The Road to Radwood Detroit - Part 1

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men………..” Robbie burns said that, way before Quattros were invented. Still applies today.When we left you we had just installed our center console and were about to start working on installing brake lines before we put the engine in. Well that plan got blown up as the car got invited to Radwood Detroit, the car show for 80s and 90s stuff. So our...

Our Rally Quattro Gets Proper Gravel Wheels

Proper Gravel Rally Wheels! We ordered more BRAID wheels for the car. This is the third set! We sold the first set including the tires. We have a problem. We justified this set of gravel wheels by ordering them double drilled so we can also use them on our 911 rally car. That car now has five sets of wheels yet only does about 300 miles a year. Did we...

Our Quattro Rally Car Gets A Center Console!

We finally have a center console!The saga of the OE center console is over! This piece took a very convoluted path to get to us from Germany but it arrived via (Friend returning from a trip to England) courier and couldn’t wait to install itself under the dash.This is the same piece used by most if not all the works cars and comes off lower spec cars not sold in...

Solutions for our Beautiful Intake Manifold

Last time we conversed we were reveling on the beauty of our aftermarket intake manifold and despairing at the frustration that nothing would fit around it. Now we think we have solved all these issues. Read on:First we made a throttle body adapter to place the throttle body above the power steering pump: Then we started to hack up the OE fuel rail. We stripped off all the brackets and...

Solving Intake Manifold Challenges

We found an intake manifold!It’s a new old stock from Wagner Tuning. A fellow Audi nut had it in his stash and no longer had plans for it. We do! This thing should be plug and play and make moving forward very easy. We test fitted it with the 034 Motorsport phenolic spacer kit and it fit perfectly! Trouble is, nothing else would fit to it. Firstly, the throttle body...

Refurbished Turbo - Hot Side Engine Reassembly

The turbo won. Turns out it takes longer to find a unicorn aftermarket intake manifold than it does to refurbish a turbo. Well it does if you are a professional outfit like G-Pop Shop https://gpopshop.com/So we’re going to assemble the exhaust side next. First we’ll need a heat shield:Our new exhaust manifold fit well but we did have to shorten some studs to get the nuts on.The rest was easy bolt...

It's Time to Get Serious - Cold Side Engine Reassembly

This week we started on the serious reassembly of the engine. We’ll try not to get distracted. We started on the intake side as that has the most shiny bits ready to go. First up the modified alternator mount:Then the coolant adapter. We were advised to get a straight one in metal for better fitment:Then we installed the alternator, power steering pump and belt tensioner:We still need to find a...

More Engine Bay Work - We Plated Almost Everything

More distraction this week but look at it! Wouldn't you be distracted?Some of this is for the engine refurb but some has been holding up some ancillary stuff so we got busy. We installed the wipers (can you spot the long awaited plated parts?)This piece of automotive jewelry holds the blower motor resistor!Alternator fan (that's engine related)Power steering rack fittings.and the front left tie rod adjusters.We even got our anti-roll...

Turbo Trouble & Fuse Dash Panel

We received some bad news from our turbo shop, G-Pop Shop this week. Our turbo is bad. Exhaust turbine ate something that didn’t agree with it.We got on the blower to our engine supplier, EFI Express and they soon had another core sent out. This one turned out to be fine. The other good news is that the bad turbo was never on our engine, it was just one of...

Quattro Rally Build: Hot Side Engine Refurb

This week we turned our attention to the hot side of the engine and removed the turbo, exhaust manifold and waste gate. The turbo will be sent out to be refurbished, the exhaust manifold will be replaced with a slightly better one and the waste gate will be, well, we are not sure. We know we are not keen on the red cover however.This is the eBay special $85 exhaust...

Engine Refurb, Round 2

ENGINE REFURB 2 We know, engine stuff. (Focus TIM). But look what arrived this week!  We could have just tried to convince you that we had a surge of enthusiasm and finished the car but that wouldn't be right. We did paint something though, as promised:  Gold too!  and red!  We also had a go at cleaning up the oil pan. It's not obvious in the pictures but it did make quite a bit of difference.    Enough...

Getting Carried Away On The Rally Quattro Build Engine Bay

We promised you an engine-based post this week so here you are.As we mentioned in an earlier post we were supposed to just bolt this in but have recently gotten carried away with cleaning and polishing everything on this car so let's see how nuts we can go with an engine. Is there therapy available for this stuff? We need help.So we started by painting the block, even though nobody...

Wheel Selection for our Quattro Rally Build

Halfway through our engine tear down our new wheels showed up. Yes, they did distract us.We chose these from BRAID’s catalogue because they look very similar to the BBS wheels the Rothmans (and some others) rally Quattros ran back in the day. Look:Specs are:- BRAID Serie 4 RC- 15x10- Et0- 5x112- 57.1 center boreAs far as our research suggests, the same as the originals.Of course we took lots of pictures.Then,...

Engine Teardown Begins For Our Quattro Rally Build

Well, this is a big step forward for the project. It’s time to take the engine off its pallet and get it into the car. Of course it is not that simple. We have lots of ways to make it complicated.  As we’ve previously discussed, we decided to go with a fairly stock later AAN 20 valve engine rather than try to wring extra power from the original 10 valve that...

Brake Master Cylinder Work On Our Quattro Rally Car

We decided some time back that this car would dispense with the hydraulically powered brakes and employ dual master cylinders with a bias bar adjuster but were never quite sure how we'd accomplish that. Then a friend turned us on to Compbrake in England who have a bolt-in kit for the Quattro. How could we say "no"? So we ordered one up and it arrived in just a few days. Seems...

Quattro Rally Build - Clutch Master Cylinder & Coolant System Installation

Cracking on with engine bay stuff we installed the clutch master cylinder. Remember, we have an 20V AAN engine just itching to try on this engine bay for size so we want to get as much engine bay stuff figured out before it crawls in there.Not wanting to lose our bottle before the engine fit we also tested and installed the coolant reservoir. We rigged up this pressure test to...

Defrost Manifold - 83 Quattro Rally Build Update

Now we had the heater in we thought it a good idea to install some of the ducting to spread that heat where it might be needed. The foot wells heat comes right out of the side of the heater box so we don’t have to deal with that, and the center and side vents are fed from flexible pipes so we can figure those out later. But the windshield...

Rally Cars Need Heaters Too

We could have just wiped the dust of the heater box a bolted back in place but we are glad we took it apart as we found the heater core had been weeping or leaking. Besides, all the seals needed replacing and it was full of leaves inside.We had also broken off a tab from the blower while removing it from the heater box so that needed to be glued...

Acquisitions and (no) Mergers - A 83urq Update

Another long gap between updates, sorry. We have been traveling and working a lot and then there was the holidays to contend with. Still, we did manage quite a few parts acquisitions but we didn’t get to merge much of them with the car.Our long awaited 20V engine arrived late last year. Thanks to Marc of EFI Express for assembling it for us. It’s a AAN engine out of an...

Our 83 Audi Rally Project Gets New Rear Reflectors, Fuel Tank, Bulkhead & Rothmans Rally Dash

Installation was relatively simple as we kept all the hardware.Then we remembered that we also have a broken reflector which we thought would be better used on this car rather than the pristine one that came off it as we are going to be wrapping it anyway a la Rothmans livery:But how to fix the crack? It can be unsightly but has to be smooth as any hint of a...

Choosing Wheels and Tires for the 83 Quattro Project

TIRESIt’s time to start thinking about wheels and tires. Well, it’s a bit early but a) we are obsessed about wheels and tires and b) this project is as much about showing off our BRAID wheels as anything. At least that’s how we justify it.You may recall we previously purchased a set of BRAID Series 6 in 16x9 and mounted some 245/45-16 Bridgestones on them. This size combination seems to be...

Now Our 83 Quattro Has Legs!

Like the suave, sophisticated gentleman in this video says “The car has legs now”How did we get to this point? Well, as we discussed in our last post the delrin bushings are wider than the sleeve that goes through them. This sleeve needs to end up slightly proud of the bushings so that it gets clamped in the mounting slots on the subframe and does not move. Then the bushings...

Our 83 Quattro Rally Build Gets Delrin Bushings, Coil-Over Conversion & Spherical Bearing Top Mounts!

It’s been a while since we got to work on the rally Quattro project so also a while since any updates. We have been distracted by other projects such as getting our 85 Quattro ready for the Concours D’elegance of America towards the end of July. Happily the car won an award so it was worth the effort.  As you may recall the car came with some suspension parts, the...

Short Shifting and Full Gas

We mentioned earlier that we had purchased a short shift kit from 034 Motorsports. Well, with our freshly plated shifter components back at the shop we wasted no time in assembling it and bolting it in.   This is the stock shifter: And the freshly plated components and short shift kit jigsaw puzzle: We soon had it together: And bolted in the car: Of course the transmission is not in...