The Project Pad

This is one of a few cars in my collection that i've had for a handfull of years and its most likely my favorite when it runs right. i got this car from a guy because it was one of those wiring nightmare's that no one could figure out. what its nightmare was that someone had wrecked it and installed the 85-87 front end parts on it but didnt know how to wire any of it up. to make things worse they had installed the 85-87 front doors and the whole entire dash. i now understood why the guy didnt want the car because none of lighting and the whole dash didnt work! plus the car had shut off on him several years before and he never cared to make it run again. so i took it off of his hands and after installing a new ignition, a fuel pump and a fuel pump relay she fired right up. thats how the story starts and i'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking because its been a long strange road for this car.

The day i got the car out of the barn and got it running again.




I decided that the flat black spray paint sucked so i chose to paint the car in a swedish snow camo pattern. it is my winter car after all lol.







My next decision was that CIS sucks and that the car could run far better on digifant 1 EFI. so i ventured into the unknown and started setting up DF1 and tuning it N/A.



The first intake setup that i didnt like because the filter keep getting wet and muddy.

The second intake setup that worked very well using the 300ZX turbo hood scoop to get fresh air.


Me and my brother decided it would be fun to setup a rally course on the 500 acre farm my family owns. it was great till i slid off course into a swampy part of the field. this is the first time i ever got a quattro stuck.

My 4000 and my brother's 8v scirocco.

had to use a farm tractor to get it unstuck. even broke the drive shaft on my little brothers F150 trying to get it out.

The aftermath. ripped the core support right out of the front of the car. turns out the tow hooks where pretty rotten as they ripped right off the frame rail.


Time for another front core support. i figured while i was in there i might as well add a turbo too.









Bone stock JT engine finally gave up the head gasket. im impressed that the JT too 15psi as long as it did!




Time to freshen up the old JT with all new goods.



Built a new bumper support out of box tubing. also added a tranny cooler from a mercedes benz 300TD as an oil cooler.

Added HID hella 4000 rally's instead of hell 500's. plus fitting bumper cover with merc trans cooler mounted.


Bought a set of blizzak's used and they came with free wheels lol.


Secondary air pump was stupid so me and my brother designed and machined a block off plate for it


Interior shot with MK3.5 cabrio front seats, IMP steering wheel, AEM wideband, and schroth rally 4 harness installed.


Decided to put the later 85-87 rear bumper cover on.






Ebay front mount intercooler install



Than the 20v turbo got to be boring so i decided it was time to upgrade to the legandary 20V turbo.

This is my donor car i picked up for 1200.00 bucks. car was still inspected and registered for 2 months. and i drove it for that 2 months before dismantling it.



engine removed, cleaned and started powder coating parts.



Time for one last rip on the 20v turbo. i attend one local car show a year and i was going to make sure the old quattro displayed its power.

New larger front mount intercooler.

installed gray cloth recaro's because the MK3.5 cabrio seats sucked.

Picked up a digital dash from a coupe GT.

Painted my intercooler pipes to match the car for something different.

Larger intercooler installed.

Refinished my stock wheels with harbor freight gloss white powder coat.


Wired up the whole factory bose URS4 stereo with 10 disc changer. i've never heard a 4000 with a better sounding stereo.


Time to install AAN engine!!!!

20v turbo out!!!!!

Screamer pipe fabricated.

AAN in its new home.

The wiring nightmare.

Battery tray gone, URS4 plug rack installed, URS4 ICM bracked installed, URS4 fuel filter bracket, URS4 positing battery junction installed.

Power steering reservoir and washer bottle relocated.


Machined a few 7A flywheels down and added the single timing pin.

URS4 false floor installed and wiring complete under the dash.

False floor cover installed.

Everything fabricated and reassembled, its time to go scare the crap out of myself lol.






A few pics my buddy frank took of the car.




Messing around with turbo volvo wheels. their 5X108 so one bolt hole lines up. i think the car looks bad ass with these on it.





As of recently the AAN spun a rod bearing and chewed the crank up. Now im in the process of assembling a ghetto 20VT for it instead using an NG 2.3 bottom end and the head off of my AAN engine.

the NG bottom end cleaned with the rods & pistons removed.


Pistons ready to go to the machine shop with my brother to have valve relief's machined in.



And thats where i stand at the moment with the car. i still have to tear the AAN back out and strip everything off of it yet too.

Sweet! I didn't know you swapped an AAN in!

yeah, there's some pretty fast street cars in my area now and they need an education that an old audi is not a car to turn their noses up at lol. got a precision GT30R to put on it with a wagner sport quattro manifold to bump the power up. hoping to make high 10 second passes at the track. my next investment for it is going to be standalone. leaning toward megasquirt 3 because they want way too much money for VEMS.

Awesome car! What clutch are you using? Fuel pump, etc? Teach those new cars a lesson

Econoseal vems is like $700 and you have a huge btdt in these cars.

Also, if you're running a 30r buy some damn rods! Especially if you don't want to build another engine. It's pretty much guaranteed to throw a rod at some point if you're over the 350 mark for whp/wtq, and then you need to put another bottom end in. Pistons are good for way more, rods are the weak point.

chaloux wrote:Also, if you're running a 30r buy some damn rods! Especially if you don't want to build another engine. It's pretty much guaranteed to throw a rod at some point if you're over the 350 mark for whp/wtq, and then you need to put another bottom end in. Pistons are good for way more, rods are the weak point.

im using a pump from a volvo 740 turbo at the moment. it has a clutchnet 6 puck sprung hub disc i had custom made, 7A flywheel with the back machined down and the single firing pin added with a southbend pressure plate. i dont think there is a need for rods just yet, i've seen guys go 500 to 600HP on a stock bottom end on S2forum with some good tuning. if anything since im going ghetto 20VT i would invest in a set of pistons because the 2.3 slugs are cast. i run the car in the winter so im going to put it back together with stock turbo and such for now and gather parts for spring time. my friend is selling me his URS6 avant as soon as he finds a replacement for it although i have no idea when he'll find a new replacement as he's pretty picky. if the avant falls into my posession before winter than im going to just make the 4000 a race car. i actually have am 83 UR coupe quattro too im in the process of restoring and i considered putting the 20V in it but i just want that car to be simple and nice. the stock 2.1 20v turbo thats in it runs great so i may just leave it alone till it becomes a problem.

Ah, missed that bit about the cast pistons. If that's the case then don't bother with the rods. I wonder how long those builds on s2forum will last :-P

chaloux wrote:Ah, missed that bit about the cast pistons. If that's the case then don't bother with the rods. I wonder how long those builds on s2forum will last :-P

Theres one guy in sweden that has been daily driving his URS4 for around a year and a half now with no problems. death 4KQT on motorgeek told me that he made 500WHP on a bone stock NG 2.3 bottom end with cast pistons and drove the car with no problems for a like 2 years too. he put 30-32 PSI on the stock cast pistons along with stock rods and beat it off the rev limiter/anti lag all the time. he said the new owner of the car put 91 octane fuel in it and tried hammering on it at high boost and thats what killed it. he said it was tuned specifically for 93 octane and up.

no sorry dana didn't make 500 whp
mid 35x whp ya

I've always really liked this car and really jealous it got an AAN! Are you tuning the motronic yourself like you did the Digi 1? I always thought that was pretty damn cool how you had it running on that haha And yeah, I think the amount Dana beat on his car and how quickly it gave up the ghost with just 2 octane points difference shows how close to the line he really was in terms of NG bottom end limits. He made 310whp before he ran an 11.7 for the record, deff not 500chp tho

310Whp is definitely past the estimated 350 crank limit of the NG pistons that I remember reading a while back.
Definitely is in the tune. Cast pistons just wont take a little mess up like a forged one will.

vt10vt wrote:I've always really liked this car and really jealous it got an AAN! Are you tuning the motronic yourself like you did the Digi 1? I always thought that was pretty damn cool how you had it running on that haha And yeah, I think the amount Dana beat on his car and how quickly it gave up the ghost with just 2 octane points difference shows how close to the line he really was in terms of NG bottom end limits. He made 310whp before he ran an 11.7 for the record, deff not 500chp tho

i've messed with motronic 2.3.2 off and on for the past year or so and im not very pleased with it personally. i know it has potential to make big power but its such an ass backward management system. the most frustrating part about it to me is the audi motronic community. the guys who know anything guard it with their lives and belittles anyone who seeks information in hopes of frustrating them into giving up. well for the most part their tactics have worked on me because its getting too expensive to fix my car every time i do something wrong with the tune. now that im gonna have the ghetto 20VT my margin for error is even worse than with the AAN by the looks of things. im leaning toward MS3X now as i can setup my own PNP setup for around 600.00 versus VEMS thats atleast 1500.00. with that price difference i can focus on getting the larger turbo and better manifold on or send my AAN bottom end out to the machine shop and have what i screwed up repaired.

after seeing only 300HP im sort of kicking myself with venturing into this setup. i mean its too late now as i already have money into it and the pistons are at the machine shop with my brother as i type this having the valve reliefs machined in. i always wondered if there was an over sized ring or something that could be installed to the 81mm AAN piston and and install in in the 82.5mm bore block. i dont know how safe it would be either. i mean it is only a 1.5mm difference which doesnt seem like much to me but the tolerances are pretty tight. my crank is the only thing thats messed up in my AAN block, the rods and pistons are perfectly fine. basically what i was thinking is if theres a way to fit the AAN pistons and rods into the NG block and use the NG crank. i know the rods are roughly the same but its the piston diameter that screws me. ohh well its an idea to look into and maybe i can make something work to get it rid of the cast pistons.

you can VEMS a car for under a grand

i did price comparison and MS3X is the cheapest. i can only get VEMS running for around 800.00 and i can get MS3X running for 600.00. only thing i like about VEMS is no messing with the crank sensors. MS3X i have to get a translator board or setup a 60-2 trigger wheel somewhere. as for the 60-2 wheel setup i seen how 034 modified the stock crank pulley to add the teeth, me and my brother set my pulley up in the CNC at his work and added the teeth to my pulley. all i have to do is create a bracket to mount the sensor and it should work just fine.

vwnut8392 wrote:after seeing only 300HP im sort of kicking myself with venturing into this setup. i mean its too late now as i already have money into it and the pistons are at the machine shop with my brother as i type this having the valve reliefs machined in. i always wondered if there was an over sized ring or something that could be installed to the 81mm AAN piston and and install in in the 82.5mm bore block. i dont know how safe it would be either. i mean it is only a 1.5mm difference which doesnt seem like much to me but the tolerances are pretty tight. my crank is the only thing thats messed up in my AAN block, the rods and pistons are perfectly fine. basically what i was thinking is if theres a way to fit the AAN pistons and rods into the NG block and use the NG crank. i know the rods are roughly the same but its the piston diameter that screws me. ohh well its an idea to look into and maybe i can make something work to get it rid of the cast pistons.

:voice of unreason:

Where is this 300whp max for cast pistons coming from? If you go back in the archives (@MG or QW) of my 7aT posts the consensus seemed that the cast pistons can/should outlast the rods with a good tune (E85 is a big help but perhaps not required). One thing that we do know 100% is that a bad tune will kill any piston at any whp. I see the major issue as keeping things "cool" and eliminating detonation so in the absence of E85 water injection may be a good idea. Of course, at some point you can kill a ring land with peak cyl psi which we've seen on Hank's urQ @ >600whp. But I've been running 15-17psi (H1C) and 10.2:1 CR (E85) for ~1yr on an unopened 7a and still have not blown the paper HG or fragged a piston so I'd think that the low compression G20VT, and it's HUGE top ring land, could easily deal with more boost/advance. In the end it is all a guess and I really need to get on the Dyno (maybe BBQ if I can go) to quantify what WHP equates to keeping up with a auto C4 'vette (~290rwhp). I'm guessing I'm in the high 200awhps since the CQ is close to the same weight as the C4 but with more driveline loss and he just edges me out on a closed test track from a roll.

:voice of reason:

Why don't you find a good AAN/3B/7a/ABY/ADU crank (they are all the same)?

I have a dynojet in my back yard practically as my neighbor at my garage owns a USF2000 race team and they use it for their race cars. Its only 2wd but im sure setting up the 4000 to be RWD and running it wonr be so bad for it. I've driven the car with front axles pulled and center diff locked and its a freaking blast lol. Once I get it running on the ghetto 20VT I'll have to take it over and toy with it. As for tuning it any further I have no means of data logging it for starters. I still don't understand all of the maps and what they do. Like in the boost chip I'm not sure of the axis's for pretty much anything or what the actual real world values are. I've tried to trace them and see what happens but my moates emulator seems to act weird with the motronic ECU. If I knew what exactly I was changing I'd feel a lot more comfortable tuning it. I'll probably just run it on the TAP stage 1 file set I have for now till I can afford standalone.

I've searched in my area for another crank and it seems there isn't any more 20V turbo cars or parts around here. I like have everything in my area. I have 4 C4 S-cars, the 4000 and my UR coupe quattro. Only one of the C4's is mine and its my donor car for my 4000. The other sedans I have is my buddys, one is a totaled car and it had his built engine in it and the other is his new project but its crank is screwed and there's a fist sized hole in the block. The last C4 is my other buddies S6 a ant and it a 90,000 mile car that's mint so no scavenging it for parts lol.

Where in PA? I grew up out there but it looks like you are west a bit, Poconos?

Anyway, I've seem some motronic decoding sites which may help.

Mcstiff wrote:Where in PA? I grew up out there but it looks like you are west a bit, Poconos?

Anyway, I've seem some motronic decoding sites which may help.

yeah, im like 25 miles south east outside of pittsburgh. i actually have a super clean coupe GT sitting in my garage that my buddy just bought in pocono. as for the motronic any info is helpful at this point.

well to cure my bottom end problem i opted to fit an NG crank into my AAN block for now. ETKA shows them as having the same part numbers but the cranks are visually different. i plastigauged the mains and everything is perfect also checked radial and axial clearance and its spot on too. now im waiting on new rod bearings to come in so i can finish assembly and start this thing up. excited to have my 4000 back running again. once i feel its stout than i can continue upgrading and modifying other parts of the car. i think my next adventure is going to be a 5X112 conversion and make a set of coilovers for the car. the eibach springs i have on it now are far too soft, under hard accleration the car smokes the front tires off and pushes like crazy from the rear. i need to get a stiffer spring on the rear atleast for now to keep the front tires planted.

Good choice imo. Now do rods :-)

i wish i had the money to buy rods right now. im waiting on a new pilot bearing to come in than i can re-install the bottom end. plus i have to go to my buddy's shop tomorrrow and we're going to dig up all the stuff to make braided stainless lines for my custom oil cooler setup. im using a W123 mercedes benz 300TD tranny cooler for my oil cooler. its ALOT bigger than the stock one.

its been a while since i posted and i guess its time for an update. last time i posted i bombed the engine for the millionth time. im happy to say its back together and seems to be stronger than ever! i ended up using an NG 2.3 crank in the AAN block with the original AAN rods and pistons. i've also repaired and up graded a bunch of stuff too.

for starters i've always wanted to have launch control and no lift shifting, i dont have a grand to splurge on VEMS and i refuse to pay for over priced modified factory software. the solution i came up with was the N2MB WOT BOX. This a great add on and it works extremely well.

here's a couple videos of the WOT BOX in action. I have it set at 4000RPM in this video. i actually found it works very well at 4500RPM.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of6Jdrm-coU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daL9-3b8XAI[/youtube]


one of the other things i finished was my exhaust. its 3in 304 stainless from the turbo back with no muffler and no cat. i made the section after the rear end removable with a stainless V-band so i can swap out the rear straight pipe with a section that has a muffler. The 4000 is not designed to have 3in pipe at all lol. i had to drop the rear end down to fabricate the exhaust and get it on and off the car. While i was under there making the exhaust i realized my brake likes where in pretty rough condition, i remembered i had a roll of stainless hard brake line so i spent a few days making new lines to the rear calipers starting at the master cylinder.

once all that was done i was looking at my turbo manifold and realized it has a bunch of cracks so i decided it was time to replace it. after doing some research on the E-bay manifolds i opted for the more tubular one over the cast one. i can say that these knock off manifolds have come a long way with quality of the materials. this thing was actually made from pretty heavy tubing and the welds looked really good. the flanges where a little warped and i did have to plane them down on a large belt sander though. once i test fit the manifold with the turbo on it i realized i had to remake the downpipe, oil and coolant lines, all the intake piping, my charge piping before the intercooler and a bit more.

Here's some pics of me test fitting and installing the manifold.

Test fitting the manifold on a spare AAN head.



Test fitting the manifold on my car.




and installed on the car with the downpipe remade and new oil feed lines.



The car is actually running in this pic. i had the headlight out to clean up vacuum lines and wiring.


Also i decided to run the MAF in a blow through configuration instead of draw through. there was no room at all for the MAF and the filter before the turbo. i think the car actually runs a bit better with the MAF being blow through instead of draw through. my brother and i are working on an aluminum piece that the MAF will bolt to and it will be welded to a 3in aluminum pipe with bead rolled ends because the stock MAF housing is plastic with no way to hold the silicone on under boost.

Actually this all started when i decided that i didnt like the factory license plate lights so i shaved them.


Than i decided to do some other body work and that the car needed a change in paint scheme.



The previous owner spray tinted the tail lights which i never really liked. i ended up using brake fluid to remove the spray tint, it didnt hurt the plastic and it pulled all the tint off. i decided that half tinted red/smoked looked a ton better.



I cant wait to drive it again! only thing thats gonna suck is working out all the bugs again.

Filmed some quick video of the car launching on the N2MB WOT BOX.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23eoLxJZD3Q[/youtube]

my buddy frank came down today and took some professional pics of the old S4000. here's on of the pics he took after editing.

my buddy frank sent me more of the final edit's from the pics he took so i figured i'd share them.