"Hello, would you like to buy..."

[Gerard]

I just got a very strange phone call. It was in reply to my ad in a
local performance magazine where I was selling some unneeded parts from
my Audi 200 project. The person on the other side of the line was going
to try and sell me something.

He has for sale a Audi 5-cylinder engine as used in some car driven my
South African rally king Sarel van der Merwe. Aluminum block, stroked
steel crank (maybe 2.5-litre), dry sump and a turbo comparable to a T-62
(he mentioned something like "262", so probably a big ass K27) and
various other goodies. Asking about the head, it's a 10-valve. Not the
20-valve units I usually saw him in. I could think of only one engine
with those specs locally as driven by the "Van The Man" himself. It's
from the type-44 which held the local public-road landspeed record over
10-years ago (beaten afterwards by a daily-driver twin-turbo 7.2-litre
V8 Pontiac TransAm and recently by some tubular-framed machine with
normally aspirated 10-litre V8 running on locally-produced Dunlop street
tyres (450km/h) on a track). I believe it was somewhere between 320km/h
and 350km/h average when the Audi held the record.

Around $3000 for it. :(

I'm waiting for pictures as I'm interested in finding out more about
this engine and to also lay aside fears that some joker upcountry isn't
pulling my leg for posting nonsense on a forum somewhere. :)

Apparently, the engine has been on display in an orthodontist's waiting
room area, so it probably hasn't been run for many years. :) I wonder if
it still turns over? Hmmm... indeed. :)

And did I mention the 10,000rpm rev limit? (Not so sure about that
either)

G.