Project: Expedition Allroad

[ExDementia]

Oohh yeahhhh, got me some turbos:

They’re so cute and tiny! Awwww, look at them sitting there, being adorable. Goochie goochie, little turbos!

Got a set of K03s from my buddy who’s helping me out with the Allroad. They came off a B5 S4 with only about 30k miles on them, and are in really great shape. Yeah, yeah, I know, K04s would be ideal, but who the hell turns down free turbos? Also I just want to get this puppy up and running right and establish a solid baseline before doing anything crazy. I’ve had the Audi for three months now and I still haven’t driven the damn thing.

We mocked them up, but since we need to cannibalize so many parts from the engine that’s in the Audi currently, we held off on installing them. Meanwhile, the timing belt is done, all the cam seals are replaced, the valve cover gaskets, the timing belt tensioner, idler, water pump, thermostat with aluminum housing, and motor mounts are all done. Checked, double checked, and then quintuple checked the timing and turned the motor over by hand a few times. Everything is solid.

The next step is to finally begin tearing into the Allroad and start ripping that poor broken heart out of her. Currently I’m thinking the weekend after Christmas is when I’ll start the surgery.

:friday:

 

[OuterLimits]

Oohh yeahhhh, got me some turbos:

Flippin' Sweet Turbos!!!

 

[ExDementia]

Finally reached the point where we could tear into the Audi and remove the engine. It definitely wasn't easy, but after 7-8 hours, we got it out. The key phrase of the day was, “************* Audi...” followed by some head scratching. Luckily my buddy is pretty familiar with this engine in B5 S4s, but there was just enough different on the A6/Allroad platform that there were plenty of head scratching snags to tend with. I'm just glad this this was a Southern California car, and with the exception of some of the exhaust hardware, most everything came apart without too much hassle. That being said, I think the impact wrench saved us at least an hour when all was said and done. This is my first time doing anything this involved on a car that wasn't old and American (therefore, extremely simple), so it was an awesome learning experience.

Anyway, onto the pictures! First, we had to reposition the car to get better access to the passenger side (need to remove the axles to clear the transmission later on). We threw on a set of B6 S4 18" wheels that my buddy had lying around to move it, and with the air suspension totally flat, the Allroad was properly slammed to the ground:

Front bumper off:

Front carrier off next, A/C fan and condenser intact to save for later without having to recharge the system:

Took off one of the covers and found part of the shredded timing belt:

I pretty much forgot to take any pictures whatsoever for the next 2 hours or so when it came time to remove the connections to the ECU. It turns out on the A6/Allroads, Audi put an anti-tampering case on it, meaning we would either have to drill out the bolts or cut the cover on the harness to get it off. We didn't bother with either, and just decided to pull the ECU out with the engine intact for the time being:

I'll have to drill those out at another time, but we just wanted to get the engine out. With the axles out and everything else seemingly ready, we hooked up the hoist:

And after messing around with getting the AC compressor and lines out intact, disconnecting the shifter linkage and finding a few things here and there that we forgot to unhook (like draining and disconnecting the power steering lines, and one ************* ground strap that was holding us back that took forever to find), the engine finally came out:

This motor mount had completely let go, despite being unbolted from underneath, which was pretty funny. 165k miles will do that, I suppose:

And there we have it:

And the colossal mess to clean up after the fact:

Other misc. shots of parts and things to save:

This coming week we'll be swapping all the parts needed from the old engine to the new, mating up the transmission, and if everything goes to plan, dropping the new motor in by the weekend. Fingers crossed we don't run into too many snags that will prevent me from having it running this time next week (not likely)!

 

[borison]

Two things; 1) I was very nervous when I saw the working wheels and stance in the early photos and 2) I'm so glad there's someone ballsy enough to undertake such a cool job and document it. I think I've said this before. Keep it up. Thanks.

 

[ExDementia]

Two things; 1) I was very nervous when I saw the working wheels and stance in the early photos and 2) I'm so glad there's someone ballsy enough to undertake such a cool job and document it. I think I've said this before. Keep it up. Thanks.

You mean the slammed to the ground look? Hahaha, yeah it's pretty crazy how far down the suspension will sit with the air suspension down flat. I sent that to one of my buddies from work and his answer was: "Go lower"

It's tough for anyone in the VW/Audi community to accept the direction I'm going with in this build, hahaha. Thanks man! I appreciate it!

 

[java]

Haha coming from the Audi VW world I love it. But standard answer is lower it

I don't miss the "service position"

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

 

[ExDementia]

The service position cracks me up, because it's only maybe 15-20 minutes more work to just remove the front carrier altogether. If I'm ever doing another timing belt service, I will not be bothering with the service position at all.

Ordered up some new axles. Can't beat RockAuto:

 

[java]

The service position cracks me up, because it's only maybe 15-20 minutes more work to just remove the front carrier altogether. If I'm ever doing another timing belt service, I will not be bothering with the service position at all.

Ordered up some new axles. Can't beat RockAuto:

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View attachment 381311

Yeah just say remove the front end... lol

 

[Deleted member 13060]

The "un-serviceable position"...... I tell customers that we're gonna have to remove the car from the timing belt... LOL

 

[ExDementia]

This is what turbos look like when you go offroading in sand and clay. Now you know. Anyway, got the new turbos bolted up, and man was it a pain in the ***. Audi really knows how to make life miserable with their incredibly tight packaging.

Just look at this mess:

Unfortunately I didn’t take any better pictures than that, these were mostly for reference, and updating here was an afterthought. As you can see in the last picture, one of the bolts holing on that turbo isn’t correct, that’s a triple square bolt for the axle just there temporarily due to one of the bolts from the old turbos being effectively welded to the manifold, and broke an allen bit trying to get it out. So I’m just ordering a new bolt.

I did remember to take a picture of the bumper, though, to show how shredded this thing is:

Yeah... it’s lived a hard life. There may be a custom fabbed solution in the future for the bumper, but for now it’s still intact, so she’ll have to do.

Next steps are to scavenge a few more miscellaneous parts from the old engine, then pull off the transmission, take the new engine off the stand to do the clutch/flywheel, mate up the transmission, swap the ECU and full harness from the old engine, cry for a while at all my time spent on this thing, and then it will be time to drop the engine in the car!

 

[Blackzuki]

To remove the lock bolts from the ECM, cut a slot in the top with a thin cut-off wheel, then unscrew it with a flathead screwdriver while the thread lock is hot.

 

[ExDementia]

To remove the lock bolts from the ECM, cut a slot in the top with a thin cut-off wheel, then unscrew it with a flathead screwdriver while the thread lock is hot.

That's not a bad idea, thanks! If I need to remove it then I will definitely try that out, otherwise I should be able to just swap it over intact, as I need the harness from the Allroad anyway.

Oh yeah, and the axles came. They look pretty damn high quality for only being $115. Still keeping the OEM ones as spares, so we'll see how they hold up off road.

 

[ExDementia]

I thought swapping the wiring harness and ECU would be more of a *****, but it actually wasn’t too bad. We had to swap it because the wiring for the Allroad had some differences from the S4 harness, and I didn’t want to find out that I needed to swap it over later when everything was hooked up in the car. Better safe than sorry.

It’s too bad, because the harness on the S4 was in a bit better shape. Oh well.

S4 harness off:

A rare look at this engine with all the wiring removed (looks so nice and clean):

And then Poof! Like magic, the harness appears:

Since the S4 engine doesn’t have the secondary air injection, and we found out that the auxiliary coolant pump was deleted (more hassle than it’s worth, so when they start to leak, people just rip them out and bypass them), I’ll need to cap off some connections, and then get a tune to exclude the SAI, otherwise it throws a code.

Also swapped over a few last needed things from the old engine like one of the cam position sensors, a coolant temp sensor, and what ever else. Next step is to disconnect the trans from the old engine and mate it up to the new one, and then it will be ready to drop in this weekend!

If all goes well, the Expedition Allroad will be running by Sunday. We’ll see!

 

[java]

Boy that sure does look clean without the harness!

Good luck getting it all back together this weekend.

 

[ExDementia]

After about 9-10 hours of work, the engine is in. It’s not really hooked up to much, but it’s on its own mounts, so I’m counting it. Man this thing is a tight fit...

Started off taking the last few things we needed from the other engine and getting everything ready. Cleaned up the timing belt covers, which ended up being a mix between ones from both the new and the old engine (they’re kinda brittle), threw on the rest of the accessory belt pulleys, and then cleaned and hooked up the inlet pipes.

Then separated the transmission from the old engine, which was a pain in the ***:

Still had the OEM stamped clutch at 165k miles. Not too shabby. Luckily the transmission is light enough to move by hand with two people, so we set it aside to change the slave cylinder (the boot had disintegrated on mine, luckily my buddy had a spare), the throwout bearing, and lubed up the engagement fork:

Hey, another nice shot of the old, shredded timing belt:

New clutch and flywheel on:

After transferring the old engine off to its new home on a few blocks in the back of the garage and mounting the new engine on the hoist, came the extreme hassle of mating the new engine to the transmission. This took at least an hour in itself, with some careful maneuvering of two floor jacks and many, many expletives:

Luckily we remembered the bell housing spacer, which I probably wouldn’t have even noticed on the old engine if my buddy hadn’t pointed it out and told of some horror stories of his friends who forgot it before. No thanks, I only want to do this once.

After that we hooked up the downpipes, O2 sensors, crank position sensor, vehicle speed sensor, and everything else that I’m forgetting:

We also took a little bit of time to get the harness sorted out and made sure all the mess of cables was routed somewhat correctly for when we attach everything to the firewall, as rerouting these things when the engine is in is a much bigger pain in the *** than when its out.

Time to drop the new engine in! People always say it like that, like it’s as simple as just setting in, but it’s a ************* pain. It was probably in the mid 50° range in an open carport, and I was still sweating by the end of it. No wonder you have to pull the engine for every little service...

And that is how we left it. Now we just need to hook everything up, which is just way too much crap to list, and will probably be another day in itself, but we should probably have it running by next weekend, barring any big road blocks. Fingers crossed.