Committing to Front Bars

The last time we referenced the front skid plate bar was back in May when we were installing the front tow hook which is sandwiched between the chassis rail and the skid plate bar mounting flange. At that time, it was mocked up from PVC conduit. Now we felt it was time to commit it to steel and even connect it to the front bumper bar. How hard could that...

Alternator-tive Universe

We all know that Audis are different and UR Quattros even more different. Well, we also tend to do things differently and that did not change when it came to installing the alternator for our rally car.We could have just used the stock alternator in the stock location on the stock bracket but that meant it wouldn’t be able to power our ridiculous number of lights, it would be right...

Works Muffler Mounts

We’ve been frustrated by the rear muffler just hanging around but finally had some time to tackle it. We wanted to replicate the works cars even though it’s ridiculously over built.How hard could it be? First find some bushings from McMaster and some cardboard:Guess the length and reproduce it in stainless:Then weld it to the car:Actually, it’s screwed to the car for now. We’ll weld it once we get the...

Time To Get In The Groove

It recently occurred to us that if we ever get to drive this thing we might get a flat and need a spare tire. But what size and where to put it? The stock spare is a skinny donut that fits in the trunk up against the left quarter panel. Our car didn’t come with one and we doubt we’d wanna use a 35+ year old skinny tire anyway. No,...

Stop Buffer? Engine Stop Pitch? EPS?

What’s this called? The Audi parts diagrams call it a “stop buffer” but what does it stop? Engine pitch perhaps? Well, it’s probably important so we should have one, exactly like the works cars of course. Oh boy! We’ll call it an Engine Pitch Stop or EPS.It sits in a receptacle on the bumper bar and presumably stops the engine from pitching back and forth. Subarus have one on the...

Fabricating the Driver's Footrest for Our Quattro Rally Car

Driver's Footrest: In case there’s a long straight between corners or for transits we thought we should have a nice foot rest for our clutch foot. Of course, we tried to reproduce the one on the factory cars because buying a perfectly good off the shelf one would make too much sense. First some auto CAD:Followed by some 1/8” aluminium, with dimple holes:Then we cut it and welded it at...

Rest Your Weary Feet - Quattro Rally Build Update

"Rest Your Weary Feet" - Rally navigators need somewhere to plant their feet and brace themselves. So, rally cars have sturdy footrests. We could easily have bought a generic one or made a simple one but we’d seen the ones employed on the factory cars, and of course thought “we could make that”.As usual we started with a cardboard model to get the shape similar and then transferred that to...

Mud Flap Build Continues on the Quattro Rally Build

A continuation of our mud flap build... When we left off with mud flaps to go do some other stuff we had just finished making all the CAD templates for the brackets. Now we have formed them in steel, welded them to the car and even made an installed the actual mud flaps. Well, Sparco made them; we just trimmed them to fit.Next episode: footrests!

PULL THE OTHER ONE!

Ask any serious rally driver and they’ll tell you that it’s critical that your door pull straps match you pin stands. That’s why we bought these from MOTAMEC in the UKWe wanted to mount them in one of the holes for the original door pull handle because we knew that area of the door would be strong enough and it was in the right place. That had a twist bayonet...

This Week on "Will It Fit"

This week on "Will It Fit", we wanted to find out if a 215/65-15 BFG all-terrain tire would fit on a Quattro. Why? Because a customer wanted to know. Why? Because he put big-arse brakes on his quattro but now wants to go play in the dirt! We thought we could help especially as we had the exact same tire on our Allroad. Unfortunately we didn’t have any 16” wheels...

We're Hooked On Quattros

If you’ve been following this build, you’ll know by now that we have strongly resisted copying the works cars as much as possible. That is unless we can find an excuse to replicate what they did of course. So, it is with the front tow hook. Our car has perfectly good tow hooks that came from Audi. They work, we’ve used them to drag the car into the trailer more...

Closing Gaps On Our Quattro Rally Build Grill

Smile. You’re on Cadded Camera!See the problem? Get closer... big gap.Small gap (and a bent slat)After a bunch of measuring and head scratching, we determined that the top of the carbon/Kevlar bumper was less then perfectly flat. In retrospect we should have just looked at the pictures but we want this build to be engineering based so we got the football fields out and measured everything. No crashing probes into...

Rally Quattro Build Update: Grill Mounting & Alignment

We took a break from cardboard engineering and decided it was time to grill, or attach the grill. This concoction of aluminium slats has been on and off the car for a while but, until now has never really been fully integrated into the front of the car. Sadly, we’ve just been wedging in in there and taking pictures of it. Ultimately it needs to be attached to the upper...

Quattro Rally Build Update: Time For Proper Mud Flaps

With the mud flap brackets cadded, it was all we could do to resist cadding the mud flaps themselves. Actually, we couldn’t resist. Well, who could?First, we started with something that isn’t present on the Group B resto we now seem to be trying to emulate in infinite detail: mid-rocker mud flaps (MRMFs), for want of a better term. What are those and why are you installing them? You may...

Quattro Rally Car Update: Door Cards, Foot Rests and Mud Flaps

Solid modeling was the major CAD advancement made in the 1980s. Significant software offerings included the well-known 2D system known as “AutoCAD.” We’ve been doing a lot of Auto-CAD ourselves lately but the more grassroots Cardboard Aided Design versus the Computer Aided Design you might be more familiar with. Most of what we are cadding is to make templates for a bunch of parts we need to fabricate most of...

We're Exhausted

The car took a big leap forward recently and, as a result, we are now exhausted.We asked our friend Scott Banes if he’d like to build us an exhaust and we were honored that he said yes. Scott is a local rallycross and rally competitor who has owned about a gazillion Subarus and we’ve always been impressed with the work he’s done on them. We thought it would be good...

Prepping for Custom Stainless Exhaust and Skid Plate Design

We are honored to have a friend of ours, Scott Banes, agree to build us an exhaust. It’s going to be 3” stainless steel with one muffler at the rear and as similar looking to the works cars as possible. Of course, that meant we had to build a skid plate! Well, not exactly but we did need to see how much room we would have around it so we...

Rally Quattro Update: Brake Bias, Period Correct USB Ports & Throttle Cable Mounting

Distractions over we turned to our last remaining issue to solve on the center console: where and how to mount the brake bias knob and the period correct USB ports. So we can sync our Walkman of course! Time for a bracket.Then we thought the next logical project would be the throttle cable because, well, we felt we could finish it. You may remember that we had previously rotated the...

Quattro Rally Build: Parts from Rennline!

It’s been an interesting and satisfying couple of weeks with the car. We checked off a few smaller things from the list and opened up some big things.Right after our last update we received this package from Rennline. Based in Vermont, Rennline manufacture and sell specialized parts for mostly European cars. They are very well known for the Porsche parts, many of which we have on our 911 rally car,...

Heater Control, Venting and Air Inlets for our Rally Quattro Build

This week we turned our attention back to the heater control panel which we hadn’t installed because it needed refurbishing. The plastic was faded and the legends needed a good clean.So we split it in two, gave it a good scrub, re-made the legends, hit it with some plastic paint, slapped it back together and installed it.With that looking spiffy we thought we’d tackle the vents. The works cars used...

Out of Storage & Into the NEW Workshop

So after we took that deep breath in the last update we stood back and assessed where we are in the project and found a great way to shrink our to do list: put it on a photocopier and hit REDUCE.   Kidding aside, we have got it down rather a lot but it’s still quite daunting to think about what’s still in front of us. And this is just...

Week 17 of the Storage Unit Rally Build: A Sharp Intake of Breath

We’ve been back and forth on what to do about an intake system for the car for ages. We’d like to have our cake and eat it too but we just can’t see a way to get there. This is what we’d like to have:As used on the works rally cars. It looks iconic and sucks air from the high pressure cowl area where, conveniently, there are louvers in the...

Week 16 of the Storage Unit Rally Build

It's been cold so we felt inspired to hook up the heater controls. This week we learned all about “Bowden Cables”! These clips are hard to find new but we found some.And dug out the rest of the system.The control sliders went in easily but hooking up the cables and clamps was a bit fiddly. Surprisingly satisfying once done though.Now we just have to figure out how to direct the...

Storage Unit Rally Build - Week 15 (Quick Update)

I'm back to working on the fan mount. You may remember that our beautiful afterthought of a fan shroud would not allow us to fit the actual fan as it interfered with the frame rails because we didn’t think it through. So, we ordered up six of these fan mounting brackets and went to town.The fan is quite weighty so we thought some vertical hanging type mount would be a...