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The vin # of Her Urq
I guess it's time to start another project thread seeing as I've gone stupid and went and bought another 83 Urq. That is just what someone needs.....two old audis, let alone two old Urqs!! It should be a real trial in patience, time management, aquiring parts, and of course trying to finance two builds at the same time. So what did I tell the wife you ask? It was on sale and I couldn't pass it up, which as it turned out wasn't that far off. She wasn't all that thrilled that I dragged it home and has no idea that I have always had an itch to have some sort of Him and Her's of something, so why not Urqs? In all seriousness (now don't start laughing Hank) It would be way cool to talk her into an event where we both showed up in Mars Red cars. I'll have to work on that.
So this is the story. Dave up in Salt Lake (Hybrid_hatch) calls me one day a few months ago about a Urq in northern Nevada that is for sale. I'm not really interested in another all consuming project at this point, but figure since it is so close that I ought to at least look. I start the process to get pictures only to find out that both Derek and Martin have beat me to it and the guy sends me the same pictures that he has taken for them. The problem is that it has a rusty front driver's fender, the muffler is rotted away, the Mars Red was faded bad, the whole car was filthy all over, and if that wasn't bad enough it still had Wisconsin plates. I think it scared most potential buyers off including me. I told the guy I already had a rust bucket that I was working on and didn't need another and left it at that. He claimed that it was just surface rust, but it looked pretty scarey in the pictures. To add concern and stress was the fact that it hadn't been run since 91, but only had 93k on the clock. We finely settled on a sight unseen price delivered to Hank's shop in Salt Lake. I told Hank that if it was really bad we would just turn it into a dedicated track car and move on. I was really stressed seeing as I hadn't even told the wife that I had bought it.
The good news is that when it arrived in Salt Lake, Hank calls me and tells me that other than obvious problems of not running and the visible rust, that it was in way better condition than the project in my garage and that it was completely stock. He even went on to say that it was a real candidate for keeping it stock which for Hank is saying alot. The fender wells and all the normal rust spots on these cars were all good. There isn't a jack dent one under the car and just surface rust on completely straight subframes. All in all I'm way pleased with the car. I wish it wasn't red, but then how could you have a Him and Her's that weren't alike? LOL
A big thanks goes out to Dave for finding it for me and Hank for dealing and storing the car for the last month or two. I really am glad you two talked me into it and I'm pretty stoked to have brought another Urq into the family.
This is how it looked when I first went up to Salt Lake to The Lab to pick it up. It hadn't been cleaned up at all.
I thought that I had taken pictures of the engine bay when it was dirty, but can't seem to find them. It was pretty much like the rest of the car, completely stock with everything there and waaaaaay dirty. Oh and for the first time I get to deal with mice nests and droppings like I keep hearing you back east guys talk about. The trunk had a few nests where the insulation from somewhere in the car had been used. The glove box was also a favorite place. I'm just hoping that the wiring insulation hasn't been eaten.
I arrived in Salt Lake at 6am and Hank was already down there working on his Urq trying to get it ready for this weekend. (He didn't quite make it) The first thing I did was fire up the pressure washer to try to clean up the engine bay and outside a bit. The car will need to be painted, but I kind of wish I would have been a bit more gentle with the pressure washer as I blew off both sets of audi rings on the doors, pinstriping, and patches of paint here and there. Hank wanted to see if I could make it run and was pretty disappointed when I whipped out the buffer and started cleaning it up instead of trying to fire it up. He just shook his head and kept working on his car and let me be. I think that just polishing out the faded red and cleaning it up some added $2k onto it's value. Here are some of the pictures after cleaning and polishing.
I did deal with a battery and grounds that were badly corroded. The PO before had put a new fuel filter in and a new fuel pump trying to get it to run, but I'm not sure that the cables were even in good enough shape to turn it over. I pulled all the plugs and looked to see obvious rust etc and squirt a few shots of oil in each cylinder before trying to turn it over. All the hole had good finger over the spark plug hole compression and we had spark. Hank was dying to try it before we had to go to dinner, so I put the plugs back in and we went for a start.
IT FIRED ON THE FIRST TRY :woowoo: :woowoo: :woowoo:
Link to video
I decided that since it hadn't run since 91 and only had 93k on the clock that it was a good possibility that it had the original 27yr old timing belt still and that further starting was probably just flirting with disaster. I think I want to get a new belt on it before I do to much more with it. I at least know that it isn't ceased, but really don't know what took it off the road. I'll look into it more when I get it home. It looks like a new car all shined up!!
We then loaded it up on the trailer for the ride home to Vegas after unloading Hank's new coupe GT.
I'll try and post when I have more time at it's new home. It needs paint, but it could be driven to the Vegas event in October if needs be. I just have to get it running.
TWO MARS RED URQS......... :bashtard: :bashtard: :bashtard: I was really stressing about this fact until while cleaning up the interior other day I found this.
