Project: Expedition Allroad

[Hackopotomus]

Great build! I am so glad I stumbled on this thread. I had been trying to figure out which vehicle to use for me expo rig and settled on my truck (see this):

http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/189349-Help-Me-Pick-An-Overland-Rig

But, I also have this B7 A4 Avant Quatro with the 2.0T engine. It is in great condition and is a joy to drive. However, I live on a dirt road and also like to explore the tons of other dirt roads in my area. While I can use my truck or Jeep to do this, I really want to make my A4 into a WRC rally type vehicle. The car is built so solidly and it would be fun to tear around the back roads in it.

It has 19" RS4 wheels with Conti's on it now but I also have the stock 18" wheels. My thoughts were to put some more aggressive tread tires on the stock wheels and if possible, raise the suspension maybe an inch. I don't know if anyone makes anything to do that. I love the AllRoad fender flares and wonder if they would fit on the Avant.

Coincidentally, I recently purchased that same light bar as you have. I haven't put it on yet as am waiting to do everything at once. BTW, I have run Hella lights on my vehicles for at least 25 years in CA with no covers and have never had an issue with LE, even when getting pulled over for speeding. In fact, I once had a truck with driving lights hooked up to high beams and fogs hooked up to low beams. Someone backed into me in a parking lot and wiped out one driving and one fog light so left me with one each. When I was on the freeway and someone was left lane hogging I would just flick low beam / high beams and the lights would alternate like a cop car and they would pull over quickly. I'm sure that was illegal but it was fun!

Thanks for sharing your build. :clapping:

 

[limeylight]

Great build! I am so glad I stumbled on this thread. I had been trying to figure out which vehicle to use for me expo rig and settled on my truck (see this):

http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/189349-Help-Me-Pick-An-Overland-Rig

But, I also have this B7 A4 Avant Quatro with the 2.0T engine. It is in great condition and is a joy to drive. However, I live on a dirt road and also like to explore the tons of other dirt roads in my area. While I can use my truck or Jeep to do this, I really want to make my A4 into a WRC rally type vehicle. The car is built so solidly and it would be fun to tear around the back roads in it.

It has 19" RS4 wheels with Conti's on it now but I also have the stock 18" wheels. My thoughts were to put some more aggressive tread tires on the stock wheels and if possible, raise the suspension maybe an inch. I don't know if anyone makes anything to do that. I love the AllRoad fender flares and wonder if they would fit on the Avant.

Coincidentally, I recently purchased that same light bar as you have. I haven't put it on yet as am waiting to do everything at once. BTW, I have run Hella lights on my vehicles for at least 25 years in CA with no covers and have never had an issue with LE, even when getting pulled over for speeding. In fact, I once had a truck with driving lights hooked up to high beams and fogs hooked up to low beams. Someone backed into me in a parking lot and wiped out one driving and one fog light so left me with one each. When I was on the freeway and someone was left lane hogging I would just flick low beam / high beams and the lights would alternate like a cop car and they would pull over quickly. I'm sure that was illegal but it was fun!

Thanks for sharing your build. :clapping:

I've been into rally for about 30 years now. Currently run a 84 911 Carrera and building an 83 UR Quattro

Untitled by Team Illuminata Motorsport, on Flickr

Untitled by Team Illuminata Motorsport, on Flickr

You are going to need proper wheels and tires with plenty of sidewall on your A4 and some under body protection as bashing a sump on a rock could ruin your day. I doubt you could get 15" gravel wheels over the brakes but we sell some 16" you can run with All Terains. Those might be tight too. Skid plates would need to be custom as I don't know anyone selling bolt on plates for that.

 

[Hackopotomus]

I've been into rally for about 30 years now. Currently run a 84 911 Carrera and building an 83 UR Quattro

Untitled by Team Illuminata Motorsport, on Flickr

Untitled by Team Illuminata Motorsport, on Flickr

You are going to need proper wheels and tires with plenty of sidewall on your A4 and some under body protection as bashing a sump on a rock could ruin your day. I doubt you could get 15" gravel wheels over the brakes but we sell some 16" you can run with All Terains. Those might be tight too. Skid plates would need to be custom as I don't know anyone selling bolt on plates for that.

Very cool! I'd like to do up my 911 too but it's a cabrio and I don't think it would look right. I have a hard top for it too but still looks funny as a rally car.

I can fab up some skid plates myself for the A4 but don't know if there is a way to raise the suspension an inch or so. I'll have to do some research on all terrain type tires that would fit my 18" wheels.

I'd love to have an 80's Group B 5 cylinder Audi!

 

[limeylight]

Very cool! I'd like to do up my 911 too but it's a cabrio and I don't think it would look right. I have a hard top for it too but still looks funny as a rally car.

I can fab up some skid plates myself for the A4 but don't know if there is a way to raise the suspension an inch or so. I'll have to do some research on all terrain type tires that would fit my 18" wheels.

I'd love to have an 80's Group B 5 cylinder Audi!

You should be able to get 16s on your A4. There are some 215/60-16 AT tires available. We have customers running them on their subarus and 911 Safari cars.

 

[ExDementia]

Life really has a way of messing up your plans doesn't it? The fiancee and I are no more, so I moved back to San Diego just a few weeks ago.

Finally got back to working on the Allroad, though, and made some real progress on things.... but of course since I'm working on a 15 year old Audi, nothing can ever be as easy as it should be. Worked on it all weekend and got the following done:

• New rear air springs installed
• Front and back lift kit and ride height sensor arms from IPP installed
• Fixed some leaks in the air system, including a crack in the sealing surface on one of the new air springs

Helped my buddy install a lift in his garage recently, and this made everything sooo much easier. It's unbelievable how much time and hassle this thing saves.

I'm a stubborn idiot and didn't just look up the best way to remove the rear air struts, so the first one took me way longer to get out than it should have, but finally figured out the best way is to unbolt the lower wishbones where they mount to the body, that way you can compress the strut down enough by hand to get it out of the tower. It's still a **********, but isn't too bad when you know what you're doing.

Somehow forgot to get a good shot of the lift installed, but here's one where you can sorta see one of the spacer pucks in the front:

Getting the air springs separated from the strut was a hassle. The tried and true method of zapping the top nut off with an impact didn't work, as it just spun the strut shaft. Annoyingly enough, the top of the strut shaft wasn't a hex nut or anything rational that we could get a bit onto even with a pass-through socket set, so we just ended up cutting the bag open and using a section of the rubber with vice grips on the shaft to prevent it from turning:

Here's where the real frustration comes in. I get everything in and hooked up, drop the Allroad back down on it's wheels and run the compressor to pressurize the system and.... The compressor is fubar. It runs but barely puts out any air pressure at all, so it's likely that the piston ring is shot, which is pretty common on these. Luckily, a helpful gentleman named BagpipingAndy makes a compressor rebuild kit for only ~$45 that includes a new piston ring, new o-rings, etc. This is far cheaper than ~$250 for a whole new compressor, so I'm extremely glad I found that.

While we were troubleshooting everything, we decided to check for leaks in the system by bypassing the distribution block off the compressor and hooking up an air source directly to the lines going to each wheel. I'm sure glad we did this too, because we discovered quite a bad leak in the rear passenger side air spring, coming from where the spring seals against the strut. We pulled it out again and pulled the strut apart to check it out, only to find a crack in the sealing surface of the air spring:

It's difficult to tell in the picture, but that crack that runs from the sealing surface up into the air chamber of the bag. We filled it with super glue and then applied some silicone around the whole sealing ring, slapped everything back together and bench tested it to find absolutely no more leak, even after really squeezing the crap out of it to try and induce a leak. Hopefully this is solid now.

Here's the suspension sitting with the tires at full droop with the lift kit installed. Not much use without a prior reference shot, but the kit added about an inch of height.

So now all I can do is wait for the rebuild kit to come in so I can finally get this thing back on the road. Until then I'm just another inoperable Allroad owner. How stereotypical, huh?

 

[java]

Glad to see some progress (finally! )

 

[matt922]

Sweet project. These cars are basically worthless, but have such an awesome (when working) powerplant. I just did a countrywide search on manual allroads on CL, and came across exactly one.

 

[ExDementia]

Thanks guys! Yeah, I definitely would never have picked this thing up if it wasn't one of the very rare manuals.

Bad news for now, however, is that the compressor is shot. The rebuild kit from BagpipingAndy was excellently made, but unfortunately this thing is just too far gone. It was difficult to photograph, but the cylinder wall of the compressor is just far too worn and scored to the point where at the peak of piston travel, I would guess there is nearly a millimeter worn away. I'm pretty sure that this is where it is losing just about all compression, because if I had to guess, this thing is probably putting out less than 5 PSI. The output on this thing feels like a slight breeze.

The compressor before removing it from its pain in the ass spring mounted isolation mounts:

And here is where we see why this thing has failed. It is absolutely filled with dirt. This poor compressor has just been inhaling the worst, most dusty air imaginable, and it shows:

Seriously, look at how packed this ************** thing is with dirt! Here's the top of the cylinder head before and after cleaning it with a wire brush, emery cloth, carb cleaner, and some compressed air:

Before:

After:

What you can see in the image above is the line where the piston reaches the peak of its travel on the cylinder walls there. What's interesting about these compressors is that the piston is fixed on the piston arm, so there is no wrist pin to prevent the piston from canting in the cylinder, and I think this is exactly why it is so worn on one side and not the other, where there is basically no scoring at the peak of travel.

After putting it back in the car and it not even budging the bags, we pulled it out and jumped the compressor with a spare battery on the bench to see what sort of pressure it was putting out. I think a baby could breathe harder on your hand than the pathetic amount of air this was pushing out.

We pulled it apart again and pulled the replacement piston ring off to wrap some layers of teflon tape around the piston and put the piston ring on over it to try to get a tighter fit inside the cylinder. This actually did help the issue, but it still is not putting out anywhere near enough pressure to ever lift the car. Not even close.

I did go back and get some shots of the lift spacers that I failed to get last weekend, though. Here's the front:

That air line doesn't quite reach that clip nicely anymore, so that has since been ziptied up there.

And rear:

This kit seriously could not be simpler. If I just had to install that kit and nothing else, the whole thing probably would have only taken me 2-3 hours to install, even with taking my time.

So now I need to find myself a new compressor. With moving back to San Diego and everything going on, I'm really not in a place to really throw more money into this ************** thing right now. A new compressor is $200-$220, so I think right now I'm going to just roll the dice on a used compressor, and if it needs a rebuild, then I have the kit for it that I can transfer over to the replacement compressor. I have read a ton of people who have had great success with the rebuild kit, so I'm pretty confident the replacement compressor wouldn't be as bad as mine, which has been chugging down dirt for the latter portion of its life.

Gaaahhhh. Ah, the sweet life of Audi ownership. As pointed out, these aren't worth anything, so it's not like I'm going to dump this thing now and get literally nothing for a questionably modified and still broken Allroad. So this build will go on, even in ************ times as these.

 

[frink84]

I hope some sort of filter setup is in the plans for the new/rebuilt compressor, that amount of dirt/dust in the old one is incredible!

 

[java]

Could any compressor be substituted?

 

[BritKLR]

Nice build. I've always like these allroads, just have no experience with Audis. Good luck and sorry about the fiancé.

 

[ExDementia]

I hope some sort of filter setup is in the plans for the new/rebuilt compressor, that amount of dirt/dust in the old one is incredible!

I'm thinking about throwing a layer or two of pantyhose over the compressor intake like the desert racing guys do. These generally have to be changed out with some regularity, though, so that will have to be figured out. It might just be something I do when I'm planning on taking it off road. We'll see.

Could any compressor be substituted?

I've done some reading on this, and apparently VAGCOM does not play nicely with substituted compressors, and throws a fit. Also, over pressurizing the distribution block can damage the solenoids (and this is even more expensive to replace), so really the only people who have successfully used a different compressor have generally done a full independently controlled system, which is big bucks.

Nice build. I've always like these allroads, just have no experience with Audis. Good luck and sorry about the fiancé.

Thank you! This thing is pretty sweet to drive when it's not being such a pain in the ass. And yeah, this is a pretty rough transition, but luckily I have hobbies and good people around me to keep me occupied.

Cheers, guys

 

[Cread_B]

Just read through the whole thread. thanks for sharing the process.. I'm hoping to revive all of our shared enjoyment of the Audi Allroad with a 2013 B8.5 2.0 TFSI... I just clicked a 100k on the odo and have decided to just keep it and drive it into the dirt... Currently, it sits stock plus low pro whisp bars and a Küat cargo rack. Here's what I have planned so far.. I'll be painting, wrapping, powder coating all the necessary parts to get rid of all silver/chrome trim + black the mirrors/emblems. I'm excited to see the license plate bull bar you used because I will go that route instead of fabricating something excessive like I've rendered in this picture attached.. This was taken on my way back home from Telluride.

Does ANYONE know of a lift for this platform??? or.. why I shouldn't do some spacers of some sort to fit a bit more tire under there.. Also.. how about Audi accessories/tuner chips etc.. in general.. I'm new to ALL of this and can't find ANYTHING for this vehicle really.. I did just recently find a S4 grill conversion and will be ordering that soon... and have actually been looking at 2013 S4 engines to swap in..

 

[ExDementia]

Thanks man! Damn good looking Allroad you've got there. It's a shame you don't see too many of them on the road.

I have no idea about a lift for that thing, though you might be able to find a skid plate from some company in Europe where these are more popular. I would think that 2.0t at least has a lot of aftermarket support, if not specifically in Allroad guise because VW/Audi use that engine in just about everything they can stuff it into. I've talked to a few guys on Instagram who are going a similar direction with yours, you should start poking around there are talking to people if you haven't already.

The used compressor has arrived and bench tested. It's putting out a freaking ton more air than mine, so I'm thinking this will work well as a stopgap until I can afford a better long term solution. The compressor will go in this weekend and hopefully... HOPEFULLY this thing will be back on the road finally.

 

[frink84]

your compressor issues have had me thinking...

would it be feasible to build an extension harness and add some more airline, to relocate the pump into the cabin to keep it's source clean?