Making your own engine adaptor plate?

[Bugsy_malone 666]

I know its a bit of an engineering job and I'm not scared of doing it.

I was wondering whos made there own and by what methods did they do it?

I am looking at slinging a polo engine in the beetle I have and I thought i'll be buggered if I'm going to spend £400 on an adaptor plate/flywheel, I must be able to engineer sometihng myself.

I have a T25 diesel bellhousing to make my template from to make an adapto before it goes back in the bay so I thought buy a big chunck of aluminium and drill a few holes then jobs a gooden.

however its not always that easy, so any ideas?

and any ideas on a good place to get something the right size to make an adaptor plate?
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Second Gear All The Way Baby!

Doing Thing Differently.

[Neil-C]

I made my own plate, a few years ago now, and before I knew about kennedy Engineering.
I spent a lot of time drawing out what I needed on paper before I started to make the plate, and as I have no access to a mill or sufficient knowledge to use it, I decided to make a template out of MDF, its stable and easy to work, and have it cast in alloy. I had been warned about shrinkage during the casting process, but this is minimal and did not cause any problems. Once cast, the faces were machined flat and mounting holes and studs fitted. It's been working fine for seven years now.
The cost of the casting was around £50, and £120 to have it machined. It was cheeper than an off the shelf, but expensive in time.
If I was doing another conversion, I would pay the money and buy a ready made plate, leaving more time to solve other problems.

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66 Camper with 2.2 Subaru
63 Triumph TR4 with Rover V8

[Bugsy_malone 666]

thats a fair comment, hopefully because I have already done one conversion and the beetele is easier to work on, realistically I dont think I will have much problem solving.

The adaptor plate will be the main problem.

I was considering doing the same as you, making a MDF plate first to work from too, then its making it from some material or other, maybe a ply one lol
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Second Gear All The Way Baby!

Doing Thing Differently.

[sven]

Make a drawing and contact a water jet cutting company. They usually have a startup fee for every cut, but then they don't care if you want 1 piece or 500.
I do it all the time. Instead of milling all my parts for customers I design them, water cut them and then just finishing of in my own workshop. The cut is pretty precise, less then a tenth in tolerance so the only holes you may need to do manually are for the studs.

[richbaker78]

not really an answer to your question - but have you investigated the new watercooled brazilian t2s - they run polo engines. in my limited experience of them the earlier a/c ones also appear to run beetle type boxes too (bit like a splitty) suggesting that there might already be a polo compatible beetle sized box out there.

[Bugsy_malone 666]

well my biggest thing is the material the plate will be made from as im more than happy to get my grinder out, pillar drill and other tools.

Took me 3 days just ot make an adaptor for my fan on my diesel! so I dont mind taking my time building it
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Second Gear All The Way Baby!

Doing Thing Differently.

[Bugsy_malone 666]

[Bugsy_malone 666]

Ah ha, I think I managed to get a VAG plate for £45

Still might need to make one in future though.
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Second Gear All The Way Baby!

Doing Thing Differently.

[andymacdonald30]

The adapter plate in my T25 with a 1.9 pug motor is made from approx 5 mm steel
It seems to have been made in several sections and welded together

There are no studs in the plate but 2 holes line up with the original engine/gearbox boltholes and 3 others bolt into the engine direct
Then the starter is bolted onto the adaptor plate from the engine side through the adaptor plate

I was looking to replace it/add to it , as there is a gap at the bottom that allows water to get into the clutch housing

Andy
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2002 T4 2.5 tdi
1987 T25 1.9 D

[Bugsy_malone 666]

5mm seems pretty thin! i would have thought 10mm at least.

The adaptor plate I have bought is by the pictures designed for a VAG engine to be fitted at 15 degrees only and only fits the larger VAG engines as in 1.5/1.6/1.8/2.0/Diesels.

Now I was thinking of fitting a 1300 polo engine to keep things cheap (as I know where theres a cheap engine.) but apparently the bolt fixings are different. the VR6 mounts are apparently also different.

I could really do with getting a nice fresh piece of 1" thick alloy so I can use this adaptor plate as a guide/base and then add a selection of other holes to suit other VAG engines!

now on top of the adaptor plate, how did people go about flywheels & clutches? I know that with the bigger VAG engines they use a back to front clutch/flywheel layout thats not suited to beetle/camper gearboxes and some people with other engines use a 200mm beelte centre plate (or bigger if the flywheel will fit) and then pressure plate/flywheel from the doner engine?
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Second Gear All The Way Baby!

Doing Thing Differently.

[13 window deluxe]

the 1000-1400 type polo motors use a conventional type clutch as per beetle so the would be ok to use on the bug box i bet the release bearing diameter is approximately the same size od? also you need to check out the od and teeth pitch of the polo ring gear to see if they will fit in the bug bellhousing and mesh correctly with the 12v bug starter motor the polo (small family)engine leans forward but the golf style(large family) engine leans back so a diesel/1500 upwards petrol adaptor plate would be no good anyway as the angle would be all wrong! the early polo 1300 gt carb engine would be nice in a bug a good mix of simpicity very easy to wire electronic ignition no hastle with a good old carb and lots of free reving power and the engine is quite light making for good balance
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1964 rat 13 window deluxe 1Z tdi,
1975 rhd twin slider tintop (TBA)
1991 golf 2 gti with tweaked AHU tdi,

previous tdi swaps: gone but not forgotten
1979 rhd twin slider tintop bay ahu 1.9tdi
1990 T25 1Z 1.9tdi
1993 suzuki samurai with 1Z 1.9tdi

[13 window deluxe]

the later polo usually has a 190mm (if memory serves me correctly?) clutch plate which is the same spline as the beetle box which would be more than man enough for a 75bhp polo gt engine in a bug! but upgrades are easy to get use a g40 clutch made for the super charged polo if you had slip issues
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1964 rat 13 window deluxe 1Z tdi,
1975 rhd twin slider tintop (TBA)
1991 golf 2 gti with tweaked AHU tdi,

previous tdi swaps: gone but not forgotten
1979 rhd twin slider tintop bay ahu 1.9tdi
1990 T25 1Z 1.9tdi
1993 suzuki samurai with 1Z 1.9tdi