must see engine bay!!! derracuda style.

[speeding-g60]

i stopped by to drop off some tools to my friend Derek (derracuda on forums) and he wanted to show me his progress on a car he has been working on. and i must say i was impressed. he, just like i am, is a home-builder, does stuff out of his garage at home. and, it looked great!

i dont know much about specs, but it has GT3071R, and some really nice seats that were pretty custom and lots of money. RS2 projectors with HID's, Euro rear bumper, that typical kind of stuff.

the stuff that impressed me the most was how clean the engine bay turned out and the customized FMIC mounting stuff he built. wait until he lets me post pix of the custom bracketry for mounting Reiger (real, not fake or FG) front bumpers. CAD designed and laser cut, fully adjustable piece. looks great!

anyhow, here are some pictures. enjoy! and yes i noticed the Audi rings are crooked on the grill, and i should give him a clean brake fluid reservoir cap too but his attention to detail is very high for the work he performs and the things he builds.

[PRY4SNO]

yum

[Error404]

Fair play that cross member / cooler mount is really nicely thought out and looks excellent

[mcandmar]

Umm, looks nice but i would have rubber mounted that inter cooler personally. With all the vibration and thermal expansion/contraction something has to give.

[FCP-ENGINEERING]

Very good job

[quattrostyle]

Derek always builds nice cars for sure. Think mcandmar has a point though with the IC mounting.

[A80Avant]

My intercooler has been mounted with alloy mounts without any rubber and has lasted nicely. One only broke when some local mechanic forgot to put the jubille clip on the IC exit, it blew and broke the mount in the process

[Rusty]

Nicely done

[Tarmac Adam]

that looks really neat and tidy and what re the seats out of they look cool

[Greg_S]

Very neartly done. Does he have the oilcooler mounted horizontally on the left of the photo too?

[ChrisAudi80]

I miss seeing Derek's work. Always has such cool solutions and attention to detail.

Also curious about the strut brace and the oil cooler mounting.

[ringbearer]

Sweet, thanks for posting!

[derracuda]

Hey all, thank you for the compliments!

The car was originally converted to AAN by 2B about 10 years ago. It left with a factory S2 intercooler/crossmember and I don't know what bumper. After that is when someone put a Rieger on, and some custom bracket that was very poorly thought out. It moved the intercooler up into the grill area, only had one rubber mount on one side, and the other sat loosely in a U shaped trough kinda deal. It rubbed a hole in the bottom of it on the pass. side, and flopped backwards and met with the P/S pulley numerous times.

It has an S2 6spd, 993TT front calipers on 2B/coleman rotors, 034 GT3071R turbo/software kit, and had someone's alu. radiator (2B or 034). The drivers side engine mount arm ripped off the frame rail and caused the engine to sit on the subframe, also creating enough tension to cause the alu. radiator to leak from it's core. The pass. side subframe mounts were rotted out and caused 3 major cracks from flexing. The P/S return line conglomerate was leaking everywhere, clutch slave/master were bad, the clutch line was positioned to rub on the exposed procon ten bracket on the bottom of the floor board, the shifter was loose as a goose (both ends were done), front brake pads were gone, ball joints, hyd. brake booster leaking, turbo oil return line leaking, poorly mounted crank case breather system chaffing on the RS2 IM, REALLY terrible intake plumbing fit job, Airbox flopping about, plug wires corroded on the the 034 coils, oil cooler damaged from an accident, A/C system components that were modified to fit this car were damaged from that same incident (wrapped around the oil cooler area) and numerous numerous other violations that needed straightening out.

I didn't do all the work seen, but repaired and made proper anything that wasn't, as requested by the owner.

To answer about the IC. It's a garrett unit that is a tank and I decided to hard mount it because of that. It's very well secured and that cross member is made from steel. It's a little heavy, but not too bad IMO considering all that it accomplishes and should never need replacing unless it gets wrecked. I designed it as such that after you remove the bumper, it's two t-bolt clamps and 4 bolts to remove the whole unit to gain access to the front of the engine. Service in the future will be a breeze. The rest of the charge tubing is aluminum (come on you brits, you know that's how it's spelled ) The radiator is a heavy duty recored unit, copper with 3/4" upgraded dimpled tubes. I recommended the copper route because in the long run, it's rebuildable. This one runs about $500 out the door, but if you ever need to, it can be fixed, unlike the aluminum units. To anyone saying the copper won't cool as well as the aluminum, I did a lot of asking around and researching. No aluminum radiator of the approximate same size will cool any more efficiently than a copper unit in proper working condition. Alu. is lighter, and has no other benefits.

I also designed a Rieger bumper mounting system that is low profile, goes the width of the bumper to provide a moderate amount of protection against what's behind that thin plastic skin (especially after the effort of building it), and provides a very secure mounting for the bumper. I always hate seeing aftermarket bumpers flopping in the wind at freeway speeds..... I'd hate to know what it would look like at real speed with what this car is capable of. The brackets are fixture fitted, will come black wrinkle powder coated, and are adjustable - (say it like Ludacris in 2fast2furious) front, back, side to side. I didn't find anything available to mount these bumpers, and I think the innovation will be greatly appreciated by enthusiasts. There is also tabs with holes welded to it so the cross wiring can be ziptied up behind the bumper skin. All hidden away and looking tidy.

All the red wrinkle is powder coat. the RS2 manifold, and turbo housings were ceramic coated, downpipe wrapped, turbo lines redesigned and made with SS lines and banjo fittings to get rid of those unsightly stacked adapters for AN lines (which the coolant return line was literally laying across the top of the valve cover in a protective sheath), and now run tidily around the backside of the head to the water manifold to allow an uncluttered top view of the freshly coated goods

Lastly, the oil cooler will have a duct to direct airflow from the pass. side air inlet in the bumper. Laying it flat wasn't my first idea, but allows for the best quick access when working on it in the future. It comes off in a couple minutes, lines included. It's also of decent size and wouldn't allow a vertical mounting without protruding below the bumper line.

I'm out of time now, but I'll try and post some pics of the bumper mounting soon.

[andy10v]

Nice to see you posting again Derek. I used to love reading your projects on motorgeek.