I ended up getting carried away writing this story. Feel free to skip past all this nonsense to the build section below. I won't think any less of you.
Let me give a bit of back story. Back in 2013 I read the article on Jalopnik "Cars that time forgot" featuring the Audi 200, I think that may have been one of the first things I heard about these cars. Everything about these seemed pretty cool, this sort of gets into what a friend and I have determined to be the best daily driver recipe. A daily driver needs to be fairly large to hold friends and/or family; it needs to have some decent power to make it fun to drive; it needs a manual transmission because of course; and it needs AWD for traction in any weather. At the time my daily driver was a 1994 BMW 525i with a 5 speed, it was rock solid but a bit rusty as well as fairly slow/boring so I was always searching online for something to replace it. After a quick search I noticed several 200s for 1-2k in my area, although all of them had seen far better days I decided I needed one if they are that affordable. I managed to stumble upon a few completely by accident while browsing the classifieds. One was a white 200 sedan in the background of a for sale ad for a newer Audi a4, don't ask me how I found it. I sent him a message about it and despite it being way out of my price range ended up having a long chat with him about these cars which just encouraged me to find one for myself.
I gave up the search after a while due to the lack of decent examples. Enter approximately 1 year ago, I was checking eBay for 200s (I didn't find any more local cars after the initial few). There was a newer listing that seemed like an actual nice car, 1991 Audi 200 20v Avant, tons of pictures and some actual details on what had been done. I saw the location in the ad so I pulled up the local craigslist, found the car, and gave the guy a call. Keep in mind this is on the opposite side of the country from me, I wasn't entirely interested, especially for his asking price, however I still really wanted a fairly decent 200 to replace my rust bucket so I was willing to look into it. Over the phone it sounded like the car was in fairly good shape, there were a few fairly minor problems and he just didn’t have the money or time to deal with it. I ended up making him an offer completely blind which he eventually accepted. So I sold the 5 series and got myself a plane ticket.
Let the records show that I have never done anything like this before. I didn’t think airport security would let me through with a compression tester and a full set of wrenches so I ended up bringing very little to help me check out the car. When I got off the plane I realized this guy was pretty much just out of high school. We went over the car and everything seemed as described, some gauges didn’t work, driver’s window didn’t work, oil leaks, etc. The car also felt a bit slower than expected but I chalked it up to the weight of the Avant and called it good. After paying the man I hopped on the highway to head back home. I ended up getting stuck in rush hour traffic and after sitting at a stand still for a while there was smoke pouring out from under the hood. I pulled over and of course the car had puked coolant everywhere. The temp gauge didn’t work so I had no idea it was even overheating until it was too late. I waited for the car to cool down and called the owner, the car was his daily driver so I wasn’t expecting any sort of issues like this. He assured me this had never happened to him before and aside from that didn’t really provide any help.
After the car cooled down and traffic cleared I hopped back in and made a quick stop to pick up some coolant, I was really hoping I wasn’t stuck with a junk car and no way home. After leaving for a second time I ran into issues on a steep hill, the car seemed to noticeably lose power and was pouring smoke out the exhaust. I pulled over again expecting overheating. I was really starting to lose my mind at this point. I let it cool off again and continued on. Daylight was starting to run out and I had a long way to go so I decided to carry into the night until I made at least a little progress. The first thing I realized was the headlights were terrible. And to say terrible I mean nearly nonexistent. I thought only the running lights were on when I first flipped them on. The second thing I realized was the interior lights did not work. So at night I went from most gauges not working to all gauges unusable. I tried using a light but that didn’t work. After just doing my best to maintain speed I ended up stopping for the night around midnight. I ended up finding a decent hotel and got some sleep.
When I got going in the morning after a good night’s rest I realized all of the gauges were working and I was no longer in fear of the car overheating or running out of gas. The previous owner had told me in cooler weather the gauges all worked but I didn’t believe it. With a bit of confidence I carried on. Near noon it had warmed up and all but the tach and speedo had died off, so it really was just a case of temperature. I drove all day and into the night, I wanted to cannonball through the night to just make it home as quickly as possible. I was really hoping to rack up some miles before something broke and left me stranded. I ended up getting tired early into the night so I decided I needed to stop and sleep again, this time opting for a cheaper hotel. I found a place that was only 39.99 a night. I had never seen a place quite this terrible, the water smelled awful, the bed was most likely full of bedbugs and used syringes, the floor was uneven and coming apart, and the door didn’t seem trustworthy. I didn’t like it but I left the light and the TV on all night and took my chances. The next morning I was still alive and hadn’t lost any organs so I made the final leg of the trip back home. I feel like it is necessary to mention I was pulled over twice on this trip. I never would have expected it seeing as how I have never been pulled over in any vehicle since my mustang. How is an old Audi station wagon a cop magnet?
After registering the car and all that I decided to check on the overheating. I found that the fan fuse commonly goes out and purchased it from the dealership for around a dollar. At this point I could actually hear the fan kick on so I felt like I had fixed that. After daily driving it for a week or so I decided something was definitely up with the power as well as a bit of a weak initial startup. I started to do research and suspected the fuel pressure regulator but I decided to do a compression test as well. After pulling the first plug I realized I might be in trouble. It was covered in thick buildup, mostly black, with some white spots. All of the plugs ended up looking like this.
As I started the compression test I couldn’t seem to get the gauge to work on the first cylinder. I ended up giving up and moved on to the others, magically it worked. The other cylinders were around 145 PSI but I couldn’t get even a hint of pressure from cylinder one. Great, time for an engine rebuilt… The cheap daily I just picked up has become the project car already.
Eventually I managed to borrow a cherry picker and stand and got the engine out and torn down.
One of the exhaust valves in cylinder one had come apart.
I dropped off the engine fully torn down at a machine shop and called up 034, they were the only relevant performance company I had heard of at the time. After discussing my options I decided I wanted a gt3071 but would need need rods to avoid destroying the motor. The machine shop gave me a call around this time and let me know that I would want to get over sized pistons as my cylinder wall to piston clearance was a bit too high. So I ordered scat rods, JE pistons, coated bearings, ARP main studs, and head studs for the hell of it. I dropped off everything at the machine shop and got a call the next day saying they are the wrong pistons. Turns out they sent me pistons for a stroker.
After talking with Samuel they got things sorted out for me and I eventually had the correct pistons in hand for the machine shop. About this time I discovered that it would be fairly expensive to make the jump to a 3071 and really just wanted to get the car running, just with more power than the factory k24 7000 could provide. I nearly jumped on doing an rs2 swap with the k24 7200 but ended up deciding the best bang for the buck would be a k24 7400. I'm currently working with Marc Swanson to get a complete kit together to make a 7400 work, hopefully I'll have that in my hands soon. I don't know if it necessarily deserves the "rowdy Audi" title my friends have given it with this tiny turbo but I hope to make the switch to something like a gtx3071 in the future if/when I have the funds for it. For now this should make the car at least a bit more fun to drive.
The Build Begins
Now that I have gotten everything back I have actually started making progress. Ignore the disgusting garage.
I went ahead and painted the engine block just to make it look a little nicer. I taped off everything just to play it safe, it took much longer than expected to make it look somewhat presentable.
After that I went to work figuring out the bottom end. Also I didn't notice the shoe sitting on the lawn mower until looking at the pictures now, but it was kind of distracting and I feel like I must mention it... I guess it is my roommate's lol, I have no idea why it is there.
I haven't ever messed with ARP studs before. Directions say clean threads and hand tighten, I went ahead and did a dry run with the bearings fitted. I was going to use loctite to make sure nothing backs out after a while and wanted to make sure the threads were clean and everything was good to go. One of the studs was much shorter than the others. Once I removed them I noticed it appeared to have about 1cm sheared off.
So I ended up making basically 0 progress on my first day working on the engine. Hopefully I can actually get something accomplished soon. Maybe I will take a look at the shifter linkage while I wait on the ARP studs.
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