and then cut the oil pickup.



After that we installed a hose clamp loosely so we could set the pickup on the oil pump and find the proper angle.

The oil pump side gets scored with a screwdriver.



Once we rotate the pickup side to the correct position we score the pickup side to match the oil pump side.



Here you can see both marks.



The hose clamp did a great job of keeping this together, but we didn't have a welder on hand and I wanted whoever was going to weld it to be able to nail the alignment.

Luckily I had a machine shop nearby who welded it up for a few bucks while I waited.

Finished product.

Clutch installed.



I went with a dual-mass flywheel because I wanted to keep some smoothness in the clutch operation. I've never been a fan of single mass flywheels.

ALH steel oil pan installed.



Engine and transmission mated together.




There are still a bunch of parts missing from this photo. One thing I quickly found is that the coolant hard line that goes around the front of the engine to the back wouldn't fit correctly because the 02B transmission is taller.

There's a mounting tab on this pipe that we had to cut off.

Here's Russell making short work of that tab.



Next we reinstall the turbo, intake manifold, and EGR components.



I'm keeping the factory EGR stuff for now because I want to get the car running before I mess with anything that isn't stock/ factory for the engine.


And finally test fit the drivetrain!




The biggest hangup is the coolant hard pipe again. Cutting off the mounting tab wasn't great because now it had a lot of play in it. I was planning to figure out a better solution for that later. Unfortunately when we test fit the engine it was clear that the coolant pipe was contacting the firewall.



You can see it actually digging into the insulation on the back side. This pipe is going to have to be modified further.


But while the engine is in we were able to take some measurements and get an idea of what's left.

In case anyone's curious, the piece of notebook paper on top of the valve cover just says "torque everything". Because I knew this was a temporary fit I didn't properly torque down a lot of the fasteners, coolant flanges, etc. I use a lot of those sorts of notes as reminders so when we walk away and come back weeks later we don't mess up anything.

I'll try to get a few more photos of the coolant hard pipe. I think it's one of the big pieces that needs to be modified for an ALH swap into a T4 Eurovan chassis. Most of the rest is stealing parts from other vehicles.

That's all for now.

Awesome update, do you have info on how you are mounting the Passenger (Timing belt) side of the engine to the framerail?

My passenger side mount isn't complete just yet. I have it held in temporarily while I finish adjusting it and have the final one ready.

But the mount will be about the same as the 1.8T mount Erinyes / D-9 / 04VWGTITURBO used for their 1.8T swaps.

Here's a link to D-9s mount thread:

https://www.vwt4forum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=408117

Nice to see this swap happening a little more frequently- I put an ALH in my EV a few years back due to California law not allowing me to use an engine older than the 2001 van- Finished it up 2.5 years ago- 20k miles without any major issues. Knock on wood. I used that same steel oil pan with the modified pickup and fabricated a very similar right side mounting bracket. I also found the AC compressor hung way too low for me so it was relocated in front of the PS pump. That took some time to get figured out. Used a low front mount intercooler that fits just under the bumper and seems to be working out great.
Nagging issue I have had has been the ESP/traction control coding. While I was able to make everything read in the ESP unit I haven't been able to make the systems happy enough to function correctly and turn the light out- I'll be following along to see how this works out for you. haven't spent much time on it and should get back to it-

Do you have any photos of your setup/swap? I'm curious about the A/C compressor mounting.

Any details you may have on the wiring might be helpful as well!

olskool58 said:

Nice to see this swap happening a little more frequently- I put an ALH in my EV a few years back due to California law not allowing me to use an engine older than the 2001 van- Finished it up 2.5 years ago- 20k miles without any major issues. Knock on wood. I used that same steel oil pan with the modified pickup and fabricated a very similar right side mounting bracket. I also found the AC compressor hung way too low for me so it was relocated in front of the PS pump. That took some time to get figured out. Used a low front mount intercooler that fits just under the bumper and seems to be working out great.
Nagging issue I have had has been the ESP/traction control coding. While I was able to make everything read in the ESP unit I haven't been able to make the systems happy enough to function correctly and turn the light out- I'll be following along to see how this works out for you. haven't spent much time on it and should get back to it-

Click to expand...

I'm curious about what cluster you used inside for engine management, or for Ocelot--what are you planning to use?

My head is spinning--I was on the swap trajectory a few years ago, but have forgotten most of what I knew. The few Eurovan threads that are fully documented seem to be the early T4 (1993) with the AHU/1Z motor. so I'm curious about how you solve issues with the newer ones. (I believe Justin/Greaseworks did a successful newer van--but I'm not sure what he used for management, and what functionality was retained).

I have a MK4 TDI cluster I'm going to use. The bezel from the Eurovan swaps over. The cluster seems to be one of the few non-issues.

There's a lot of wiring I'm trying to wrap my head around right now. I'm out of town for a bit so apologies for the lack of updates/progress.

ocelotpotpie said:

I have a MK4 TDI cluster I'm going to use. The bezel from the Eurovan swaps over. The cluster seems to be one of the few non-issues.

There's a lot of wiring I'm trying to wrap my head around right now. I'm out of town for a bit so apologies for the lack of updates/progress.

Click to expand...

Ocelotpotpie,

Good to have another TDI Eurovan in the NW! I'm down in Salem, OR, just south of PDX. There's a fellow in Lebanon, OR that is importing and selling some single and doka pickup eurovan TDIs. He's got a 2.5 5cyl TDI swapped one for himself.

I just bought a cluster from a 2.5 TDI to put in mine. I was using a mixture of the BHW and the 2.8L VR6 cluster, but it didn't line up right and it wasn't what I wanted. I do miss having the half FIS of the BHW cluster, but I suppose I'll get used to it. I wonder if I can figure out a way to still have a screen to display temp, warning messages, mgp, trip distance, etc. I 'think' (big emphasis on think) there were some of the T4s with the FIS display, but I couldn't find any on ebay UK or ebay IE. I've still got to sort out a bunch of my wiring so I'll look at it then. It's a hoot to drive though, for sure. If you have any questions with the wiring I can try to dig up some of my notes and help out if I can. Cheers!

-Ryan