Bordom's Allroad; Boat in the Street

[Bordom]

Got around to throwing the upper control arms, and tie rods into the subframe. Loose for now.


I ran into another problem with the inboard eccentrics on the tie rods. They are 10mm longer than the other bolts I had, but not quite long enough for the aluminum subframe. It's a shame because that's the part number associated with the RS6. The original bolt was superseded to this one, and it's short. I'm going to blue loctite this and fill the nut with Anti-sieze to try and prevent corrosion. No going back now


Next up was the passenger front brakes. The stock line twisted off the caliper hose, and this run had considerably less straight ends to work with. I got just enough room and a good bubble flare, so it should hold up. Front brakes were also installed, but there's no pictures of that.


I tackled the fuel filter as I was simultaneously painting the caliper shields. This job was MESSY because of the Fluid Film I sprayed. It also seems to be slowly eating away at the rubber because my hands were BLACK. Here's the old filter out


Old line vs new line


New filter mounted with a Oetiker clamps on the 90° bend.


90 close up. These washers were fantastic, and I'll probably never use another type of washer if I can help it


Final act of the day before rain was putting the rear calipers together. Slide pins got silicon grease (I use this on everything brake related


Healthy dollop, and twisting as it went in. Always make sure that your slide pins fully seat, or you'll have problems


I enjoy the contrast. I was originally going to do Red calipers and silver brackets, like on my 96 A4. The problem with a grey car is there's too much grey already lol.


If it rains tomorrow I can spend that time under the car putting the driveshaft back on the transmission, and then running air lines under the protective trays for the fuel/brake lines. I still haven't figured out where the stock lines run to in the front of the car. They're probably inaccessible without removing half of the fuse blocks and panels underneath

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[Bordom]

how you salsaing with all this queso, big bro?

Hope the windo weld goes well, it served me well for 10+ years till I parted out on the rear diff mounts.

It still hasn't showed up, and that's what's keeping me from putting the rear diff and axles in the car lol. I figure that's going to be a 2 day job just doing the window weld

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[Bordom]

The china shocks and bags came yesterday. I unboxed it today and found some interesting evidence of squatters in the RockAuto warehouse


God damned racoons having a field day somewhere in the US lol. I guess I can't expect any less from a wholesaler closeout deal (150/strut and regular price is $500)


Opening it up, this is how they come shipped.


The bags seem sturdy enough


Welds are also quite decent all around


Part number for anyone interested.


You'll notice the part number is for a right side. If I remove the locating tabs up top, it'll be applicable to both left and right sides

Today's work in the next post


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[Bordom]

Today's work included running air lines to all 4 corners of the car.

I tackled getting the grommet for the factory air suspension compressor, air lines and associated connectors through that little hole. The trick to getting this free was being at least 10% smarter than the grommet, and spending 30 mins stretching the rubber and forcing the huge connectors through. Worth it in the end


I moved on to dropping the underbody plastic skid plates for the fuel and brake lines. The driver side used 6mm Allen plastic nuts, and I could only remove the rear and foremost nuts. All the nuts came out on the passenger side, so I started there first.


The passenger side used 7mm aluminum/stainless nuts. These are quite nice, and I would 100% convert the driver side to these if the flange area was wider.



I fed the air lines through the grommet in the spare tire well and above the subframe to the passenger side where the fuel filter was. From there, I pulled enough line to bring it up to the front. I installed the adapter, the 90° bend and hooked up the line. From there, I played around with the line positioning so it wouldn't interfere with the wheel.

I ended up running the line far up and attaching it to the stock line at the top by the bag


Working backwards towards the rear of the car now, the air line got zip tied to the brake line and ABS junction beside the tie rod boot, and zip tied directly to the brake line


I ran the line into the plastic skid plate via a little cutout, and zip tied it to the outboard side line of the chassis. I made sure the skid plate would snap over it as I went along. In the picture below you can see how it's run without the skid plate


With the skid plate fitted, you can barely see the line there tucked away. I left some slack in these section in case repairs have to be made in the future


The driver side followed a similar path. Straight out of the spare tire well, along the side of the gas tank, and the. It met up with the larger lines running to the front. The routing for the driver side is the same as the passenger side.

Luckily for me, the driver side has a free spot on the btackets I could clip the air line into(top most line in the below picture). Thanks Audi!


This picture you can see I've attached the air line to one of the brake lines and run it up the side. Not as clean as the passenger side, but still pretty hidden


The rear lines were run similarly to stock, but without the air line clips and all that jazz. I decided to run them up and around the subframe for a better shot into the 90° adapter.

I also spent a couple hours figuring out how I wanted to plumb the management and all the air tanks I have. I've come up with a satisfactory solution, and you'll see that tomorrow

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[ShelbyM3]

I can’t wait to see this finished product.


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[Bordom]

I can’t wait to see this finished product.


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I can't wait to rip this around and enjoy it lol

Dug up the fastener specs for when I eventually get it all together. It's here for anyone that's curious


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[Bordom]

Tapatalk wasn't being very cooperative the last couple days. I've got a semi long update to post:

I finally received the 3M Window weld the day after it was supposed to arrive. Hilariously it came in this giant box


Someone at Amazon had a rough day lol


I took that tube and filled the better condition mounts with window weld after spraying with brake cleaner.


Are they pretty? No. Are they functional? I sure hope so lol


After doing that, I measured out the mounting clamps and the holes for the bracket in the spare tire well. I lined them off and roughly drew where the hole center were.


For the mounting at the hatch sill, I elected to use 3/8" carriage bolts for the low profile. I elongated the holes enough where I could hammer home the bolt into the hole


Here's the first bracket mocked up, and bolted together


Overall mounting


Completed section and what it should look like, approximately.


If you've been following along, you'll know I have dual stock tanks in the driver side cubby. The aluminum tank you see above is the wet tank. The compressors will feed into this tank, and I'll have the moisture collectors off the ends that feed the stock tanks and the black one. Another water trap will be installed between that system and the line to the management manifold.

In total, with dual stock tanks, the aluminum one, and the black Viair, total system volume will be about 6Gal. 3.5x larger than the original design.

I want to add fittings to the billet manifold I have so that I can fill tires, and use air tools if necessary. I'll have a whole workshop out the back hatch lol

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[Bordom]

Yesterday was all getting the diff and rear axles in and getting the rear suspension together.

Lower control arms installed


New stainless hardware for the ABS sensors (not that they're going anywhere). M6x16 A2 Stainless socket cap for these


Passenger rear mostly bolted together. Every bolt received a generous helping of Anti-sieze to prevent corrosion.


I had to cut out the passenger side level sensor harness because there weren't any mounting brackets left of my original setup, and there weren't applicable mounting bosses on the aluminum frame I had.

When installing the driver side, I attempted to fit the aluminum pipe, but it snapped off due to corrosion.


What's never failed me? Zip ties. Front side of the frame.


Back side rear of the upper control arm.


Rear end mostly together. Missing out on the sway bar



I took out the sway bar and went to install these brackets. Turns out, Hotchkis jams them in there, turns the fitting 1/4" and says good luck. Disappointing



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[Bordom]

I chased the zerk threads using a 1/4-28NF die.


Tapped the brackets with the same one. These are much more secure, and professional now


The roadblock I ran into that ate up several hours here was the actual sway bar. I didn't install the end links and that was a mistake. I originally installed them this way leaning towards the shock. That took a good 30 minutes because of the Super tight working space.


The install pictures from Hotchkis showed the sway bar links facing the other direction. So, I went back through and took them all out to flip around. Like so


When I finally figured out I had to jack up both sides to get the sway bar remotely close to the sway bar links, I ran into this


Yup, you guessed it. Wrong way. I had installed the links correctly the first time around and now went back through flipping them back around. At this point it's about 9pm, light fading quickly. I decided the last thing I'd do today is install the rear brakes so there's less to do the next day.

My phone died there last night, so no pictures. Hopefully wrap up today and begin dialing in the suspension after torquing all the bolts in the back.

To keep things simple, I'm going to torque it all to stock 402 height, and set my presets to approximately stock heights.

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[Bordom]

This post categorizes the plumbing in the spare tire well.

I grabbed some hex headed self tapping screws and mounted the black Viair tank to this 1x6. Some washers under the screws help distribute the load


From there, I took Robertson 3/4" wood screws and attached the compressor mounts to plywood platform.



I also had these nail plates where I used more Robertson screws to affix them. This allowed me to securely mount the plate to the plywood


The next few hrs was mounting the compressors to their mounts (using the same screws) and then plumbing everything in. Here's the stock tanks plumbed and the mounting rods red loctited together



All wiring and lines are being run through this little gap here. Not that it matters so much because the mounting plate interferes with how the spare tire cover sits (3/4-1" higher at the trim plate


This was the end when I had to pack up and leave. It's kind of a rats nest right now, and I should have made some connections longer than they are to securely mount everything.


The compressors are wired in, and all that remains is powering up the system, beginning system calibration and integrity checks for leaks.

Work to be done still:
1. System calibration and integrity check
2. Fitting exhaust and wheels
3. Coding ABS to standard A6
4. Bleeding ABS
5. Disabling Level Control
6. Alignment

I'm on some trashy China winter tires right now, so I'm not too concerned with with the alignment, unless the steering wheel is right crooked. I have some cheap alignment plates, but I can't use them without modifying them with extensions to clear the rear suspension


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[Bordom]

Popped back home for a few hrs tonight.

Set the car on the ground. Attached all power and ground cables. Connected the display.

Since I connected this to the fuel pump, I hadn't realized I couldn't use this with the key off lol. Forgetting the exhaust is off and it's straight downpipe, it startled me when I started it up.

Anyways, when the Airlift got underway, I ran into problems with the tanks not building pressure. Turns out, I left the drain line open and that's why I couldn't build pressure. Once that was closed, I could only build pressure to 50psi at a time. Once I killed power, I could hear all sorts of leaks:

A. All fittings leaked to some degree on both aluminum and black tanks. Gave them all another 1/8 turn and that solved most of them.
B. The overpressure valve was actually loose. Tightened it up and it stopped leaking immediately.
C. Top stock tank leaked around the threads of the adapter on the NPT side. Took it out, cleaned it, Teflon taped it, then used Loctite 545 on top of that. The fitting leaked regardless from the center, which was strange to me. I tugged on the air line and it seemed to seal up.
D. The drain line with the valve was actually loose. It leaked good from there as well. 18mm socket and a 14mm on the brass side tightened it up
E. Passenger side bag leaked in the same place as the stock tank. I left that because it was getting dark
F. The OG air tank on the bottom also started to leak from the 90 fitting. Someway, somehow.

The pattern I'm seeing is that the areas where I had to move the 90 fitting to install into the tight space, has caused them to leak. None of the other 90s leak, and the straight fittings don't make a peep either. I'll tackle this on Sunday when I'm back home.

In the mean time, here's a lopsided photo of the car with tons of work to happen to it still


Pressures in each bag before the photo was taken. This was about 5mins later, and the front right is already FUBAR.


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[allroadc5]

Awesome stuff. So it will be fully controllable? How high is max, with those things you could pop the bags


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[Bordom]

Awesome stuff. So it will be fully controllable? How high is max, with those things you could pop the bags


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Yup, each corner fully controllable, and I can also do front or rear axles independently if I wanted.

I saw a post somewhere saying that level 4 was about 177psi when looking through VCDS. That would make sense as I've seen level 2 hover between 135-145 psi. I'll probably never get the bags over 175psi.

I still have to figure out how to switch the pressure switch over to 200psi in the manifold settings.

I think what I'm going to do is remove all the fittings where it's metal on metal contact and do the Teflon tape with Loctite 545. I'm surprised the rear bags were as air tight as they were compared to the front.

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[allroadc5]

That’s great, so you can just drop it to the bump stops when you park? And guessing it pumps up pretty much instantaneously. I’m sure chasing down those air leaks is no fun…


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[Bordom]

That’s great, so you can just drop it to the bump stops when you park? And guessing it pumps up pretty much instantaneously. I’m sure chasing down those air leaks is no fun…


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Exactly! The rate of suspension fill is ridiculously fast compared to stock. I'm glad I have 6gal of air because the tank pressure drops quickly from 150-110psi when the bags are empty to just 75psi at all 4 corners. Both compressors do get quite warm after running continuously for 10mins straight.

I've ordered extra elbow fittings and straight sections to iron out the problem areas. If the elbows I have now are continuously leaking from the swivel point, I'll replace them with the ones I bought. That would be a shame because those stainless swivel fittings were $30/ea

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[Audibot]

Way to persevere through all those issues!

[Bordom]

I worked on getting the suspension leaks sorted today. A few hrs disassembling and checking and verifying it doesn't leak.

I got a number of fittings to use. 1/4 Female NPT PTC, Plastic 1/4 90°, brass 90°, and brass straight.


The brass ones are DOT approved and should be more reliable


I ended up replacing 5 of the stainless bends with the brass ones where I couldn't get it to seal. This is $150 in useless fittings


While dialing in the suspension, and recalibrating the system, I developed a leak in the driver side rear bag. I went underneath to replace the fitting and noticed this disaster. Brand new end links pulled off the bushing from the body. Both sides are like this


I did hear strange groaning/creaking from the rear, and didn't think anything of it. I guess me setting the sway bar at it's tightest setting and going max lift to completely aired out multiple times pulled them off. Obviously this sway bar wasn't meant to articulate as much as the stock unit.

I'm going to pull these off and switch to the softer setting. I'm also considering running a giant washer on the outside to stop the bushing from pulling through the bushing well. Worst case scenario, I'll put the 22yr old plastic endinks back in and call it a day on the softest setting. This is incredibly annoying.


Here's a link to my IG where you can watch the car go from completely aired up to aired out. Tank storage was at 195psi, and airing up from empty to level 3/4 used 60psi. Second video is going from max pressure 145psi, to each "stock-ish" level settings. First drop is to a height between stock level 3/4, second drop is to ride height 402mm, and third drop is to lower than level 1. After that it completely airs out
https://www.instagram.com/p/DK8nB-IN...R5dm5xd3Ywdg==

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[superdlux]

In your video - the rear is going up much, much higher than level 4. - that's probably causing your problem with the endlinks…

[Bordom]

In your video - the rear is going up much, much higher than level 4. - that's probably causing your problem with the endlinks…

Yes, because I dropped the rear as it was and haven't moved the car back and forth yet. I've also gone far beyond the factory design height.

I've noticed there's almost some kind of binding when coming down/up. The rear will almost drop into place when the pressure comes down enough. That may or may not be related to the links being undone, as I fixed the leak after the video was taken

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[ShelbyM3]

Dang that thing moved quick, relative to any of mine. Wow!


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