ALH 01m to Dq250 DSG Swap Completed!

[boertje]

Thats good to know if i can‘t source the real thing.

 

[oilhammer]

I've found the non-OEM axles (Chaxles, typically) will have more slop and play in them after 10k miles behind a TDI engine than the OEM ones do after 100k miles.

At least they are not too terribly difficult to swap out, so that lifetime warranty that provides a lifetime of swapping axles won't sting as much.

Shame all the OE ones were wrongly chucked in a scrapper. Raxles could have rebuilt a lot of them I bet.

 

[Judson]

I just have to echo what others have said here: this is SO cool. I love this kind of trail blazing. You’ve done all of the hard work and documented it for others here. Doesn’t get any better than this.

 

[boertje]

I've found the non-OEM axles (Chaxles, typically) will have more slop and play in them after 10k miles behind a TDI engine than the OEM ones do after 100k miles.

At least they are not too terribly difficult to swap out, so that lifetime warranty that provides a lifetime of swapping axles won't sting as much.

Shame all the OE ones were wrongly chucked in a scrapper. Raxles could have rebuilt a lot of them I bet.

Yeah, though even both joints are odd ball and big big bucks.

 

[coolvdub]

@tdicaddy01,
I have been contemplating doing this exact swap. I just passed 500K miles and am on my third transaxle and have two bad knees and arthritis in my right shoulder, so a DSG swap fits the bill. Can you give us a cost breakdown to do this swap, I know everybody will have different costs, but a ballpark amount would be great to know. I'm assuming us manual guys would need to change the coolant flange on the head to an auto one for the DSG cooler.

Thanks
Don

 

[tdicaddy01]

@tdicaddy01,
I have been contemplating doing this exact swap. I just passed 500K miles and am on my third transaxle and have two bad knees and arthritis in my right shoulder, so a DSG swap fits the bill. Can you give us a cost breakdown to do this swap, I know everybody will have different costs, but a ballpark amount would be great to know. I'm assuming us manual guys would need to change the coolant flange on the head to an auto one for the DSG cooler.

Thanks
Don

So here’s a list of parts that you’ll need and roughly what I see them selling for:
-Dsg trans from mk6 tdi 500$
-Dsg dust tin plate (between engine and trans) 20$
-Mk6 shifter box with clips to attach cable 120$
-New dual mass flywheel with pilot bearing and new flywheel bolts 450$
-aftermarket cv axles 150$
-used tdi dsg starter 50$
-mk4 auto brake pedal 10$
-various wiring and connectors 50$

For the cooling loop you can either use an auto hard line (kinda hard to swap) or just tee into one of the heater hoses and then use the auto upper radiator hose fitting.

There may be some other things I’m forgetting but this is most of it.
I am doing this swap for people at my shop in Tenessee but I haven’t figured out how to get registered as a vendor on here so I don’t want to discuss my pricing for the swap publicly.

 

[coolvdub]

@tdicaddy01 ,
Thanks for the reply, pretty reasonable moneywise. How much for the tunes to make the ECM and transaxle play well together?

 

[tdicaddy01]

@tdicaddy01 ,
Thanks for the reply, pretty reasonable moneywise. How much for the tunes to make the ECM and transaxle play well together?

@BustedBolts will do ecu tuning and dsg tuning for these. Also I’m a dealer for Thanatos tuning in Poland and he will tune this setup as well. You can lookup Thanatos tuning on FB. I would figure3-400$ for ecu tune and 3-400 for trans tune. I think the car would work fine with with stock transmission tuning. Ecu tune I would probably try to get done fairly soon after the swap.

 

[lemoncurd]

For the cooling loop you can either use an auto hard line (kinda hard to swap) or just tee into one of the heater hoses and then use the auto upper radiator hose fitting.

doing a air cooler is also an option, but a little more spendy

darkside has one or you can go for your favorite china flavor

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803976551901.html

 

[coolvdub]

@BustedBolts will do ecu tuning and dsg tuning for these. Also I’m a dealer for Thanatos tuning in Poland and he will tune this setup as well. You can lookup Thanatos tuning on FB. I would figure3-400$ for ecu tune and 3-400 for trans tune. I think the car would work fine with with stock transmission tuning. Ecu tune I would probably try to get done fairly soon after the swap.

@tdicaddy01,
Thanks again. I currenty have a Malone Stage 4 tune which is okay, but not great.

doing a air cooler is also an option, but a little more spendy

darkside has one or you can go for your favorite china flavor

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803976551901.html

@lemoncurd , Thank you also for the air cooler idea. I'm not a big fan of those. I built an air cooler for my 09A Tiptronic when I had a 1.8T and the problem with air to oil cooling is slow speed hills with no fan to move air causes overheating. I was going to Whitney Portal in California and you could really smell the fluid overheating, I found my design flaw when that happened. I'm a great machinist, but engineering, well not so much.

Don

 

[tdicaddy01]

doing a air cooler is also an option, but a little more spendy

darkside has one or you can go for your favorite china flavor

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803976551901.html

I saw that air cooler for it, I think I’ll go that route on my mk4 r32 that’s getting tdi dsg swapped

 

[Rob Mayercik]

So here’s a list of parts that you’ll need and roughly what I see them selling for:
-Dsg trans from mk6 tdi 500$
-Dsg dust tin plate (between engine and trans) 20$
-Mk6 shifter box with clips to attach cable 120$
-New dual mass flywheel with pilot bearing and new flywheel bolts 450$
-aftermarket cv axles 150$
-used tdi dsg starter 50$
-mk4 auto brake pedal 10$
-various wiring and connectors 50$

For the cooling loop you can either use an auto hard line (kinda hard to swap) or just tee into one of the heater hoses and then use the auto upper radiator hose fitting.

There may be some other things I’m forgetting but this is most of it.
I am doing this swap for people at my shop in Tenessee but I haven’t figured out how to get registered as a vendor on here so I don’t want to discuss my pricing for the swap publicly.

Were you able to reuse the 01M's mounting bracket (bolts onto the trans over output speed sensor, then the top of the bracket bolts to the frame in the car), or did you to come up with some alternative mounting arrangement?

 

[tdicaddy01]

Were you able to reuse the 01M's mounting bracket (bolts onto the trans over output speed sensor, then the top of the bracket bolts to the frame in the car), or did you to come up with some alternative mounting arrangement?

Yes I just reused the 01m trans mount as well as the stock dog bone mount. If you wanted it to be perfect you could get the 3bolt transmission mount from a 2004 dsg beetle. The dsg is quite a bit heavier so it would probably benefit from having 3 bolts but I can speak from experience 2 works just fine with the stock mount.

 

[[486]]

I'm almost done doing a dq250 in my own 350hp alh car so we'll get to see how well that works also.

keep us updated on that

I'm tired of breaking clutch and transmission parts, golf has been parked for a couple years and a DSG would certainly get it outta the weeds

 

[Matt-98AHU]

I haven’t got mine working yet but I’m going to just grab 12v signal from the shifter trim that lights up when it goes to reverse. Then I’ll use that to power a relay that acts as a reverse light switch.
Also if you tune the dsg it can be tuned to put out 12v to one of the pins as well in reverse.

Take a look at a Beetle DSG wiring diagram. Those don't have a BCM, but they have a DSG and of course functioning reverse lights.

There are several "unused" pins at the mechatronics unit, I would not be surprised if, even on later 02Es meant for PQ35+ cars, you still have an individual reverse signal wire to trigger a relay for the lights there.

Looking at a diagram now, T20/12 at the mech unit acts as ground trigger output to the control side of a relay (J219) to operate the reverse lights.

I would not be surprised if, even on an 02E from a PQ35, that ground trigger output still works.

 

[Matt-98AHU]

Screencap of the wiring diagram page I'm mentioning above.

J219, back-up light relay, gets power on the trigger side from fuse S7 (terminal 15/ignition witched power) and the ground trigger is from the mechatronics unit T20/12. Load side is also getting power from fuse S7, and of course the output is to the reverse lights themselves.

 

[bigsexyTDI]

How in the world did I miss this beauty of a thread. I have an 01M ALH Beetle I want DSG swapped... drooool

 

[tdicaddy01]

How in the world did I miss this beauty of a thread. I have an 01M ALH Beetle I want DSG swapped... drooool

No one has posted on my thread in awhile so it’s got buried lol. However I’m up to 13k miles on the swap and it’s running amazing.

Another thing we’ve found you need to use an 03 ALH ecu or an 03 file for it to transmit torque properly to the gcu.

 

[Freakoboost1]

No one has posted on my thread in awhile so it’s got buried lol. However I’m up to 13k miles on the swap and it’s running amazing.

Another thing we’ve found you need to use an 03 ALH ecu or an 03 file for it to transmit torque properly to the gcu.

If I’m going to run an ALH ecu in my mk3 to swap to vnt style turbo and of course better tuning options, is the DSG possible on the ahu block?

 

[tdicaddy01]

If I’m going to run an ALH ecu in my mk3 to swap to vnt style turbo and of course better tuning options, is the DSG possible on the ahu block?

Yes, the dsg will bolt up to your ahu/1z no problem and you can bolt up a dmf as well.
However it looks like the issue your going to run into is you need a late model ALH ecu for it to work with the stock dsg mechatronics and you also need mk60 (00+ mk4) abs module for it to communicate with abs.

I’m not sure how hard it is to retrofit abs into mk3 but you will also need abs to read wheel speed since dsg doesn’t have vss. Which I’m guessing you’ll need a mk4 cluster to read speed from abs then too.

Another option to look into would be a stand alone controller for the dsg. I want to swap a dsg into my mk1 rabbit with a pd engine and I will be using stand alone controller for it. Much easier than retrofitting mk4 abs system and cluster.

 

[Matt-98AHU]

If I’m going to run an ALH ecu in my mk3 to swap to vnt style turbo and of course better tuning options, is the DSG possible on the ahu block?

Other challenge is mk3s have much smaller diameter tires, which is generally compensated for by a taller final drive in the transmission.

But since no DSGs were made in our market intended for a diesel with much smaller diameter tires, you will not find the gearing to be very satisfactory.

And that's on top of the challenges that tdicaddy01 mentioned. First that there is no CAN bus network at all, secondly that you would need not only a later ALH ECU, but also the Mk4 instrument cluster and a Mk60 ABS module, which again is meant for a totally different car.

Not worth it! I'd do a 02S 6 speed in a heart beat, but not a DSG on a Mk3 or older car.

There exists a few 02S 6 speed manuals in Europe with the correct 3.16 final drive for the shorter tires Mk3s and older have. PTW and QVX code off the top of my head. I did hybridize one with a 02J bellhousing and limited slip for bleachedbora awhile back for his Mk1 Caddy TDI swap project.

If you swap both case halves, you can make it bolt-in with the factory mounts, axles, clutch and flywheel and everything.

 

[GTiTDi]

Other challenge is mk3s have much smaller diameter tires, which is generally compensated for by a taller final drive in the transmission.

But since no DSGs were made in our market intended for a diesel with much smaller diameter tires, you will not find the gearing to be very satisfactory.

And that's on top of the challenges that tdicaddy01 mentioned. First that there is no CAN bus network at all, secondly that you would need not only a later ALH ECU, but also the Mk4 instrument cluster and a Mk60 ABS module, which again is meant for a totally different car.

Not worth it! I'd do a 02S 6 speed in a heart beat, but not a DSG on a Mk3 or older car.

There exists a few 02S 6 speed manuals in Europe with the correct 3.16 final drive for the shorter tires Mk3s and older have. PTW and QVX code off the top of my head. I did hybridize one with a 02J bellhousing and limited slip for bleachedbora awhile back for his Mk1 Caddy TDI swap project.

If you swap both case halves, you can make it bolt-in with the factory mounts, axles, clutch and flywheel and everything.

^^This is why I didn't bother trying to use the 02E that came with my CJAA donor.