gear ratios?...

[Hammy]

Does anyone know if the ring and pinion gear sets are interchangeable with each other? Also, are some the trannies that are listed on those spec. pages not available in North America? For example the ATH, DFP, CHD, ASF, ect.......   I have only come across one 4S, a couple of ACH, and lots of AWY.

 I have an ACH in my TD Golf, now, but it revs too high for my liking.

[Dr. Diesel]

all 020 5 spd ring and pinions are interchangeable. (99% sure this applies to the bigger mainshaft trannies too)

[chrissev]

Does anyone know if the ring and pinion gear sets are interchangeable with each other? Also, are some the trannies that are listed on those spec. pages not available in North America? For example the ATH, DFP, CHD, ASF, ect.......   I have only come across one 4S, a couple of ACH, and lots of AWY.

 I have an ACH in my TD Golf, now, but it revs too high for my liking.

AGS is available and was in the 1986-1989 Jetta TD.  It has the .75 5th so is good on the highway.  AWYs are not nice.  .89 fifth means the thing is reving at 3000rpm at 100km/hr (60mph).

[Greasemonkey]

Does anyone know if the ring and pinion gear sets are interchangeable with each other? Also, are some the trannies that are listed on those spec. pages not available in North America? For example the ATH, DFP, CHD, ASF, ect.......   I have only come across one 4S, a couple of ACH, and lots of AWY.

 I have an ACH in my TD Golf, now, but it revs too high for my liking.

you can swap ring and pinions from tranny to tranny, preferably with their own bearings if you don't put new ones in. Also, ideally you shouldn't mix'n'match ring gears and pinion shafts. There's more info on my site. Not an easy job at any rate, gl.

[racer_x]

The ring and pinion sets from all 8V, 1.6D and 1.6TD transmissions are interchangeable, but it's not an easy swap. You would be better off finding the gearbox you want and swapping the entire transmission. Unless you have a whole lot of special tools (or want to make a lot of special tools), and have access to a lot of different new shims for inside the transmission, changing the bearings (which are pressed on the diff and the pinion shaft) is beyond the scope of most home mechanics. The bearing preload is set with shims pressed into the case before the bearing outer races are pressed in. You have to have special tools to remove the outer races, special drifts and a press to press in the outer races with undersized shims, then you have to measure the clearances and take it apart and swap in the appropriate size shim to set the preload and put it all back together a second time. And changing the ring and pinion set requires installing new bearings and measuring and setting all the preloads again.

One easy swap is changing the 5th gear set. If you have one of the 0.89:1 fifth gear sets, swapping in a 0.75:1 or 0.71:1 from one of the other gearboxes is pretty easy. You can do that without even removing the transmission from the car. That's definitely worth doing. There's only a couple of special tools needed to do that. One can be made from a piece of 1/2" pipe, and the other is the 12mm triple square wrench you need for the fifth gear retaining bolt (it's the same wrench you use for the head bolts).

A gear set from a used parts yard is pretty cheap. The fifth gear retaining bolt is a use once bolt, and it costs about $50 US at a dealer, and the 5th gear circlip and the retaining plate on the 5th gear shift fork are also single use parts. And you obviously want to use a new gasket on the 5th gear housing. Total "single use" parts is around $65 US, plus the cost of the gearset. If you want to replace the throwout bearing at the same time, you can do that while you are in there.