Bus Trans

[Russhebert]

Is there a year of bus trans to stay away from. I am looking at a 1972 and I am not familiar with bus trans at all, but I am going to build a wild rail buggy and thought I might want to use a bus rather than a bug trans. Help would be greatly appreciated.

[David O']

Unless you are going to run tall tires, the bus drive ratio is over 5 to 1! Lots of torque, but no top end.

[David Head]

I think the ones in demand are the so called "six rib". I think those are out of a '77 and '78 bus.

[Epimetheus]

Exactly how wild are you thinking? I'm putting a ~220HP Subaru EJ20T behind a Manxter. I was nervous about pushing the limits of the 091 6-rib bus box. From what I've read that is the strongest stock VW transaxle. I'm using a stock Porsche 915 transaxle from a 1979 911SC. Just to be clear, I'm building a street buggy, it will never leave the pavement (At least not intentionally). Everything I seen limits the bus box to ~200HP when completely beefed up.

If I'm wrong somebody please correct me.

[Russhebert]

I am only talking about a 2276 vw but it will be built for street and off road. Will most likely have tall rear off road tires.

[Epimetheus]

Sounds like the bus box would be fine then, as long as you can get the gear ratios you want.

[Aquabuggy]

Stay away from the 68 bus trans, they have some one off & very hard to find parts.
The 3 rib is geared down pretty low but if your gonna be running some big tires it should be OK.
Also the 3 ribs came with type 1 engines if you use a 5 or 6 rib they came with type 4 engines, the bell housing is different you can make it work with a type 1 but it will require some modification.

[Russhebert]

Thanks for the info guys

[Aquabuggy]

Russell, You won the Hawkeye chassis at the blast rite? So what are you planning to build?
Im looking forward to seeing your build, if its anything like your yellow buggy its gonna be awesome!