Alex at Bugat5speed(us) was kind enough to help me out on the 901 install. He emailed me a solution he had used, which got me thinking about a possible solution for myself. Enter the $30 empi solid mount kit. Because the lower cross member is supposed to be used without mounts on the T1 trans, it gets me a whole lot closet to where i need to be.
I am concerned about the urethane mounts failing, and may still end up with a Bugat5speed aluminum mount setup. At least the way I've done this I should be able to swap out for Alex's mount relatively easily. The final version of my mount required some cutting, bending, welding and then moving the frame horn holes to get everything exactly where I wanted it to be. My input shaft now sits 1/16" higher then the Type-1 transmission, with the mounting flange for the engine in the exact same spot fore/aft.
It's a whole lot easier working on the pan upside down...not sure if/how you would do a Porsche transmission swap with the body on the car. It would suck, I can say that much! With the 901 Trans being 1"(ish) longer then the VW transmission, and my decision not to move the engine back at all, I've had a lot of cutting to do in the torsion bar area. Thankfully I'm using coil-overs...but I'll never be able to go back!
Started on my front mount, which will be done in the factory rally car style. This requires just a short plate, and two regular transmission mounts welded to the frame rails.
Volkswagen was even kind enough to include motorsport mounting brackets in the regular Type-1 transmission cross member. You just have to cut away all the metal bits that aren't for racing ;-)
In order to weld in my new mounts, however, I need to remove the speedometer gear assembly from the nose-cone of my Porsche Trans. Having no factory manual, and not being able to figure out exactly how it's being held in...I started to think about removing the nose cone. Alex's 901 install write up talks about removing the speedometer drive gear inside the nosecone, and I need to do the shift-selector seal anyways...so it seemed like a good idea.
Not so much now.
My first issue is that the nosecone didn't separate from the intermediate plate, first the intermediate plate separated from the trans case. I suspect this means I'm in for a bit of a tear down if I want to ensure that my transmission is leak free, the paper gaskets won't be much good now. No photos tonight, but I've got the nose cone off now and will start dealing with this tomorrow.
-Dave