Noooooob building Audi 4000

Hey all! My names Dane and as you can tell by the post count, I'm a noooooooob lol. Figured I'd just dive in and make a build thread to start off..... I'll post up up the last years worth of stuff that I've been working on, all the way to current. The car started off bone stock. Picked it up Spring of 2012 with intentions on dallying it through the winter and then after a couple years turning it into a race car of some sort. Only until recently have I become serious about full on track/race car. After recently leaving the performance world professionally, I actually enjoy cars again lol. I went from making 1000hp drag cars to making ammunition in a factory. Believe it or not, I'm way more happy making bullets than I was building cars for a living. Aaaaaanyhow...... The slow build has finally picked up its pace a little bit. I've got a little more direction now, more time, more space and a bit more money to play with now. The work swapping the drivetrain over happened in my tiny little garage in Minneapolis. 3 months ago we moved to Cambridge where I've got an actual shop to work out of now. So I know it doesn't look like much work over the last year but it's been a year of moving, new job, baby on the way and not really being able to work on it last winter due to no heat in the last garage. Plus the up and down motivation levels that go with projects.....So the pictures will start from when I started the 7A/01a swap last July.
Well, on with the pictures!

On jack stands getting ready.

Gotta ask cause I'm right in the middle of making some Audi parts for a couple of people out here in the PNW, what you planning on for suspension? Cause as for what is commercially available, there's isn't anything worth spending money on so I'm making some and right now its time to finish machine the steering arms and I have to do enough to spread the set up costs so the unit cost is not too terrible, so let's talk and see if you can get into the current run..

You seen the stuff done for Vittorio Barres up in Nude Hampster?


These things?


Well we're making the steering arms as a 1 piece detachable thing so that the struts are not "handed" like LEFT front and RIGHT front, but instead any strut goes in any position...so that 1 spare will do for the whole car.

Interested?

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

The donor car! 1990 90q 20v. Picked it up off a father who was pissed at his 16 year old son for jumping a culvert at 50mph pretending he was Mouton running Pikes Peak. Out of spite he sold the car to me for $600 and bought his son a bicycle! That guy was awesome......



Broken control arm, trans mount, bent tie rod and tweaked core support. Luckily the suspension was straight and I can weld aluminum!

John,

Yes! Very interested! I've been lurking for a bit on here and special stage for a few weeks. I've been drooling over that exact picture and your suspension, for quite awhile. I was going to contact you as soon as my Datsun sold. I don't have the $2kish at the moment or even $1k to get the ball rolling on a set though right now. As soon as my Datsun sells, the car will get a cage and money down on your suspension. Unless there's a way to break up the price point over a few payments type of deal? I'm in absolutely no rush right now, if that makes any difference. I'm shooting for a stage ready car for 2015, with shakedown rallyX events next summer.

First step was to get the power trains out of both vehicles. I started off with the 4k. I didn't really want to mess around with mix matched clutch setups when mating the 20v to an 016, even though I know that tranny is stronger, crashed A4s around my area are plentiful. Plus, eventually an 01e will go in when the time comes to make power.

Audi says to drop the subframe with the engine/tranny.....


Dane says fuck that! What idiot designed that bullshit up? Out the front....der der


10v/016 out and set aside.....


Now time for the 20v......

Yanking the 20v. Motor ran fine with 120k on the clock. Wiring was all intact as was the oil pan! Leaks a little bit it took a pretty good hit. Had to pick clumps of grass out of everything before I could even start lol!



Score! Spec clutch and LW flywheel! Explains why it revved quicker.....


At this point I pulled the tranny on the 90q and then harnesses on both cars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2013 01:35PM by deaner.

Kaboooooooooom! What a mess!


Shade treed the rear ends around. Luckily Audi is pretty swap friendly when it comes to parts interchangeability. I literally unbolted both subframes and just swapped them. Driveshaft fit perfect, like normal the carrier bearing mounts were rusted and broken. An hour chiseling out the rotten spots and tacking in new nuts and done! Whole rear end swap took like 8 hrs, including messing around with that carrier bearing.


Got the diff stuff finished up and then swapped the brakes and time saving 2 piece suspension. Will make suspension work a breeze!

So, at that point, rear ends were done and the engine bays of both cars were empty. I don't have pics of the broken trans mount, but I welded that back together and prepared to put the 01a into the 4k. I ordered up some 034 Motorsports engine and trans mounts, wheel stud kit and hood pins.

Bye bye stupid wheel bolts.....


With the mounts in, I dropped the 01a into the chassis. Pulling apart everything I kept thinking how I was going to do the shifter linkage. The linkages themselves between the 2 trannies were completely different, as we're the mounting spots of the shifter and the entire tunnel itself. Here are the 2 shifters side by side.

4k on the left, 90q on the right.


With some thinking and measuring, I hacked apart the stock 90q shifter along with opening up the trans tunnel a little bit, and made this!


Puts the shifter like 5" higher while keeping the linkage angles the straight. Normally VAG cars suck sometimes with how low their shifters sit in relation with the steering wheel. Problem solved! This picture is recent btw. As you can tell I've started gutting the car in prep for wiring and a cage...that's later though!

Ok so at that point, the driveline was sorted, shifting was sorted and all that was needed was to drop the motor in and do the wiring. I started in July of 2012 and wanted to have it running before duck season. I knew that once October showed up, it is was game over. Chasing ducks and then straight into winter with no heat in the garage, I knew that it would sit all winter. At this point we were going into August. One of the shop I was working ats, busiest times. All the straight liners(drag racers) have broken their shit by now and are scrambling to get their cars back together to finish the season out. I was working non stop at the shop. I did manage to get the harness run, engine dropped in and started doing the wiring.

Then it happened.....

Duck season!!!!!!!!!!!!

MN opener with the wife! One of them was banded!



Quickest hunt I've ever been on! 2 man limit in less than an hour! Me and my buddy were eating breakfast at the diner by 9am!

First Can of the season!


And then another awesome mixed bag hunt! Cans, blue bills, teal, spoons and I think a red head or 2?


Ok enough with hunting lol. Back to cars I suppose....... Man that was a fun season.......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2013 02:36PM by deaner.

Ok maybe a couple more......






Ok I'm done. Back to race car!

Quote
deaner
John,

Yes! Very interested! I've been lurking for a bit on here and special stage for a few weeks. I've been drooling over that exact picture and your suspension, for quite awhile. I was going to contact you as soon as my Datsun sold. I don't have the $2kish at the moment or even $1k to get the ball rolling on a set though right now. As soon as my Datsun sells, the car will get a cage and money down on your suspension. Unless there's a way to break up the price point over a few payments type of deal? I'm in absolutely no rush right now, if that makes any difference. I'm shooting for a stage ready car for 2015, with shakedown rallyX events next summer.

Yeah Dane since its so costly building a complete car now I have "made arrangements' with literally hundreds of guys... for me it's good cause some things have to be made model specific, like the steering arms, and the economies of scale is the operative word when using CNC: bigger runs does equal lower costs...Knowing you wanna go for the stuff means I can wipe my brow a little and spread the costs of machining over more parts...the raw pieces are already there and design is done...

So give me a ring when I have more ciggies and lets do some "pencil in planning".
You should definately get hold of our own AJ here, formerly in Idaho, now in Pendelton OR.. He's a sharp guy and ahead of you in the build phase. I'm sending him some of the whole top mount things I make for Xratties which are straight copies of earlier GroupA parts for fords and VERY similar to the Audi top mounts..

The hope is we can use the Ford bits maybe with some re-do of the fat rubber mounts cause the Audi bits are as chees-u-larly cheesy as the cheesoid Ford junk and we have to have something durable..

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Quote
john vanlandingham


Yeah Dane since its so costly building a complete car now I have "made arrangements' with literally hundreds of guys... for me it's good cause some things have to be made model specific, like the steering arms, and the economies of scale is the operative word when using CNC: bigger runs does equal lower costs...Knowing you wanna go for the stuff means I can wipe my brow a little and spread the costs of machining over more parts...the raw pieces are already there and design is done...

So give me a ring when I have more ciggies and lets do some "pencil in planning".
You should definately get hold of our own AJ here, formerly in Idaho, now in Pendelton OR.. He's a sharp guy and ahead of you in the build phase. I'm sending him some of the whole top mount things I make for Xratties which are straight copies of earlier GroupA parts for fords and VERY similar to the Audi top mounts..

The hope is we can use the Ford bits maybe with some re-do of the fat rubber mounts cause the Audi bits are as chees-u-larly cheesy as the cheesoid Ford junk and we have to have something durable..

I def will and I'm def in for a set as long as you're cool with working something out. How were you going to make the tie rod arms removable? Does AJ have a website or build thread on here that you know of?

Quote
deaner

Quote
john vanlandingham


Yeah Dane since its so costly building a complete car now I have "made arrangements' with literally hundreds of guys... for me it's good cause some things have to be made model specific, like the steering arms, and the economies of scale is the operative word when using CNC: bigger runs does equal lower costs...Knowing you wanna go for the stuff means I can wipe my brow a little and spread the costs of machining over more parts...the raw pieces are already there and design is done...

So give me a ring when I have more ciggies and lets do some "pencil in planning".
You should definately get hold of our own AJ here, formerly in Idaho, now in Pendelton OR.. He's a sharp guy and ahead of you in the build phase. I'm sending him some of the whole top mount things I make for Xratties which are straight copies of earlier GroupA parts for fords and VERY similar to the Audi top mounts..

The hope is we can use the Ford bits maybe with some re-do of the fat rubber mounts cause the Audi bits are as chees-u-larly cheesy as the cheesoid Ford junk and we have to have something durable..

I def will and I'm def in for a set as long as you're cool with working something out. How were you going to make the tie rod arms removable? Does AJ have a website or build thread on here that you know of?

AJ has build thread here somewhere.
The arms shall look like thick versions of the 3 piece deals and the bottom part will be a squareish deal with 4 bolts in the corners and bolts down to a matching flange welded onto the body just above the "ears"...Pretty simple really.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Quote
john vanlandingham


AJ has build thread here somewhere.
The arms shall look like thick versions of the 3 piece deals and the bottom part will be a squareish deal with 4 bolts in the corners and bolts down to a matching flange welded onto the body just above the "ears"...Pretty simple really.

Gotcha. So it slips over and is bolted to the flange type of deal? Makes sense. I'll hunt around for AJs thread. Is that red 4k using factoryish top mounts?