150k !!!!!!!

[Rusty]

The old girl's just gone through 150k today

To celebrate, I've just put her up on axel stands this evening and am half way through fitting new front wheel bearings, new front CV joints, new front top mounts & retaining nuts, giving the front struts and hubs a lick of paint, fitting a new set of Textar pads to the 996s and have completed an oil and filter change (Valvoline 10W60 fully synth). AND I had it in a local garage earlier this evening to have the rear diff oil changed (using suction!) as I, and then the garage, couldn't get the phooking rear diff plug out - AND I/we TRIED! And I had the garage tweak the exhaust as the cats were scraping everything after I couldn't fit them properly having taken them off to drain the torsen, whist changing the gearbox oil...

PHEW, just another normal weekend in S2 ownership then!

AND, JUST TO TAKE THE ****, I think the bomb's on it's last legs...

In the next installment (w/end Jan 28th/29th):-

151k, a new bomb and possibly fit a 2nd hand PAS pump. Yippee

BUT it's ok cos the Nurburgring is calling!

[Rusty]

Dude! Where's my suspension!

[Rusty]

Gratuitous & very, very dirty brake porn!

[Dpicariello]

I'm impressed mate, quite a list of things you're doing! Keep the pics coming as I'm interested in the top mount replacement process and how it's exactly done.

What diff oil did you go for out of interest. That's on my to-do list this month.

[S2central.net]

Nice lot of work there for a weekend...

Mine just cruised thru 130k t'other week so I am ever closer to some of these 'orrible jobs. And there's even a house with a half decent garage on the horizon which I can look forward to filling with the noises of profanity, the sight of blood and the smell of fear when it all goes wrong

Paul

[4WheelDrifter]

Nice one Andy.

For my car 150k seems like so long ago. I'm looking forward to the big 200k. I don't think the gearbox will make it though. Oh well, I'll have to use one of my spares.

[Jamo]

We should call you Frankendrifter as you could build a 2nd car with the amount of spares you got!

[s2dude]

Andy.To do the front struts and hubs properly...you need to get them bead or shot blasted (cant remember which mine was) and then powder coated.
Not a one day job!! Ask me how I know
But it makes them brand new again so was worth it big time.
Dont forget you will need a 4 wheel alignment.

[Rusty]

Firstly a massive thanks to Mike for his write ups on S2-Audi. Immensely helpful

4 wheel alignment will be done when it's all back together, seem to spend my life going to and from Protyre in Bristol who do my 4 wheel alignment for me! I've started to cost it into just about all my reapairs!

Gearbox and diff oil were both Audi OEM stuff sourced from S2Avant.

Just plastered the struts, hubs, etc. etc. in Plasticote enamel after a damned good wire-brushing and clean. Good enough for me in the short time scale. The car's a daily so needed it on the road really. (Well that was the plan... read on!!!)

Anyway, just as I thought that things were going to plan, I ran into the obligatory problems!

The small one, that can be easily fixed, is that one of the wheel bearings wasn't fully pressed into the hub and this means that the drive shaft fouls the hub and locks it solid when tightening it up! The one bit I could do myself and outsourced and it wasn't done correctly! Just have to sort that tomorrow if I can call in a favour and if not, there's an engineering company down the road who I'll have to cycle down to, hub on me back and get the nice bearded man there to sort it out! Thankfully I have spare hub bolts as I only found out the problem after doing it up to the full 200Nm+90deg!

However, the major problem is that, on replacing the passenger side calliper, the phooking brake line union nut cross-threaded into the calliper and has done some quite impressive damage. Found this out when trying to bleed the driver's side brakes and hearing a distand "drip drip drip"!! Looked at the angle that the nut was at, **** myself (cos I knew straight away what had happened), undid the , inspected the damage and then started to SWEAR! This is a pretty serious problem and I'm looking at having to helicoil the thread to fix it. I inspected the other thread and it too is a bit knckered so will look at fixing both callipers at the same time.

Never ends does it!!

So, having hoped to finish around 5pm it all started going down hill about 4 and by 5 I needed a beer! Curry and beer has now passed and anger / malaise has turned into acceptance. I'll get it sorted this week hopefully and then get back on it! These things seem to be part and parcel of attempting to maintain an S2 with minimal outside help. Frustrating when the parts that are outside of your control are those that ultimately cause you problems. All the disassembly and most of the assembly was a piece of cake, even my Ford obsessed mate who was helping was impressed with how easy it was to work on the 'complicated' old girl!

Pics to follow tomorrow when I have got over the shakes of frustration!

[PeteRR]

Hope it all comes together ok with a fresh look tomorrow then Andy.
And 150K?, hardly run-in yet mate!

Do you have the part number for the Audi rear-diff oil handy at all?

[Rusty]

The rear diff oil and gearbox oil were both the same. Part no. G 052 911 A2 and Material no. G 052 911 3H are both on the label. HTH

[Rusty]

Rant:-



Hmmmmmm... it gets better. It would appear that the bearings were not pressed in correctly. The wheel/disc carrier was pressed into the bearing and then the bearing + carrier assembly pressed into the hub (me and a friend saw this being done and were not convinced that it was the way to go but left the chap to it, assuming that he knew something we didn't). I have been reliably informed that this is the incorrect method of assembly, as it puts huge loading on the inner race of the bearing during the second pressing operation, thus damaging the bearing. This will either reduce the life of the bearing considerably or could already have cause sufficient damage to leave it in a non-roadworthy state. This basically leaves me with an unuseable hub, which I'll have to take somewhere else to get the bearing fitted correctly and two bearings that will not last for very long and so I'll have to do the whole job again in the near future. That leaves me around £100 out of pocket and with a severly bitter taste in my mouth, no car and a headache for travelling anywhere next week!

Had the hub have been serviceable then I could have put the orignal G60s back on and at least had a car that I could use to get the monoblocks sorted but alas, no such luck.

Annoyed doesn't even cover it!

[4WheelDrifter]

Yes. I remember being very careful to press the bearings on the right way. The Bentley manual came in handy there.
It looks like you'll have to get 2 new bearings and start again.

[Rusty]

Indeed, best get in contact with my friendly Midlands based supplier... again!

[Rusty]

Passenger side strut with a fresh lick of paint!