# B1 wagon TDI swap



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

hi yall, let me introduce you to my passat









i bought this car about a year and 3months ago as an unfinished project. the original engine was long gone and it had an AAZ td mated to a b2 diesel 5 speed in it. got it fit for the road somewhere in august last year, but unfortunately last winter a bit of ice managed to get between timing belt and pulley making it skip a couple teeth and wreaking havoc in the engine.
well, damn. of course any sane person would've sold it, but since its one of 3 diesel variants with papers and 1 of two that is still registered i couldn't bring myself to do so. 
at first i was looking at putting another AAZ in it, but then thought, why not go for a bit of a power upgrade while we're at it? so that's where this ordeal all began.

so off to the local wrecking yard i went(fortunately i'm on good terms with them, makes for cheap parts) looking for either an audi a4/a6 tdi or a passat tdi. luck would have it there were several passats, one with a wrecked auto box and the other with a broken timing belt, both pd130 engines so good power aswell. 
of course i went for the one with the bad slushbox as i allready had an engine that had the pistons and valves be a little too intimate😅









300 bucks and it was mine if i removed the engine meself. 

so two days later the engine was swinging from a hoist








a bit of cleaning later it looked pretty good already

since the engine was out the car and god knows when it was last serviced it got a bit of a service
egr delete, new used turbo(old one had enough play on the shaft the compressor wheel hit the housing), new headgasket, new timing set, new seals, etc etc.









after the new engine was mostly finished(messed up the new rear main seal trying to mount it) it was time to pull the engine from the b1










a couple days later it was time to dry fit the new engine, and we immediately ran into a bit of a problem, it dont fit









the subframe was hitting the rear most bit of the sump. but after some thinking and discussing the grinder came out to remove the now useless lump on the sump(the lump used to bolt to the auto box but there was nothing for it to bolt to on the b2 trans)
















after some more cutting grinding and welding the motor mounts were made and it was in place









for cooling i picked up a 3 row honda civic radiator that seemed to fit pretty well. unfortunately after fitting the alternator and hacking off the ac and ps mounting points there wasnt much place left for a radiator
so out came the measuring tape and grinder again, cut a bit off of the rad and had my sister weld it back up, succes it fits










after all that was done it was time to figure out the intercooler piping and of course the intercooler itself


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

hmm, only 10 pics per post eh, anyway, on with the show.

a bit of rummaging around landed me these









and of course none of them fit right, so back they went and another headache was born.
then i remembered that i had an intercooler from a mazda laying about at home, lets just say it was as perfect of a fit i could get

now that all that is done it was time to pull the engine back out to finish it and the transmission up, do some finish welding on the mounts, repair a bit of frame rail and some other stuff. and thats pretty much up to date now. since the space where i work on it wasnt available last week i had time to figure out the wiring loom i pulled out the donor b5 mostly to see if i could get the chinese instrument cluster working with the b5 loom









said chinese instrument cluster from a shanghai santana 

and said chinese cluster compared to a b1 cluster, an empty b2 cluster and a b5.5 cluster









the fitup in the dash trim is pretty nice







+

anyway, this cluster is proving to be another source for headaches and sleepless nights. on the back it has the same socket as a mk3 golf would have, 28 pin connector. unfortunately the pinout on the santana cluster is completely different from the mk3 pinout. its been 3 days of constant searching for pinouts but no luck so far(if any of you have the pinout for it please please share it)

so yeah thats all for now. ill try to keep it updated


----------



## B1-16V (Aug 5, 2002)

Great build! Looks good so far. And a sister that welds Aluminum - wow.


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

B1-16V said:


> Great build! Looks good so far. And a sister that welds Aluminum - wow.


thanks chris, question for you, do you have good pictures of the battery compartment on your build? im probably going with a small agm battery but if that fails i might want to put a hole next to the interior fan where a normal battery can life


----------



## B1-16V (Aug 5, 2002)

This is the best I've got, I can get another if you need it. This part is certainly not finished, I need to still make a lid, and also the tie downs for the battery. I'm still trying to decide what kind to use. The Optima batteries have a great support and tie down that can be bought, I might get that setup. I will most likely get a side post battery, so I can have the cables go straight down to the hole, instead of having to bend at a 90 degree angle coming from top posts.

If I was to do it all over again, I would likely put the battery in the trunk. I originally did not, because of the utility nature of the hatchback, but my purposes have drastically changed for this car, it is merely a toy, and will never be relied on for utility. With the battery where it's at, that ruins any chance of an aftermarket AC in the future if I ever decided to do that.


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

Ah seeing that picture shows me that o had my ideas all wrong, I had made a box with lips on it to weld to the metal of the car. Scrapped that plan because I couldn't figure out a neat way to get it to sit flat. Might still go that route if the AGM battery I ordered turns out to be too weak


----------



## Willi-The-Red13 (Nov 12, 2011)

Depending on how long I keep FrankenWagen it might get a AAZ engine at some point right now it's a Turbo 1.6D


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

Willi-The-Red13 said:


> Depending on how long I keep FrankenWagen it might get a AAZ engine at some point right now it's a Turbo 1.6D


i'd go with an 1.6td in that case, more power potential. tho the aaz will run on anything thats vaguely liquid and maybe flamable


----------



## the vegenator (Dec 9, 2010)

Impressive build! I wondered what it would take to modify a tdi engine to fit longitudinally, but here you found one already oriented that way. It’s looking great so far! 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

YAY! some more work has been done again. all engine stuff this week

so, slight recap, engine is from an automatic b5, transmission, flywheel and clutch are from a b2 passat.

so with that in mind i had to go find a pilot bearing. first i ordered one for a b5, that came in and didnt fit. uhoh, this is gonna bite me in the rear end isnt it?
back to ordering part then. que vacation and a bit of waiting around.

enfin i got my pilot bearings in. guess what?









luck would have that a b2 pilot bearing fits right in\
(also notice the shiny new rear main seal, screwed up the first new one i had)

so, pilot bearing in that means the rest can go on









flywheel on










and the transmission back on

once all back together i tried the starter that came on the trans. turns out, NO FIT 
a little scrounging later i found two possible candidates that might fit, one of a mk2 1.8 golf and one off of a mk1 1.1 golf
the mk2 starter was still to big so my hopes were the mk1 starter would atleast fit, and it did










thats all for this week, next week there'll be some welding on the chassis to fix a little bit of rot and then the enginge can go back in, exciting times


----------



## Almost1 (Nov 3, 2010)

This is awesome! Gives me plenty of motivation to keep on with this project:










1Z TDI from my old B4. I have a gasser trans in it now, but always on the lookout for a proper B2D trans.


----------



## Tuckk (May 27, 2021)

Great build!! This is an awesome and inspiring thread.


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

and we're at it again. progress has been at a bit of a standstill the last couple weeks because stuff got in the way(brother broke his neck at a sidecar cross)

anyway, 
finally got the hole in the chassis welded up, welded the intercooler mounting bracket thingy, cut out the original battery tray and got on with making a new tray for the smaller agm battery





















oh and last week i also got the alternator mounted with a stretch belt, so no need for a tensioner.

hopefully the engine will be back in an maaaybe running next week


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

some more progress has been made,

i've turned down the crank pulley to create some more clearance at the front









and picked up a tps sensor off of a citroën, hoping to use this instead of the drivebywire pedal. just so i dont have to weld inside the car and keep the original pedal









that all was thursday, then friday happend and had me back welding on the frame😑

anyway, here's the culprit
snapped the front right subframe bolt clean in half, sigh.










so out came the grinder again and it was time for cutting more holes where there shouldnt be holes

door #1









and door #2









the nut and cage holding it were angrily removed with the use of a big hammer and a cold chisel. and that was all that i had time for yesterday.

oh well, today's another day, another day with a passat fighting me.

first up, welding in a new nut









after that my phones battery ran out, so no pics of the rest of the progress.
but, the progress consisted of some more welding some more grinding, quite a few colorful words from weld spatter landing where it shouldnt. 
the front axles came back out for some new boots, the hood came off, enginebay got cleaned up and wires strung up to not get in the way of reinstalling the engine

THE ENGINE IS BACK IN, HOPEFULLY FOR GOOD.

tomorrow morning will be finishing some things up so its a roller again, just so it can be pushed back out because the shop needs the space for actual payed work


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

bit more waiting on parts done and putting parts in

while i had the time i thought i might aswell put on all new cv boots, low and behold, cv's were a goner. bummer. so out to the interwebs i went looking for replacement cv's for a b1, that turned out to be a no go, but what i did find was some complete new axles on vw classic parts. (those were the parts i was waiting for)










so when the time came to install them i ran into a problem caused by a previous owner, see, this passat has been lowered, in the back this was done (by a previous owner) by cutting the springs(yeah i know). in the front this was done by cutting the welds on the shock tubes and lowering them into the steering knuckles and rewelding them, great idea if it was done with a sense of, this might need to come apart someday. as you can see below, the new cv hits the bottom of the strut, even with the rubber boot off, eventually got it in after lots of colorful language and remounted the boot. all in all, the axles are back in and thats where im at with it, bar some little things that arent really worth mentioning


----------



## B1-16V (Aug 5, 2002)

Looks like the strut tube actually CUT the boot. Wow.
You could pretty easily remedy this with Golf 1 or 2 strut inserts, but with a new bottom welded in and that extra bit of strut tube cut off.

And bummer about the nuts inside the body. What a pain to fix.


----------



## Beetspeed (Mar 8, 2011)

Hey mate,
How did your engine swap turn out? Did you get it past the RDW yet for inspection (APK)?

greetings, Walter


----------



## C101horse (Feb 21, 2021)

Beetspeed said:


> Hey mate,
> How did your engine swap turn out? Did you get it past the RDW yet for inspection (APK)?
> 
> greetings, Walter


Havent got it running yet, most parts are back in and theres been a start to the wiring. As for getting it past the rdw inspections, im not going. Just gonna get apk on it again and itll still be 1.5d on paper


----------



## B1-16V (Aug 5, 2002)

Keep the updates coming.


----------



## Beetspeed (Mar 8, 2011)

Fingers crossed! Cool project!


----------

