Audi TT 225 - banger project

[B5NUT]

Over the weekend the front suspension & subframe was removed. Thankfully it all came apart quiet easily, and other than someone changing a CV boot at one point it's very unmolested by the hand of the bodge. I cannot stand a dirty wheel arch!

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Usual rust issues on all the suspension components, however there is very little on the outer and inner arches.
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Bushes are also well passed there best
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The hand of bodge. One of the parts changed has been bodged!. God only know what brand CV boot was used but it was the very cheapest.

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Joints on the mechanism that controls the self levelling headlights were all sized.
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The mounting points for the sensor had also corroded way to nothing. Once I tried to remove the bolt it just fell out and only powder was left.

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No matter how much genital prying and pen fluid I tried the ABS sensors would not come out! So they got a gentle tap with a BFH which removed them. New ones are cheap enough so no big issue with them being damaged.
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Looks like someone splashed on on the brake pads!
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Front bearing were also not in the best of condition, leaking grease and were a little to free moving for my liking.
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Don't usually see an inner CV boot failure
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Forgot about this! It's also had a single spring replaced. This one is made by KYB the other one side is still the original Audi one and it's covered in rust
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These were the only parts that refused to come off so were given some gentle persuasion with the angle grinder, to chop the nuts off.
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While I'm under the car I think I'll chop these off and fit some new one. Think it's only good will holding these together.
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Found a leak on one of the PAS hoses when the subframe was removed so that will need to be replaced.
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When I looked around at TT's there were many nice ones at about £3K, however when contacting the owners asking details on the cars not one of them had any work done on the underside other than usual maintenance of brakes and the like. So all of them will be needing this sort of work at some point or they will end up on the scrap heap. For UK cars unless someone has looked after them very well then most 20 year old TT with 100K + miles will all need some serious attention to the running gear. It's why I wanted a car with minimal body work issues and cheap so I can put some money into the car and bring it up to a £3K ish motor.

[B5NUT]

Got the subframe back form the shotblasting today. Have not had it powder coated as the two bushes fitted to the subframe are NLA and the two bushes are in very good condition, so will epoxy paint the subframe. However this got me thinking. Why are there only two bushes in the subframe? The two front bolts are secured to the chassis and it's just metal to metal no bushes. However the rear two bolts go through a very large subframe bush. So does that mean the subframe is allowed to flex around the area in red. This makes absolutely no sense to me at all, however I'm not an automotive engineer!

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[K Simmonds]

I use the dab of paint method as well or even a line with a permanent marker will do.

I hope you haven’t got to get at the turbo, I’ve done a couple on this platform and not enjoyed it all, lot’s of swearing 1/4 drive extension’s required.

Looks like your making good progress with the car, have you checked the condition of the metal PAS pipe behind the front bumper.? They are renowned for rotting through.

Forgot to add good man for pulling the sump off and cleaning it and the pick up out, I’ve dealt with the consequences of it getting blocked once on a B5 A4 I was driving at the time. I thought the cambelt had snapped, which it had due to the cams being starved of oil and making a real mess of the head.

[B5NUT]

Hi Kit,

Yes that pipe does have some rust on it but it will be sanded back and painted, it salvageable thankfully. It's the other pipe that is more expensive that has the leak. Will see if I can get a good one from a breaker.

I believe the oil leak could be coming from the oil feed or return pipe, and I have new seals for both. It does look a bit of a sod to get to.

Also just discovered today the GKN now use that cheaper plastic for the outer CV boot, and it looks like Audi OEM boot (Also made by GKN) is now also plastic. They are cheap enough at £13 but would rather spend the extra £10-£15 and have a rubber version.

[Monkeymagic]

In my experience VAG cars of this era have always come with the plastic GKN boots, they last far longer than the rubber variety. Usually only splitting on the smaller end over long periods.
The reason for only two bushes as because the rack is mounted to the rear of the subframe, those bushes allow a little flex.
As for the lower arm bushes they always fail, thankfully on the TT they used solid bushes not the awful flexy ones with voids.

[B5NUT]

So It's been a week since I removed the front suspension & subframe. All of the parts have been stripped and are ready for paint. The subframe and the lower arms went off for blasting. I'm only going to powder coat the lower arms, as the subframe just went for blasting to remove the rust. I picked in up on the Wednesday, hoping I could paint it that day but other commitments and life got in the way. I stored the frame in the house but even in my upstairs workroom the rust started to creep back.

So yesterday everything else was stripped using various power tools and air tools.
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Before and after as it were, they were in a bit of a state.
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Once I stripped them down as much as I could with the wire wheel, and then put them in the blast cabinet. My setup is really only for thin rust, as it does struggle with the thicker stuff. None of my wire wheels were small enough to get into this area so used the needle scaler to clean this lot off.
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So once all the parts were as free from rust as possible and all had been shotblasted the rust convertor was applied. A lot of the parts were heavily pitted, and unless I started grinding the metal away to remove the pitting then rust convertor was the next best option. I used the FE converter from rustbuster.
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The subframe was also applied with convertor. The blue colour is the during colour colour on the rust converter, It now looks black.
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The reason for not having the subframe powder coated was the bushes They are NLAThey are also in very good condition, due to the fact they get little to no flexing whatsoever, due to the front subframe mount being solid metal. I could have gone down the poly bush route but figured I would save myself some money and hassle by leaving them.
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Stripped down the headlight levelling arm. The joints were rusted solid. Going to see if I can find some plastic inserts as one them them is not in a good condition.
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CV joints were not in the best of condition grease wise. Couple of them looked like the one in the photo below, one had very little grease in it and the other was more like thick oil than grease! They were also stripped and cleaned of all grease and rust removed ready for paint tomorrow.

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While I was under the car yesterday, I removed the cats as I wanted to check them and fix/replace all the rusty nuts & bolts as most of them looked like this
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All of the bolts and nuts had to be cut off in the end and none of them were in good enough condition that I could get a socket on them. Once the cats were removed then I started cutting hammering out the pressed in bolts. I'll replace these with stainless bolts with copper nuts

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Also dismantled shocks, as I wanted the dust covers and stop buffer. These were the only salvageable parts on the shocks. Had to make up another tool using an old 19mm/21mm double ended socket. Made one of these of my A4 but it uses a different size nut then the TT. It's very basic just drilled out the center hole of the socket so it did not foul the top end of the threaded shock shaft, ground away some of the metal around the bottom of the socket so it did not foul on the rubber mount and then put a flat on the socket so I could get a spanner on it.

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Also had to deal with the inner race of the old bearing that was still firmly attached to the hub. The cupped ABS ring gets in the way of using my normal go tool of a bearing puller/splitter, so improvised with a another gear puller I had. Also used a clamp to keep the legs of the puller tight as there is so little lip to deal with it just pops off without them. Also there was no chance of getting a grinder in there cutting through the race.

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Also had to grind the edge off an old hub bolt to push against.
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So tomorrow will be paint for most parts and will be collecting the bottom and the refurbished wheels on Tuesday. I'm hoping the front-end is done this week so I can get the rear of the car stripped next weekend.

[Tractor Dave]

Nice work.

[B5NUT]

Thanks Dave.

Just ordered full set of PS4's for the car, the current federal family killer on the car are coming off.

So I do have a question if anyone can answer. I would like to tidy up the rusty exhaust. Has anyone painted the pipe sections before? Was also thinking of doing the cats as they are a mess. However they do get quite toasty. 750deg from what I understand. However you can buy manifold paint so don't see any reason whey the cats could not be done.

[Tractor Dave]

You will see from my threads that I wire wheel the exhaust and then treat with rust converter. I've only painted the middle and back box with high temp paint. Nothing much lasts on the downpipe or cats as they get so hot. The bilt converter keeps the rust at bay for quite a while and doesn't seem to burn off. Just be aware that if you wire wheel polished stainless, it leaves a textured finish.

[B5NUT]

Thanks Dave. I'm not touching the boxes, they are in good condition. It's just the pipes I would like to tidy up.

[K Simmonds]

Just caught up on your progress with this, it's looking good.

I'd have left those subframe bushes alone as well, no point creating more work than required.

I am surprised by just how rusty everything is underneath, though I guess the car is roughly 20 years old and been driven year round so subjected to three months of road salt annually.

Both my C4 Avant and RS2 are nothing like as crusty, though when I had them on the road I'd pressure wash the underside at least once a week in the winter.

I would love to be working on them but my elbow is still problematic and one handed mechanical work is pretty much impossible, though it is slowly getting better.

[B5NUT]

Thanks for the comments.

Slowly the front end of the car is starting to come back together.

Over the last coupe of days the arches were painted. The arches were washed, rust ground away and converter applied to the pitting. Once done two coats of Lechler epoxy were applied.
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Then onto the Base colour
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Followed by 2-3 coats of 2K clear and once dried all the masking was removed. Leaving a nice clean and shiny arch!
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Also got all the running gear parts painted. Think I used about 300ml of epoxy on this subframe alone both inside and out.
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Then all this lot was painted..
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I know I could have all that lot powder coated but, I'm trying to keep the cost down on this project so like Tesco. Every little helps!

Very little done this evening. Got the bearing pressed into the housing.
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This time remembering to support the centre of the bearing rather then supporting the housing while pressing the hub in and ******ing a bearing like I did on the S2 build
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Hub was then pressed in. The old one were well passed there best there was wobble on at lease one of the old bearing and they were a little too free running, so the grease has long since escaped .
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I was going to rebuild the drive shaft this evening. However it looks like a made a bit of a mistake! On the inner joint I removed and binned both the inner and outer metal covers for the inner joint. As I wanted to make 100% sure that all the old grease and dirt had gone. However when I opened the GKN CV kit tonight only the inner metal cover is included in the kit not the outer one. The item highlighted in red is the one I've binned.
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Now I think I've found a possible replacement. It's an inner CV boot kit from a B5 RS4 made by FEBI, looks like the right thing and the size looks to be correct. I just hope it fits.

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If that is not correct then my only other options would be to buy a set of used shafts or buy two new inner CV joints

[Rikki Kitto]

Great work

[B5NUT]

Thanks. Today was a step backwards in the rebuild. I was hoping to get the subframe in the car today but the PAS pipe were just not acceptable. The one that is leaking form the joint is over £400 from Audi, and the other one that is getting a little rotten is £250.

So today I had a drive up to Newcastle to pick parts from a car that was been broken. Got a replacement pipe for my leaking pipe. A nice £60 rather than the £400 from Audi. The pipe is now ready for paint which I'll do in the morning.
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however the other pipe I was also hoping to get was sold. So I've decided to strip my current pipe back and paint it. Thankfully it's still solid and does not have any holes, so it will be covered many coats of epoxy to keep the rust at bay and the water/salt out.
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The support that holds the front pipes was also starting to rot and it's part of the charge air cooler system so don't want to to be full of holes. That was stripped back this evening and rust convert applied and will be painted tomorrow.
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Changed return turbo oil seal. what a sod to get to. You can just see one of the bolts. The other is completely hidden and trying to get the bolt through the plate and the gasket and find the bolt hole took a while.

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Front alloys are back and the PS4's fitted. should handle a little better now. Yes, that is a lot of tyre soap on the tyre. He must have had trouble getting them on!
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Also got a replacement bottom engine support today. My support had started to dissolve away. not sure it would have made much of a difference but rather one fitted that is complete.
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People that read through my somewhat long a mostly boring updates on my s2 rebuild thread will remember what a colossal nightmare I had when looking for shocks for the car. Well you glad to know the TT has also been a complete pain in the backside when it comes to buying shocks. It would appear that "sports suspension" shocks are difficult to get hold of, and the standard shocks are 25mm higher than the sports version so they are no good. So rather than beating my head against a brick wall for days on end and returning shock after shock. I bit the bullet and presses the buy now button on these. Bilstein B12 Pro-Kit Suspension Kit With B8 Shock Absorbers. If these don't fit then it won't be my toys that are getting chucked out of the pram, it will be the hold bloody pram getting chucked about. Have to say I'm not keen on the yellow and blue colours.... It's not very factory looking!

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So tomorrow will involve more painting rust removal, and waiting for parts to arrive.

[K Simmonds]

Great choice of suspension, I always find Bilstein stuff to be really nice quality. As it happens I helped fit a complete B8 kit to a B5 S4 Avant a year or two ago and was highly impressed by both the fit and end result. The owner initially wanted all new Audi parts but changed his mind when we priced it all up, the car drives really nicely as well, not too stiff.

The rear springs are probably on their last legs by now anyway and are very prone to snapping and the rest is also probably getting also towards the end of it's service life, I forgot to ask how many miles has the car covered?

You could always carefully paint them black if you don't like the yellow.