[Shad Laws]

Hello-


Hell, has anyone attempted or installed a Prosche tripomatic in a 1303 before?

I think you are confusing two different transmissions... a Sportomatic and a Tiptronic.

The Sportomatic is the Porsche equivalent of VW's Autostick. They both began production in 1968, following the 1967 VWAG aquisition of NSU (who developed the idea in the first place :-). The gearboxes themselves are manual transmission gearboxes. However, instead of simply having one manually-operated clutch to connect the engine to the gearbox, there is both an automatically-operated clutch and a hydraulic torque converter. To the driver, the car is just like an automatic transmission that you have to shift yourself. To purists, both the Autostick and Sportomatic are hated furiously. But, they really aren't that bad of devices... 99% of the horror stories you hear are because people don't understand how to work on them, so they are often in disrepair :-).

The Sportomatic is similar in size to a 901 gearbox. The early 905 boxes had 4 speeds, but weren't too strong. Then they went to a 925 gearbox that, although it was still based on the 901 gearbox and had 4 speeds, was stronger. The last revision of the 925 gearbox only had 3 speeds, but was the strongest of all. I don't know of anyone who has put one of these into a VW, but have often thought that it'd be a novel idea :-).

The Tiptronic is an electronically-controlled automatic transmission. Whereas the Sportomatic is more like a manual tranmission modified to be clutched automatically, the Tiptronic is definately an automatic transmission modified so it can be shifted manually if desired. They are significantly bigger than even a G50 transmission. In fact, to get the package to fit, they had to do something very funny with the differential.... know how most VW/Porsche transaxles have the diff right in line with the gearbox and engine? Well, that didn't fit. The engine goes straight to the gearbox. At the forward-end of the gearbox, there is a longitudinal output shaft that runs outside and to the right of the gearbox back to where the diff "should be," and the differential is outrigged on the right-hand side of the gearbox. So, it is quite bulky and wide, and heavy, and requires a computer, and is expensive.

There's an article in both Excellence and HotVWs about a bus with a Tiptronic in it, but they also have the 6-cylinder 911 engine in there and all the ECU stuff, so it's probably quite a bit more straightforward than having the gearbox alone.

Take care,