The mayhem begins: My airride build thread.

[Capt. Obvious]

It's made from an acual Burberry purse that I cut up; much to my girlfriend's chagrin.

[Maverick]

thats so cool. girls would love that.

[Capt. Obvious]

thats so cool. girls would love that.

Uh, kinda. Most think I'm a jerk for cutting up a nice purse! haha

[Maverick]

you can always buy a new one lol

[Capt. Obvious]

Made a little progress this weekend. Worked on the trunk and finalized where I'm going to put the tank and how I will mount the valves.

I'm giving up about 18 inches of trunk space for everything, but it's totally worth it so I'm not too worried. I'm going for an "OEM" look with the trunk, so the wall and new floor will be carpeted with charcoal carpet that matches the carpet already in there. I used 1/2" MDF for the enclosure and the wall will be supported by two metal L-brackets. It should be pretty sturdy.



The tank, valves, compressor and all the electronics will be mounted on the other side of the wall and be accessible via the fold-down seats. I didn't order the carpet soon enough so it wasn't here in time for me to put it down this weekend, so I couldn't actually mount anything, but this should give you an idea of how it will look:



In the future, the empty space on the right side of the enclosure will house an amp and a 10" subwoofer that will be mounted in the wall.

This will be the last update for about two weeks. Next weekend I'll be in The Vegas so I'll have to wait until the weekend after that to work on it again. I'm hoping that I will have the bags installed and the car laying on the ground by then however.

[2k1s]

You are so going to want to get silencers on those valves now. I'd also look into some additional sound deadening stuff for your back wall. Your system is going to be LOUD.

/you still need me to get you a price on that AZ compressor?

[3.0L AUDI A4]

It will be LOUD as HELL! Better use sound deadening and some rubber grommets under the air tank...

[Capt. Obvious]

I've got Dynamat that will be going in, and I might move the compressor to the spare tire well also, but I'm not sure if it will get enough air to stay cool in there. I'm gonna mess around with stuff a little more this week.

[dubenvy]

you can still mount it down there, just install intake and exhaust fans like on an amp rack.

[B6Lovin]

im getting excited. finish the bitch already!
i wanna see this thing on the ground

[martini]

Finally, I want to take a quick moment to thank Martini and his website (www.a4mods.com for those who don't know) for the wealth of great information he has compiled. That site saved me a lot of time of trying to figure out which wires were 12v switched under the dash and the best way to run the cable from the battery to the trunk. Thanks again Martini!

glad i could help

[martini]

Martini is the man!

hah

[Capt. Obvious]

im getting excited. finish the bitch already!
i wanna see this thing on the ground

Yeah yeah yeah... I should have the air management installed and working (and hopefully not leaking...) this weekend and by next weekend I should be on the ground. There will be A LOT of pictures and explainations once I get into the nitty-gitty of installing everything.

[B6Lovin]

YAY!

im gonna have to pull a doss
<tone = giddy little school girl>

[golgo13]

I like the Burberry insert wrap around your shifter, i like that a lot man. is that custom made? pm me about that please. thanks

Oh me too bro I would love to get one of my girls louis or gucci and set it off lol

[T-dot B6]

Hey Capt. Obvious, not sure if it was mentioned in this thread but the first stage of your car, what kind of HRE's did you use to have? TIA

[Capt. Obvious]

They're HRE 526's. Click the second link in my sig for more details about them.

[JJPA4SE]

FWIW... here are some more pic's of the car on page 2 (and i agree w/ rerep, please dont use it as inspiration)

[Capt. Obvious]

Oh my. That car makes Baby Jesus cry. The only thing I hope my car has in common with that one when I'm done is the color. I hope my front end goes lower than that one too.

Meh, I guess it wouldn't be that bad without the bra, different wheels and the trunk carpet and rag top changed to black.

[JBM]

also look at the convertible

[Capt. Obvious]

The Mini Cooper Pepper White Cabrio? One of my favorite cars ever, it's on the first page of this thread.

[Capt. Obvious]

I made A LOT of progress this weekend and I'm pretty excited about it. I'll post details tomorrow, but here's a progress pic for the time being:

[B6Lovin]

sweet jesus

[darkstar]

did you think about mouting the compressor outside of the car?

[gotdubd]

he seems to drive this thing a lot by the way he makes it sound. and i hate the idea of that even with a water trap...

[Capt. Obvious]

There isn't a lot of room under the car to mount the compressor (it's a 480c, it's a big boy). Shockingly enough, you can hardly hear it when it's on anyway. The seats absorb most of the noise, and once I Dynamat the rear shelf it'll be just a faint humming noise when it's on.

All I've got left to do now is put the suspension itself in, which I'm going to start Thursday morning.

[dubenvy]

Talk about a great way to spend thanksgiving!

[ewytt]

stuffing.

[B6Lovin]

YESSSSSSSSSS

its like christmas over thanksgiving... there better be enough pictures here to distract me from how fvcking boring my family is. lol

[Capt. Obvious]

Thanksgiving is at my parent's house this year, so I can take over the garage in the morning and work on the car until everyone starts showing up.

I'm hoping it should go pretty smooth, but everything has gone SUPER well so far, so I'm totally overdue for something terrible to happen...
I think the fronts are gonna be a piece of cake. However, I think the rear brackets are going to present some issues, but unfortunately I can't find out until I actually have the car torn apart and try to put them in.

Cross your fingers for me.

[B6Lovin]

well atleast you have removing the stock rear springs to look forward to.... lol

the stock non-sport rear springs are bigger than the stock sport fronts, and they come out of a hole that's twice as small.......

WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA

[Capt. Obvious]

I can get the rear (non-sport even) springs out in less than half an hour without even needing spring compressors.

[B6Lovin]

you cheat and drop the subframe. lol

do it the manly way

[Capt. Obvious]

Alright, here's the big update you've been waiting for: I actually made some real progress this past weekend!

The first order of business Saturday morning was to drive down to Tacoma so I could use the lift at my friend's work (a body shop that specializes in Mercedes repair) so that I could run the air lines easier. We put the car up on the lift and accessed the situation:



The first thing to do once we had the car in the air was to remove the two plastic panels/skid plates that are on the bottom of the car. These are held on with a bunch of 10mm bolts and some plastic clips.
Once we had those off, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the route I needed to follow was pretty much laid out for me, complete with brackets to secure the air lines to: on the drivers side I had the brake lines and on the passenger side I had the fuel lines.

The tricky part was running the air lines from the spare tire well through the rear subframe. The most important thing to do when running your air line is to run it in a way so that it won't rub or chaffe on anything and is away from sources of heat, because the last thing you want is to rub (or melt) a hole through your airline and be left with a leaky corner, or worse, stranded with an airbag that can't fill up! Be sure to always use rubber grommets when the air line needs to pass through holes. Rubber fuel line (get it at the auto parts store, it comes in bulk by the foot) makes a great protective covering for the air line in places where you can't help but let it rub on something and to protect. It's also really cheap, so don't be afraid to use it! I used about 4 feet of it in just the rear of the car.

Here you can see how I used the extra clip on the brake line brackets to hold the air line:


Here is a view of the bottom of the car after both of the front lines were run. You can see how the lines fit in there almost like they were that way from the factory.


Here you can see where the passenger side air line runs past the fuel filter and joins up with the fuel lines. You can also see the copious use of fuel hose to protect it:


Next order of business was to run the rear lines. These went pretty quick since they're a lot shorter than the front lines, just a lot of snaking lines through tight places and trying to squeeze my hands in to secure the protective rubber hose where it was needed.

An important thing to keep in mind when you run the lines is to make sure that they are the same length from left to right on each end. For example, both of the air lines going to the front of my car are 15 feet long and both of the rear lines are 7 feet long. The reason for this is that if there is too much of a difference in length, your bags will empty and fill at different rates and you'll look lame when your car is lopsided.

Once I was done, this is what the air lines look like coming through the spare tire well:

Getting the tubing through those grommets can be a pain, I suggest spraying some window cleaner on them to lube them up so they slide through easily.

After that was done, we did a little work and carpeted the enclosure where the tank and components will be mounted.

The L-brackets are to provide strength and support the wall portion of the setup. It's not the most elegant solution, but it's strong and will be able to hold up the weight of the subwoofer enclosure that will be getting added to it at a later date.

That's it for Saturday's progress.

[Capt. Obvious]

With the air lines run and ready to go, I was ready to finish installing all the air management components. The first thing I had to do was create the wiring harness for the air management system. This got a little confusing considering that each valve has six wires going to it. Here is a shot of my living room in the middle of the day as I was laying everything out:



My roommate walked in the room and commented that if he didn't know what I was building, he would think I was assembling a bomb in the living room! LOL

Here is a shot of the harness as I was working on finishing it up:

The gold things on top of the valves are the sending units for the gauges.

After I finished the wiring harness, I put the tank together. Depending on how you put your setup together, the parts you use for this will vary. However, ALWAYS use DOT approved air fittings and air line on your car! I got my fittings locally from a place called Valley Hose and Fitting in Kent.

Make sure you use Loctite 545 (the red stuff) on all the fittings to ensure an airtight seal. You don't need a lot of the stuff, just a drop on each piece is all you need. Another thing to keep in mind while tightening air fittings is that they are really hard to tighthen! They're not like a regular bolt where you can easily turn them until the end. After the first couple of turns. it gets really difficult to turn these fittings. It's also normal to not be able to tighten them all the way down, so threads will still show once it's tightened.

Once everything was mounted, it was time to turn the enclosure on its side and mount the relay for the air compressor and the block that supplies power to everything that needs a connection to constant 12v power (the switchbox, wireless controller and compressor relay). You're looking at the bottom of the enclosure in this pic:

The red wires are the leads for the gauge senders, the green wires come from the pressure switch on the tank which turns the compressor on, the black wires are the ground wires for the valves and the red and black wires twisted together are the leads from the compressor.

After this, it was time to manuever the whole setup into the car. The completed enclosure isn't particularly light and it's pretty awkward to move around, so it took a little work to get it into the car, but it made it without too much of an issue.

After I got the air management into the trunk, I had to run the air lines to the valves and connect the wires to their proper mate on the wiring harness I made and installed in the car a couple weeks ago.

This is before I cleaned up the wires and finished connecting everything:


After everything was connected, I started the car and the compressor kicked on, ran for about two and half minutes and turned off at 150psi. This was Sunday evening, and now two and half days later the compressor still hasn't kicked back on, so I'm pretty happy to report that I have NO air leaks in the tank!

I still need to finish hooking up the valve leads to the control box for the switches and clean up the wires a little, but other than that, I'm pretty much done with the air management.




The white square on the wall of the box is where the receiver for my remote control for the switches will mount. The carpet actually matches really well also, but since the OEM trunk carpet and the aftermarket stuff I have aren't exactly the same material, they reflect light differently so it doesn't look as good in pictures. In person it's a really close match though.

Next up: installing the suspension!

I plan on having everything installed and working by Friday evening.

[golgo13]

About time lol. GL with everything.

[alexza4]

Good Lord!!! This is one seriuos job! Good luck!

[osofast10]

BALLER... i can't wait to see this done

[B6Lovin]

i grow more excited by the day.

first thing you do when its done better be to take videos of it raising and lowering.....

[Quatime]

That's some great, clean work! I can't wait to see this thing slammed with your next set of wheels which I'm sure will be another awesome set!