Club 80-90 Forums

afternoon chaps.....ive been into vw for a few years now but never had a camper. been mulling a few things over including campering out a landrover 130 but decided i gotta stay with vw.

so i started looking at syncro's and saw pretty much my ideal van (the gold one on the syncro-nutz website)

anyways i popped round to see a good mate and lifetime vw nut and showed him a few syncro 16's that i spotted on busman etc etc. his reaction was that i was looking at spending £5K ish on a pretty ratty looking left hooker panel van just coz its 4wd. add another 5 grand to camper it out and have a high top fitted and i'm at 10K+ without thinking about a decent engine, spray job or sorting problems.

he reckons the best camper he's ever had interior wise was the T25 autosleeper trident and i must admit they are pretty damn good (much better than any aftermarket conversion available now) so i wanted to ask you guys if it's possible to fit syncro 16 running gear to a 2wd T25 camper?

i'm not a dreamer, i know there's gonna be a lot of ££££ and sweat involved. the point is if i paid £4K for the camper and £4 for a mechanically sound syncro 16 i'm still 2 grand in hand to start paying for the 4wd conversion and i get the factory camper interor with the luggage rack hi top etc.

anyways at the risk of just rambling on like a dick what's the score, is it possible to 4wd up a regular T25 and if so do any of you guys know a company that would undertake the task.

one last quickie? i assume ( lol ) that the syncro system from a vr6 passat is fairly similar and they are peanuts to buy....see where i'm going? could i fit a 2.8vr6 syncro engine and running gear to a T25 and at the same time have diff locks fitted ( i know some Syncro's in the USA have had diff locks retrofitted)..

jacked up, fat tyres, fully resprayed autosleeper running 4wd and a 200hp vr6. nice little offroad trailer with a cr500 in it and i'm off to morocco for a surf and sahara motocross trip.

anybody wanna come lol!?????

Not done either, but even if it is technically possible, it has still got to be easier to camper-ise a syncro than syncro-ise a camper

yes you probably right mate but i really would like the 'factory' camper interior and hi-top.

just had a thought actually, there was a guy on one of the mk2 golf forums who did a full Audi S2 engine and running gear conversion on a mk2. there's a video on pootube i think. he's running some like 500 horse lol!

2.2 20v S2 quattro camper?

it's not that big a job to syncroise a 2wd, but going 16" would be a big extra cost, for not a lot frankly, much better to go 14", jack it a dadge fit all new shocks, dampers, bushes and bearings etc, power steering, 15" rims, sort the engine and rebuild the box(es).....syncro-nutz would be an obvious choice of converter, but anyone could do it with a bit of care and the appropriate donors, you'd want good paperwork for the insurance subsequently I reckon.
Mike Ghia has done a 4wd conversion and could advise, but M0cki won't let him in here anymore so you'll have to find him on brickyard, in fact he'll probably quote to do the job

thx Aidan.

ok so could it be done with a passat vr6 syncro? or would it be better to use a T25 syncro 14 donor and maybe put in a 1.9 tdi at a later date.

if i'm gonna need to replace all the suspension parts anyway wouldn't it be a waste to pay the extra for a van when i could get the engine, transmission etc from a passat?

so what sort of tyre size could i use on the 15" rims without chopping the arches? not that it's a problem its gotta look the nuts so it needs fat rubber. i'm a newbie but i've already sussed that those plastic arch covers are pretty rare and expensive but they'd be needed if the arches were cut to avoid having to repaint the area right?

i will ask Mike Ghia on the brickyard but could ya pls let me know (pm if ya like) why the rofl smilie mate?

thx for the help, mucho gracias

Do you realy need a 16" or is it just kudos? Autosleeper converted some 14" syncros to trident spec. they were also speced quite high from factory elec windows/ mirrors, pwr steering, twin diff locks, ctrl locking etc.. I think you would be better of trying to source one of these and fitting 15" or 16" wheels and sorting any little problems out than converting a genuine 16" to camper spec.
Just my thoughts. good luck with the hunt.

In your area, Pm me might have what you are looking for...

timtheenchanter kudos? yeah probably mate. seriously i didn't know autosleeper had converted some syncro 14's.

that would be the perfect solution, the only question would be whether i could afford it if one came up. that's the nice thing about a project, you can do jobs as and when you can afford them.

can't imagine there's many about. if i owned one i would want good money that's for sure.

Get yourself a good 16", then get yourself a camper and take all the stuff out of that ....... Remember syncro gearboxes can only handle so much power before they go pop so easy with your VR6s.

Dont convert from 2wd to 4wd if you want to recover your money at resale time.
LHD factory window vans with westy interiors fitted afterwards will demand a good resale value if fitted well.
I would'nt buy a syncro VR6 converted van, as stated to much power, gearbox's are expensive.
You'll allways be tempted to boot it.

you would probably be better off buying this
and saving a lot of money and time

its in the for sale section
https://club8090.co.uk/forum/download/file.php?id=189

i imagine the paperwork/insurance/resale would be more hassle than doing the conversion itself.

i wouldn't convert to vr6 unless i could use the engine and all the running gear from a VR6 syncro passat. they have really nice leather seats in i could nick too

bit difficult to use a fwe/4wd set up in a rwe/4wd vehicle I think you'll find, don't think you can flip the diff so you'd have 5 reverse gears and 1 forward, though I may be wrong, check out the germans to see if they do whole engine/box transplants in 2wd vans.
There aren't many autohomes or autosleeper syncros out there, probably a dozen tops but they do come up for sale occasionally.
The ex finnish ambulance would make a really good blank canvas as per Simon's van and you could have Russel mod it to increase lift and approach angles etc...get the best shell you can, the rest is all readily fixable, and most uk campers aren't great shells due to poor insulation techniques and fridge venting etc....a Westy might be abetter platform, depends if you can live with lhd, personally I find it fine and so much nicer when abroad when I'm naturally a more nervous driver due to the different languages and signs, keep the old lhd lights and swap over before going abroad too helps with night driving massively compared to running deflectors or benders on rhd lights ime.

i had been thinking the same thing, it's probably unlikely that the passat would work.

i have a westy syncro hi top to go and look at, just waiting for a message from the seller. i'm taking a m8 who knows T25 inside out but nothing about syncro's. what do i need to be looking/listening for when i drive the van? oh it does have a pretty ratty shell but it is pretty cheap. when i say pretty i mean stupid cheap.

i would probably take it even if it blew up on the test drive. i'd rape it for bits, sell the rest and probably not lose

See the Wiki, pretty useful stuff in there

https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/Sy ... ing_guides" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;