The Project Pad

Lookin goooood!

:stupid:

Nice work on the front end. I have had similar plans with my coupe for quite a while now. There is a whole lotta in that!

thanks, the front end is just starting to come together i have a nice big oil cooler to put up there as well, full frontal cooling ftw!

been working on it a lot and promise to update tonight, i am 98% finishing installing my undercoating/sound deadening delete kit lmao, pics to come

back to removal!

Great work on that front end, Tim. Nice and tidy fab work there.

too tired for full update, heres a sneak preview
full update tomorrow

Attachment ( 32409 ) : clean undercar4.jpg

UPDATE!!!
I acquired this shell in a sandblasted and primed condition, although the shell was still completely undercoated. Haydn (timmmy), did remove a lot of it when he made the trans/exhaust tunnel, but I still had to remove it from the back third of the car and the front and rear wheel wells.

I needed to remove a bunch of brackets, mounts, tabs etc under the car and do a bunch of chassis welding so I finally bit the bullet and started to remove the rest of the undercoating. I also had to fill a few holes and small gaps when we went a little too far with the spot weld driller bit. So down to the bare metal came the underside of the car! I will prime it soon even though I'm not finished, just to prevent ir from flash rusting.









As you can see in the last pic I’m still not 100% done with the removal. I need to get the compressor fired back up so I can run the smaller wire wheel bits and get into some of the corners. But for now, I can do all my chassis welding and cleanup without setting underseal fires.

UPDATE
I had cut out a small section of the rear floor in order to route my exhaust exactly as I wanted to. I started by bending up a piece of 16 gauge, got it trimmed and it was ready to weld. With the undercar finally cleaned up, I could weld without issue. I got it all welded up, let it cool and cleaned it up with a flapper disc.






Now that the floor patch was welded in and cleaned up it was time for some etch primer and seam sealing. Here it is all done, top and bottom

Awesome work..........custom stuff.......WIN!!

I'm going to go back and re-read the whole thread...nice way to start the
morning. I'm off to reading......... coffee in hand :-)

Great workmanship.

Cheers,

Craig.

UPDATE!
After I de-undercoated the bottom of the car I moved to the real wheel wells. Most of the wheel well cleaned up without issue, then I got to the strut mount area at the top. I was met with chewed up, and nearly destroyed top mount seats. So a setback. I have basically two options going forward. I can remove these and replace them with oem pieces from another car or convert to the Ground Control universal 4 bolt adjustable plates.






I have the same plates in the front of my car and will be adding them to the back. Haydn, hooked me up with another set of the waterjet cut upper plates and some of the 6x6” steel square stock. I will also be raising the mount plane by ~1”. I will also be removing the excess rear seat support metal shortly. I need to do this in order to make the rear firewall compartment and it gives me more access to weld the new tops in. I realize there is some structural value to the stamped/spotwelded pieces I will be removing. The chassis will be taken care of with a full FIA cage and halo around the fuel cell, as well as the ½” box 16gauge / 22 gauge sheet rear compartment, so I’m not too worried about loosing a bit of stiffness/strength as it will be regained five fold.

May as well.

UPDATE

In order to get the catback to downpipe connection made and the downpipe up into the engine bay, I had to finalize the transmission mounting and get it bolted down in its final location. Haydn, made this great transmission support bar, I just had to drill it and weld some nuts on it as well as the reinforcement sleeves for the bolts that hold the trans. to the support bar. there will be reinforcement sleeves on the "to trans" bolts as they are in teh center of the bar. The bar is held to the chassis with 4x m10 bolts that are very close the the end cap of the bar so I don't think they need further reinforcement to reduce the risk of crushing it under load. I reinstalled my rear diff, driveshaft, and mid/rear portion of my exhaust. I reinstalled the shifter linkage and doublechecked it, all good. I made a few marks and removed the trans bar for drilling, and also drilled the lower bar mounting plates.







I got the nuts welded onto the trans bar and the holes drilled and cleaned up in the mounting plates on the chassis. I gave it a quick etch prime, and bolted it all into place to check the trans to plate mounting holes. The trans bar is currently bolted into the chassis with the trans just resting on the delrin spacer/mount. I have another piece of ½” delrin being machined to have a small recess to locate two thick washers that the trans will sit on. Pics! And onto downpipe work!

Update!!!
Ok, with the trans/engine in its final resting spot, I got started on connecting the mid/rear portion of the exhaust to the downpipe. The vband connection where the aluminum meets the stainless is about 5-6” rearward of the end of the transmission. The Race Part Solutions Vbands have nice receiver grooves and the machining matches up nicely. The flexpipe is 6” long and is immediately infront of the vband. This is all nicely tucked up in the downpipe tunnel that Haydn built. The vband connection is 3.5”, as is the flex joint. Directly infront of the flex is the mandrel transition 3.5” > 4.0”, it is a very smooth piece. The rest of the downpipe is 4.0” 16 ga. 304SS to the turbo outlet.






The lower portion of the downpipe is all tacked together. There is about 5/8” of clearance around everything in the tunnel area!! it will be especially nice to help control heat into the cabin, having a little bit of extra air gap. So the downpipe is done/tacked up to the firewall in the engine bay and has been removed to be backpurged and finish welded at Ryan’s before we start the exhaust manifold and dp work.

More! Ok a kind of update, or more of an update preview. I now have the motor and trans bolted down in their final spot and can move on to some of the many many other tasks that still need to be done. I will be using an ABZ alternator, as it is slightly more compact and 150A output. Ryan machined a piece or large rectangle stock that I had with a radius’d side and a through hole, so I can mount that to the engine mount plate and bolt the abz alternator to it.





I have also acquired a few different serpentine belt tensioners, as I am trying to get away from using the oem BDF tensioner as it is kind of in the way of the fuel lines but I can change it if I really need to. Either way the alternator will work where I am positioning it on the lower driver’s side. Although its getting machined down a bit more so the alt. can sit closer to the mounting plate.

Heres some more on the redone in aluminum driver’s side engine mount arm. The original mount that Haydn made used the factory accessory bracket as I was planning on running some oem access. at that point. The factory bracket mount the power steering at the bottom, the a/c in the middle and the alternator at the top. The vr6 intake manifolds wrap over the cam cover just like the 7a, there was no way to mount the alternator at the top and run the kind of intake manifold that I wanted to. So we cut the upper portion of the bracket off. So we started off by replicating the rear portion of the mount that Haydn made.








The front portion will have the ABZ alt. mounted close to flush with the block and have a piece of 1.5” diameter, 0.25 wall aluminum tube welded to the rear of the lower plate at ~45 degrees and then to the bottom of the main mount surface. The upper plate will be tied into the main surface in a similar fashion.

engine mount reinforced with ratchet, extension, majic marker, screwdriver and harpoon cap. Excellent.

why the change to an alum mount? what was wrong with steel? i cant imagine your trans bar is anything light either so assuming your doing it for something other the weight savings? just to run an abz alt?

looks cool.

the drivers side mount arm is being changed as it was based off me using the factory accessory bracket, as i have no factory accessories on that bracket it can be removed and the engine mount arm simplified. it also allows me to run the 150A ABZ alternator with my custom serp belt routing. the fact that its alu over steel, i have a lot more alu around than steel stock.

so much work getting done to the 16vT 4kq ill be back at this beast soon

Tim,
I finally got time since we are closed today to read through this thread. This is truly top-notch work and it mates three of my favorite things together: the unique coupe quattro's sexy body lines, the like-no-other VR6 powerplant with forced induction, and the legendary quattro system! looking forward anxiously to see and hear the finished product. Do you think it will be together for Carlisle '13?

Excellent stuff Tim.

nuugen wrote:Tim,
I finally got time since we are closed today to read through this thread. This is truly top-notch work and it mates three of my favorite things together: the unique coupe quattro's sexy body lines, the like-no-other VR6 powerplant with forced induction, and the legendary quattro system! looking forward anxiously to see and hear the finished product. Do you think it will be together for Carlisle '13?

thanks, its a decent read isnt it? i also have to thanks Haydn, for doing a TON of chassis work before i got it back up to my shop. the vrt/quattro/cq should be quite the ripper when its ready. as for carlisle '13, i guess its a possibility but pretty unlikely. most of my time in the last month and a half has been working on/ finishing up the 16v/aba turbo o1e vems 2piece etc etc 4kq that ill be dd'ing soon.

i did get a pretty sweet double propane burner/heater for my garage, so vrcq progress will go on through the winter vs the near standstill that happened in the cold garage last year.

its not all 4kq work though, i did manage to get down to H's and get my steering arms/strut housings welded up and ready to go back on the car for c/o mockup.
ive also been collecting a good bit of parts, so ill get a small parts porn picture update soon

Rallyfreak202 wrote:Excellent stuff Tim.

thanks she's getting there, check out he 16vt 4kq, its going to be quite the local hellraiser!!!!

looks really good. i really like the tunnel work.

in talking with H, i also got the CompBrake floor mount set, without throttle cable. what MC's did you end up getting? i got .75 clutch, .75 front and .70 rear. and i really hate this stupid balance bar thing, i think i am going to ditch that and figure out how to just run both MC's direct. i dont need bias i dont think as i already have a prop valve for the rear. but that thing will not cooperate with different sized MC's paired together....

anyhow, keep it up. its coming along nicely!

oh yes, and i also copied you on the Tilton reservoir, that really is a nice piece for the $$$. i was gonna have one fabbed up single chamber three lines, but figured why not buy instead of build this time?

i am also glad the lids are the same for stock VAG lids, this way i can use my Motive to bleed the things and that makes me happy.

Thanks Aaron, I have to thank Haydn for the tunnel work, it’s a dream having the removable top. As far as the master cylinders, I’m pretty sure I have 0.7 for the clutch, 0.75 front brake, 0.7 for the rear brake. You should be able to tack some washers in the sleeve to act as permanent “ circlip” style retainers.

speeding-g60 wrote:i am also glad the lids are the same for stock VAG lids, this way i can use my Motive to bleed the things and that makes me happy.

WOOHOO good to know! Hadn’t even thought to check that yet.

I got a chance to get down to Haydn’s and weld my steering arms up. Pics and update to come

Damn son, you've been doing some nice work. :-)