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Great alternator service write-up, deserves its' own thread-header and perhaps a sticky in electrical. Can you describe how you knew in advance, which bearings and slip rings to order and from where; and how the new slip rings are fixed in place. Thank you sir.
Thank you! I was thinking of writing a how to. I'm missing a couple of photos to do a thorough job, but I should have time next week.
The bearings were a bit of a question mark before I took it apart. Local spare parts store gave me 3 different bearings based on the alternator OE number. We agreed that I can buy all 3 bearings and return the one that I don't need.
The slip rings (or even their p/n) were not available from the store I got the bearings from, so it was google time. I found an eBay supplier that had the right looking slip rings for sale so I bought them. They did not arrive in time so I had to google again. I found a Finnish shop that had the slip rings in stock which turned out to be genuine bosch items. The eBay ones were definitely not, their quality was pretty poor. Basically nearly all Bosch internal fan alternator share the same slip ring.
The alternator rotor has slots cut into the shaft that match the slip rings. The shaft also has little splines on it to hold the slip ring assebly.
So this week was MOT time. As per usual some faults were found. Rear left shock absorber was dead and the exhaust pipe was rusted through before the rear silencer. So I ordered some new bilstsein shocks and a Jetex catback exhaust system.
Today was time to fit new shocks. They are bilstein B6's
Just jacked the car up and took the oem shocks out. They were pretty tightly fitted to the lower arms so I had to give it a few good whacks to make it loose.
Bilstein fitted. The lower spring perch sits roughly 2cm's higher on these than on the oem's. So I had to compress the spring even more to fit them. It was a little scary since I only got some cheapo compressors but I managed to it The other low side is that the car sits a little higher now and looks somewhat funny. I decided to let it be, since my plan is to fit KW coilovers in the future. I could get someone to do a new groove for the spring perch snap ring but I thought it is not worth it since this will not be the permanent solution.
If I may suggest, particularly if you're driving this in the winter and haven't treated these two areas already, that you may want to (and perhaps, at least WRT the first instance, only if you later decide the KW's are too firm, however as the B6's are still too tall to simply re-install, and you then don't want that perch to by then be well seized for instance!) as follows:
a) Disassemble this coil-over and remove the spring's lower alloy mount which will expose the snap-ring it rests on), remove that too and spread some anti-seize in the ring groove, in the alloy perch and then reassemble, do wax-oil that alloy perch's exterior also; &
b) Remove any existing rust on or in the big black steel upper-perch bracket, particularly on the flat inboard side, as this area, bolted close against the inner-fender is a notorious rust-trap that untreated, will cause your brackets to have to be replaced. Repaint properly as required and treat with wax-oil.
Thanks for the tip. Hopefully they will be ok until june, my plan is to replace the rear quarter panel and and a little section from underneath the car. The rear end will need complete disassembly for that and it would be good time to stop any rust issues.
The Jetex exhaust system arrived and it was fitted yesterday. I was in a little hurry so no welding was done (I don't have any welding equipment myself), but I was able to mate the Jetex system to current one.
This is the current stainless catback system from Jetex. No underside pics since all of the work was done on axle stands and there is not too much space underneath to take photos
The Jetex system was pretty straight forward to install. It matched the oem exhaust hangers nicely. But while fitting the exhaust I noticed that both of the rear inner cv joint boots were torn. I replaced them two years back with SKF items so I thought they would last longer. The quality of today's parts is just . Boots now ordered from Audi and they will arrive next week. Let's hope that those last a little longer.
Shocking how rubbish some quality of modern parts is,(I had to change ball joints after only 18 months)
I like the numbered cups idea, simple and effective
Did the fuel pump relaying today. Not that I needed it right away but now it's ready for future upgrades.
Routing the wires from the battery to relay under the rear seats. I used 4mm2 tinned thin wall cable from battery to relay and 2.5mm2 from relay to fuel pump, as I could not pass the thicker wires through. Propably the 4mm2 wire gauge way overkill but at least it's enough.
So every wire was replaced. I had a little hard time feeding all the wire from to pump under the rear seats but managed to do it after a bit of fiddling
And that completes the fuel pump relaying. At first the car did not start but I quickly remembered that I did not install the fuse Fuse in and fired straight up Next job is to relay the headlights.
After the panel bond was cured the small rust spots were sandblasted and etch primed. After that followed a coat of sanding primer, polyester filler for dents and a couple of more primer coats. The primer was block sanded with P400 followed by P500 using a DA sander.
I also was able to do some painting. Here are the fenders about to receive base coat
Here the fenders receive their second coat of clear after wet sanding them first. The doors also got their first round of paint. They will be wet sanded and flow coated too.
I also relayed the headlights before the painting happened but got too excited about the shiny panels so I forgot to mention it. No pictures takes because that is pretty much just a loom spaghetti The relays were placed in the aux relay carrier under the dash.
Some voltages before and after. A big improvement I would say
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