A friend of mine has a 2000 Jetta TDI that he's done god knows what to, but the damn thing can hustle. I know that in the European A4s you could get a diesel as an option. Seeing as how my friend's Jetta gets close to 55MPG when he's nice to it and can really get moving when he buries it, I got to thinking: if something ended up happening to the 1.8T in my car, could I get a junkyard 1.9TDI out of a Jetta or Golf or whatever, rebuild it, and put it in my 1998 A4 Quattro? It's a manual transmission, and I know that the Jetta/Golf/Etc. TDI is transverse mounted which (I'm guessing here) would mean that I'd need to find a different bellhousing for the transmission (if it's even possible to find/make one to have it work). Obviously this would be expensive and time consuming, but It just seems like it'd be pretty damned sweet to have a TDI A4, especially with gas prices being so low now and everyone kind of cringing waiting for prices to skyrocket again.
Just a thought.

 

like everybody says in here when when of these crazy engine/driveline swap questions come up, you can do anything with the right amount of money and time. personally i would guess it would be cheaper importing a diesel a4 and modding it

 

Most likely. I'm just sitting around bored and thought, "Hmm....". Would be sweet though.

 

One of these days, americans will realize that diesel is the better fuel and we'll start importing them more regularly. I myself am eagerly awaiting TDI Audis being readily available on this side of the pond. Until then, you probably would have better luck importing one yourself than trying to mod a jetta engine into your current A4 IMO.

 

The mount up really shouldn't be too hard. I believe they share the same bolt pattern on the bell housing so you would probably just have to worry about the clutch and FW. Then obviously there's the matter of engine management. You might be able to get the Euro wiring harness and ecu and make it a direct swap but I couldn't tell ya. The engines are damn expensive though.