The Project Pad

I know how you feel man. My car hasnt run all month and Ive been lazy about it hardcore. I just dont have any motivation for this thing. So I totally understand.

Justin, since you're still running dizzy spark...bad plug wire?

Sam

SeStone wrote:Justin, since you're still running dizzy spark...bad plug wire?

Sam

We swapped in a different wire and that didn't seem to make a difference either unfortunately. I'm kinda stumped at the moment... but will start picking at it more once I can actually let the motor idle WITH oil pressure :bashtard:

I had been dragging my feet doing this for the past week and a half, but finally got into it last night.

I spent 4+ hours on it last night R&R'ing the oil pump. What a royal PITA!!! ugh.

Actual removal of the oil pump was a joke, but getting that damn 7a oilpan off was ridiculous. Seriously, there are like 25 bolts holding that thing on... that's excessive! haha. I had 3 bolts hidden that I didn't see, and was stumped as to why it wouldn't come off. After some poking around I figured it out and dropped the pan. That took the longest out of everything.

I'm not sure what its issue was, but there was something seriously wrong with the oil pump that was originally on that motor. The pressure relief valve was pretty much jammed into the pump. I had an interesting time getting it out, but it came out. I did a light sand w/ fine metal sandpaper around the surface of the valve and stuck it in the "new" oil pump I had from the donor car. The valve slid up and down w/ ease... like it's suppose to. Only thing I can think of is that the original oil pump got dropped or something to cause the original issue. Wish I would have done this from the get go when the other valve jammed, but what have you.

total out of pocket was about $14 for gaskets and shipping, so not a bank breaker (since I had the pump already) just a pain in the a$$

Car is 80% back together at this point, so I haven't started it yet to see if I fixed the issue. I need to pick up some rubber hose so I can plumb in my elec boost controller, and then from there I can start putting the 'ol girl back to glory status.

Then once I get that done, I can get back to the original issue of figuring out why the damn thing is only running on 4 cylinders!!!! ugh... what a PITA!

Original thinking was that the injector wasn't firing. Unfortunately, after playing with it (before the oil pump died), I found that I was getting fuel, but it wasn't burning... so NOW I'm thinking it's more due to a bad spark plug than anything else, but we'll see I guess... time will tell on this one.

I'll post up pix later with a full writeup later on. Didn't finish till 1230 last night, and still had to make my lunch/dinner for today (work and class will keep me out till 11 tonight), and I just didn't have the energy to download pix after I was done

stay tuned! Hopefully good news will be on the horizon.

Well, as promised, I'm giving ya a good 'ol write-up with pix this time on R&R'ing my oil pump.

To say this was a PITA is an understatement... but the end result was a positive one to say the least.

30 min into the job, I had the car up on jack stands and looking like this:



and everything "staged" for reassembly:



I was rather proud of myself for how modular I have made this front end. After taking off the bumper, I had to undo 2 T-Clamps to pull the intake track from the TB to the intercooler, snip one wire tie, and undo two bolts and the intercooler was out and everything was easily accessible. Kinda nice, not gonna lie to ya.

Unfortunately, dropping the pan wasn't as easy as tearing down the front of the motor. Well, it was, I just couldn't find all of the 50 some bolts (or so it seemed) that held the damn oil pan on. Amazing how easy the oil pan comes off when you take all the bolts out <bangs head on desk>. After about 2 hrs, dropping the subframe and burning my arm serveral times on my halogen work light, we had success!



followed by a lil finagling and the old oil pump was out:



new vs old pump (which one you think is the old one???)



The pressure relief valve was jammed up in this thing. Not sure why this was the case, but nothing you can really do about it. Either this housing had some sort of front end hit or got overheated and warped, I don't know... I do know that it didn't slide AT ALL inside the pump. Once I was able to get the valve out of the old pump, i tossed it in the new pump to see how it slid.



valve slid up and down w/o a single issue... I was relieved to say the least. So after another 2 hrs buttoning that up last friday (as my lady friend hovered over me laughing of course) the car was back in action. I fired her up and watched the oil pressure rise to it's normal sitting point once again <wipes sweat from forehead> :woowoo:

UNFORTUNATELY, things are still not smooth sailing with the ride. No matter how much tinkering I did with it, it's still running on 4 outta 5 cylinders. I compression checked all cylinders (again) and they're coming in b/n 135 and 140 psi (again). All cylinders are getting spark, all cylinders are getting fuel, and after hotwiring the injector on Cyl #3 (the one not firing) it def flows fine... which I found out by accidentally filling the cyl a lil bit with fuel... oopsy :-P

So at this piont, it's looking like the 034 ECU is potentially messed up. This is the same cyl that was melted on the donor car that I got the ECU from... I called 034 and talked with Nate, who gave me some tips on how to test and figure out if it's truely the ECU. So I'm going to do that this afternoon I think, and then go from there. It's either the ECU or the harness itself.

So this afternoons project is to follow Nate's advice and swap the injector plug from #3 to #4 and see if my "dead" cylinder moves. If it does, then I'll more than likely pull and send the ECU into them to test the injector drivers. If they check out OK, then I'm gonna pull my harness and redo the injector portion of it... and maybe just cut and redo the entire harness again since it's already 5 ft too long... heh. We'll see how crazy I feel like getting.

Well, that's it for now... hope ya enjoyed the show.

Nice work with the oil pump RR. I had to do something similiar with my 4ktq sorta. Had to RR the front main seal because I screwed up

Hope you get the running problem figured out, those can be an annoyance to get right.

Since you're using a dist I doubt it's the ECU, try swapping things like plug wires as well, anything that is cyl specific and like nate said, try and get the dead cyl to move.

swapping plug wires how, like cyl 3 to 4? wouldn't that just mess up the firing order though? If the other 4 cyl are firing correctly (spark-wise), I'm not entirely sure how the #3 cyl isn't, since the distributor can only spin one way, etc etc... know what I mean? Still a bit green with all of this, so any extra explanation you can toss this way is appreciated! If I'm looking at this completely wrong, please set me straight.

I've swapped the plugs around a bit, and that is def a dead cyl, so it's just a matter of figuring out why I guess.

what Jim means is remove the #3 plug wire from the car and replace it with a known good plug wire.

You could also move the injectors around.... swap #3 and #5 for instance.

But.... I'm thinking injector driver too sooooooooo......

I'd do two things....

Using an LED test lamp or "Noid" tester (available at most FLAPS) check for a trigger signal at the #3 injector

Jumper the #3 injector in parralel with one of the other injectors. The 034 can handle extra load from a pair of hi Z inectors on a single driver.

Yea, forgot injectors have drivers too. What ECU do you have? You can also move the duties of #3 to a different driver in the software, then move the pin to the new driver location if you have II system. For example, duplicate the settings for driver 3 in driver 6 and move your wire for driver 3 to driver 6.

RockinV8q wrote:what Jim means is remove the #3 plug wire from the car and replace it with a known good plug wire.

You could also move the injectors around.... swap #3 and #5 for instance.

But.... I'm thinking injector driver too sooooooooo......

I'd do two things....

Using an LED test lamp or "Noid" tester (available at most FLAPS) check for a trigger signal at the #3 injector

Jumper the #3 injector in parralel with one of the other injectors. The 034 can handle extra load from a pair of hi Z inectors on a single driver.

Already did that with the plug wire. Keith A. had a known good plug wire at his house when we first discovered this little issue, and it made no difference unfortunately. I'm gonna pick up a LED at Radioshack and wire up my own lil "test light" and hook it up and see what I'm getting. Also, might take up a fellow Audiworlder on his offer to borrow his oscilliscope and do some playing with that as well.

BTW, by parallelling the injectors, is that just as a quick fix so I can use/trouble shoot, Keith? If I do find a dead spot due to a bad driver, I'll probably just park the car and leave it be and send the ECU in for repair. I'm kinda curious if this might have been the reason marvin toasted that #3 piston... real shame if so.

audifreakjim wrote:What ECU do you have?

running a Ib ECU, so I don't have the luxury of swapping over to another driver, I don't *think*

The ECU should be able to handle 2 hi Z injectors on a single channel for quite a while.

No, Marvin had issues with that engine before he had the ECU you have now. I'm pretty sure he blew the engine doing 21lb runs with the chipped MAC 11 controlling timing.

RockinV8q wrote:The ECU should be able to handle 2 hi Z injectors on a single channel for quite a while.

No, Marvin had issues with that engine before he had the ECU you have now. I'm pretty sure he blew the engine doing 21lb runs with the chipped MAC 11 controlling timing.

Gotcha... well unfortunately, life isn't as easy as I was hoping.

Did the little injector plug swap that Nate suggested and there was no change what so ever :frustrated: Cyl not firing was still the #3

I tossed an LED into the #3 injector plug and spun an extra distributor I had laying around and i heard all injectors click (that were hooked up) and the LED turned on in the #3 plug... So between those two tests, that means wiring and ecu seem to be OK.

Sooooo, it looks like the fuel rail is coming out and I'm yanking the injectors. That's the last thing I can think of. I'm hoping that injector is just gummed up and will spray if a constant 12v is held to it (when I hot wire it) and doesn't react fast enough when putting the quick spurts that happens via the distributor.

I tossed in a brand spanking new spark plug and idled the car a little bit and there was no sign of fuel in the cylinder from smell... compared to other times I've pulled it and it's just soaked in gas... so who knows. I'm tearing into it... again... this afternoon, so wish me luck.

I gave up horsing around with the motor after friday. Spent all day saturday installing a custom sub box/amp rack into the car... lol. DOesn't drive so hot, but the system sounds phemonial Pix to follow of that...

While you're looking at the injector, if you think it's alright and decide to re-install it, make sure you move it to a different cyl just to rule it out.

yup, I'm going to mark all the injectors and then swap 'em around. Hopefully that will make the dead cyl move.

I'm pretty tempted to toss the 19 lb injectors in that came with the donor car and see if the problem goes away completely. That way I can run the car, and send these injectors off to RC to get cleaned up, flowed, and sent back. REally regretting selling off the extra 3 42# injectors I had :curses:

So amungst this anguish I'm going through trying to get the car running right, I took a break from engine work this past weekend. What did I do instead? Yup, as title might suggest... a friend and I installed a custom amp rack and sub box into the 'ol girl.

Some might ask... why in god's green earth would you drop ~$1k worth of stereo equipment into a $200 beater? Answer: I didn't pay a cent for any of it haha. My friend had an entire system in his pickup, which he just sold. He had no need for the stereo stuff, so instead of trying to sell it off, he wanted to put a lil bump into the 4kq.

Original plan was to shoe-horn two 12" subs into the back. Unfortunately, they were JUST TOO BIG to fit in the box design. If we would have made a completely square box, they would have been fine, but I didn't want to go that route. Luckily, my buddy's lil brother was there, and he had 2 10" subs that would work perfectly... so we "traded" his 10s for the 12s I got from my buddy.

So it all started bright and early saturday morning (~10am)



After staring at the trunk for a little while, my buddy and I came up with a game plan. I started to tear the interior apart to run a new cable for the subs, and he started hashing out the angles needed so we could fit the speakers. At this point, we were still planning on running the 12s.

The first 2-3 hours we spent wiring and mounting the amps. Holy hell there are a lot of wires to route for these things. The amps mounted and wired:



Every wire is tucked and hidden. You can see no wires for anything, except the ground wire next to the battery box... but that goes down with the existing ground for the battery. So yeah, everything is hidden and it's a REAL clean install job.

here is the amp with the cover plate:



this took a little playing with, but we were able to get it to look real smooth. Big obstacle was to get it to clear the bolts that I had in the frame rail that held the battery box in place. Though the notches aren't pretty... fear not, cuz you won't see 'em once I'm done

And the beginnings of the box:



the back wall of the box:



big thing with the box was that it HAD to be removable. Once this car finally hits "track ready" condition, I don't want this thing in the back. Sure I could sinch it down, but it's not worht having the extra 50lbs in the back. So this was a def limit on how big we could go, and in the end was the reason the 12s wouldn't fit. Another obstacle we ran into was that the 6x9s that I had installed earlier were hanging REALLY low. There was some sorta plastic collar that went around them, making them hang down really low. So after a bit of trimming, cutting and adjusting... they were tucked up higher into the parcel shelf and giving us considerably more room.

here's the box w/ sloped front:



almost ready for the subs:



even closer still:



We put the rings on the box to space the subs out a bit. Original plan was to install just one ring, but due to the lack of depth, even the 10s hit in the back. SO after installing two rings on each hole, they popped right in w/o issue.

and here is everything installed in the car prior to upholstering!



So next came the upholstery. Earlier in the day my buddy and I went for a field trip to the local craft shop. I knew I wanted to do something "different" and not just cover the box and floor with the typical black carpet. So after browsing the store, we came up with two things.......

For the amp rack cover, we found a black 3/16" shag fabric. Looked fun as hell, and is kinda cool looking.



and since I have a bit of a red theme going on with the car... well.... yeah, pic speaks for itself



red whorehouse vinyl! I saw it and I couldn't resist.

At this point, it was like 130AM... mind you, we started at 10am! But we weren't giving up! This beater was gonna be bumping that night, no if ands or buts about it.

So we finished up the box, getting all the speakers wired up and the lil junction box hooked up in the back:



and the final product... after 14 hours!!!



As for looks, it turned out awesome. This is the first time I've ever wired or installed a system in a car. I figured this car is going to be my tried and true "project"! I am going to do things to this car that I've never done in the past, and potentially never will again... lol. My buddy really knows his stuff with this, and has a pseudo "business" or at least a name haha. He has always been tempted to start up a shop, but just hasn't been willing to give up things to do it yet I guess.

I did kinda have a "pimp my ride/unique whips" feeling when tearing the car apart and doing all this though, not gonna lie to you

So by 2am, we were "tuning" the system. For how small the box is, this thing really does bump nicely. and even more surprising... it doesn't rattle all_that_bad! I mean, the license plate sounds like a maraca, but a little foam and it'll be golden. Not too shabby for a 22yr old ride.

As for the running issues, I tore into the 'ol girl again on monday. Looks like I have a faulty injector. not 100% sure that's the issue, as it's still spraying fuel, but that's my hunch. It flows noticably different than the other 4 when I fire them (spinning a spare distributor I have w/ the rail out of the car). So at this point I'm trying to decide whether to send the injector off to RC engineering or to just pick up another one and be done with it.

I'm also tempted to just hook up the 19 lb injectors that came from the donor car and see if that makes the car run any differently. That means having to reassemble/disassemble/reassemble things to get the fuel rail in and out again. I mean, I only have to pull the throttle body to do this, but it's a bit of a PITA cuz you can't reach the bottom allen bolt that holds it on. We'll see how crazy I feel tonight after my softball game I guess...

Well, that's it for me... hope ya enjoyed the show.

well, she's finally back up and running!!!

So after finally giving in and tearing the fuel rail out, I found that the reason the #3 cylinder wasn't firing was because it wasn't getting enough fuel. Yup, the #3 injector was flowing like $hit.

So I sent it off to RC engineering to get cleaned up. $34 later, I found that it was flowing 89 cc... and it's a 440cc injector!!! Yeah, let's just say it made all the difference in the world.

I found the injector last night on my porch when I got home from class at 1030 or so. I immediately started tearing into the car by 11 I had it back together and went for a lil joy ride and was back by 1230...

Car is NOTICABLY faster! Like, wow. Night and day difference from before. Unfortunately, there's a catch. It's still not running totally right <slams head on desk>. It's stumbling at part throttle. I have a feeling that the other injectors aren't flowing 100% correct, and are causing the car to stumble. At WOT it's seemless (and I can spin the tires... WOOOHOOO!), but at part throttle its not too happy.

So, I'm gonna go find myself a strong injector cleaner and run it through the system and see if that helps at all. Hopefully it does, otherwise I'm pulling the other 4 injectors and sending them off to RC again to get redone. At this rate, I shoudl have just bought the damn injectors new instead of used, but ya live and learn I guess.

Regardless, I'm all grins. Unfortunately, the battery was dead when I tried to start it after sitting for a month. That's not good in my book, and has me concerned that the newly installed stereo is draining the battery. We'll see how it goes though. It was nice to drive and bump around in the 'ol girl again. Once I get it fully buttoned up again, I can finally put the A4 back in the garage!!!

Been a while since I've updated this, and also been a while since I've actually done something to the car, which is a good thing!

I've logged about 5000+ miles on the old girl and things are going nice and smoothly. Haven't had to mess with any of the tuning since the issues I was having here: http://www.motorgeek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18131

Thankfully, all tuning issues are pretty much gone. Car gets kind of pissy when it's cold and kind of backfires into the intake at times under light RPMs when trying to accelerate. I need to increase my enrichment tables I think to compensate because it runs fine once everything is warmed up.

But, ever since I've done the turbo swap/034 ECU to the 4000 I've had my Zeitronix Wideband display kind of flopping around infront of the instrument cluster. I left it there so I could keep my eye on my A/F ratios and my EGTs, but now that the car is running pretty reliably and I havne't had to tinker with anything for over a month +, I figured it was time to make it a permanent home since I was tired of it flopping everywhere when I'd take a turn, hit the gas or put on the brakes! In addition, I wanted to replace the master window switches since they are very prone to breaking. Since I was planning on redoing the entire panel, I figured I'd integrate the leftover A4 window switches I had from the interior a buddy had hooked me up with way back when... hence sprucing up the interior a bit 'with something new' :-P

I had been planning on making something out of aluminum to put down where the current window switches were and my broken ash tray, but wasn't sure how to make it since I wanted to use aluminum but didn't have a tig welder. After I saw the post by a_CQ (thanks peter!!) about aluminum brazing material, and I was sold! This is by no means a high stress piece, so the AL braze would be PERFECT (though technically brazing can hold the stress)! Trip to Home Depot and $7 later I had what I needed. It was a bit of a PITA to work with, but once I got the hang of it, it was really easy to work with. Hardest part was keeping the stuff I was trying to braze in place w/o falling apart.

So with some playing around with a cardboard template, some bending and some creative (read: slow and tedious!) cutting I came up with this:



and the back side:



This is after a couple revisions to figure out a way to get the A4 light switches to fit and STAY PUT when operating them. I originally was trying to make mounts so they snap in place like stock, but that didn't pan out. Then I was going to wire them down (see tabs on the sides) but that didn't work either. Once that idea failed, I continued to stare at the piece for a little while longer and came up with what's in the current setup. The screw basically pushes the switch to a backing plate and holds 'em NICE and tight.



From there, I needed to cover it. I had some left over red vinyl from my sub installation so I figured... hell, why not

Here it is with a quick wrapping:



and back side:



And after some careful cutting with a razor and installation of some black felt to pad the wideband unit this is what I had prior to installation:



And after some building of mounts that hook up where the screws hold the shift boot in place... we have an installed unit!



Came out really nice if I do say so myself! The switches unfortunately went a little crooked when I pressed it into place due to the wires hitting the tranny tunnel (that's my guess at least), so I need to do a little playing to get them to sit right/straight... but otherwise, it works perfectly! I can now pull the WB monitor out when I need it (i.e. when tuning and needing it w/in eye shot), and I have full view of it when driving as well, so this works out PERFECTLY!

The switches will get fixed in the near future when I pull the assembly to allow me to install an aftermarket cig lighter since mine is now gone... so it'll be 100% real soon... until then, I'm enjoying not having a gaping hole where the ash tray used to go and the window switch panel just flopping around there :-P

hope ya enjoyed the show! Got a few more tricks up my sleeve for the 'ol girl, but I'll save that for a later posting

Even Justin succombs to the wrath of Whorehouse Red Leather!

Looks nice man, gotta love making something like that from scratch

So after finally getting this thing to the point where I'm comfortable to dump more $$ into it, it's time to address the suspension and brakes on this car because they are just that bad and border on dangerous.

This car is officially going to be 5 lug'd thanks to tips from Derek, but I'm slightly altering how the bearings are put into the uprights as I'm not 100% confident on the long term affects of spacing the hub out of the bearing as far as he did.

Parts required/used for 5 lug swap on a 1985 4000 are:

4 - 5000 tq hubs (thank you Austin!)
2 - Rear axles from '86 and up 4000 (thank you a aorsinger)
4 - 4000 rear wheel bearings (Thanks Joe@axismotorsport)

and AL spacers, which I'll elaborate on their use later in the post.


Now onto the supension story...

The only way to make this car handle like I think it should means I can't just pick a standard H&R solution off the shelf... nope, it was coil-overs or nada. I did a lot of thinking as to how I wanted to tackle this. I could go the cheap route and do the Ground Control route and get it done rather inexpensively and then R&R the remaining of the strut mounts w/ new ones w/ some of Mance's Mount Saver 2s. Then I could go the next step and do Mance's CCK setup w/ his Pro-Mounts all 4 corners. Final and off the wall was to do 034's KW setups, but I just couldn't justify that much $$ when I'd have to spend more adjusting tie rod arms, and still tackle the strut mounts, etc.

So my decision... was to go with Mance's CCK, Big Bore Strut Extenders (for the front to allow me to run bigger shocks than stock), and pro-mounts. I've used a fair amount of Mance's stuff in the past w/ my 12v, and I've never been let down... and as par for the course, his work is absolutely beautiful!



To make the downtime on the car as minimal as possible, I've purchased a completely different set of uprights for the car (thanks Keith [karthurq])... but out of a B3 90q. This allows me (with the help of Mance's BBSEs) to upgrade to bigger UrS4 Bilstein Sport shocks in the front as well as have the 2 pc uprights, which are better and more adjustable.

This post will only address the rears as I'm waiting for the hub carriers for the B3 uprights.

So I started off w/ a very very rusty set of rear uprights. I now realize what you guys w/ northern cars have to deal with. These came off a car that was a NY car iirc, and holy lord man!

As par for the course w/ any coil over project, I first started by grinding off the OEM spring seats. 30 min w/ my angle grinder and they were off and in the trash.

From that point, I started pressing out the old bearings because I needed to take measurements to figure out where to space the bearing so I could fit the upgraded rear brakes (more on that later)



can you say ruuuuuuusstty



Removing the circle clips from this obscenely rusted beast was not quite a treat. The first one came off pretty easily w/ a lil pb blaster, lil heat, and some physical persuation. Unfortunately for me, the other circle clip fought me tooth and nail... literally crumbling as I tried to remove it.

After a LOT of heat, a LOT of pb blaster, and evenyually me resorting using a dremel tool to cut it to hell and welding various washers and beads on the damn thing to break it free we come with this (easy one on the left, PITA on the right):



and the upright in all its nasty/rusty/primered glory:



after some quality time with my drill and wire wheel (sandblast cabinet at work was dead unfortunately... and i burned up my corded drill wire wheeling these things :frustrated:) they were ready for some paint:



and the finished product:



unfortunately, I got a bit ahead of myself as I forgot I had to weld on the rings for the coilover conversion stuff... soooo, with a little lovin' with the wire wheel (and a new drill):



And I got the rings fitted:



and welded on:



not the prettiest of welds, but pretty good considering it's a $85 harbor freight flux-mig welder After a bit of brushing w/ the drill and wire brush again they looked pretty good if I do say so myself 8)

Mance has these rings REALLY tight toleranced (going along w/ his 'gonna be a dog, why be a chihuahua" theme :-P) so I had to clean up a little bit where I had originally cut off the rear perches to get them and the sleeves to slide over the upright. These fit like a glove and were great to work with. I have no concerns w/ them failing, that's for sure!

And here are the uprights all painted up and ready for final assembly and installation :-D




With the uprights ready to go, next in line was to get the brake situation settled.

For the Fronts:

I am going to fit a set of Boxster Calipers w/ A8 rotors on the B3 uprights. These uprights allow me to bolt on brake setups from an A4 (Thanks Derek for figuring that out!), so I will use the boxster caliper brackest from an A4 to do the job (thank you Joe@axismotorsport!!!). The offset from the hub to the caliper aren't quite right and need some adjusting, but otherwise the brackets bolt straight to the upright. I will cover more on the front brakes once I get the hub carriers.

For the Rears

For the rears, I figured bigger is better, and the stock rears on the 4000 were just not going to cut it in my book. After parting out the 200 donor car, I found that it had a set of 200 20vt rears that were freshly installed and had next to no mileage on the pads or rotors... so I figured I'd make 'em fit

From what I saw on Dereks 20vt buildup, if I would have stuck w/ the stock rear brakes on the 4000 I wouldn't have had to go through this, but since I'm using these brakes alterations need to be made.

All the parts ready to get sized up:



after a good deal of measuring of the hubs, rotors and uprights w/ my digi calipers, I used autocad to help me dial in on how much spacing I needed to do to get everything to line up right. I decided to push out the bearing from the carrier approx 3/16" and the hub from the bearing ~1/8". Since spacers for this kind of deal aren't exactly common (at least, that I found), I decided to make my own:



With some time w/ the drill and hole saws I came up with this ring:



naturally these aren't quite the right size, and I used 2 of them to get the required spacing, so I merely made them into "C" rings and stretched them so they would seat perfectly on the outter ring of the wheel bearing:



Then came time to press in the bearing:



and this is how it sat...



basically sits flush with the outter ring on the upright. It seats firmly and should hold nice and tight in there.

Then came putting in the hub:



At the time of this picture I decided to space the rotor off the hub. After doing this I decided it'd be better to space the hub from the bearing so I don't loose the hubcentric ability of the rotor on the hub. I had work arounds so I could still keep the rotor centered, but in all honesty, spacing the hub not the rotor is the "right" way to do it in this case.

here's the almost finished product:



And now w/ all spacers in place... the rotor and carrier to the 200 20vt rears



and ready to go:



Really can't wait to get these fully ready to go on and rockin'. The rear rotors will now be as big as the old front rotors on the 4000 :-P

I have no doubt that I will probably have to install an adjustable proportioning valve because these rears are probably going to bite TOO much... but we'll see once I get everything all installed

So that's the update for now... hope ya enjoyed the story! I am waiting on an order from Joe to come in w/ more wheel bearings so I can finish assembling the other rear upright and then hopefully I will be able to get me the front hub assemblies soon so I can start cranking those out.

until next time

Are the coil-overs done yet? I need a ride to test out your spring rates since I spent $1.48 selling you that suspension set-up.

unfortunately, no. GF was in town, so not too much work got done on the car. Spent yesterday tearing half the motor apart to get to the damn leaky exhaust manifold.

I tightened down the 2 studs that had backed out slightly, but unfortunately the damage had already been done and the gasket was toasted :( I got the gaskets replaced, but have to deal w/ the coolant line from the block to the turbo because it got cooked by the exhaust manifold and is hard as a rock and cracking/leaking. So need to deal with that and get the car back together in the next few days (hopefully).

I'm going to start tearing apart and cleaning up the knuckles I got from you/austin and get workin' on it quick. hopefully by mid march it'll be standing on its new shoes and springs. I also might have a lil gift for ya to make up for the expenses so you're not out so much on the deal we worked up. Give me a call if you want, or I'll wrap it up and surprise you... lol

Figured I'd toss out an update since it's been a little bit...

Unfortunately I have been unable to work too much on the front 5 lug setup due to trying to get the car back on the road...

At the end of Jan, the car developed an exhaust "tick" that was coming from the engine bay.

After doing some investigation, I found that my exhaust manifold was leaking <frustrated> After a few hours standing on my head removing the IM and the EM while the head was on the car (NOT a fun task to undertake, esp in the small engine compartment of the 4000!!!) I found that 2 of the EM studs had backed out of the head enough for a leak to develp b/n the #3 runner and the head.

In a feable hope, I retightened the loose studs and bolted everything back together only to find that the gasket was burned through <bashtard>...

So I sent an email to good 'ol Joe @ Axismotorsport and ordered up new gaskets and such, and figured... "while I was in there" I'd address a few issues that I had w/ the car... and a month later, I'm finally done.

Issue #1

The car was leaking coolant on cold days from the coolant feed line to the turbo. Upon closer inspection, I found that the hose was hard as a rock and crackingdue to being cooked by the heat of the EM. After a quick trip to the local Hydraulic hose shop and $7.50 later, I had a rebuilt hose. To prevent anything else from happening, I made sure to wrap the hose w/ some fiberglass protective sheething so I don't repeat this issue down the road.

Issue #2

Removing the previously installed afterrun coolant pump. I had set the car up to use this pump, but after a dumb move on my part I ended up breaking the nipple off the pump rendering it useless.

I had ideas of replacing the pump, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't need it, and didn't have the energy to figure out how to wire it in either (though it was pretty simple).

So instead I ended up redoing all the coolant hoses to bring it back to 4k stock. Thanks to fellow AWer, I got a next to new hard coolant line (that goes from the thermostate to heater core) to replace the one w/ the port to feed the AR pump. I then picked up the upper and lower rad hoses from a local euro shop (Bap Geon) so I was rocking new rubber. I had never replaced the lower rad hose when doing the swap and it too was seeping at the thermostat housing during cold nights after running the car.

Issue #3

The crank case breather system... or lack there of shall I say.

When I tore down the intake on the car I was welcomed by a lot of oil sludge/jizz in my intake (where I had the breather routed to from the valve cover/crank). This left a fair amount of oil slime in my intake and intercooler, which ain't cool... so I decided it was time for a catch can.

I had picked up a Jazz breather can from a fellow motorgeeker a while back, but unfortunately it was just too big for my needs... so it was time to go custom I had seen others do this, so it was just a matter of finding the parts and making it work...

after a trip to Home Depot I had everything I needed:



Consists of a 3" PVC cap (bottom), 3" Male coupler (Middle...cap and treaded portion held together w/ RED RTV), and 3" female threaded adaptor that pressed into the rest of the setup (top).

In order to force the air to swirl around the catch can and make an attempt to get the oil to separate from the air, I epoxy puttied a AL tub to the lid:



Hopefully this does the trick

From this point, it was time to disquise this a little bit as I don't want a big white cylinder under the hood... so after a quick coat of primer, I laid on 2 coats of undercoating spray... makes it look good and is pretty durable as well:



Now that the catch can is all done, I needed to figure out how to hook up the hoses from the block and the valve cover. Since the line from the valve cover is 5/8"-3/4", that was easy... but the line off the block was closer to 1"+... so instead of trying to figure out some sort of reducer, I came up with this instead (similar to the adaptor that 034 sells, but this one was free due to me having all materials on hand :-P)



after laying a little AL braze around the top you get:



and finally installed on the pass side of the block:



The bigger nipple is the breather gasses leaving the block and the smaller nipple is for the catch can to feed the separated oil from the catch can back into the block.

Also, since the ID of this tube was bigger than the nipple on the block I used some epoxy putty to make up the difference and really hold this puppy down... worked pretty well and it seems to be holding strong. We'll see how it does down the road, though. This part of the block shouldn't get that hot as to cause it to fail, but I've been wrong in the past

And after some configuring here's the catch can setup off the car:



The tube on the far right hooks up to the block and meets at the T, where the valve cover meets up. The smaller hose on the bottom is the drain for the catch can and the top nipple is where the hose attaches that feeds back into the intake again (didn't want to vent the air to atmosphere <insert green/hippy comments here> ). All this gets hidden on the pass side of the car where the battery USED to be... actually just under the fuel lines.

After driving around for a bit, it seems to be working fine, though I'll probably open it up in a little while to see if it's draining like it's suppose to be. Time will tell on this one.

Thankfully, though, the car *seems* to be running properly again, so I can once again concentrate my efforts on the suspension. I've received the necessary parts to assemble the front hub assembly (going to press the bearing and hub into one today) so I can start prepping the uprights to clearance my 235 track rubber Pretty excited about this, that's for sure! Just need the rotors to show up and I'm ready to rock!

well, that's it for now. Should be able to give you a 5 lug front hub assembly update later on in the week or early next week if all goes according to plan. Hope you enjoyed the tale

Update time for front 5 lug conversion w/ Boxster Calipers and A8 Rotors

So over the past month+ I've been working towards getting this whole assembly together and ready to go.

Thanks to a joint effort between Keith and Austin I was able to get a set of front hub assemblies from an earlier B3 quattro (need to use one from a 20v, not a 20v as they use the bigger wheel bearing)

Here's what I started off with:



though the bearings were newish, I knew I needed to offset the bearing once again to allow the appropriate spacing for the hub to get the caliper and the rotor to line up properly... so out they came. And as par for the course, the c-clip fought me. Thankfully, this one wasn't as bad as the one rear... a little heat and it popped right out



after a little loving from a wire wheel, it was time to press out the bearings:



These things were REALLY stuck in there. I had a helluva time getting them out, but they finally let go with a commanding BANG

naked and bearing-less:



Next step was to get 'em all painted up. Since I didn't want to make a mess out of my garage like I did with the rears (and it was actually nice outside) I took 'em out and painted them outside





and all done:



After spending some more quality time w/ my digital calipers and more drawing w/ autocad I figured out what kind of spacer was required for the bearing to push it out of the hub. Fortunately this time around, I was able to farm out the spacer making instead of rigging up the ghetto way I did it in the past.

After seeing what I did last time, Mance (VAP on AW) offered to make me up a set for a good deal. Knowing what I know about his work, I couldnt say no and the price was very reasonable considering the work put into them. After getting him the appropriate dimensions here's what I ended up with:



Installed in the hub carrier:



As usual, I am nothing short of impressed with how pretty they came out and how tight toleranced they were. Amazing craftsmanship as always! It's a shame I have to cover 'em up

and time to put the bearing back



and the hub:



and here it is all assembled... mmmm... tastey



Since the rotors hadn't come in when I did this and I was too impatient to wait the extra day or two for them to show up, I decided to canibalize one of the A8 rotors off the A4 and do some fitment... and w/ an extra 3/16" spacing of the caliper carrier off the hub assembly I was able to get the caliper perfectly centered on the rotor:



and from above:



Now of course comes the fun part... clearing the 17" OZ SLs w/ 225s on 'em.



After some measuring of another set of 235s I had in the house, I found that my Azenis marked as 225s are closer to 235s, which is good... means I don't have to swap the 235 tire onto the rim quite yet

but it looks good w/o a doubt



So that is where I'm at right now.

I'm going to need two things now inorder to procede:

1) I'm going to need a 10-12mm spacer to get these rims to clear the arm and for my regular A4 OEM 16" rims to clear the boxster calipers (oops).

2) I'm going to need a dead tie rod end so I can figure out how much room I have and what I'm going to need to adjust inorder for everything to fit as necesssary. Again, Bernie has come through for me and apparently is shipping one out my way... thank you Bernie!!!

Hopefully I'll be able to do all this w/o doing too much major reconstruction. I'd love it if I could just do some minor trimming of the steering arm and call it a night, but we'll see I guess...

That's about all for this update... hope ya enjoyed the show

looking good Justin 8)

which azenis do you have? RT-215? 615? or some more street oriented tires?