The Project Pad

This car has been sitting behind a shop in Fort Worth for the last twelve years...











The interior has completely disintegrated over the years - its literally a big pile of plastic shards, crumbled foam and dry rotted fabric, but I don't care as I have about 4 cars worth of B3 and B4 interior parts stockpiled. Unfortunately I discovered that the fuse panel had been cut out (not disconnected ), the e-brake lever removed and the cable yoke cut, and both the brake and clutch pedals were missing *after* I paid for it and the shop owner wouldn't give me a rebate On the bright side it has a new 12 year old clutch, has never been wrecked and the body is in great shape aside from two easily repairable dents. Not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it just yet, but rest assured it doesn't involve that NG under the hood! I have already ordered 4 new 75mm wheel bearings and pulled the hubs off one of my B5 1.8t parts cars so the 5x112 swap is the first mod (mostly to get wheels with decent rubber on them under the car so I can move it in and around the shop). Tomorrow I will gut the interior and see what I need to do about the wiring/fuse panel fiasco.

Doing research on swapping 5x112 hubs on these cars, and came across the info referencing the change in 04/1988 from one-piece to 2-piece struts. As luck would have it, this particular car was manufactured in 03/1988. But as I checked it out, I found something confusing. The rear of the car indeed has 1-piece struts, but, the front of the car has 2-piece. Is this common? Its a little difficult finding exact information, but I just assume when people refer to a car as having one-piece or two-piece struts they mean all 4 corners - am I right? Or are they just referring to the rears?

Based on what I have dug up, I need 5kq (or possibly 200 FWD front) hubs for the rear and B5 A4q rear hubs for the front. Does this sound right?

At this point I am keeping everything low-budget on this build, so unless I come across a complete late B3 rear subframe/suspension for free I'm going to keep what's on there.

ur20v wrote:Doing research on swapping 5x112 hubs on these cars, and came across the info referencing the change in 04/1988 from one-piece to 2-piece struts. As luck would have it, this particular car was manufactured in 03/1988. But as I checked it out, I found something confusing. The rear of the car indeed has 1-piece struts, but, the front of the car has 2-piece. Is this common? Its a little difficult finding exact information, but I just assume when people refer to a car as having one-piece or two-piece struts they mean all 4 corners - am I right? Or are they just referring to the rears?

Based on what I have dug up, I need 5kq (or possibly 200 FWD front) hubs for the rear and B5 A4q rear hubs for the front. Does this sound right?

At this point I am keeping everything low-budget on this build, so unless I come across a complete late B3 rear subframe/suspension for free I'm going to keep what's on there.

There were three versions, one with one piece struts all around (very early '87 production).
Then the 2 piece front and single piece rear, like yours.
And finally 2 piece all around.

If you have 2 piece fronts i.e. 82mm bearing then you need machined UrS hubs front and 82mm bearing.
Rear, if you have CV nut (not bolt) you need 5kt hubs and new non stepped 75mm bearing.

HTH

ralleyquattro wrote:If you have 2 piece fronts i.e. 82mm bearing then you need machined UrS hubs front and 82mm bearing.
Rear, if you have CV nut (not bolt) you need 5kt hubs and new non stepped 75mm bearing.

Martin, you're a great guy and full of knowledge, but in this case I need to point out one little error - only the 20v and V6 knuckles use the 82mm bearings. The 20v still use 75mm bearings (and smaller outer CVs).

W00t! Looky what Fed Ex just dropped off from the UK



I did notice a little tiny bit of blue corrosion around the pins in a couple of the sockets, but hopefully a little DeoxIT will clean it up, but I took photos and will send the seller an email just to cover my butt in case it turns out to be DOA.

So its been a few months since my last update, figure its time, as some questions are arising, too.

Motor is in and wired, Griffin radiator (different than the one everyone else uses - dual-pass with inlet and outlet on the same side and no filler neck - although more expensive, makes life 10x easier) with twin 11-inch Maradyne fans wired to an AutoCool PWM fan controller and an RX-7 oil cooler plumbed in just below.

CQ fenders are bolted on in anticipation of fitting an S2 bumper if I ever hear from Frosty Flax again B4 hood and headlights are bolted up. Still waiting on black carpet and door panels to arrive from New Hampshire, but I the meantime I've re-foamed the air box flaps and installed a new heater core and tested the blower motor. Still working on the instrument cluster, though I have the euro parking light feature enabled/wired up with the correct switch and an aftermarket alarm/keyless entry ready to go. Scored a sweet Becker Traffic Pro for free from a friend and replaced all the switches in the dash with those from a pre-facelift A8. Esoteric, I know, but its the little things, ya know?

Earlier this week I finally got around to having my V8q hubs machined and pressed into B4 front knuckles and B5 hubs pressed into CQ rear knuckles, and I finally got all that stuff swapped out. Front end is all B4q stuff - axles, struts, knuckles, control arms, sway bar while the rear end is all CQ (upgraded from one-piece strut housings).

Yesterday at the junkyard I found a rear subframe with sway bar mounting provisions in the only B3 in the junkyards for miles around, so naturally that found its way home with me... but I won't be installing that until I do solid subframe mounts and control arm bushings (and find a 4k front sway bar to use) later on down the road.

This morning I bolted all the new suspension and axle shafts in, then I set about monkeying with brakes. The rears were easy - TT 225 calipers and carriers over B5 S4 rotors, wham bam thank you ma'am. The fronts, however, are going to be a little more tricky. The late A8 front rotors seemed to be the best fit and would allow use of stock carriers if they weren't, you know, so damn big. With the B5/B6 rotors the B4 G60 and B5 54mm carriers need to be machined a little to fit, and even though he's a nice guy, I don't feel like shelling out another minimum shop charge for 10 minutes of my machinist's time. Tomorrow or Monday I'm going to see about using some TT 225 carriers and possibly the rotors they are currently hugging, though I'm presuming the offset is too shallow on those rotors (not to mention I would also have to re-drill them for 5x112). I wish I hadn't given my stock B5 S4 front rotors away to the guy who bought my HP2s!

And finally, I scored a nearly mint set of B7 cabriolet 17" rims on 235 Contitechs complete with center caps for a steal. I can't wait to bolt them up and see how bad ass they look on the 80!

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ur20v wrote:

ralleyquattro wrote:If you have 2 piece fronts i.e. 82mm bearing then you need machined UrS hubs front and 82mm bearing.
Rear, if you have CV nut (not bolt) you need 5kt hubs and new non stepped 75mm bearing.

Martin, you're a great guy and full of knowledge, but in this case I need to point out one little error - only the 20v and V6 knuckles use the 82mm bearings. The 20v still use 75mm bearings (and smaller outer CVs).

I know this is an old post but the 5000 quattros used 82mm bearings. Martin is correct. I can prove it too as my 5-lug converted 4ktq with 5000 struts use 82mm bearings. They also use the large spline and hub.

Umm, OK. My response was about the fact that my early B3 (3/88) had 75mm bearings up front... Had. It now has 82mm bearings and proper hubs :-)

Not sure how I missed this project. VERY cool!

Pics on this rad and fan setup please! How well did they fit during install, any custom hoses or brackets?

My bad. Didnt realize you were referring to 20v b3 cars. I thought you were referencing all 20v cars

PRY4SNO wrote:Pics on this rad and fan setup please! How well did they fit during install, any custom hoses or brackets?

I can snap some pics for you tomorrow...

Out of the hundreds and hundreds of hours I have spent on this project thus far, the radiator has taken up more time than anything else in the car, even wiring! Even though its proven to be a massive PITA, having a motor that doesn't overheat will be worth it in the long run.

I'm using a B4 crossmember that I removed the snub mount from. The Griffin rad I ended up using only had a saddle mount provision, so I fashioned up a simple mount using 1½" angle iron and a 2" wide piece of ⅛" flat stock. To build up the saddle I used some ⅛" aluminum stock and counter-sunk machine screws. I bolted the angle iron pieces to the stock tabs where the radiator isolator mounts would screw in and added another bolt vertically. I slotted the bolt holes in the saddle mount itself so I had some adjustability forward and back. I made some clamps out of ⅛” aluminum that attach to the lock carrier using the stock holes but I don't know if I will end up using them.

The core of the radiator I chose is 22 inches wide, and I'm using a pair of 11” fans, which means I had to slightly modify the fan frames with the Dremel in order to get them to lie flat. But the biggest fitment issue I have had with the radiator concerns the outlet. First off, its 1¾" while stock hoses are 1½”. Second, it is welded to the tank at a 45° angle instead of 90°. This has posed the greatest challenge in fitting the radiator. I've spent over 3 hours in the stock rooms of a few FLAPS and $50 in new hoses trying to make something fit, and I'm still not where I need to be. I had my machinist mill off the nose for the clutch fan bearing from the timing cover but I still don't have enough clearance between my lower rad hose and the motor. I'm on the verge of ordering some pre-formed aluminum piping from a hot rod shop to make something that goes up and over the fan motor instead of trying to sneak behind it.

The upper radiator hose was a piece of cake as I was able to take the stock hose and cut about 2½" out of it and use a splice to rejoin the end to the rest of the hose. No issues there.

I'm mounting the PWM fan controller over by where the power steering reservoir used to live before I got rid of all that messy nonsense.

And the RX7 oil cooler has been mounted to the crossmember using custom brackets made by yours truly and some aluminum off-road light rollbar mounting clamps. I had to cut up the stock B3 bumper to accommodate it, and it does protrude a little, but hopefully that will be solved with an S2 bumper. In the meantime I am creating a steel frame to go around it and hopefully protect it from parking stops, curbs, sidewalks, etc.

Ugh... sorry about the lack of pics. Been suffering a few technology crises these past few days and hyper-focused on completing phase 1 of a short-term project I've been ignoring for months. Phase 1 should wrap up tomorrow (yeah right, that's what I've been saying the last 3 or 4 days) and I will leave myself reminders to take some photos.