S2 Restoration Options.

[Twenny Benson]

Seems to be quicker to get apart when you don't care about the panel your removing lol.

Changing just a sill would be fairly straight forward I reckon, I called my parts man at Audi about a sill and there expensive and not many left! The replacement sill I have needs a few dents sorting out but nothing major just going to dolly them up and be happy is not rusty. You could remove your sill & dolly it into shape and refit it depending how bad it is, Or cut a section from a scrapper and weld that in? Doubt it would be that difficult to line it all up again

[Error404]

Well done mate, you're certainly making good progress

you're really making me wanna go buy a new sill and cut my dented one out!

[Twenny Benson]

Quick brew time update, more like a photo dump.

Rear quarter is off to reveal more rust and more differences, there are two in the first picture, the obvious one and a not so obvious one!











That would not polish out

I'm not to bothered that the sill & outer arch is completely knackered as I planned to change them anyway, but here are the pics anyway





And thats the other difference I've found between the ABY & CQ, there is an extra bridge piece there on the ABY.

The CQ for comparison



Now the toe piece on the B pillar needs sorting out as will those bridge pieces and possibly the metalwork behind it. The cowboys that fitted this rear quarter didn't even seal it to the outer arch piece! No wonder its all rotten



This picture is looking down the B pillar on the inside, look how the sheet metal work that joins up there is all bent! Starting to wonder how straight this shell is



Luckily thanks to DJH I have all of these sections on standby ready to weld in and I'm quite confident I can pull this off to a much higher standard than the previous attempt.

So I cracked on and cleaned up the flange faces that will be needed, primed them with weld thru zinc primer. I finally fired up my new portamig and had play with the voltage settings & wirespeed on a scrap piece, welds nice & smoothly. Think I need a bit more practice before welding on the car, I need to tighten my spacing a little.









I then welded in a bent weight lifting bar across the A & B pillars in readiness of removing the sill and pieces of floor pan, I will brace the A & B pillar again on the outside once the sills removed just while I replace the pieces of floor pan.



I'm hoping my pack of new spot weld drill bits & hammer & dolly set arrive tomorrow then I can crack on. I'm hoping by the end of the week to have the replacement sill & floor pan pieces in place and possibly the rear quarter! Come on courier man bring my ****.

Brew finished, back to it.

[Error404]

I guess the gear for handling a complete chassis plus the cost of filling a bath big enough to take one must be pretty expensive etc

[Twenny Benson]

Well, there is a place locally that I take engines, heads too etc, there baths are mahoosive. I asked about dropping a car in and they said it would be fine. They have a multi stage process, the main one being the acid dip, then through multiple rinses and finally a phosphate dip, there is a place across the road where they can epoxy prime it as well, I think its expensive for dipping a large piece of metal in a bath though so I'm still thinking about that one. All the components I've removed will getting dipped and painted, this for some odd reason is a fraction of the price of dipping a chassis, doesn't make any sense as the million & one components has to be more of a ball ache than one chassis but the price is almost 10 times more

[Error404]

have you though about biting the bullet and getting it dipped?

[Twenny Benson]

**** me never seen so much filler on one of these before, that car has seens its fair share of shocking repairs over the years!
Glad its getting the treatment it deserves

I have to admit I was a bit shocked myself, its is pretty bad, when I took the wire wheel to it it just turned to dust. If I had been rear-ended while driving this thing, the back half would have just disintegrated! Scary. It shouldn't matter now though as I have pieces for all those nasty bits and it all seems quite straight forward. Its floorpan in the boot area that I'm now going to struggle with since the pikey robbed one half of it. I might just recreate an entirely new piece, hmmmm. There is alot to do, more than I anticipated and I'm sure I will find alot more yet. Slowly slowly is the key, I think I should be ordering up some box section to brace the shell before I cut too much out of it me thinks

[Error404]

**** me never seen so much filler on one of these before, that car has seens its fair share of shocking repairs over the years!
Glad its getting the treatment it deserves

[Twenny Benson]

Cheers dude, I was a bit skepitcal about the rotesserie at first as it didn't look beefy enough but I'm sure it'll be fine as I can lift the front or rear off the axle stands myself so it can't be that heavy. Should have it spinning soon hopefully.

[TimE-J]

Nice project!

I like the rotisserie, I've got a mk2 golf up on one!

[Twenny Benson]

Audi Autopsy! I just hope I eventually find some steel I can weld to lol.

[andy10v]

Nice progress!

It is interesting to see bits of the shell you don't normally.

[Twenny Benson]

Those are the one's I've noticed thus far, plus there a fair few upfront, here's one I haven't heard mentioned, the box section pieces under the front floor pans that tie into the chassis legs are very different, the CQ ones are much larger and extend further down the sides of the floor pans than ABY ones, God only knows why Audi decided to change these!?! I would have thought the CQ would make a stiffer shell. Here are some rough shots of what I'm on about. I will take pics of everything I notice and post them all up together at some point.

CQ


ABY



The aim of all this graft is to hopefully create a track orientated road legal coupe, she will never be a show pony but hopefully awesome in a rough track car kind of way. My plan for now is to get the shell solid again, stitch her up and seal it all up and get it painted. Then its just a case how much money do I bolt on to it!

Some more joyful pictures from this afternoons efforts





Along way to go yet!

[Error404]

No prob's I will make sure I capture the ABY vs. CQ differences, I have found lots more that I will make sure I get pic's of. Bodywork is something new to me as well, this is my introduction I can weld, just never had to weld a car before. Lets hope she turns out well.

There's three I know about at the rear end - the quarter panels as Mark posted the link to plus there are the vertical members tying the rear towers to the inner C-pillar area. Both ABY and 3B have an additional cross-tunnel brace too.
Be good to have a list

so remind us what the aim of the project is mate?
road / track or somewhere in-between?

ez
Alex

[Twenny Benson]

****! you have your work cut out there dude (no pun intended!)

It is certainly not happy, its seems to get worse the more I remove. Its alot of work but I've come this far I may as well see what I can do with it.

Please do take some side by side pics, i stumbled across this before but would love to have a clearer look at the difference.

http://www.s2forum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=425595&postcount=229

Great thread by the way, body work is something i know little about, always eager to learn

No prob's I will make sure I capture the ABY vs. CQ differences, I have found lots more that I will make sure I get pic's of. Bodywork is something new to me as well, this is my introduction I can weld, just never had to weld a car before. Lets hope she turns out well.

nice restoration projects mate !!

keep on the good job and thanks for sharing that with us !

good entertainment here

Thanks mate, I will try and keep all the progress posted