Justin's 200 20v Avant

[Justin517]

Hello everyone, most of you know who I am, some do not.

I had a '97 A4, then a Coupe Quattro, then a MKII 8v GTI, then an '89 200 wagon that I loved dearly:

http://www.motorgeek.com/viewtopic.php? ... ilit=wagon" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

but was sold to my very good friend Mark.

Well, the whole reason I got away from audi is because I had a job with a 4x4 truck with snow chains (Job was tech rep for the snow chain company) so I didn't NEED AWD.

But, as of March of this year I left my job and took another one where I would not have a truck. So... the fiance and I were left with a 540i 6-speed and a 330Ci convertible... RWD. My car is decent int he snow with snow tires but still can get a little white-knuckle-ish up some inclines or in deeper snow.

SO... enter the 1991 200 20v.

I have been passively searching for one pretty much forever, even when I bought my 20v version, I still wanted a 20v.

I found one on audifans with no pics and a short description. I contacted the lister and found out that he was selling it for a customer. He bought it 7-8 years ago then sold it to them and they had it for about the last 5. IT belonged to an older couple that used it to drive back and forth to Canada.

Well yesterday I went and picked it up:









The car is super clean.

It was supposedly repainted at some point (looks it) and it was a nice job. Tires are recent. Master cylinder recent. Supposedly recent bilsteins and all the bushings look good too.

It needs power steering system love and a battery, but that's about it other than small stupid stuff. I got the car for a really good price, I'm not going to post it here because I don't want to be partially responsible for driving down the prices of these things, plus I know there are people here selling theirs for a good amount more and I don't want to hurt their bottom line...

So... I'm back and very happy to be.

[20VAvant]

Beautiful car

Poor pathfinder though! Haha

[Justin517]

Thank you.

R50 pathfinders are beasts, I had an '03 and my dad has had a '98, '00, and this is his 2002 in the pics. He once towed a waterlogged glassed-over wood lobster boat over 200 miles with his '00, it had to weigh close to 10,000 lbs.

I used my 2003 to tow a 2000 lb. (empty, super heavy duty) dual axle trailer to southern florida and back to CT with a coupe quattro full of parts, the trailer was every bit of 6000 lbs. Plus I had 2 friends and their gear in the pathfinder, so that was 700 lbs of people alone. We also hit a snow storm in delaware. It was an exciting journey.

[loxxrider]

Good to have you back! That looks like its probably one of the cleaner ones around. Nice score.

[Justin517]

Good to have you back! That looks like its probably one of the cleaner ones around. Nice score.

Thanks man. I'm happy to be back.

It is quite clean, the interior is REALLY nice, almost puts my old '89 to shame and the paint is in considerably better too, much of it was re-sprayed at some point.

Plus just the fact that I got it for not much more than the cost of the euro lights it has (or maybe the same price, I don;t know what the market is like these days) I couldn't pass it up. I never would but I could double my money if I just parted it.

[Justin517]

So Saturday I pulled:

Power steering pump
Brake Bomb
pump to bomb line
reservoir to pump feed line
and the bomb relief valve to reservoir line

I have a good used bomb on the way, I also have a seal kit for the pump along with 2 new X-caps (no idea which ones I will replace, I guess the worst looking ones? didn't realize there were so many), all the line o-rings, and fresh pentosin.

I also picked up new plugs just in case, a fuel filter and some oil filters.

Is rotella 15w40 still a preferred oil for the 20vT? I will be using it primarily as a winter car, should I go with a bit thinner in the colder CT climate? Synthetic maybe? Sorry if this is a noob question, I ran rotella in my 20vt but it ran much better when the friend I sold it to switched to Mobil1.

[Justin517]

Resealed the power steering pump. It went pretty smoothly but I wont know if it was a complete success until I get the thing installed this weekend.

Going to change the oil/filter, throw a new fuel filter in it and maybe the new plugs I picked up (if the old ones look old/bad).

Other than that I hope to have it running this weekend and registered/insured/on the road by the middle of next week.

[Justin517]

Power steering is all back together, seems to be all good too other than when I forgot to connect the small hard line to the bomb and dumped a bunch of pentosin on the ground... oh well.

Also, I was told the autocheck system was messed up and I expected to have to pull the cluster and re-solder like I did on my last car. Same symptoms, fuse 4 blown, etc. but it turns out that the back seat cig lighter was stuck in the "IN" position causing the fuse to blow. Pulled lighter, replaced the fuse and it works flawlessly! The old kenwood even sounds decent.

It has a bit of a lifter tick. I poured some seafoam in the oil and let it idle for a while. I revved it a bit and I got some blue smoke out the tail pipe. I hope its just the seafoam tinning out the oil and allowing it to get around the rings/seals. I'm going to do a fresh filter and some rotella T. Hopefully the ticking will quiet down and the smoking when revved will go away too.

Lastly, it is idling like total crap. I'm guessing its the gas that has been sitting in it for at least 3 weeks. As soon as It is road legal I'll top it off with some premium and change the fuel filter, which I have.

[Justin517]

I changed the fuel filter anyway and the crap idle seems to have improved even with the old gas still in there.

Insuring it today, going to DMV today or tomorrow.

[Justin517]

So, is it normal for my dash boost gauge to read no higher than 1.8 if I'm getting 14-15 psi?

My boost gauge as far as I know is pretty accurate, I compared it to a couple tire gauges and they read within a psi or so of each other. I also know the stock digi gauge is super slow, somewhat inaccurate, and can read 0.09 higher without you knowing because it is only 2 digits.

The car runs well, boost goes right up to 14-15, sometimes a tiny bit higher than 15 but it corrects pretty quick back to a bit under 15, which also makes me think that the gauge I added is fine because I'm chipped with a stock 200kpa transducer, so it probably is going right up to around 14.7 or maybe a little more than corrects.

So... is it normal to see 1.8 (about 12 psi) when I'm really getting 14.5-15psi?

[Justin517]

No one likes my thread... lol.

So this chip is interesting, it hates stop and shop gas if it gets more than like 5 days old... it'll boost to 8-10 psi then fall flat on its face. Put shell V-power and itll be fine for a week+ (I run the thing a lot so it doesn't really sit much longer). I'm guessing it is cheaper gas with less beneficial additives and probably higher ethanol content which goes to crap faster. Plus I guess the chip runs a lot of timing because it isn't running much boost.

Either way I think I will be switching to a different tune sooner than later. The one I have is nice because the lower boost is less likely to find weak points in the plumbing... so I guess I will run this until pretty much everything is replaced over the next 6-12 months then I will have to decide what I really want to do... go with a ben swann setup and more or less keep it stock and max out the K24, injectors, etc. and just be happy with ~220awhp. OR buy a better maifold, billet K26 or a hybrid of some sort, turbo-back, injectors, Swanson tune, etc for ~300whp.

Unfortunately I'm thinking the former rather than the latter. At least until it is emissions exempt in 2016.

That is the great thing about these things, they last forever and you can always sell your mods to the next newcomer (or returner, like me)

In the meantime I'm going to do the timing belt, hydro pump, t-stat, lower radiator hose, probably 2bennet upper silicone hose (unless someone has a good stock 3B upper hose they'll sell me!), check out the dizzy gear and cam chain, replace as necessary, check tranny and rear diff fluid, probably replace even though it has likely been replaced fairly recently... and maybe put snow tires on it.

After that I'll probably drop some coin on poly rear subframe bushings, apikol rear diff mount, firmer engine mounts, 034 short throw.

I plan on staying at stock height with the stock 15" BBS wheels, if I went to DIY coil overs (it already has bilsteins) it would be to just go a tad stiffer and likely actually a little higher!

I bought this car to be a fast, good handling utility vehicle. I almost wish the wheel wells were big enough to fir A/T light truck tires... but now I'm just getting crazy.

[themagellan]

Haha, I like the thread.

I had the same thing with the difference of gas I was using - little did I know that the shell 93 was just masking a timing issue where my hose to ECU had a pinhole leak - (Aka ECU thinking car is running less boost than it actually is and thus allowing absurd timing when it was really running wastegate pressure) Might be worth checking.

I also only run about 1.8/1.9 on a good day - I really need to hook up a real gauge.

I also think Marc still needs a 3B car to tune in house for the billet k26's (or anything stock ecu), I am definitely regretting not having this done since I live quite a little bit further away than I did. Hopefully someone will get him a platform to work on

[20VAvant]

No one likes my thread... lol.

After that I'll probably drop some coin on poly rear subframe bushings, apikol rear diff mount, firmer engine mounts,

Being new to the whole Audi game myself, I would definitely recommend doing all the rear and front bushings. Especially the front bushings on the rear arms(just got done doing this 5 minutes ago, damn...). If you get apikol rear subframe bushings for the UrS4, make sure you have access to make some bushings that have an M8 thru hole and not an M12 I also have the apikol rear diff mount - bolts up like it should, I got mine in blue which is less dense but it is still pretty firm(also looks really pretty)
I also recommend HPR engine mounts. I put it off for awhile thinking mine were fine. Needless to say, alot less slop later it was definitely worth it.

If you have the funds, go with the coilover setup. It was pretty easy to do, and is a lot of fun to play with and handles much better.

As everyone else on here will tell you, look into running VEMS. It's pricy along with some bigger injectors, but it is very neat.

[loxxrider]

I like your thread! Just been too busy to read or post. Keep it up. The T44 force is strong here

[Justin517]

lol, the first line was a joke... it hasn't been too interesting here anyway.

I will look into the leaking line, although I have a boost gauge Tee'd into the line a few inches from the ECU and I'm getting the proper 14.5 or so psi on the gauge.

I wonder if there is possibly a pressure transducer issue. who knows, I wish I had my old shadetree VAG-COM still but the palm pilot I had it on is a useless POS. I'll have to look into a newer solution, in the meantime I need to pick up a new test light (crushed mine a while back, haven't replaced) and blink out any codes there may be.

I really like the idea of VEMS but I don't really think I want to mess with it on this car, I want a simple chip tune that I can just run and forget it, this is a half-time daily driver. Plus I don't know that I'll ever go bigger than a billet K26 and will likely stick with stock rods for quite a while.

[Justin517]

Did the timing belt and related bits.

Put Motul Gear 300 75w90 in the trans.

Hunted down some weird phantom boost leaks that seemed like bad fuel because they would only seem to happen near an empty tank after sitting a couple days. I just went through and tightened all the clamps a few times. I'll still pressure test it eventually but it seems to be running more or less perfect now, boosts fast and hard and even looks to spike a half psi over 15psi for a second when I punch it between 3-4k or so.

I'm super happy with this car. I honestly can't decide if I like driving the 540i or this better, they are very different yet both on about the same level of awesome.

Sometimes I find myself thinking I should sell the 540 and dump money into this thing and get like a 944 or maybe a 914 for a summer vehicle... but then I drive the 540 and remember why I bought it int he first place.

[Justin517]

Couple pics...

[AngryTaco]

Man I want a 20v avant now

[Justin517]

Man I want a 20v avant now

Do it.

Sooner than later, they are getting to be few and far between. I got super lucky, great car at a ridiculously low price. I would have gladly paid 2-4 times the amount of money.

I'm # 71
http://www.20020vavant.com/the-registry.html

[Justin517]

So... the car did great in the snow as expected. The Kumho all seasons aren't nearly as bad as I expected, I'll run them through this winter.

I have a line on a pair of HP2 calipers for $175 shipped, so I'll be getting those for when I need to do my brakes... just need to figure out what wheels I'll run, I'd like to find a mesh replica similar to stock.

Now, I kind of want to start collecting parts for some upgrades. I'll be doing the Hersh mounts likely in Jan. ad a clutch in the spring.

Eventually I will go billet K26, now my question is, am I beter off keeping my stock exhaust manifold? or should I spend $200 or less on an ebay cast piece? There is nothing wrong with the one I have, just wondering if the cast non-log style pieces are of any benefit? OR if mine isn;t cracked don;t bother?

I would be looking to get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Audi-2-2l-20V-S ... c6&vxp=mtr

Not this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUDI-S2-S4-S6-R ... 6f&vxp=mtr

the first one looks like a better design since it isn't a common plenum "log", but the second one is made by STR which I guess is decent quality.

Thoughts? I want to assume that at up to 325whp or so the stock manifold isn't too much of a bottle neck? Skip it?

[pilihp2]

I'd go with the one you're choosing. Obvious advantage is better flow, which is never a bad thing. The STR manifold you'd have to modify or make a new downpipe to get it to work. Only manifold to steer clear of is the factory rs2 replica manifolds on ebay. the replica wagner rs2 manifolds I hear aren't too bad, especially for the price of it all.

[Justin517]

The factory RS2 replica you are talking about are the ones with the visible casting marks on the outside? This one...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cast-Iron-Turbo ... 2d&vxp=mtr

??

Those just look like crap so I didn;t even consider them...

[Mcstiff]

is the 7a FPR capable of compensating for manifold pressure? or just vacuum?

It works just fine and is a 4.2bar base pressure

[Justin517]

whoa... you cross-forum quoted!

I was just asking for the person asking in that thread... but that is good to know though if I end up going VEMS and want moAr presshur.

Thanks.

In other news... both of these came in today...

[alxdgr8]

Awesome, where'd you get the shirt?