B7 A4 2.7tt Engine Swap

[austin white]

I'll be buying a muffler/resonator very soon so who has a good muffler/resonator they would like to recommend that doesn't drone.

[tankdeer]

The RB8 cluster does not have the pin for the gas cap switch.. The switch I believe is wired into the comfort control now and the message is sent to the cluster via can. Closest solution I came up with was downgrading to a rb4 cluster and changing a few pins around at the cluster

Why does this come up after the swap though? Is the signal routed through the ECU for some reason? Can you give details on what pins you had to swap around?

[mightemouce]

Why does this come up after the swap though? Is the signal routed through the ECU for some reason? Can you give details on what pins you had to swap around?

I believe it's routed through the med9 unless an me7 communication is interfering the can bus signal sent to the rb8 cluster. I never finished setting up the rb4 cluster because I sold my car but based on the instrument cluster codes a ground pin may need to be changed. Rpm and speedo worked right off the bat

[tankdeer]

I believe it's routed through the med9 unless an me7 communication is interfering the can bus signal sent to the rb8 cluster. I never finished setting up the rb4 cluster because I sold my car but based on the instrument cluster codes a ground pin may need to be changed. Rpm and speedo worked right off the bat

Hmmm. Interesting. Ok then. At least the RB4 does seem like an option, albeit a slightly annoying one. No more annoying that having false warning codes/messages though

[Charles.waite]

Why does this come up after the swap though? Is the signal routed through the ECU for some reason? Can you give details on what pins you had to swap around?

That was my question. The gas cap light should be irrelevant to the engine swap...

As mightemouce said, I suspect you can just ground the proper pin and be done with it. It's seems ridiculous to have to swap a cluster simply for a gas cap light. I suspect a quick trip to the Bentley wiring diagrams will shed some light on this....

[tankdeer]

Maybe. Would definitely prefer to keep the RB8 cluster because as you said, it's a dumb change for a little light. I skim through the last ~20 pages of the swap thread again yesterday and saw a few B7 people mention it, but no fixes yet

[austin white]

If someone has an idea of how to fix it I'd probably be willing to be the guinea pig and move some pins around just as long as it's not too inconvenient and there's some logic to back it up.

[mightemouce]

That was my question. The gas cap light should be irrelevant to the engine swap...

As mightemouce said, I suspect you can just ground the proper pin and be done with it. It's seems ridiculous to have to swap a cluster simply for a gas cap light. I suspect a quick trip to the Bentley wiring diagrams will shed some light on this....

You can't ground the gas cap pin... I've tried this. The rb8 cluster pulling the warning code from the canbus system or the me7 is sending a false signal on the bus system.

An Abox me7 file may work or downgrade to the rb4 cluster those were the only two ways I had the warning off

[Ali SC3]

good info, will need to look into this. wonder if you can flash the ecu to that version that would probably be easiest seeing as I need a tune also. Those 2.0t A/c lines were tricky to bend around the 2.7t compressor but it does seem to work. alot left to go. How is yours going, getting some street time in or still assembling stuff?

[austin white]

Right now I'm just working out the kinks and breaking things in on the street.

There is some oil dripping from a couple places I believe, but its really hard to tell where the origin is.
I had a boost leak for a little bit but it was an easy enough fix, just had to tighten some clamps.
All in all it feels like the clutch is getting a little "grippier" so I'm guessing that means the clutch is breaking in.
There was a decent amount of smoke coming out of the engine bay after doing some pulls but now thats come to an end pretty much. This is most likely the piston rings seating and stopping so much oil from going into the crankcase under high pressure.
I don't have any videos or pictures yet but once I go back next I'll do that. After I get the exhaust all done then I can put the wideband sensor in and move onto logging the car.
So far it feels slower then a k04 car. According to my boost gauge I'm only running 15psi and if I had to guess I would say i'm only doing like 400hp to the crank, which is pretty crazy to think that in the end I should theoretically be doing 500whp.

[Urtorsen]

Great to hear it's on the road. Please keep us all updated. I'm keeping a lookout for a cheap BEL engine.

[austin white]

A buddy of mine just picked up a k04 s4 and of course one thing leads to another and we're ripping through the gears. After an aggressive display of power from both of us that was about 15 minutes long, we're pulling up to a light and come to a complete stop. After the light goes green I try to put my car into gear and it isn't having any of it. Once a little push was given to get the car rolling I could put it in gear and start driving while rev matching if I needed to shift. I eventually get home and realize that if I try to put the car in gear while the car is running it will start to lurch forward as if the clutch were not disengaging. When the car is off however, there is no problem shifting into gear. Now my car only has about 150 miles in at this point so that means my clutch isn't entirely broken in just yet. I'm pretty confident that what happened was that my clutch got very hot and ended up sticking to my flywheel. I believe I have removed all other possibilities for the cause.
Does anyone have any proven methods to break free the clutch and flywheel?
Also if this happens to anyone else, my guess is that it will be much easier to break the clutch free when it is nice and warm. So it would be easiest to try to break it free right away with whatever method proves to be the best. Or you can just be smart and break in your clutch like you should and avoid this whole thing.

[tankdeer]

Those exact symptoms happened to my buddy's S5 and when we tore it apart we found that the fingers on the pressure plate were bent. So pedal depressed or not, it wasn't fully disengaging the friction disc. New PP fixed the issue. It could also be your slave cylinder

[austin white]

Those exact symptoms happened to my buddy's S5 and when we tore it apart we found that the fingers on the pressure plate were bent. So pedal depressed or not, it wasn't fully disengaging the friction disc. New PP fixed the issue. It could also be your slave cylinder

The slave is new but nonetheless I pulled the slave cylinder and the piston from it was well intact. While that is out I can stick my finger into the hole and feel that the arm that pushes the throwout bearing into the PP fingers is pretty tight and high up as it should be. I would think that if the fingers were bent that the arm would be loose and able to move down without resistance and coming in contact with the fingers

[tankdeer]

The slave is new but nonetheless I pulled the slave cylinder and the piston from it was well intact. While that is out I can stick my finger into the hole and feel that the arm that pushes the throwout bearing into the PP fingers is pretty tight and high up as it should be. I would think that if the fingers were bent that the arm would be loose and able to move down without resistance and coming in contact with the fingers

Possible. We replaced his slave as a precaution because it was cheap and original. And it didn't help. I don't remember if we tried playing with the arm inside or not.

Where is the engagement on the pedal? After his was messed up you only needed to release the pedal 1/2" or so before it would engage. That's around the time we determined it was the pressure plate.

[austin white]

Possible. We replaced his slave as a precaution because it was cheap and original. And it didn't help. I don't remember if we tried playing with the arm inside or not.

Where is the engagement on the pedal? After his was messed up you only needed to release the pedal 1/2" or so before it would engage. That's around the time we determined it was the pressure plate.

right now the clutch is always engaged but previously the clutch would engage just like it would before I did the swap which is about 1/2" above the bottom. I also can say that i can hear a little squeak from the PP when i would push the pedal and the slave was still in

[tankdeer]

Yeah, that's hard to say for sure. You could have fused the clutch to the flywheel, but I would expect that you'd have to slip the shit out of it for that to happen. Either way, you'll probably have to pull it and see

[Charles.waite]

Can you even fuse an organic disk to a flywheel?

My vote also goes to the pressure plate. Does the PP have a SAC mechanism? If so those are somewhat problematic as well...

[austin white]

I just seriously don't want to pull my trans because that means my car being down again, which is exactly what I don't want.
do you have any ideas of what exactly would be wrong with the PP and how I might be able to troubleshoot it?

[LINDW4LL]

I'll say it again- there's no way you fused the flywheel and clutch.

It's either the slave or PP. Trans pull incoming!

[tankdeer]

I can't think of any way to troubleshoot without pulling the trans.

[austin white]

so is it a faulty part or is there something I did wrong that would cause this? considering i got 150 city miles on it with no issue from the clutch system that leads me to believe that I installed it properly. Of course i could have still made a mistake that would only appear after my car got beat on a little. I will test the slave to see if it pushes the piston out when the pedal is pushed. If it's a sticky clutch (this seems to be the least popular answer) then all I have to do is manage to do is break it free. the only other option is the PP, so if I rule out the other two I will be forced to pull my trans and investigate what's wrong. I just don't see how I could have broken my PP.

[austin white]

So after a little research, a possibility that I'm considering now is that the pressure plate bolts are backing out. i don't hear any rattling yet so i'm not sure if this is a real possibility or not. Although I do know I did reuse the old PP bolts and i didn't put any loctite on them.

[Charles.waite]

That could be the problem for sure. If you can get a hold of a borescope you might be able to stick it in the inspection hole or just pull the slave out and peer into the tranny and see if the bolts are backed out. Just toss the car on stands and rotate the wheels in gear to spin the pressure plate.

[austin white]

Just read this from a guy on bimmerforums "Pull the M3 out of the garage the other day to discover a few drops of brake fluid coming from the trans. Diagnose as a failing slave cylinder as the past few weeks the car was getting a bit tough to get in and out of gear. So I replace and power bleed slave but car will not go into gear when started. Tried pumping clutch 100 times, removed slave and bled again with no luck. Ended up removing clutch stop and was able to sometimes get the car into gear. Out of frustration and time constrants, I limp the car to a local reputable shop. They attempt to bleed with the same results. Next up the chain would be the master cylinder so I tell them to go ahead and replace. Then I get the dreaded call that still, no clutch. They do some more digging and find a cracked master cylinder supply line. They hypothosize that the cracked line is allowing air into the line, so they replace said line and bleed again. Still no clutch. Next up is dropping the trans and looking for a bad throwout bearing or fork pivot. I give them the ok and hope for the best. The next day I get a call asking me to come down and take a look at the car. We find out why the clutch wont disengage:

- The pressure plate bolts had backed out due to the lack of locktite on those bolts"

this is pretty much my scenario, not sure if I should even try to drive it to somewhere I can work on it or just tow it there.

[LINDW4LL]

Since you have a free trailer to use; just tow it.

[Charles.waite]

Trailer it somewhere and get new bolts and use locktite.

Just Doug that probably won't be too bad, just slide the tranny back a foot, replace bolts one by one. Slide tranny back in. Easily doable in an afternoon.

[austin white]

According to ECS the bolts are M8x16. Does anyone know if the bolts need to be a special material or would a store like Home depot or Menards carry something that would be good enough?

[tankdeer]

They're TTY bolts. I highly doubt a hardware store will have them

[aluthman]

According to ECS the bolts are M8x16. Does anyone know if the bolts need to be a special material or would a store like Home depot or Menards carry something that would be good enough?

I would just get them from a dealer if I were you.

[Ali SC3]

Man thats unfortunate, hope it works out without too much fuss. I actually have an access hole on mine, where Mec cut the top of the bellhousing out.. including one of the bolt holes.. lol
its a little hard to reach but its like a window into the trans, just hope the trans stays bolted to the engine.

make sure you order the right bolts the first time I ordered PP bolts I wasn't fully paying attention and got the wrong ones, that wasn't fun on install day and made me think my pp threads were bad, but they were just fine bolts were wrong.

[austin white]

I ordered some new OEM ones because the risk to reward didn't seem that good. What's the torque specs on those PP bolts? i've gotten a couple answers.

[austin white]

Well she's back on the road. I picked up some OEM hardware and found an equivalent to red locktite then pulled the trans. I thought I would be able to just scoot back the trans and slide a torque wrench in there but thats a lot easier said then done, so I ended up just dropping the whole trans. Found that the PP bolts were pretty loose, not quite hand loose but pretty loose. After reassembling the car, she shifted into gear quite nicely. Took me and a friend of mine two days to do the job all in all.

One thing that has been happening is when I start the car cold there is a pretty loud squeal for a second or two and then it's gone. it sounds like the most common cause is a belt, has anyone had this happen to them.

[Ali SC3]

Nice fix, that is weird how they got loose so fast. I can't remember what torque I did, but I went a little on the tighter side as the steel flywheel can handle it.. well unless of course you hulk it. Now I am worried that I forgot loctite on those cause the ones I had were wrong and had to reuse. will just hope for the best at this point hopefully your fix stays solid now that you corrected the issue.

[austin white]

My buddy was telling me that he didn't use loctite on his bolts and he didn't have a problem, so my guess is if you have the right torque you should still be fine.

[aluthman]

I have and always will use red loctite on PP and FW bolts. You CAN maybe get by without it, but why take the chance.

[Charles.waite]

The bolts that came with the clutch I installed in my b6 had locktite applied to the bolts from the factory. I think I added more though just in case. Either way I ran it for 15k miles without a single issue. The flywheel bolts were somehing like 60ftlbs +90°. Can't recall what the PP bolts were.

[aluthman]

The bolts that came with the clutch I installed in my b6 had locktite applied to the bolts from the factory. I think I added more though just in case. Either way I ran it for 15k miles without a single issue. The flywheel bolts were somehing like 6ftlbs +90°. Can't recall what the PP bolts were.

You mean 60 ft-lbs + 90 deg? I think my PP bolts were ~20 ft-lbs.

[Charles.waite]

You mean 60 ft-lbs + 90 deg? I think my PP bolts were ~20 ft-lbs.

Yea 60. Stupid Siri...

[austin white]

I have and always will use red loctite on PP and FW bolts. You CAN maybe get by without it, but why take the chance.

I'm definitely with you on that. if you have the opportunity to do it, then for sure do it. But if it's installed already and you had the proper torque then I would just leave it.