The Problem

When Ferdinand Porsche was asked to design a utilitarian “People’s car”, he could not have guessed how wildly successful the Volkswagen beetle, and its commercial variant, the Kombi, would become, or the passion they would generate among enthusiasts, who are now using these vehicles in ways the manufacturer could never have envisaged. Some of them are being raced and rallied, some have been converted into mobile homes, and some have been lovingly restored for the concourse show circuit. But under stresses they were never designed to handle , the old engine and transmission set ups just haven’t been strong or reliable enough. The older VW “dak daks” use a boxer style engine, rear wheel drive, and have barely enough power in stock form to blow the froth off a cappuccino. This has been a source of frustration for owners of the old VWs, who have been installing more powerful engines or tuning the old ones only to break the old style gearboxes with heartbreaking frequency.

The Obstacle

An upgraded gearbox seemed to be the answer, but there were few viable options. The VW rear engine bay, designed to accommodate a flat-four engine and transaxle, limited choice of replacement. The obvious candidates were Porsche and Subaru. Porsche is the easiest conversion, and works well, but is prohibitively expensive. That left the modern day Subaru, with its boxer engine, and in the turbo models, enough power to give you whiplash if you’re not braced when the go pedal is pressed, coupled with a gearbox able to handle the power. But the Subaru used a front mounted engine and transaxle, with All Wheel Drive. You have to get rid of the center diff for a start, and even then, if you stuck any powerful engine mated to a modified box from a WRX into the rear of a VW beetle or Kombi, the car might well go like a scalded cat, but backwards. There was simply no manufacturer building modern gearboxes designed for rear-wheel drive cars, other than Porsche.

The Inspiration

Enter Todd Triebler, AKA “The Problem Solver”

Todd Triebler has been a passionate VW man all his adult life, and a keen dune buggy driver, running a Subaru WRX engine in his VW buggy. As with all such conversions though he was constantly breaking gearboxes, and there was no existing box other than the very expensive Porsche strong enough for the purpose. Hardly anyone made rear wheel drive gearboxes. The need to solve this problem drove him to look more closely at the Subaru AWD transaxle. And that’s when he had a flash of genius.

There was the pinion gear, rotating clockwise, meshed with the crown wheel, which turned counter clockwise. On a rear wheel drive car this would result in the wheels being driven counter clockwise, pulling the car backwards. There seemed to be no way around this. Todd’s stroke of genius was in seeing that if the crown wheel could be flipped so that it meshed with the pinion on the other side, then the crown wheel rotation would also be clockwise, the same as the pinion. The modified VW would be pushed forward rather than dragged backwards.

Having cracked the central core of the problem, the rest was R & D, then machining and rebuilding parts of the gearbox to convert it into a drop-in 2-wheel, rear drive box, and finding a gear engineering factory to cut the reverse crown wheel and pinion set up. Now all Tod needed was an expert Subaru gearbox builder to put the conversion kits together.

The Production Solution

Enter All Drive Subaroo and Subaru Gearboxes Australia. Todd first came to us in 2010 with his ideas and a proposition to develop and assemble his kits for shipping locally and internationally. All Drive Subaroo had the specialist expertise required for the job, and experience in the logistics of shipping gearboxes and engines around the world. It was an ideal partnership, and we have been working together on the project continuously since then, helping to develop and implement the design, and assemble and freight the products. Tod manufactures the kits in our Peakhurst factory, and we assemble all gearboxes for the Australian market.

The result is a well proven kit that has enjoyed great success here and internationally, particularly in the US market, with sales growing week by week.