The Project Pad

i see your using nord washers, those are the coolest. got bags of them for cv halfshafts.

Yup, those look like our lines 8) , mind saying who the doner was (just curious). We have a proper oil drain line for the 20v using the stock manifold, but looks like you got it figured out :-)

Coming along nicely! :woowoo:

dspl1236 wrote:i see your using nord washers, those are the coolest. got bags of them for cv halfshafts.

yup, after seeing all the issues the 1.8T guys were having with the bolts backing out, as well as the guys here... I figured it was worth the $5 to pick them up. Def a slick lil beast though!

JShadzi wrote:Yup, those look like our lines , mind saying who the doner was (just curious). We have a proper oil drain line for the 20v using the stock manifold, but looks like you got it figured out

Coming along nicely!

THanks Javad... and PM sent to ya 'bout the PO

well, guess I'll toss out a mid week update here...

Unfortunately, powdercoating stuff didn't make it to me by last weekend... but even if it did, I wouldn't have been able to do anything cuz of a mix up with the TO bearing (which was solved faster than I could blink an eye!!!)... so, I figured with all the free time I had, I'd start building some stuff with my new welder to get the hang of it...

Instead of doing the stand on teh brake w/ the car in 5th gear trick to torque down the crank bolt, I built myself a timing belt tool... kinda ghetto, but it'll do the trick nicely I think:



From there, I started figuring out a way to remount the top center portion that I had cut out to make the motor removal easier... I wanted to keep it pretty hidden and not have tabs everywhere... so I ended up with this on the passenger's side:



and this on the driver's side:



Piece installed:



and upclose:





Once I get everything buttoned up, I'm gonna get some touchup paint in a can from paintscratch.com or someone similar and repaint that entire front clip I think... There are a few little spots of rust here and there I want to address, and also to cover up the new metal work I'm soon to install once the motor is in.

After I finished that center section, I pretty much called it a day/weekend. I didn't pick back up until today... when I came home to 3 packages on my front porch.

Box #1 was my new TO bearing... found out the issue monday afternoon... and it's already here on wed... that's good service if you ask me Thanks Javad!

Box #2 was my powdercoating from Haydn!!!! He did an amazing job with everything, and it was worth the wait. Here's the goodies all laid out:



but this by far is my favorite part:



He powdercoated the script red, then masked it and did the rest gunmetal... turned out awesome, and I owe him a beer or two for sure!!! Thank you again Haydn, you are the man!

And then box #3 was my 3" in/out XLerator performance muffler:



I was able to get a real good deal on this from a guy on ebay, who was even able to beat out the price of my local wholesale guy... so can't shake a stick at that! Suppose to be a relatively quiet muffler (at least compared to a flowmaster, which is the other one my local guy sold) so I'm hoping for a good sound from this puppy. Only other thing I need to complete the muffler is a 3" flex pipe and a high flow cat. I have a cat lined up, I just need to bite the bullet and order it.

But, since I couldn't just LOOK at that pretty powdercoated stuff all night long, I put on 2 shirts and gloves and went out into the 30 degree weather and started to assemble things :tard:

First off I made a blank for the cold start injector:



then I plugged the 2 pre-existing holes around my MAT with aluminum epoxy putty and installed my GM air temp sensor:



From that point, I then installed the throttle body, and the IM is now ready to get bolted to the motor... and ifyou ask me, this thing looks friggen schweeeet:



Now came time to install the exhaust manifold... for the most part, this wasn't that bad of a thing to do... but I def had a few :bashtard: moments and wanted to slap a few audi engineers upside the head for their lil design... inparticularly getting to this bolt:



granted, if i didn't already have the turbo mounted to the exhaust mani, it would have been a tad bit easier to do... but still, holy f' that is tight in there! I torqued it down as best I could with 2 1/4" drive extensions, a universal joint and a 12mm deep socket... lol

and this is how she stands right now:



Tomorrow the game plan is to install the fuel rail and injectors, install the intake manifold and get the new throwout bearing installed. The old one is beyond shot (i.e. it is completely seized) and I'm really surprised I wasn't having any clutch issues because of it... but that's neither here nor there.

So this weekend, the motor is DEF going into the car and with any luck... a test fire will ensue :-D

Wow Justin, awesome progress! 8)

Lookin good meng. I really like the color of the IM you chose, very unique. The tabs for the removable core support look nicely done as well. Mine are shotty . I did a real half ass job of it, something I need to sort out and fix when it gets warmer out.

Keep truckin

GTIVR62801 wrote:Wow Justin, awesome progress! 8)

Thanks, Carson... here's hoping that this weekend everything goes in smoothly

AudiSport4000 wrote:Lookin good meng. I really like the color of the IM you chose, very unique. The tabs for the removable core support look nicely done as well. Mine are shotty . I did a real half ass job of it, something I need to sort out and fix when it gets warmer out.

Keep truckin

Thanks mike! I was trying to keep it as clean looking as I can... I'd love to figure out a way to fill in those gaps as well from where I cut with the angle grinder, but I don't think that's gonna happen w/o an excessive amount of work I can probably make a flap, but I'd need thinner sheet metal and more patience than I'm willing to toss at it right now. It'll look better with a coat of paint.

it's def worth spending some time on though to make it a clean look. And even better is I'm able to reuse some of the bolts I have laying around to put this together Reduce, reuse, recycle :-P

AND We have a motor installed!!!!

So I was planning on doing the install saturday morning, but after finding that there wasn't much going on friday night, and I could get the engine hoist from the local tool rental joint, I snagged my friend's truck and headed out to pick up the hoist. I recruited my old roommate to head out and help as well as my other friend (she wanted to watch us install the motor and learn a lil bit about it all). Even though it was 35 or so degrees outside, we decided to go through with the install... did get a tad bit chilly, but I was struggling enough to get the motor in I didn't get too chilly...

Before getting the motor installed, I got the new TO bearing installed:



The old TO bearing was SHOT... I'm honestly surprised I didn't have clutch issues before I took the car off the road. I could barely get it to turn by hand, and it was def a bit messed up.

from there, I got the 42 lb lucas greentop injectors installed in the custom fuel rail I got with the donor car:



I lubed up the o-rings before sliding them in... then I put them in the motor and got it ready...

I cleaned up and organized ALL my tools so I knew where everything was, then got the car ready to accept the motor:



My 2 friends getting ready to get the motor off the engine stand...



Now, before I installed the clutch and pressure plate, we actually installed the motor to see how the custom 3" downpipe fit that came with the donor car. To my surprise, it fit perfectly. I was actually REALLY shocked by this. I only had to slightly massage the pass side frame rail and grind a bit of the lip off the subframe. When I pull the subframe off the car to do the solid aluminum subframe mounts I'll do a little seam welding around this point just to strengthen it.

Once I got everything ready, it was time to get the clutch installed. Here is me getting the clutch installed with my buddy holding the light:



Clutch installed:



And here's the motor ready to go back into the car.



In order to get the motor to sit level I ended up tying to my driver's side motor mount arm with my wratchet strap and get it plummed... we figured this out when we mocked up the motor for the downpipe. It def made life a lot easier putting the motor in the 2nd time around, that's for damn sure!

Once we got the tranny input shaft engaged into the clutch, it was time to start rocking the motor into place. Now, I've never installed a motor before (yet I've pulled 3 already )... but holy hell, what a royal PITA!!! lol. At one point it seriously looked like I was humping the front of the motor trying to get it to slide onto the tranny input shaft

my friend was kind enough to video tape me as I was doing this... but I'll keep that to myself... you guys just get a picture



and after 3 hrs or so... this is what you get:



and of course, the celebratory beer:



At this point, I called friday night quits. We were all pretty tired, and pretty much frozen to the bone . I know my other two friends were a bit tipsy since they were drinking the entire time we did the motor install (i had a total of 3 beers, then had a whiskey after all was done to relax some), so one went home my my other friend passed out on my couch cuz she was a lil too tipsy to drive home and was frozen cuz it was so cold out...

Saturday I was pretty much too lazy to do anything... pretty sure it was deserved So I didn't do too much to the car. I mainly concentrated on getting the passenger's side motor mount bolted to the motor mount arm. For some reason, it wouldn't line up properly, so I had to take the motor mount off to get it all bolted together... took a bit, but it worked.

Sunday I got into it for about ohhhh, 5-6 hrs though... starting off with fabricating up an aluminum heat shield to keep the downpipe/turbo from melting the passenger's side motor mount.

used about an 1/8" to 3/16" thick aluminum sheet.



I drilled and tapped a hole then made a spacer out of an oversized threaded sleeve I had laying around the garage. Ended up getting something like this:



The shield is pretty solid right now and doesn't hit anything, which is awesome. Took a bit a futzing with to get it right, but now I'm pretty confident it's not going anywhere.

from there I spent a fair amount of time redoing the wiring harness. I'm coming to the realization I'm going to have to completely cut up this harness from the donor car and redo it :( It's just obscenely long... to the tune of I have like 6 feet of extra wiring in my passenger's side foot well right now... but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Right now I'm focused on getting the engine bay all buttoned up and ready.

The TPS is now ready to rock as is my IAT... looks really slick if I do say so myself



From there, I got my old EGT bung plugged as well as the OEM O2 sensor bung plugged up. Coated each with a hefty amount of antisieze so if I ever want to take them out, it should just pop right out.



So with the motor pretty much buttoned up... its time to start plotting how I'm going to mount the intercooler... It's def gonna be a TOIGHT squeeze in there, but I think I can make it. Unfortunately, the nice powdercoated snub mount Haydn did for me won't work (hits the intercooler) so I'm going to have to devise my own snub...

but this is how the front of the car is going to look once I figure out a way to mount this thing to the front of the car:



I have a few ideas running through my head right now, so I'm sure I can figure it out and get it all mounted up. Big thing I want to achieve here is to be able to put the stock grill back on w/ minimal amount of cutting... and from what I can tell, I *should* be able to pull it off.

Alright, well that's about it from me... hope ya enjoyed the show, and more updates to come! Hoping to get the remainder of my exhaust stuff this week, so maybe this weekend I"ll get my custom 3" exhaust welded up and then plumb up my coolant system... then once that happens... welll...... I guess I can turn the key :woowoo: :woowoo: 8)

:woowoo:

Nice work.

Steve

great progress :cheers:

Awesome meng!

We actually only had to try lifting the motor twice to get the input shaft to line up, I was kinda surprised. Then again, we just lifted the block by hand into the engine bay.
Nice job with the heatshield, I still havnt done that yet

Its a real feeling of accomplishment when things get this far and you actually "see" the motor sitting there.

Nice work man, real nice

Oh yea, and no worries on humping the motor, it really is the only way the input shaft will go it, its all about stamina and endurance, it will happen eventually

:stupid: Looks great so far!

JShadzi wrote:Oh yea, and no worries on humping the motor, it really is the only way the input shaft will go it, its all about stamina and endurance, it will happen eventually

yep, humping the v8 is a little tougher tho

Nice work Justin!

Sweet, Yuengling. My brother brought home a case from PA, been drinking that the last few days

I may be the only person that isnt a huge fan of Yuengling. We had a keg of that at Carlisle one of the past years, it wasnt bad.
I guess I just prefer other stuff

AudiSport4000 wrote:I may be the only person that isnt a huge fan of Yuengling. We had a keg of that at Carlisle one of the past years, it wasnt bad.
I guess I just prefer other stuff

I agree with you on the yuengling, so you're not the only one. Bring on the Bell's Hopslam!

Justin, great work with the car so far, and I'm glad the flywheel seems to have worked out for you... it makes me want to go get back to work on my project.

Thanks guys! I was pretty much giddy about getting it into the car on friday night... I still haven't quite wiped the grin off my face... now imagine how I'm gonna be when I get it started and running!!!

AudiSport4000 wrote:We actually only had to try lifting the motor twice to get the input shaft to line up, I was kinda surprised. Then again, we just lifted the block by hand into the engine bay.

If I were to do this again, I would install the short block first then install the fully assembled head. Just seemed to me to be a LOT easier since the weight would be down 80 lbs or so with the head off (might be over estimating, but whatever)... I think the biggest issue we had though was how the motor "stood up" and left the driver's side mount so much lower than the passenger's side... but we got it, so that's all that matters 8)

JShadzi wrote:Oh yea, and no worries on humping the motor, it really is the only way the input shaft will go it, its all about stamina and endurance, it will happen eventually

It's all in the hips baby... all in the hips

a4kquattro wrote:Sweet, Yuengling. My brother brought home a case from PA, been drinking that the last few days

yes, yuengling is my brew... I love it.... but then again, I pretty much drink anything Grew up about 40 min from the brewery (though haven't had a chance to visit it yet as shameful as that sounds). Used to only be able to get it in PA, and then it started showing up in FL (when my grandparents went down there for the winter we'd see it) and now it's pretty much up and down the east coast. Stupid thing is I can get it cheaper here in VA than I can in PA My brother used to bring like 7-8 cases back with him when he was living in detroit and working for ford... lol. I swear if he ever got pulled over and searched the cops would DEF be wondering what kinda operation he was running

Berserker wrote:Justin, great work with the car so far, and I'm glad the flywheel seems to have worked out for you... it makes me want to go get back to work on my project.

thanks Nate! I was excited to finally get the damn thing in there... i've had it for, what, 8 months now? lol. I had an interesting time getting it indexed though... didn't realize that audi drilled the holes so it only fits on in ONE position only... talk about a PITA trying to index a 20lb flywheel while it's on a hoist. Now I know why they said to mark it and the crank shaft when pulling it off.

Damn cool Justin, I wish I was as motivated as you!
I guess I didn't pick it up, but where are you putting the 02 sensor ?

Onwardtothestars wrote:Damn cool Justin, I wish I was as motivated as you!
I guess I didn't pick it up, but where are you putting the 02 sensor ?

thanks! Only thing motivating me now is the fact I want the damn thing moving. I have kept it on insurance and registered for the past year almost and only used it 2 months out of that year... and I want my garage back

For now I'm not gonna run a narrow band O2 sensor, but I might reinstall it for the closed loop tuning once I get everything where I want it.

I have a bung under the car towards the end of the downpipe though for the wideband O2. I haven't snapped any pix of it yet, but will make sure to when I snap pix of the exhaust install I'll be doing this weekend (hopefully)

well, another weekend and more progress to report... though nothing huge.

Game plan of the week/weekend was to get the front end buttoned up and get the intercooler hard mounted (and not held up by the bungee cords that were initially holding it in place )

I wanted to make a mount that both held the intercooler while also serving as a brace for the frame rails, since I had cut all the structural stuff out of the middle for the swap and to make room for the intercooler.

I had picked up a few sheets of 3/16" with intentions of building an entire frame that bolts between the two sides of the opening, but after I got the intercooler in, I realized that just wasn't going to happen like I had planned.... so i set out with a fresh and new idea in my head.

I wanted to have this thing hard mount right to the frame rails, and after looking at the front of the car for a min or two, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I cut a few 3" strips from the sheets of carbon steel plate i had, and started with this:



After loosely fitting this onto the frame rails and bolting it in place (using 4 12mm bolts to hold it in place) I put the bumper in for a fitment. I knew that when it came time to install the blinkers into the bumper, it was going to be tight... but unfortunately, it was REALLY tight, to the point that the blinkers weren't going to fit at all w/o modification :curses:

But all was good... I had the patience to work with it, and a trusty grinder to cut with. So after a little mocking up, making some marks, and some cutting... I was able to come up with some openings that allow the blinkers to fit perfectly!

So I continued on with the building of the frame... next went on was the side pieces of the block (you can see the holes I cut in the bends on the brace for the blinkers)



and then I put on the cover plate. I decided that I didn't like the idea of having ugly box ends on this piece... so I cut a 45ish degree angle on each side piece and then scored the top plate and bent it down... no other reasoning for it other than it looked better than a straight box end



and after 45+ min of welding (can only weld so long with my cheapy flux harbor freight mig welder) we have an almost finished product:



From this point, I needed to reinforce the corners of the bracket because they were considerably weaked by the removal of the material to allow the clearancing of the blinker assemblies... so I build some gussets to go on the corners and tie into the rest of the frame:



and before ya say it... yeah I know how ugly all the weld splatter looks. Never realized how messy those damn flux welders were! BUT, after some quality time with the angle grinder (and one entire grinding disk later) this is what we have:



I think it came out pretty damn nice personally.... what do you guys think?

Now that the brace was all done, I mounted it and fastened it nice and secure to the frame rails and started to mock up the intercooler so it cleared all the pullies. After some playing around with the angle of the tabs, and multiple fit ups with the bumper on and off... this is what the ALMOST final product looks like:



I unfortunately used up my only grinding disk cleaning up the piece originally, so I couldn't clean up the welds on teh tabs. I'm going to pick up a few more tomorrow, so I'll finish it up this week and get a coat of paint on it so it doesn't get tempted to rust!

From there, I reinstalled the bumper and did some trimming to my grill to get it to fit over the intercooler... I think it turned out really cool if you ask me... nice lil sleeper look



When building this bracket, I have it tucked in pretty far into the frame of teh existing bumper. This allowed me to give an extra 2 inches or so b/n the intercooler and the bracket, so down the road if I decide to swap in a bigger intercooler, I'll have clearance!

Another added bonus is, I think this lil contraption will absorb just as much or more impact if I were ever to hit anything and teh front bumper fails.. haha. Probably a lil overengineered for its purpose, but what have ya. Real happy how it turned out that's for sure.

So from here, I'm going to install my radiator and associated coolant lines this week and hopefully next weekend spend some time installing the exhaust. From that point, it's just a matter of plumbing my intercooler and turning the key!!! Hopefully within the next 2 weeks this car will be up and running. After getting a ride in Keith A's (i.e. Little Keith) 20vt 90, I am very excited to hear my beast roar to life again and start terrorizing the roads once again :woowoo:

From this point though, I need to figure out a snub mount configuration because the stock one just won't work with this intercooler... and its REALLY tight in there, so I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about installing one... but I'd like it just for the fact of having a little extra bracing to hold this motor in place and not rock too much.

Wow, that is simply awesome man. I guess its ok if I a bit over it. 8)

lol... thanks carson totally cool if you just don't get any on the bare metal, it'll rust :-P

Always excellent updates meng. I wish I knew or had somebody teach me how to weld, definately something useful to learn.
Nice work with the support too and intercooler. A very wise idea. I had to dick around with the Urq IC to get it to fit in my car, what a pain. Glad you went a different and better route.

Keep those pice comin! :-D :-D