Daily Tdi avant project

[philj]

Picked up a tdi as a daily, thoughts of lowering it and doing a "general light refresh" start rattling around.

Before I know it, its the usual "I can't take the daily off the road" and within a week a new green tdi avant gets bought. It apparently had quite a few new parts and was a late model. Aim was not to spend too much money but make a comfortable/economical ride that'll do some mileage without having to be pulled apart for a while.

Exhaust was a botched up effort of sorts, so knocked this up from spare parts first. Tailpipe is gash, will fix that.





Decided the front end needed sorting so picked up one of these. Which arrived damaged and needing a bunch of work.



Then the intercooler turned up for 99p on ebay so I thought "while you're down there" since it was getting the usual tuning. Was a complete pig to get on.



Mid brain storm...





Started on brakes and suspension, turned out all the ball joint rubbers (Wishbone, tie rod and drop links) despite being new had all perished.

I think the PO was trying to make a subtle statement about a being part of a multi coloured club due to the silly assortment of colours everything's been painted. There was lots of yellow, red, green, blue and orange.





Rear calipers were knackered so had to be replaced, least the fronts came with a vented upgrade. All new pads and discs, and some racing brake fluid.

Took it for an MOT, and noticed straight away its lowering springs on standard shocks. Rode like shizer, and the intercooler hose kept popping off. So it went back up on 4 axle stands. That was a month ago.

The suspension's been a faff. Trying to keep it budget-ish I bought some second hand bilstein b8s for the front and just some fk rears to go with the lowering springs already on there. Along with some blue top mounts off ebay.



Then found some s/h KW V2s with a knackered rear shock, got them, sent them off to get copied with dampening adjustment.



Then a set of new H&Rs monotube's turned up. Couldn't say no really. Worked out much cheaper than getting new dampers made up.



Noticed the steering arms aren't as low on the H&Rs when compared to the KWs?

Found out about the HD top mounts, hopefully last a touch longer...



Fitted cruise control and a new wheel.





Made a start on a light stereo install.



Had to at least de-yellow the car....





Finished the rear doors off with some cheap 6.5" speakers. Doesn't sound too bad.



Bought the proper crossmember and cooler which doesn't fit the TDi, so hacked it up to make it fit.



Finished off the rears with the KW springs powdercoated in white with the 5 stud conversion using a4 discs with new abs rings and bearings. The disc guard could be worse, it could be yellow.



Subframes off, thought I'd get the hump at those bushes if they started rattling after all that work. Going back on with polybushes in a couple days.



Just waiting on the 5 stud hubs to finish it off.

Worried the H&R spring rate might be too harsh, might get some new springs if they are.

Needs some electric windows though, got too used to the other one having those. How much arseache is involved in retro fitting them?

Also upgraded to the A4 style fuel filter and all new fuel pipes, still getting air bubbles in the fuel it seems. Hope its not the pump.

[JMLAudi]

Looking great project

i got a set of motors for front if needed,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but no wiring sorry...if you get it its easy enough

Great work

cheers
john

[Acidburn]

both of mine have had air bubbles in the lines, I've never worried.

Get a boost gauge on your car and see what its doing. I'm interested in hearing how you get on with the s2 ic, i'll be putting a thread up about my tdi avant later on in the year. To say its changed from when I bought it off john (above) is an understatement, and its not finished yet.

Out of interest how much was the coilovers? and where from?

How hard was it to get cruise working on this, and where abouts in the country are you?

Fitting windows is easy on this, once you have the loom there is a couple of connections in the drivers footwell then just running wires into each door, the cartridges just bolt in by 4x 13mm's on each door, just make sure you use avant cartridges as saloon ones don't follow the lines of the roof, if at worst you can just swap the motors.

sorry for all the questions.

[philj]

Cheers for the advice on the windows. Easy enough then. Front doorpods are done for the moment, think I'll leave the windows untill I fit a new interior anyway. Hopefully won't be too long.

S2 cooler is currently at the welders (well the pipe from inside the cross member is) Will let you know what its like when its going. I've swapped the inlet/outlet over due to the radiator.

Coilies were new s/h off ebay, someone bought them new and never fitted them. No secret source, although I can get Gaz made up new which is what I was going to do in the first place with the KW springs.

Cruise was easy enough, you have to take the stalk out of its housing and fit it into the 80 lot, wires are straight forward 4/5 match colours. Although I do need to check that when its on the road as it threw up an error in vagcom so could be something amiss there, but worked fine on the short test I had.

[R5T]

Great thread man ! keep it going

[Acidburn]

Cheers for the advice on the windows. Easy enough then. Front doorpods are done for the moment, think I'll leave the windows untill I fit a new interior anyway. Hopefully won't be too long.

S2 cooler is currently at the welders (well the pipe from inside the cross member is) Will let you know what its like when its going. I've swapped the inlet/outlet over due to the radiator.

Coilies were new s/h off ebay, someone bought them new and never fitted them. No secret source, although I can get Gaz made up new which is what I was going to do in the first place with the KW springs.

Cruise was easy enough, you have to take the stalk out of its housing and fit it into the 80 lot, wires are straight forward 4/5 match colours. Although I do need to check that when its on the road as it threw up an error in vagcom so could be something amiss there, but worked fine on the short test I had.

Got any pics of the front door pods?

What interior are you after? I have a quattro script one i'll most likely be binning soon.

[andyg plym]

if you come down phil i have 4x electric wins

also emerald green panels

[philj]

Bought them off ebay.de, didn't fit too well, left a huge gap around the top and the side piece didn't fit either.

So I put an MDF spacer ring in there to fill the gap.



Screwed it in, mounted the doorpod, tigersealed all the gaps.

Still a gap at the top but least it doesn't leak air. Will knock up a bit of trim for it when I get a chance.

This happened on the dash, as you do...

#

If anyone's got any spare inserts going cheap that be great.


Intercooler still doesn't fit.



The top pipe can be sorted with different bends as it hits the rad, but the bottom pipe where the old cooler cleared is hitting the cross member...



Seems a completely different type? Outlet has been welded, but the end tank is a different design.





Don't really want to cut the lower cross member, needs to be cut too much anyway.

So I moved the upper cross member down as far as I could on its mounts, moved the lower one up as much as I could on its mounts. Gained 4/5mm.

Next idea is to lower the intercooler 5/10mm, elongate the left holes and use a normal nut/bolt with a spacer on the right. Then hopefully notch the lower crossmember the remaining 10/15mm.

Could get the cooler TIG'd but theres would involve a rework of the end tank as theres no round pipe to just chop and re weld where it needs to be done.

Should have just bought a universal job and painted it black, might still if the above doesn't work.

[quattrostyle]

the one in the last picture is an ABY IC, the other one is 3B IC.

Cool project

[JMLAudi]

Intercooler

Hi mate
What inserts you looking for?

On the intercooler you can use intercooler bracket but weld rad support on to the bracketand fashion onto the snub nose cone in front..................i had this set up on my old red Audi 80 tdi Avant L190PNN before it got written off.


I used the rad. from a B3 1.6 td as its slightly thicker ,but its height is slighty smaller.
I found that there was a slight rest as you booted her but after that she just took off.....i didnt do any other engine mods on her but if i had the rest/hesistation wouldve been gone i sure

Great project

cheers
john

[philj]

Cheers, might just sell the cooler on I think. Any one know what its worth without a crossmember? No pulley marks.

Insert that goes in the dash that all the heater controls, grilles, stereo and switches bolt to. Bit that goes in the hole in that picture.

Good call on the rad idea, just finding a 1.6 rad, on a bit of a time constraint you see.

Was thinking off an s2 rad actually? Gives me an excuse for a 5 cylinder diesel + 6 speed if the 4 pot blows up down the line, and I wouldn't even have to change the springs again, great logic.

How many different types of that are there? Had a quick look at the pics and there are 3 outlets like the tdi.

Did all the usual Pinocchio motorsport on it - Lies to the fuel pump, afm, map sensor, egr, etc will adjust the actuator when its done. Shouldn't be too painfull to drive.

[Ryan80]

loving the work on this!

Im on the hunt for coilovers for my dagdag, are you selling the broken KWs? and if so, what is required to get them working properly? and how much might you be looking for them

Ryan

[M_GORDON]

[philj]

Kw fronts have already been sold on. Used the rear springs on the car, I do have one spare rear and one knackered rear shock but that's it.

I'm a dealer for Gaz, and sent them the KW shock to get the drawings from, so with a pair of front struts I can get you a full set made up without too much issues. Custom spring rates and adjustable dampers on a 3:1 ratio of rebound and bump. This was my original plan using the kw fronts for ease, used them on various cars over the years with excellent results. Then the H&Rs came up and I couldn't refuse.

Been pretty bad at updating this. Forgot a few minor things like I had to redrill the coilovers from M12 to M14.

This is definitely a car that does not want to be built.

Subframe got ruined by a garage when I had the bushes pressed out...



Had to get a new one.

Didn't think I had time to paint/powdercoat everything but with all the delays typically I had more than enough time. Ah well.

Got sent the wrong tubes twice for the subframe bushes. 3rd time lucky...



Noticed this issue with the wishbone bushes...





Had to get some washers made up. Hopefully solved that - "floflex" couldn't care less.

Finally got some S2 front hubs. Had the flanges and rear discs redrilled to support 5x100. Put them together with new bearings. Had a paranoid scare when I turned up to the new place to see the circlips supplied sitting on the floor.

Decided I didn't want to drill 5x112 onto 4x108 discs due to the overlapping, so forced myself into a 314mm brake upgrade on the basis its all the same price as the s2 stuff anyway.

More arseache when the 314x30 discs come with 10 112 pcd holes already drilled on it meaning I couldn't get the 100 pcd redrilled. Had to use 314x25s from the a6. Probably a better option anyway.

Sorted that, can't find any decent quality cv joint's anywhere, ECP only do q drive which I refuse to use. Knew they were useless unbranded crap, I only fitted new ball joints to get it through an mot knowing I'd replace them with lemforders when doing the above. They did 15 miles and sat outside for 3 weeks before I found the rubber had split already.

Went to get it all together with some S/H CV's and I must of hit one off center and knocked the spline. No where can get any decent quality ones I had already made one 2 hour round trip to find GSF first lot were wrong.

Anyway, GSF can only get GSP, I finally give in to go and get one of theirs again... To find its a GPD? Never heard of them, and to top it off, I get it home and it is too big to fit in the hub, and the abs ring looks completely different?



QC wanted a touch less than VW, not paying £400 for a pair of CV joints.

Rang GKN direct and they wanted £74, bit better. Then I scroll down on their email to see they had just forwarded from their suppliers who are charging them £16! Haha, so I had a winge about a 360% markup and managed to get some ordered for £40 each.

Still going to take 3 weeks, so if anyone had any v6 quattro outter cvs in the mean time would be a great help.

Did finish the intercooler...

Modified the front panel to sit further back.





Fitted a leather interior with a new gaitor and that is all about where we're up to.



Will fit the leather doorcards with some electric windows and some new doorpods at some point.

[Ryan80]

No worries, i got excited cause second hand sets dont crop up too often (that said, you found two sets) and the new ones are fairly pricey (im used to mk3 golfs with ebay £160 coilovers )
Any idea how much a set is likely to be? i can get a set of FK high sports for £540, only thing worrying me about them is it says the lower 35-65mm, which seems daft when i currently run 60mm springs

Oh and im bookmarking this thread because i have the aby intercooler and crossmember to go onto mine, and im now not looking forward to getting it fitting!!