When it rains, it pours.
Over the last few days, I have made breakthroughs on 2 different transaxle options for my Rampage.
The first one is worthy of a story.
If you didn't know, the city of St Louis is consistenly ranked in the top 5 most-dangerous cities in the USA. I was raised in the "good part" of the city of St Louis, but was bussed to the bad part when I was in middle and high school. The good part of STL is pretty good. The bad part is very bad. Now, I live in a semi-rural suburb, about 30 miles south of the city limits.
Anyway, I heard about this guy who is supposed to be the local guru of all things VW. I get his number, give him a call, and he says that he'll take a look at my trans, and make a few needed upgrades. He gives me his street address, and I recognize it as being in one of the worst parts of StL city that you could possibly think of. I ask him if this is a private residence, or an apartment building, as it's in an area where there used to be some industry and commerce, but now consists of a lot of boarded up buildings, a few bars, and plenty of street crime. He tells me that it's a 2-story warehouse that he lives in. I know he is a friend of some other friends, so I figure everything is OK.
I put a 9mm in the side pocket of my truck, and make the trek. In MO, no permit is required to carry a gun (concealed or unconcealed) in your vehicle.
I get to the address and give him a call. He tells me to pull into the alley and he will open the door. I pull around the alley, keeping a watchful eye for anything that looks too shady. It's a large, commercial garage door, with one of those accordian style steel security fences outside the actual garage door. Once inside, he has an amazing 2-story shop, 9,000 square feet, with 3 phase electric, car lifts, a big lathe, CNC milling machine, 1ton Chevy wrecker, and more VW stuff and vehicles than you could shake a stick at. It turns out that the building was built as a car dealership, probably in the early 50's.
All of the first floor windows have been bricked in. All of the 2nd story windows have been bricked over, with the exception of some very narrow windows. There is one steel entry door with another one of those accordian style steel security fence deals. From the outside, it looks like a boarded up, abandoned building, but contains a wonderland for a car guy with no wife or kids. The guy is a mechanical engineer at his day job, and bought this building for his hobby stuff. I'm sure the building was very cheap due to it's location, and most people will never know of all the goodness inside.
He is going through the 5-speed trans that I hope to use at B-ville.