Justin's '85 UrQ'd 4000 20vt Project - Tuning Help?

[ralleyquattro]

Nicely done Justin, that's one thing I wish I had patience for, body work.
You make it look so easy!

Waiting patiently for more!

[jretal]

Thanks, Martin!

I'm hoping I have the patience too to make it look good when it comes to the final smoothing, etc of everything in regards to the body work... if not, I'm letting the shop do it... lol. I will get it 90% there, and I'm going to let a shop shoot color and clear on it. I might even let them prime it too depending on what kind of deal I can strike w/ the local shop owner. They're a sponsor for the local Audi club, and I'm on the board for organizing and running Tech at events... so hopefully I can make something happen

[karthurtq]

You're crazy Justin. I haven't gotten anything done on any of my projects. Been to busy fixing other people cars. Keep the pictures coming.

[Hank]

WOW. Glad I could inspire a good paint strip. Those pictures brought back memories, and I wish I could say they were good ones.

Keep it up.

[Highlander]

Brilliant.

Totally sick build.

Keep us updated.

Cheers,

Craig Cok

[85oceanic]

Man, talk about a lot of work!! Looks great!

[jretal]

Well ladies and gents, I’ve gotten enough done now that I guess it’s time to share some of the torture… I mean second job… I mean loving hobby… I mean progress I’ve done so far on the car. This is an INSANELY HUGE update pix-wise, so enjoy. After taking a week off of work and pulling 10-14 hr days every day, plus working evenings and at least 5 hrs over the weekends (hard w/ gf and classes all day on Saturdays), I can confidently say I’m making some progress .

When I left you off before, that was 90% completion of the front end. I was unable to proceed from that point until I got the rocker panels made and ready to go, but I couldn’t do that until I had the rear arches addressed, etc. So this is a recap of what I went through, as this is some of the initial work I did on the car when this progress started (as you can tell, as there is still paint on the car in some of the pictures!).

One of the biggest issues I was having with the car while on the track was rubbing when under load in the corners… so best way to fix this? Yes, widen the fenders, but also raise the lip to make some more clearance inside the wheel wells! So I started off by dropping the car on its bump stops in the rear and seeing how much I can get away with removing!
Pass side marked up:


Outer skin removed:


And the inner skin lifted:


Then came the fun... Time to break out the big guns and start removing some undercoating so I can start welding. Have I mentioned how much I hate the undercoating? Almost falls close to my love for fiberglass at this point…
Weapon of choice:


And the aftermath (and more reason why my cousin is a tolerable SOB and my neighbors dislike me… lol). Mind you, I did this work in Feb/Mar timeframe, so it was cold outside… hence the closed garage door. Plus I was doing this at night, so I had to keep garage door shut the noise down so I didn’t piss of the neighbors more than I have already!
[imgs]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O7iBBitASHs/TYAkmqnYS6I/AAAAAAAACgI/e4-d0THNN0w/IMG_5959.JPG[/img]



And once the air cleared:




Once all the undercoating was gone, it was time to start clearancing! My goal was to have about 1-1.25” clearance between the top of the tire and the edge with the car at full drop. This is lower than I will ever keep the car, as the suspension geometry is completely borked (a-arm pointing upwards), but if I do drop it this far, there’s still plenty of room for compression w/ my 600lb rear springs.



And beginning the trip around the circumference of the wheel well:


Since I was stretching the metal in the wheel well, I had to cut some reliefs in the liner in order to get it to match up with the outer skin. Took a bit of finagling, but after a while I got it figured out:





And filling the unnecessary holes:


Then time to rinse and repeat on the pass side:







And the aftermath:





And just to give you an idea how much lower the car is/tire is tucked


At this point, with the front fenders roughly complete and plenty of room for the rear wheels, it was time to figure out what to do with the rocker panels. A while back, I had taken forms from our UrQ project to get a rough idea of what the rocker panels should look like. Because I had the front fenders haunched out more than stock, I had to adjust the rockers as necessary as well… so this was merely a starting point.

So in order to get a rough idea on how to start the template, I sided with one of my favorite childhood materials!


Roughly on the car:


And the final template:


With that complete, it was time to make the rockers. I had tried to farm this out to a couple machinists I knew, but unfortunately the setup cost killed the deal every time. I had tossed out an email to the UrQ list to see if people would be interested in buying them so I could make a bunch to lower the costs, but b/c I wasn’t 100% certain they’d be a great fit, I didn’t want to risk sending out a bad item. So instead, I ordered a 4’x4’ sheet of 16ga galvanized sheet metal and began the fun on my own!



From this point, I cleaned up my old template and did some measuring to make sure I laid everything out correctly to get bent:


And with my crappy little HF sheet metal break, I made a mock up piece:


Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself . Not too bad for a shadetree mechanic!


At this point though, I hit a small dilemma. No one around me had a sheet metal break that could handle 4’ long piece of 16ga sheet metal. After asking around, a co-worker pulled through in a big way and was able to bring me to a local art school that had an ancient, but serviceable 8’ break. This thing was in a world of hurting and took a fair bit of finagling to get it to make a proper bend, but after some work, it came out pretty damn good.

In action:




And what happens when you bent it a little bit tooooo far… oops:


But after about an hour and a half for all 4 pieces, this is what you get:






From here, I started the process of prepping and priming the rocker panels. Since everything was stripped to bare metal, I figured tossing on some weld through primer was a good idea. I do have to say though, I don’t like this stuff. While it is suppose to be weld through, I had a helluva time actually welding to it. I’m not sure if it was the settings I was on (though I doubt that as they worked when welding on bare metal to bare metal), the gas I was using, or what, but I couldn’t get the weld to puddle on the primer without really nuking it, and it would end up getting the sheet metal (unprimed) too hot and then pop and send molten hot metal all over my leg/arm/foot. Needless to say, I was swearing a lot during this process… but I digress… lol.





With the rockers ready to receive, next step was to splice the pieces together. The rocker panel from front to rear was just shy of 6 feet, so I had to add 2 feet to each panel in order to cover the span. Thankfully I was consistent enough with my bends that I was able to do this pretty easily:



Once the pieces were made long enough, thus began the fun of offsetting the rockers to match the haunched out front fenders. This was a crucial part, as this also helped me figure out the necessary offset for the rear fenders as well! So after a ton of swearing (moreso b/c I didn’t have strong enough magnets to hold the new rocker panels onto the car, and the tape was hit or miss with how well it would stick when trying to adjust the rocker on the car), I was able to trim the rockers as necessary:





And finally, tacked onto the car… this was a pretty big moment for me. I probably sat there staring at the car for a good 15 min, as it was slowly starting to shape up!!!





Next came the fun part…. THE REAR FENDERS!!!

Being that the UrQ is a two door, and I wanted to keep the 4000 a 4 door, this made things a wee bit interesting to say the least. I did a lot of staring at the car trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to do this, but by using the knowledge that I acquired building the front fenders, this was a LOT less daunting of a task than it would have been.

First off, I had to do some clearancing on the flares themselves. I wanted to stick with an entirely metal rocker panel vs. using fiberglass as they’re just more durable. So my initial step was to cut off the bottoms of the rear fenders that were the remains of the rockers on an UrQ:



Then came the fun of measuring, measuring again… and continuing to measure in order to find the center of the arch on both fenders. Unfortunately, again, these fenders were a little tweaked, and not consistent between eachother. Why? I really have no idea, but the pass side arch was off by ~3/8” when compared to the driver’s side. Not the end of the world (esp considering the havoc I went through on the fronts), but still frustrating.

So here the fender is mocked up on the car w/ bumper (will cover that later) held up to give me an idea of what I’m working with:




Once I got everything centered where I wanted it, it was time to figure out how to make the car a 4 door again. It took a bit of pondering, but the solution was actually a lot easier than I anticipated. Simply template the door, then transfer to the flare… yeah, juuuust that easy






And look, ma… 4 doors again!!


In the pic above, you can also see the bracing that I started to put on the door to support the new flare. I initially started to do it similar to what I did on the fronts (basically make a c-channel of sheet metal, one side on the door, one on the panel), then realized how crazy I was to try to double bend and rivet the flanges onto the door. The curves were just too complex for me to get away with that, and it also dawned on me I have this nice new Miller welder that I picked up for this project, and it made welding sheet metal a TON easier than my old HF special.

But after some finagling, measuring, and time with my tin snips, I was able to flange out the door area pretty “easily”:



Next came the fun of flanging the rear! Being that this portion of the car wasn’t going to get any fiberglass covering, I was a little more anal with the fit/finish (not show worthy, but still a little cleaner than I did in the past on the covered stuff)

Gap to fill:


Filling:


And the90% completed side (to this point, it took me about 8ish hours I believe? Painfully slow process):


Then rinse and repeat on the pass side (and try to make it even, which wasn’t easy considering this was the side that hit the tire wall, so I wasn’t working with an identical surface unfortunately… but I got it damn near close or within 1/16”)














And then came the fun of making the front/rear of the flares match the doors themselves and provide some support for the fiberglass that I laid:







And then fill in the gaps by the door sills:


As I had mentioned previously, once I got the flares hard mounted to the sides of the cars, the differences in the flares started to show their ugly little heads, unfortunately. The biggest issue was the leading edge of the flare in the wheel well. For some reason, the profile of this flare was different on the pass side than it was the driver’s side… and not for the better. It made the opening around the wheel about 3/8” narrower than it was suppose to be. After measuring, and measuring again, and again, I decided to just do some chopping and make it how I wanted it to be. Frustrating, but what have you:





Once this was complete, it was time to get the rocker panels to match the flares. I really wanted to stay away from fiberglass again in this area, as by the time I was done flanging it, I could have made it in metal.


Thankfully I had one piece left of my rocker panels, so after a fair bit of measuring, finagling, cutting and welding you get:





I did a happy dance at this point, as these really completed the look of the car. A small task, but made a huge impact on the overall look of the car.
At this point, it was time to start prepping the panels to make up the gaps that I created when cutting the panels up. Unfortunately, I found more surprises in this flare that I was LESS than pleased about. I believe what happened was when these flares were made, there were air bubbles in 2 places. Instead of just throwing out the piece and starting over, they cut the areas where the bubbles were, put them back in the mold, filled the problem areas with filler, then fiberglassed over again. As you can see, it was a hellacious mess:





Nothing else has been easy on this car, so why should I expect different at this point I guess… lol. But I digress. Overall, these rear flares were LEAPS and BOUNDS better than the fronts, so a small hiccup like this wasn’t the end of the world.

After a fair bit of time grinding and prepping, the pieces are ready to go on the car for some glassing:


Out comes the foil yet again!





And the finished products:



And just a side note… be careful what grinding disks you buy!!!! I bought a pack of 3” cutting wheels from Lowes (not cheapies like HF, or so I thought). The disk was brand spanking new when I went to cut off a rivet holding the panel on the car… the disk literally exploded as it touched the rivet, sending pieces directly up into the 8’ light fixture over my head, shattering the bulb, which finished shattering over the back of my head!!! Thank God my I wasn’t positioned in the line of fire of the piece; as I’m not sure my safety glasses would have stopped it at that point… notice the dent in the fixture!





Once all the panels were off the car and ready, then came the fun (and ungodly messy… have I mentioned I hate fiberglass yet?) of making them moderately smooth! So 3 hours with a vacuum and my angle grinder w/ 60 grit flapper disk and you take this:





To this:


Have I mentioned how messy this was? This was WITH the vacuum running to collect dust as I was going… I blocked the filter, filled the canister on the vacuum AND I looked like I blew up a cocaine factory in my garage:


This was on top of the “work bench” (i.e. the old hood for the car )… there was an equally big pile on the floor to boot!


The vacuum:


My head afterwards:


At this point, the roughing on the fenders is complete… next up was the bumpers!

About 3 or so years ago at this point (just to let you know exactly how long I’ve been planning on doing this… lol), when Martin first started his SQ project (oops… yeah, it HAS been that long, hasn’t it?), I had messaged him to see if he had the bumpers still. To my surprise, he had them, and his price was so good I didn’t even blink before I put a check in the mail!! So once again, thanks Martin for the deal!!! Hope their use lives up to your expectations The catch was, I was in VA Beach at the time and he was in Canada. Fortunately, the 4000/CGT/UrQ is a very tight bunch to say the least, and through the kindness of a fellow QW’er (Thanks, Steve and Frank), the bumpers were able to be convoyed down to Carlisle where another fellow QW’er (Thanks, Rob!) shuttled them to NoVA, where I picked them up and shoved them in the 4000 and drove them south again.

All safe and sound at home (miss seeing the ‘ol girl with paint on her skin… lol):




From there, it was time to assess the pieces. Being that I wanted to start with a clean plate, I decided that they needed to be sanded completely down to the bare plastic… but little did I realize how overly involved this was going to be! To say these bumpers have lived a tough life is probably an understatement. I counted about 5-8 layers of different colored paint (shown later on), and the amount of filler where it was gouged, dented, etc was amazing! And that doesn’t even cover the parts that were not repaired that were cracked, gouged and cut… lol. Regardless, Martin made me well aware of their condition, but for the price I wasn’t afraid to put in a little sweat equity.

Time to start the fun:




Sanding….


And sanding….


And sanding…






I believe the rear was the most beat up piece in the grand scheme of things… lot of hidden filler, and layers of paint of course…


But at one point, this car was silver, then black, then blue, then golbi, then silver again… with various layers of primer in between…. Lol!




But fast forward about 3 years, ~24 hrs of labor and a huge pile of this:

And you got 4 pieces that were completely stripped down to the plastic and ready for installation today

I started off with the rear bumper. When mocking up, it became quite evident that this was not going to be a simple plug and play (surprise surprise!!!!). When holding the apron up to the car, the edges were standing off a good 2.5” from where they were suppose to meet the lips around the fender flares. Oh goodie. After doing a lot of searching online and finding every picture I could on UrQ’d 4000s, it became evident that some trimming of the bumper was going to be required. At this point, a buddy showed up and we went about making a template of the top of the bumper so we could get an idea exactly how much needed to get trimmed off the top of the bumper to get it to fit:



After measuring about 100 times, I finally got everything marked out… and began to cut. Let me tell you, I really haven’t been too nervous about cutting into this car during this whole project. When doing this, I was legitimately nervous, as plastic isn’t as easy to “fix” if you f’ up! That and it’s not like I can just go to the local junk yard and snag another UrQ bumper… but thankfully, our measuring pulled through and no big issues to report about:



Once the apron was fitted, I needed to tackle the core support. After looking at the UrQ rear bumper shocks/support, it became pretty apparent they weren’t the same bolt layout as the 4000. At this point, I took a chance and tried the 4000 core support/shocks on the UrQ bumper outer shell. To my surprise (and delight), it was going to fit!!!!!! It required a little trimming of the ends as well as a couple new holes drilled to accept the fingers that hold it together, but overall… IT FIT!


And once trimmed, I tossed it on to see how it looks:



Of course, I can never be happy with what I have, and wanted to tuck the rear bumper a bit more than it was at this point. In the past, I’ve read a few different ways on how to successfully do this… and honestly, I wasn’t a fan of any of them. One was to drill and drain the goo that allows the bumper to compress in a low speed collision. The next was to rethread the bumper shock further, which wasn’t feasible as a) I didn’t have the proper die and b) the taper on the shock wasn’t right and would have been a royal biznitch to thread… so I took a new direction… option c!

Being that I had the 4000 shocks and the UrQ shocks, I decided to make a hybrid shock mount that allowed me to thread the bumper shocks in further, thus allowing me to tuck the bumper more.

So I started off with this:


And ended with this:


Which resulted in this:


It’s not as tucked as others have done, but unfortunately if I brought it in any closer I was going to need to trim off even MORE structure on the bumper (it was hitting the unibody of the 4000), plus it was going to look a little weird (to me at least) as it would have almost no a$$! I want my girl to have a lil bit ‘o feature back there, so I decided to let it stick out a little bit. From there I made up some supports in the wheel wells to hold the ends of the bumper, as well as some supports on the back to hold it up on the underside and keep it rock solid. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of that, but rest assured… it looked good Will try to snag a few when the bumpers off again.

With the bumper on the rear though, it pointed out another area that needed to be addressed on the 4000 body… the exhaust outlet. The UrQ exhaust port on the bumper is closer to the center than the 4000, and of course, there is hard metal there and not just a big glorious open area for me to move the exhaust outlet (cue grinder and welder). So below shows exactly what I ended up doing. I was tempted to extend the opening all the way across the back end, but decided to stop making more work for myself! There was really no point in doing this other than for “looks,” and in reality this is covered by the bumper anyway, so no harm no foul.



Opening it up:




Welded up:


And cleaned up:




This pretty much concludes the major work for the rear end. I still need to finesse the rear flares, fix the gaps and bond them to the car, which I will cover later on I guess.

As for the front… well… let’s continue (as if this post isn’t long enough as is).

With the rocker panels back on the car, I was now able to figure out exactly how off the bottom portions were to the shape of the rockers… plus address the gap b/n the fender and the rocker. As par for the course with these front fenders… it was ugly. I had wracked my brain for a bit trying to figure out exactly HOW I was going to make these things line up, AND keep the fiberglass stuck there and not look like $hit. Then it dawned on me… I still have my template of the rocker panel… which means I have a mold!



Came out pretty good for an impromptu piece and only having foil as the release


At this point, it was time to start grafting them to the fenders… so I did some grinding/trimming and positioned them in place:








With the pieces roughly held in place, it was time to start glassing once again…


And after hours of sanding and glassing and sanding and glassing, I finally got a decent fit that I was happy about. The unfortunate part of this was that it pointed out a glaring issue with my initial design on the vents for the front fenders. The more and more I looked at the gap that went top to bottom on this fender, the more it looked completely unkept and unfinished looking. After checking out what Hadyn had done w/ his flared fenders, I decided that I needed to trim down my openings a bit, as they were just excessive in my mind for how this car is going to look. Plus, when looking at the STIs or GT-Rs (no I’m not comparing my car to a GT-R, just the vents ), the vents are only 1/4 way up the fender vs the entire thing. Granted their vents are a bit bigger, but these will still fill a purpose. So after doing a fair bit of measuring and mocking up, this is what I came up with:





And finished:








In my opinion, this version looks a LOT better than before. Even if it’s not as functional, it’s a lot more aesthetically pleasing to me, which is all that matters in the end, honestly. But this is how the fenders sit as of now. I still have a bit of cleaning up to do w/ the gaps and everything, but I need to weld the caps on the rocker panels (front/rear) before I can truly finalize the gaps. As of right now though, the front flares are ready to be bonded to the fenders, which is a huge milestone!!! I’m finally starting to feel like there’s light at the end of the tunnel here.

And finally for this post, prepping the front of the car for the front bumper… Ever since I put the Euro lights on the front of the car, the lights never squared off correctly to the mounts. Not on my self made one OR the actual authentic one. But when you mounted the brackets on the lights, they fit great! So given that the front sheet metal on the car was chopped to high hell to begin with, I decided to finish it off and remove the remainder of the original structure and add in my own mounts.

Out with the old:






Position my minty new euros with little to no pitting, perfect reflectors and only one damaged tab:


Figure out how to fill the gap:




Weld, rinse and repeat:




And loosely fit the front bumper


So that’s about where she sits right now. I have to do some serious adjusting to the front bumper to get it to fit correctly with my intercooler, so I will cover that later on as I’m hoping to snag a plastic welder this week and move forward. Hoping that I can finish it up in the next couple of weeks so I can send it off for prep and final paint by mid July, which gives the shop lots of time to work the car over and get it back to me so I can (wishfully) have it ready for Watkins Glen at the end of August. The goal is there, so hopefully I can fulfill it! Would be a fitting track to make her first appearance!

Hope you enjoyed the show as always… until next time!

[death 4kqt]

wow! Justin, that is some impressive work, especially considering you are doing it all with basic tools and a basic shop space. Very impressive. I bet you cant wait to get it back on the road and track....Just keep it away from those walls!

[EDIGREG]

Justin, dude.....sick !! Holy shitload of work, batman...but that is going to look amazing when it's all finished. Will be well worth the effort!! :woowoo:

[quattro87]

Wow.....I guess no real progress on the Urq can be explained now. Nice work. It looks to me like you have the same disease as me. :wink:

[Highlander]

Totally awesome !!!!!!!!

Great job, and focus to detail. This is going to be sweet when it's done.

Cheers,

Craig Cook.

[Mentosman42]

awesome update cant wait to see this thing together for good!

[HT Motorsport]

WOW thats an update!!!!!

Bravo....

Ill have to sit and read it in more depth and come back for comments, but hell yeah Justin!

[Audiurq]

Justin,

Good for you, for not giving up, it will be worth it. I love the look of flared 4000qs.

cheers, Mike

[Pre95]

I said it once and I'll say it again, why the hell aren't you my neighbor?! Nice work!!!

[jretal]

Well, time for one more update!

First and foremost, the panels are officially bonded!!!! With the help of some 3M panel adhesive and some rivets to make sure it stays put when bonding… I have bonded panels!





Car didn’t look much different with them glued as they did with them just dry fitted, but this was one big milestone to show me this car WAS actually progressing!

Now to continue on with the Bumpers

When I left you all off last time, I had just finished loosely fitting the front bumper to the car. Unfortunately, when doing so, it became blatantly apparent that this bumper wasn’t going to even come close to fitting without a fair bit of massaging to clear my front mount intercooler. And by a bit of massaging, I mean I literally had to cut off the lower lip of the bumper and extend it approximately 1.5” and then rebond it. In the grand scheme of things I should have gone 1.75”, but was able to do a little bit of finagling to make it all fit.

With the help of a buddy and a few vice grips, we were able to get the bumper roughly situated and see exactly what needed to get removed. The intercooler piping was hitting HARD on the two upright posts on the front bumper. Initially I had tried to heat the bumper and kind of “bend” it and mold it to fit better, but that idea JUST wasn’t going to happen, unfortunately. So after sizing everything up, out came the tape, the marker and the jigsaw, and a cutting we went!


I really need to stop hacking up these rare bumpers……


Now with the two pieces separated, I was able to start spacing the lower lip out to figure out exactly how much room I really needed:


And of course, added some supports to make sure it lined up correctly!


Once I got everything lined up like it needed to be, it was time to start prepping to bond it. I originally was going to use a plastic welder to mesh this all together, but the type of plastic these bumpers are made from wasn’t boding well to this process. So I went back to my original plan of using some 3M special plastic adhesive and going from there. In order to make up for the gap, I used left over material that I had cut from the rear bumper to make it fit properly.



And held it together with some automotive foil tape that wouldn’t stick to the adhesive:




And then laid the goo down w/ some of the “special” reinforcement fiber:




And then with the tape removed (note, this side slipped a little bit. I had to go back and cut it free and rebond it so it wasn’t sticking out and looking nasty. I could have ground it flat, but there would have been next to no plastic left and only the bond… not where I wanted to be):



And with everything removed and before I started cutting more to make the uprights and lateral slats work:


As you can see in the picture, I made the lower lip stick out a fair bit further than it used to in order to clear the intercooler and piping. Unfortunately, this weakened the bumper quite a bit. From all the reviews and the specs on this adhesive I used, it should be as strong or stronger than the existing plastic, but I still didn’t trust it. So in order to make sure the bumper held its shape (plus add a little aerodynamic benefit) I decided to add a splitter. With the help of a few friends, I was able to pick up a sheet of Alumilite from a local race shop and get to work.

Started off by tracing out the shape of the existing bumper and then adding 3” to the front of it for some “mad down force.”


Next came out the jigsaw once again and started to cut:


And the bumper loosely fitted on the new splitter:


As with everything, this didn’t *quite* fit right because the piping to my intercooler sticks down a bit lower than the bumper does. I was in high hopes that the UrQ bumper had a bit of a lower “chin” than the 4000 bumper (which it does), but it wasn’t enough to fully cover my IC piping. In order to make it fit, I had to trim the inside of the splitter:


But once I got it all trimmed away, she was ready to rock!


Once I got the bumper properly secured to the splitter, next came the fun part of making all the upright “supports” I cut earlier attach properly again. Because the supports and such stuck out a good inch past where they used to, I had to start off by removing all the horizontal slats that were originally on the bumper:



After that began the fun process of prepping and repositioning all of them back where they belonged (and ensured they lined up correctly to boot!):





And the backside:


Once I got all the supports re-adhered to the rest of the bumper, it was time to address the other cuts, dings and holes in the rest of the bumpers. So out came the AL automotive tape, adhesive promoter, adhesive and reinforcement fiber.

I started by patching the holes in the front bumper that were left from what I’m presuming was a front plate (must have been a euro as they were too far apart for a US plate):


Next was the rear bumper. Now that I’m using the 4000 shocks, I can remove the bumper support from inside the car, which wasn’t possible with the UrQ rear bumper support/shocks. This being the case, I no longer needed access to the bolts that hold the support to the bumper shocks, so time to smooth things out (much like the ’84/’85 UrQ rear bumpers):





As you see in the photo above, there is a strange cut out on the bumper. I decided not to kill myself and fill that in as it’s not seen. The original bumper came with a hitch that was bolted to the core support. Being that it probably could tow nothing more than a tire trailer, I figured it wasn’t worth putting back on the car… but incase I feel crazy one day and want it back, I left myself the option of repositioning it and reinstalling it.

Once all the major cracks, dings and holes were filled… then came the fun of doing the final smoothing. This was a painfully slow process, but very rewarding once done… but I started bright and early one Sunday morning:


And after 5 hours I had bumpers that were ready for the bodyshop! One more check off the list!

Next up, was completing the rocker panels. Before I could finalize the gap b/n the lower front fenders and the rocker panels, I needed to weld up caps on both sides (front and rear). This was a pretty cut and dry process of prep the area, template what I wanted, cut the material, weld on, and then grind flush.

So I started on the rear:




(no pix of final product, but imagine the brown cardboard being galvanized metal with weld holding it in place )
And moved to the front:









Then ground smooth and looking like it should.

From here, I did a little odds and ends work. When I had originally moved the battery to the trunk, I bought the Summit Racing “battery relocation kit,” which consisted of a battery box, cable, and some sort of tie down system that was suppose to hold the battery, but wouldn’t work unless you hacked the box up to make it work. Needless to say, I made it work, but was hugely disappointed with how it worked and how hacked it seemed. So since everything was already out of the car, I decided it was time to upgrade and get rid of this POS setup and make something a little nicer looking.

I decided to make this tray of 2” steel angle, and fit it to a new sealed optima red top battery so it didn’t pee acid all over like the old one started to do.



Then with some measuring, cutting and welding:






Another quick task I had to undertake was the front core support for the bumper. Unfortunately, this bumper must have had a unseen crack in it, and when I bolted it to the front of the car… it later reared its ugly little head. In order to fix this, I decided to add some tools/toys to the stash and pick up a spool gun for my Miller welder. Would it have been cheaper to farm this out to a welder quickly? Yes… but would I have the tool to start playing with AL down the road? Newp!



I can confidently say that I have a LOT to learn in order to use this tool correctly (the grinder is the grand savior of all sins I did with this thing), but it did the trick as you can see.

Before:


After:


With all the side projects done, and the bumpers completed… it was time for my last step before this car was ready to hit the road… bondo! And it was at this moment that I realized, my talent (and more importantly my patience with this project) started to run REALLY thin!

It all started off with the casual “how hard could this really be” statement… and then it showed how wrong I could be… lol. Granted, this isn’t the most difficult thing to do, as long as you mix the product correctly <bangs head on desk>!!!

I mixed up the bondo (duraglass actually) in small batches and started to tackle it. The instructions stated how to mix it and that it had about a 20 minute working time. Well my first batch lasted about 5 minutes before it got hard enough that I couldn’t spread it smoothly. Ok, second and 3rd batch I would ease up on the hardener… which I apparently eased up TOO much, as it never quite cured (i.e. was sort of like half dried bubble gum, and even after letting sit for 24 hrs never hardened).











Thankfully, I got a better hang of it when I did the rear fenders, and those worked out a lot nicer… but I put just shy of a gallon of duraglass on… and sanded probably 2/3rds of it off!!!! Took about 4 hrs to sand the entire car (and scrape the stuff that wasn’t cured off w/ a putty knife… ugh), but in the end, turned out pretty well!!









And the aftermath:



Once all the sanding was done, it was time for the final step… remove the doors and figure out how to get the new door handles to work on the car!





With the doors removed, I was able to start playing around with making the flush door handles work. Fortunately (for once) this turned out to be a lot easier than I had anticipated. I really thought the rears were going to be complicated, but turned out they were the easiest of the bunch!

In the 4000s, the rear door latches are actuated by a lever on the exterior handle pressing down on a paddle on the latch. The UrS handles I used actually used rods to do something similar. After looking at it closely, I realized it was a rather easy task to make the rods work with the paddles on the existing 4000 latches. I ended up welding on a bit of extra 16ga metal to the tabs and drilled a hole for the rod:





Then I put a nut on the rod to act as a pusher (and tacked it in place so it wouldn’t move), and it worked perfectly! Small victory!

For the fronts, it was a little bit trickier, unfortunately. Not terrible, but tricky. I ended up cutting the rods from the UrS handles and the rod to the original 4000 handles and tacking them together to make a new rod. Actually worked out nicely… but welding blindly sometimes causes an issue





Again, after some finagling, I was good to go! The unfortunate part is, I can’t quite get the lock cylinders to work with the 4000 locks. On the 4000 handles, the locking mechanism has a slot for the locking bar to travel in, and at the extreme parts the lock is either engaged or unengaged. Unfortunately, the UrS lock is a fixed part where the locking rod attaches, so if you hook it all up, the actual locking button on the top of the door is solid and can’t go up/down. I will figure this out later, unfortunately. Wouldn’t mind making the locks work again on the car, but will see what’s involved to successfully do this.

But once the door handles were right, and I spent another hour or so partially assembling the car… it was ready for what I had hoped to have done back in April of this year…….. time to go to the body shop!!!!!

Note, the first 2 pictures were at 230am this past Thursday when I FINALLY finished the car. This was the first time in 7 months the car actually touched the ground on its own feet, and wasn’t on jack stands or rollers… I was ecstatic! Not to mention, I forgot how LOW the car was!!!




And in the daylight, getting ready to go on the trailer. And yes, I DID actually drive it around the neighborhood like this No muffler, no nothing. It was loud, but glorious, and the looks I got were absolutely PRICELESS!









And here she is at the shop. I’m working with Criswell Collision Center in Annapolis to do the body work. I’ve heard nothing but great things about George (owner) and his shop, so I have nothing but high hopes for how this car will turn out. He’s been a huge supporter of the local Audi Chapter here in the PCC, and it only seems right that this unique of a project go his way! Really excited, but still have a LOT of work ahead to get this car ‘right.’



And here she is at her home for the next X weeks (months?)… hoping to hear from them today or tomorrow with a final quote and we will go from there.



Car def received a LOT of attention from the techs in the shop. I feel that a lot of it ranged from not really knowing exactly WHAT it was to “you spend a helluva long time working on this, didn’t you”!!! Only way to tell it was an Audi at this point was the 4 rings on the steering wheel, otherwise one of them almost mistook it as a Volvo! But it was received well, and is now in their hands to make it look like I can’t quite do. I know I’m capable of doing it, but I just don’t have the time/energy to put into it anymore. This car has sucked it out of me the past few months, and I want to have my life back and actually have time to spend w/ my gf on the weekends when she visits as well as my friends, instead of locking myself in the garage or skipping out on things b/c I had to work on the car…

I’m HOPING to have the car back by mid August so I can put it together and get it to Watkins Glen with the NEQ for the 22nd-23rd, but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. I want the car done right, so I don’t want it rushed. I gave the shop manager my goal, but emphasized that I didn’t want it rushed for a time line that was capable of being moved (as it was only my own… lol).

So that’s where she sits! I can’t tell you what a relief it was to get that car done and on the trailer. I was shaking with excitement as I was driving it up to Annapolis, while at the same time crashing b/c I was finally able to relax. I have been pulling 5-6hrs a night during the week and a ton of ours over the weekend (when I did the bumpers/fenders I did 26hrs in 2 days over the weekend) for the past month or so. I was absolutely dragging… so it’s a welcome sign to come home and find the garage empty… now I just need to find the time to clean it before my cousin kills me, as it looks like a bomb just went off inside of it!

That’s all for now, more to come for sure!

[Quattro Krant]

WOW. That looks incredible, great job. My favorite part of the body work is how the fender transitions into the rocker panels are BANG ON. Those rockers look PERFECT.

[EDIGREG]

Nice Justin!! That looks amazinggg...can't wait to see it finished!

[Justin517]

wow dude, amazing work as usual!

[my2000apb]

what size and offset are those wheels?

[Quattro Krant]

Just wondering if you are planning on leaving it the stock color or doing something different?

[jretal]

yeah, when I got the rockers finally fit up, I was in awe with how well they came out There needs to be some hiding of my transition b/n the old and new rockers (wasn't perfectly even, so wasn't able to grind the welds perfectly flush), but still came out pretty sick. Once final smoothing w/ the filler is done, it will look awesome... really can't wait.

Wheels are stock 4.2 A6 wheels. 35mm offset and 17" diameter.

More than likely going back to the original graphite metallic color, but will have to check out a few color books to see if that's def the route I want to go.

[my2000apb]

achet grey
ala b5 rs4 style

what width are they 7.5? or 8's?

[jretal]

might be another option, actually, Tim.

and yeah, I believe they're 8" wide... If not, they're 8.5" I know they're really wide. The 225s that were on those rims when I bought them actually looked stretched, as funny as it seems.

[Quattro Krant]

I would most likely keep it the original graphite color as well.

a) I love that color

b) less work/cost involved in a re-spray