Project: Expedition Allroad

ExDementia

Adventurer
Thanks guys!

Great advice, Ron! I already picked up replacement valve cover gaskets, cam seals and plugs, a tensioner and idler pulleys, and I have an assortment of hoses on their way. I'm looking around at aluminum thermostat housings, but they're all more than I really want to spend. From what I've gathered, really the only time they get damaged is if you over torque the nuts when installing it, but I know I really should just suck it up and get one anyway.

I picked up the engine! Luckily I was able to borrow my buddy's hoist and had a friend there to help me load that in the truck, which saved me some serious effort. I didn't think to cover the turbo oil return lines, so those puked out some lovely oil into the bed of the truck, but it wasn't too bad.

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As you can see in the last pic there, the Allroad is sitting on jack stands just to keep the rear bags from sitting down on themselves completely deflated. When I put it in jack mode it lowered down to level 1 and was sitting directly on the wheelwells. Since the engine obviously won't run, the only way to run the compressor is to hook up a battery directly to the compressor and manually override it to inflate the bags. I was going to do this, but I figured it would just be right back down sitting on the rear bags again soon enough, so why bother.

I'm picking up a Harbor Freight engine stand this week. Anyone have experience with these ultra cheap ones? $60 is ridiculously cheap, and its rated for 1000lbs, which my engine comes no where near. Got the clutch as well. Managed to snag an insane price on a Luk kit that came complete for about half of what everyone else was charging for the exact same part number. Only $160 shipped!

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So while I'm getting the engine together with all the new parts, something for me to chew on is the issue of bump stops. The Allroads have them built-in inside the airbags, so I'm thinking about taking one out and checking out how I can extend the bump stop so if/when I have total bag failure (which is pretty likely), I can still move it under its own power and get it home. I found this thread where a guy just bought a kit off eBay and threw in a cheap set to help his problem with lowering his, so from seeing what that looks like, I'm thinking I might be able to stack one and a half or two of those to get the proper spacing needed to not grind my big tires in the wheel wells.

The other option I have would require some light fabrication, but might be the better long term solution, are hydraulic bump stops. These would give a more forgiving ride when approaching the limits, but more importantly, lessen the shock of hitting the bumpstops in the first place, and hopefully take some stress off of the already relatively fragile A-arms. I'm going to pull off a tire front and rear and see if there is a good spot to mount these. On top of fabrication, these are definitely the most expensive option, and will probably run me upwards of $400 in parts alone. I'm definitely hesitant on that idea based on cost alone, but it would be a seriously awesome solution.

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Next step is to grab that engine stand, mount the engine up, and then I can sit down and take my time in tearing it down and very carefully replacing the timing belt, with a huge thanks to my buddy Jay who will be lending his expertise on this, as he has done the timing belt on many 2.7s, and the job seems pretty damn sketchy to tackle if you don't have the specialty tools and knowledge needed. Damn Germans...
 
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ExDementia

Adventurer
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Brought a box of toys for the Audi yesterday. Can you see her smiling? I think she’s smiling. That reminds me, I need to give her a name. I was thinking something German would be fitting, and was really thinking she would make a good Elsa... but Frozen kind of ruined that one. Maybe Heidi? Bernadette? Hmm.

Anyway, got the engine stand and mounted everything up. Had to remove the clutch and flywheel, which were pretty damn stubborn, but a few good whacks with a BFH and the clutch freed up.

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Plenty of life on that clutch disk still. Oh well, still being replaced.

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Big, very heavy dual mass flywheel. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing was pushing close to 30lbs (probably 25 or so)

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The cheap *** Harbor Freight stand holds! Also, this shot makes the Allroad look weirdly short...
Damn, what crappy pictures. I think I need to clean the lens on my phone.

Next step is to start pulling everything off the front of the motor and start on the timing belt. That will have to be a weekend in itself at least.

Any ideas for German names for this rugged lady?
 

OuterLimits

I control the horizontal and the vertical
"Brought a box of toys for the Audi yesterday. Can you see her smiling? I think she's smiling. That reminds me, I need to give her a name. I was thinking something German would be fitting..."

When you get that new engine running it will be "The Sound of Music" to your ears.

May I propose: "The Baroness" (high maintenance, yet exquisite), or "Liesl" (if it was a diesel).

auf wiedersehen
 
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ExDementia

Adventurer
Hahaha Bertha. Should have seen that coming! Hmmm, I was thinking Heidi or Bernadette... But "The Baroness" sounds ************* awesome, actually. I might have to steal that... danke sehr!

I picked up a replacement seat this past weekend (mine has a huge tear in the bottom leather) for only $100. Hell of a deal! It was at an auto dismantler just outside of Ventura, CA. They had a whole fleet of old military vehicles there, as well as a fairly clean looking early 80's Saab 900 Turbo that I was seriously running the logistics of taking home for a minute before coming to my senses. I showed up with time to spare and a bag of tools to start tearing into it, but it turned out the guy had already removed it for me, just kept it sitting in the car hooked up to show that all the motors worked. Good guy! I wanted to pick up some switch gear and the HVAC front panel, but they were just slightly different than mine, so I figured I would just find some replacements on eBay.

New seat (before it was removed from the other car):

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I also ordered a replacement LCD for the dead-pixel-addled one that's in there now. It's pretty much a guaranteed failure for this era Audi, unfortunately. You can see how far gone the current LCD is currently:

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Luckily good replacement screens are only ~$25 on eBay, so I ordered one. The difficult part is going to be soldering it in. It is attached by a ribbon cable with 51 individual pins. Not looking forward to that, but I figure I have been wanting to beef up my soldering game, so this is a good place to start. I just need to order a swing out magnifying glass/light and some better stands to get this done right. Here's a guide for any interested: http://www.audiworld.com/forums/s4-...r-"no-hot-air-rework-station-needed"-1637467/

The cluster was a ***** to get out, only two screws, but a very snug fit and not a lot to hold onto to pull it out. I ended up rocking it up and down using the trip computer buttons as leverage, which as sketchy as hell, but it worked:

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Getting it open was a PITA as well. I ended up using guitar picks to hold all six very stiff clips open so I could pull it apart:

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Then, following the guide, I pried up the gauge needles...

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And two of them broke immediately. :mad: Barely any leverage and the little plastic pins holding the black housing onto the clear plastic case snapped. Oh well, hopefully I can glue them. Worst case, I'll cannibalize another cluster for replacements.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's all I have for updates right now. Unfortunately with a busy schedule and a trip out of town up to beautiful Washington, I won't be able to start on the timing belt until next week. Once that and some seals are replaced, I'll be tearing apart the front end of the Audi to pull out the old motor and start figuring out if I need to replace anything else.

I'm just itching to get this thing running!
 
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OuterLimits

I control the horizontal and the vertical
Hahaha Bertha. Should have seen that coming! Hmmm, I was thinking Heidi or Bernadette... But "The Baroness" sounds ************* awesome, actually. I might have to steal that... danke sehr!

Gern geschehen! No need for theft. I offer the name free of charge, tariff, or royalties.

Sweet score on the seat and gauges. Brilliant use of guitar picks. (McGyver would be proud).

Love the old Saab 900's, but like you, common sense gets in the way of purchase.

What was the name of the dismantler? That's up in my neck of the woods. Sounds like a fun place to browse.

Keep up the good work
 
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ExDementia

Adventurer
Cleaned up the engine a bit. It had an oil leak that the previous owner was aware of, but didn't bother fixing (just topped of the oil) because he knew he would be swapping it out anyway. So there was a lot of build up of sludge around the front of the engine and elsewhere. My buddy and I scraped off the major stuff, and then went in strategically with a pressure washer to get as much crap off as we could without harming anything. Of course, we blocked off open outlets first and didn't spray them directly, and after hit it with an air compressor to make sure any open electrical connections didn't have water in them.

I should have taken more shots before, but here are some after we started scraping crap off:

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And after:

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So satisfying!

We also took inventory of some other random stuff that I need, so I just ordered some new camshaft seals, turbo gaskets and seals, turbo oil line gaskets, and new motor mounts, all for under $100 shipped from ECS. Not too bad! Everything else that is missing I can probably just steal off of the motor that is coming out of the Allroad, but if I have to order a few more things, it's not a big deal.

Planning to start on the timing belt after work on Thursday, but everything has taken longer than expected so far (of course) so we'll see.
 

ExDementia

Adventurer
If these pristine, gloriously glistening, tantalizingly lubricated camshafts don’t get your blood flowing, then I question your merit as a car guy:

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I tore down the front of the engine yesterday, pulled off all the accessories, replaced the water pump, the thermostat, the thermostat housing, one side of the cam seals along with the cam chain tensioner gasket (PITFA), and valve cover gasket. I was only able to do the seals on one of the heads because I ended up only having enough cam seals for one side (the others are on order).

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Cam lock bar engaged

I replaced the infamously problematic thermostat housing with an Aluminum one from. The one that was on there wasn’t cracked, but the sealing edge was pretty worn down on one side, so I didn’t really feel like taking any chances. Seeing as how you pretty much have to do a full timing belt job in order to get to it, I’m glad I did. Peace of mind is a beautiful thing.

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New hottness VS old and busted

Timing belt and cam gears off, t-stat housing and water pump on. I love shiny new parts:

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Insert wincing face while pulling the cam sprockets

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The old timing belt looks brand freaking new

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Mmmmm rust. Looks more like buffalo sauce than anything else...

As you can see, it was pretty damn rusty anywhere water is supposed to go. Unfortunately this is just a fact of life with an iron block that has sat for a few months without running. All I can do is clean it up the best I can, and then I’ll be flushing it frequently once it’s up and running. It looks like the timing belt was done somewhat recently, which is definitely a possibility with a ~80k engine. Oh well, this is not something I want to bother with again, so might as well do it right when it’s out of the car and have easy access to everything.

More misc. camshaft porn:
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Jesus, 5 valves per cylinder! German over-engineering at its finest!

That’s all I’ve got for now. Some day this week I’ll be doing the cam seals, valve cover gaskets, and cam tensioner seals for the other side, and then putting the new timing belt on as well as the new idler pulley and tensioner. Then probably a day in itself installing the turbos, and finally I’ll start tearing apart the Audi to scavenge a few parts I need off the old engine, and I can drop this puppy in!

****, I’ve got a lot of work to do.
 

grnson

New member
Subscribed. Have to love audi wagons. I recently acquired an S6 while on the hunt for a manual allroad.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 

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