Ok so I’ve been back from working on the road for a few weeks and have been tearing into the car big time, major progress!!!!
I have been working on a way to integrate the handbrake into the trans tunnel to keep things nice and clean and DD looking.
I got the urS4/4kq linkage to work well in my car, had all the gears, reverse pushdown worked well, everything shifted fine. BUT, it still didn’t feel like my old b5 s4 did, that shifting just felt so much more defined and refined. The old small chassis stuff just feels vague in comparison. So what do we do when we don’t like something? CUT IT OUT!!! So I went ahead and cut the oem shifter pedestal out of the trans tunnel!!!
So I started off by building a base for the b5 box for mounting in the tunnel. The box is basically 16 gauge square stock and skinned in 16 gauge sheet. I had thought of framing in the shifter box with some round or small square tube, but ended up just skinning it in with 16 gauge sheet and that seems quite strong enough. It’s stronger than the rest of the uber flexible b2 chassis.
I also made a small 4x4” wooden tunnel brace to keep things from collapsing as they were cut out/apart.
Top of the shifter box/ pedestal in its general area, getting laid out with the center console, window switches and ashtray to make as clean of an install as possible.
