The Fast Daily - A C5 Allroad Story

[Tightmopedman9]

I've wanted a B5 S4 since I was a sophomore in high school. It was the first 'realistic' fantasy car I ever aspired to own. At the time though, the closest thing I could afford was either a 1.8t or 2.8 A4. I almost pulled the trigger on a 1.8t in 2007, but instead, I ended up getting a 1997 Volvo 850. That got me started down the Volvo path, which ultimately led to a career in the performance automotive world. I've been a self employed tuner/fabricator in the Volvo scene for almost 10 years. I've had a few fast dailys, but for the past 3 years my fastest car has been a stock '05 XC70. I thought about manual swapping and modifying my XC, but I knew that no matter how much money I sunk into the car I'd always have to worry about the AWD system. On a whim one snowy morning, I searched Audi Allroad on Craigslist. Two hours later, I was driving a 2002 Allroad home



The car is super clean - no rust, very well maintained, near flawless interior. The front air bags were replace with Arnott units. The timing belt and water pump were just replaced. The car sat in front of my house for 6 months, and in that time it didn't lose any height. The previous owner did a bunch of work to get it ready for his girlfriend, but discovered a coolant leak on the driver's side turbo feed line. Since my plans for the car already involved removing the motor I didn't care.

My plan is to build a fast, reliable daily. I want to do all the work/modifications at once, and when done, have a car that behaves just like a stock car, but quicker. My goal is to get close to 500WHP on E85 and maintain all the pleasantries of a factory car. Initially, I was hoping to get the car to a 'stage II' before swapping turbos. I thought I might be able to repair the coolant leak without pulling the motor, but after I pulled the downpipes I realized both turbos were shot. I decided I might as well just pull the motor and get started on the whole build.

Before I pulled the motor I replaced all the brake rotors, pads and upgraded the lines to stainless steel. I had a set of Wilwood 6 piston super light calipers and two piece rotors from my old daily that I decided to swap onto the car. Converting them was super simple as all I had to do was mill some caliper mounting brackets and re-drill the rotor hats.




I have a new set of rotors ready to go on, but I need to decide on the slots I want to mill onto them. I was thinking about the 4 rings, but wasn't sure if that would be too tacky.


The rotors are 330mm, which is barely bigger than stock, but I cut almost half the weight vs stock. When you compare that to 17z or 18z setups in which people are adding unsprung weight, I think that's pretty good.

[Darepoole]

Congrats on the new car and great work! My first Audi was a 2004 allroad when I was a junior in high school(2017). I ending up selling it after 2 years but I’ll never forget it great car. You are gonna really enjoy it!


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[Tightmopedman9]

I've had a NIB DW300 fuel pump kicking around for the past year, so I decided to put it to good use. I turned an adapter sleeve out of aluminum to fit the pump snugly in the factory sender housing.




I then soldered the DW connector the sender lid.



For anyone who wants to do a similar install, I found this pre-filter sock at Autozone that fits great.



High quality audio has always been a high priority for me. I'm not looking for a setup that will rattle teeth, just something that will let me accurately hear the music. I found a Polish company, Basser, that makes custom fit subwoofer boxes. Considering the price, the quality of the box is amazing and the fit is perfect. The Audi trim ring really kicks up the bling factor too. It's a bummer that the carpet isn't a better color match, but oh well...




In order to fit the box I had to get rid of the factory tool box and relocate the air tank. The only place I could find that would fit the air tank was the spare tire well, which meant I had to get rid of the spare... I welded some nuts to the chassis and turned some standoffs to securely hold the tank.




I was hoping to reuse the factory air tank brackets, but it looks like they're bonded to the body with some sort of wax? 10 minutes with a heat gun wasn't enough to get it to budge, so I gave up and just left it in place.



I mounted the amp on a piece of 1/2" HDPE that was held in place by the nut which secured the spare tire.

[Tightmopedman9]

I binned the factory amp and installed a MBQuart NA2.400.1 in its place.



I measured the the stock pre-amps and found that they're pretty low voltage, but they work well enough to run straight into the amps.



I ran a 4ga wire through a 150A fuse into the spare tire well.



I'm going to use this junction point to upgrade the fuel pump wiring and supply power to something fun that the air tank will help with (more on that later).

[Slave IV]

Congrats on the Allroad and nice job upgrading it by making parts you had work with it.

[ShelbyM3]

Congratulations! I had similar aspirations. Welcome to Audi. Before my B8 S4 daily I had a Magical Blue Metallic S60R and I absolutely loved that car. Except, the turning radius was like a freight train!
Excited to watch your progress. Keep up the solid work!


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[Darepoole]

I binned the factory amp and installed a MBQuart NA2.400.1 in its place.

Attachment 289497

I measured the the stock pre-amps and found that they're pretty low voltage, but they work well enough to run straight into the amps.

Attachment 289498

I ran a 4ga wire through a 150A fuse into the spare tire well.

Attachment 289499

I'm going to use this junction point to upgrade the fuel pump wiring and supply power to something fun that the air tank will help with (more on that later).

I have a rigol scope as well super nice scope does everything I could as of it


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[Tightmopedman9]

Got the engine fully torn down. I've rebuilt quite a few motors and I have to say, I think this is probably one of the most complex ones I've yet worked on. The amount of parts that came off the motor and trans covered four 3' x 6' tables almost completely.



The inside of the motor was surprisingly clean for 210,000 miles.




I dropped everything off at the machine shop yesterday.



I'm getting the majority of the parts jet washed or hot tanked. I'm installing forged rods, so I'm getting the crank balanced. I'm also installing new piston rings, but keeping the stock pistons. I'm hoping that the bores are round enough that I can get by with a light hone, but we'll see. Cross hatching looked OK in all but one cylinder which had a small amount of rust. I'm also installing ARP main studs, so the mains will be line honed.

[aussieallroad01]

That's a huge amount of effort on the motor.

If you're going that far, consider rebuilding the trans as a preventative measure so you don't have to pull it all out again. When they did mine apparently they added some upgraded clutches and drum for reverse after it blew.

[Tightmopedman9]

That's a huge amount of effort on the motor.

If you're going that far, consider rebuilding the trans as a preventative measure so you don't have to pull it all out again. When they did mine apparently they added some upgraded clutches and drum for reverse after it blew.

Clutches and drum? Are you talking about an automatic? My car has an 01E... No way I'd put this amount of time and money into an auto car.

I got a used pair of OE BW K04's from a forum member. Despite them being low mileage, I decided to rebuild them and upgrade the compressor wheels before putting them on the car. For the wheels, I got Mamba part 010-K3A6. It's an 11 blade wheel with extended tips, taller blades and a slightly bigger inducer. As compared to the original 4 + 4 staggered compressor wheel, the 11 blade wheel will produce peak boost at a lower RPM, at the expense of efficiency at peak mass flow rates. However, since the billet wheels are taller and have an extended tip, the wheels should flow more than the original cast wheels. I'm hoping that the combination of 11 blades, extended tips, taller exducer tip heights and taller overall blade heights will result in greater peak flow and faster spooling than the original cast K04 wheels. The extended tips add an additional 6mm, giving an effective exducer size of 56mm and the exducer tips are about 15% taller.




Fitting the wheels was more difficult than I originally anticipated. To fit the new wheels, I thought all I'd need to do would be to open up the inlet of the compressor cover to accommodate the .1mm larger inducer. However, due to the taller height of the wheel, the entire profile of the compressor cover needed to be machined. I started off by digitizing the profile of the original K04 compressor cover.



I then measured the additional depth that the compressor wheel needed to maintain the same clearances as the original cover, about .0012", and machined the cover.



After the new radius was cut, I put the cover in my lathe and opened up the inlet.



The clearance between the radius of the wheel and cover looks dead on, but I don't have any way to measure it. Unfortunately, on one of the turbos, I ended up with a bit more clearance between the cover and inducer than I was shooting for. I was shooting for .0012" and got .0018"-.0020". The clearance on the other turbo is .0012"-.0014".



I'm sending the turbos to G-Pop shop to have them VSR balanced.

I bought the rebuild kits from Turbo Lab of America's Amazon store and found the quality to be very good. The parts are extremely well manufactured - the thrust collar in the kit is larger than the original and the thrust bearing is a full 360º with 3 oiling holes, unlike the original windowed, single oil hole thrust bearing.

[OOOOallroad]

Great work! Love seeing the progress you’re making on this in short order. Thanks for taking us along for the journey. Curios to see/ hear what that turbo wheel sounds like … in my old superduty the billet wheels were called wicked wheels iirc, they sounded great and whistled like a mofo but I can’t say that they flowed much more via the butt dyno. Either way, still super rad … love seeing all the custom stuff and tool setups. Keep on wrenching on!!


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[Tightmopedman9]

Finally got back to work on the car. Delays at the machine shop plus a vacation meant I couldn't work on the car for a few months.

I was hoping to re-use the stock pistons, but the bores were worn way past spec, so I got a new set of Mahle 9:1 81.5mm pistons. What's another $1000 anyways?!+

I mated the pistons to some CX-Racing H beam rods and ARP rod bolts. For anyone using the same ARP 200-6220 bolts, without a stretch gauge, I found that almost all of the bolts reached the proper stretch at 31ft/lbs - 1 ft/lb higher than ARP's specs.



I chose to use ARP main bolts so that I could measure the main bearing clearances accurately, without having to use a sacrificial set of TTY factory bolts. I know there's been some conjecture on the torque spec for ARP mains - I went with the ARP spec of 100 ft/lbs and had the mains line honed. My machinist said that the journals were minimally distorted and just needed a light kissing.







For anyone thinking about building an engine, get a piston ring compressor specific to the bore size you're working with. Yes, you'll have to purchase one per bore size, but they only cost $30 and they're so much nicer to use than a universal piston ring installation tool. With a machined piston ring compressor you can just push the pistons into the bores by hand - you don't even need to use a mallet.



I didn't think it was necessary to replace the oil pump chain, but I couldn't find just the tensioner by itself, so I ended up buying a new chain and tensioner 'kit' from Febi, part number 33750.



I got as far as the oil pan. Tomorrow I'm going to install the heads, manifolds and turbos.

[C5S6]

From another machinist, love seeing some mill & lathe action!

[Tightmopedman9]

From another machinist, love seeing some mill & lathe action!

Thanks. I'm not sure I'd call myself a machinist though, I just happen to have a lot of their tools...

I experienced some rattle right after cold startup if I let the car sit for a few days, so I figured the oil check valves had gone bad, or the oil distribution tube o-rings were shot. It's not like I'd do this level of work and not replace them, but this problem was more incentive to do so...



Basically the whole reason why I pulled the engine was to deal with the turbo coolant return line leak. Not wanting to ever deal with that again, I researched replacement options and found that all of the turbo coolant lines are NLA, so I ended up 'making' my own using 3/8" silicone tubing. If you split the factory swaged ends with two cuts, you're left with a very nice barbed end. Oetiker clamps are a must for clearance and the smooth ID won't nick the silicone.





The left side coolant feed got a link wonky, but I think it should be reliable.



The return lines came out quite nice.


I saw someone mention from-a-gasket shellac for coating copper crush washers. I've never experienced a leak from a properly torqued crush washer (and I've installed a lot of them), but given the consequences of a leaking crush washer on this car, I decided to give the shellac a try.



Almost every Volvo I tune benefits from a wastegate actuator upgrade, be it in a decrease in spool RPM or an increase in peak boost, or both. Granted, they come with the factory with quite weak wastegates that open around 3-6psi. I was on the fence about it, but in the end I decided it would be worth using Mamba's wastegates. I kept the 12psi springs that were factory installed. Considering the small area of the wastegate flapper, I think 12psi should be fine for reaching the estimated target boost of 24-26psi. I measured the stock K04 wastegate at 4mm of preload and found that they start moving at 4psi and are fully open at 11psi. With the same 4mm of preload on the Mambas, they start moving at 6-7psi and are fully open at 15psi.




The Mamba WGAs are almost a direct bolt on, but the left side mounting bracket needs some grinding and the right side engine mount needs some clearancing. The mount is pretty thin where it needs shaving, so I ended up grinding through it, which needed some reinforcement. Unfortunately the cast aluminum bracket is terrible quality and welds like sh1t.





Think this is why I had vibration at idle???



I added an oil pressure sensor which uses a 1/8"NPT thread. I ordered a M10x1mm -> 1/8NPT adapter, but it was taking way too long in shipping, so I ended up making my own. I drilled a hole through the factory M10 cap, drilled and tapped a rod with the NPT thread and welded them together.




I bought literally the cheapest K04 inlets I could - they were less than $100 shipped. I fully expected to have to do some work to them for that price, which I did. The right side fit up perfectly, but the left side was way off and needed quite a bit more length to sit fully on the turbo inlet. The piping is 2" and the kit came with straight 2" couplers to connect to the bi-pipe, which is 2.25". I probably could have stretched them to fit over the bi-pipe, but ended up getting some 2" -> 2.25" reducers.

[Tightmopedman9]

I would really to be able to drift this car, so in preparation for that I installed new shims in the center diff.



I got some new rotors for the front brakes as well. I could find only rotor with the correct outer dimensions that used the same rotor hat bolt pattern and unfortunately the rotors were quite a bit thicker than the old rotors, 1.25" vs ~.9". The additional thermal mass will be nice, but the dynalite calipers I'm using are quite narrow and already required a good deal of material to be removed from the brake pads before they would fit. With the new thicker rotors, I had to remove about 30% of the total pad material to fit them. When you consider that the pads costs $120 new, that's almost $36 straight down the drain...
Anyways, the new rotors were only available in plain. I wanted some sort of slotting - if for nothing other then aesthesis. Getting plain rotors gave me some creative freedom to slot the rotors however I wanted. It took me a while to decide, but in the end I decided on copying Brembo's 'type III' slotting.




It looks like the slots on the bottom of the rotor extend beyond the edge of the disc, but that's just an optical illusion.

[Tightmopedman9]

Not wanting to spend $200 on JHM's shifter upgrade, I purchased a Heim and some misalignment bushings. I opted for a PTFE lined Heim that shouldn't ever need maintenance. The misalignment bushings guarantee that the bushing will sit far enough away from the linkage to not bind. I turned an interior sleeve for the misaligment bushings to snugly fit a M8 bolt. The total cost was $58 shipped. For those wanting to do the same, the part numbers are: QA1-AIB10T & QA1-SG10-84.





I got a 'lite' single mass flywheel from TTV for the B7 RS4 clutch. Considering the LUK 02050 B7 RS4 clutch kit is only $175, the whole clutch setup was quite cheap. Hopefully it holds up to the power I'll be making.



When I first tried to fit the PP to the flywheel it looked like the dowel pins on the flywheel had been incorrectly placed. It turns out that the holes on the PP were punch and were at a bit of angle. I used some longer than stock bolts to pull the PP down evenly, and the dowels self clearanced.



I spent almost 3 days rehabbing a decent condition harness I found at a junkyard - way too much time considering how well it came out in the end. In the original harness, almost every wire had cracks, or chunks of missing insulation. The wires in the new harness were in much better condition, but the loom was quite hard and brittle, so the majority of it I replaced. I integrated the new 4 wire ignition coil connectors and broke out pin #4 to ground to the valve covers.



I'm using 0 280 158 298 (Ford DR3Z-9F593-A) injectors, which have an angled spray pattern (Bosch calls it the gamma angle) of 11º. This is perfect for the 2.7t engine as the intake runners are angled (13º I think). To make the injector spray angle align with the intake runners, the electrical connector needs to orientated 90º from the factory position. Unfortunately, you can't get the injectors into this position with an EV1 -> EV6 adapter, and a lot of EV6 plugs are too tall. I integrated lower profile connectors into my harness. Why go through all this work? Injectors spraying onto the wall of the intake manifold will lead to a build up of fuel on the intake runner, which will combust at a slower rate, and in an erratic manner, as compared to fuel that hits the intake valves. Dealing with this is a huge pain, and usually results in a rough feeling motor at times.

[Tightmopedman9]

I picked up some rough looking 3" downpipes for almost free - I think they were originally made by 034. I replaced the flex couplings and with much higher quality flex bellows and replaced the v-bands with male/female type ones. I wrapped the downpipes and modified the factory heatshields so that they would fit.






I haven't had exhaust hardware loosen on me many times, but the few times that it has happened it's been a huge PITA. I started using Nord Lock washers a few years ago, and haven't had a problem since. I elected to use them on the turbo -> manifold and the turbo -> downpipe fasteners.




Both of my EGT sensors failed. Considering the cost of replacement, and the fact that the EGT sensors don't start reading until above 900C, I decided to get rid of them entirely. I installed a K-type thermocouple in the left manifold. In the right manifold I installed an exhaust gas backpressure 'fitting' that I made from coiling 38" of copper brake line.



I used the space that was once occupied by the thermocouple amplifiers for a 4 bar MAP sensor for a boost gauge. I have an 1/8" tee valve on order that will allow me to switch the input to the MAP sensor to either intake manifold pressure or exhaust manifold pressure.

[quattroskier]

Looks like you will have an awesome allroad when this build is finished. impressive stuff.
Where are those black silicone coolant hoses from?

[Tightmopedman9]

The hoses are HPS brand - you can get them on Amazon or Ebay.

I've had the car together and driving for about 2 weeks now. The engine started up first try (after tightening a loose ground, lol). The base tune I flashed to the ECU has been bang on - driveability is perfect and the fuel trims are staying within +/-5%. Not bad for my first foray into tuning these cars I think, but I did spent ~50hrs reading beforehand and 10 years of Motronic experience didn't either hurt I'm sure. There was an oil leak from a loose turbo oil feed banjo bolt at the block junction, but that was quickly resolved. Other than a few seeping coolant connections which appear to have fixed themselves, the engine is leak free. I've put about 300 miles on the engine so far and will be changing the Brad Penn break in oil soon. Fingers crossed there's no metal shavings in the oil.

I picked up an Autospeed FMIC from someone on CL. I wasn't able to find very much information about it online, which seems odd considering it's custom made for the B5/C5 chassis with cast end tanks and custom formed silicone hoses. With this type of production I'd assume they would have made quite a few of them... Fitment required cutting up the radiator support, relocating the horns and relocating the AC pressure sensor. The silicone hoses to the bi-pipes put quite a bit of stress on the timing cover bi-pipe supports and ended up cracking them. I whipped up some new supports using the timing cover mounting bolts. Definitely not my best work, but they work well and only took me a half hour to make. The interference with the AC pressure sensor was quite annoying and tedious to fix, but not horrible. The horns needed to be relocated, so I decided it would be a good time to upgrade. I got some Hella Supertones and honestly, I'm not so sure I like them. They're almost clown car like and not that loud, oh wel...










I snagged a Coolerworx short shifter during their black Friday sale. I've been super exited about it since I found it, as the stock shifter is way too short IMO and put my arm in quite an uncomfortable position. I was also excited about the aesthiteics of it, as my is pretty much stock appeaInitially, I really didn't like the Coolerworx shifter and was pretty disappointed. However, after playing around with the adjustment I've fallen in love with it. Paired with the Heim joint in the linkage, shifting is precise and notchy. The shifter is the perfect height and quite comfortable.

I think the most important aspect of setting up the shifter is setting of the neutral position. With an extended ball end 6mm hex, loosen the bolt to the shift linkage and while holding the shifter in the neutral position, tighten the bolt. The shifter also comes configured for the shortest fore/aft throw, which required a lot of force to engage gears and made the throw too short. I switched the bushing from the top position to the middle position, which honestly was a bit of a PITA, but it reduced shift force markedly and made the fore/aft distance perfect. I drove the car for about a week without the shifter surround and didn't like the amount of sound it let in. I modified the shifter trim and pulled the press fit collar for the reverse lockout off the shifter to make it fit. Its not perfect, but I think it looks good enough for me to probably never worry about it.

[quattroskier]

Thanks I will check them out.

[Tightmopedman9]

Sorry for the lack of updates. To be honest I was a bit sour about how little engagement this thread had in comparison to other threads.

In December, the car was hit and run while I was at the gym. It looks like a box truck hit it, as the damage was as high as the wing and the car was pushed more than 10 feet. Had they hit the car just 6" further towards the interior, the damage would have been isolated to the tail gate and I could have had it fixed by the next day. Unfortunately, the cost to repair the quarter panel effectively totaled the car, so I've decided to scrap it.



The day after the accident I found a tailgate in the same color at the junkyard, so I was able to drive the car.



On the plus side, I found what may be the cleanest Allroad I've ever seen in real life and in a better color. Timing had skipped on one set of cylinders, so I got the car for only $1500. Considering the cost of the basically brand new snow tires on it and the $500 I'll get for the cats, the car cost me less than $500. I was able to drive it about 20 miles mostly downhill before the engine failed catastrophically.



The K04's I modified weren't performing as expected, so I already planned to take the motor out of the car. In the end, getting hit and run actually is a blessing.

I have around 250 hours of work into the new setup. I'll post pictures of the work I've done over the next week. Until then, here are some pictures of things I did to the car before it was hit.

I bought these wheels for a Volvo project car that I ended up scrapping. I should have just sold them and gotten a different set of wheels, but I was curious to see what they'd look like on the Audi. In order to get the offset right I had to make some beefy spacers. The front was 52mm and the rear 54mm.





I had a problem with the flexible fuel 'straw' hose which connects the fuel pump outlet to fuel sender inlet. The hose had a small slit in it, which turned into a large slit and I eventually lost all fuel pressure. Unfortunately there was no cell phone service where I finally broke down.



In preparation for the new turbos going on I needed up upgrade my MAF housing. I wanted to use a RS4 MAF and keep the stock air box, which means I had to make this monstrosity of a pie bend. I might redo this piece with a 3D printed piece in ASA.

[Tightmopedman9]

Oh yeah, I made a custom gauge 'pod' the mounts to the steering column cover. It uses an ESP32 and connects to the ECU via OBDII. It uses Setzi's (from NefMoto) logging exploit, so I can log 80 parameters at 25hz. It saves the logs to an SD card so I don't ever have to have a laptop in the car, except for flashing new tunes. It also communicates wirelessly to another ESP32 in the engine bay which connects to all the non-stock sensors. All of that information is added to the log .csv so I can see everything in a single log file.

[ShelbyM3]

It’s probably because you’re a savage and are wrenching at a much higher level than the rest of us. Beautiful work!

What are the specs on the new Allroad? Do you plan on keeping the silver 02?


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[ShelbyM3]

Oh yeah, I made a custom gauge 'pod' the mounts to the steering column cover. It uses an ESP32 and connects to the ECU via OBDII. It uses Setzi's (from NefMoto) logging exploit, so I can log 80 parameters at 25hz. It saves the logs to an SD card so I don't ever have to have a laptop in the car, except for flashing new tunes. It also communicates wirelessly to another ESP32 in the engine bay which connects to all the non-stock sensors. All of that information is added to the log .csv so I can see everything in a single log file.

This is next level RAD!


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[Tightmopedman9]

New Allroad is a 2001, factory manual. The silver is going to the scrapper. I've pulled most of the stuff of it, except for the interior and body panels not much is left.

[Tightmopedman9]

I hinted at keeping the air ride tank for something cool earlier. That coolness is dual 38mm wastegates mounted on the mid pipes. There is a toggle switch on the driver's kick panel, that when flipped opens up a solenoid, connecting the valves to the air tank. I have 5 psi springs in the gates and an inline pressure regulator to step down the pressure from the tank. I wish I could have fit larger wastegates or the normal electronic flapper valves, as what I have now isn't crazy loud when open. Unfortunately there's just no space under the car. One benefit about the wastegates is that I can open and close them instantaneously. They were also incredibly cheap - I think I paid less than $50 per. After having them installed for more than a year I haven't noticed any leaking.

[R490]

Ouch, well at least you've got a new one. These cars are quickly disappearing.....

[jbain2]

It’s probably because you’re a savage and are wrenching at a much higher level than the rest of us. Beautiful work!

Agreed. Keep the C5 content coming for us old guys.


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[Audibot]

Sorry to see your loss, but happy you're still chugging on this! That gauge setup looks awesome!

[jbain2]

New Allroad is a 2001, factory manual. The silver is going to the scrapper. I've pulled most of the stuff of it, except for the interior and body panels not much is left.

I like this color combo!


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[Caddylack]

Great thread. I like to see somebody else being really ballsy and confident in their own ability. You aren't afraid to stray from OEM parts, that's for sure.

I picked up an Autospeed FMIC from someone on CL. I wasn't able to find very much information about it online, which seems odd considering it's custom made for the B5/C5 chassis with cast end tanks and custom formed silicone hoses. With this type of production I'd assume they would have made quite a few of them... Fitment required cutting up the radiator support, relocating the horns and relocating the AC pressure sensor. The silicone hoses to the bi-pipes put quite a bit of stress on the timing cover bi-pipe supports and ended up cracking them. I whipped up some new supports using the timing cover mounting bolts. Definitely not my best work, but they work well and only took me a half hour to make. The interference with the AC pressure sensor was quite annoying and tedious to fix, but not horrible.

This seems confusing. What do you mean by "custom", compared to just being made for the car like a typical intercooler kit?

It sounds like somebody just took a FMIC and then did their own custom fab work, but that wouldn't lead me to believe that a bunch more kits exist. I'm just lost.

New Allroad is a 2001, factory manual. The silver is going to the scrapper. I've pulled most of the stuff of it, except for the interior and body panels not much is left.

The distance may kill it, but I would love to buy that shell and title off of you. I have enough Allroad parts stocked up that I could damn near build one if I had a roller.

[Tightmopedman9]

This seems confusing. What do you mean by "custom", compared to just being made for the car like a typical intercooler kit?

It sounds like somebody just took a FMIC and then did their own custom fab work, but that wouldn't lead me to believe that a bunch more kits exist. I'm just lost.

Custom, as in Autospeed put in development work to get cast end tanks and custom silicone hoses made. Compared to any other currently available FMIC kits, it's purpose designed and built - not just a combination of off the shelf parts. You can find mentions about the kit in some old forums posts.

The distance may kill it, but I would love to buy that shell and title off of you. I have enough Allroad parts stocked up that I could damn near build one if I had a roller.

If you pick it up you can have it. I want to hold onto it until I have the green car fully dialed in, so about another month and a half or so.

[Caddylack]

If you pick it up you can have it. I want to hold onto it until I have the green car fully dialed in, so about another month and a half or so.

Woohoo! Thanks, dude.

[Tightmopedman9]

Although seeing my car totaled was a pretty big immediate shock, I'm actually glad it happened. The new Allroad is cleaner and I much prefer green over silver. On top of that, I needed to pull the motor anyways, so swapping chassis won't be that much additional work over what I already needed to do.

Unfortunately, the K04 turbos I modified didn't perform nearly as well as I had hoped. The maximum airflow I saw from then was only 1123kg/hr (312g/s) at 20.5psi. On top of that, the turbos were very slow to spool, not making 15psi until 5000RPM. I looked over everything and even switched wastegate springs on one of the turbos (I couldn't get to the other wastegate without pulling the motor). For anyone who wants to ask about my testing procedures - troubleshooting performance issues has basically been my full time job for the past 10 years. I assume the issue is due to too great of a tolerance on the compressor cover. However, I think that even if the turbos had performed as well as they could have, I still wouldn't have been happy with their power output. Purchasing the turbos was the first thing I did, before I had planned to do any internal engine work. As soon as I decided I was going to build the motor I should have sold the turbos and gone with something bigger.

I've had an EFR 7670 on my shelf for a while and I contemplated using it. I also thought about going with dual G25-550s. In the end I decided I didn't want to do that much fabrication work, so I purchased RS6 K24s. I contacted SSAutoChrome about their K24s and was able to get just the turbos for only $775 shipped. Unprompted, they told me that the turbos came from the same factory that Silly Rabbit Motorsports used. I chuckled a bit when I unpacked the turbos...




I saw that Mamba offered a knock off of Xona Rotor's UHF turbine wheel, with 5 + 5 staggered height blades. I've heard a few accounts of how much turbo peformance is improved from this turbine wheel, but I've only been able to find one dyno comparison. Swapping from a XR7864 to XR8269S (UHF) yieled a 17% increase in power, with no change is spool up. You can find the thread about it here: https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/sho....php?t=2930695

I saw a fairly recent post in the B5 S4 section of the forum where it was mentioned that this turbine wheel yielded poor results, so maybe Mamba did a poor job copying Xona's geomtry? I guess we'll find out how it performs... Visually it looks like the wheel has way more blade area and presents much less of a restriction at the turbine's exit. The new wheel only weights 1% more than the clipped wheel.



As the turbos came from SSAutoChrome, they weren't clocked correctly at all. When I got them clocked properly the left turbo's compressor cover was making contact with the exhaust manifold. There is a bump in the compressor cover for the exhaust manifold, but with how I had the turbo clocked it was in the wrong place. I'm not sure if other people clock the cover so that the clearance bump is in the correct location and deal with the compressor outlet being off slightly, or what. I ground away the compressor cover where it was making contact, and of course the casting was super thin in that area so I broke through and had to weld it shut.



Clearance after the modifcations:

[Tightmopedman9]

One thing I wanted to make sure I got right before dropping in the motor was that I had the correct wastegate springs fitted and properly preloaded. I plan to run these turbos up to 32psi and if I assume that the ΔP will be 2:1, then exhaust manifold pressure will be up to 64psi. The area of the wastegate orifice is .75in², so this means that the wastegate will need to hold up to 48lbs of force.

In order to measure the wastegate holding force I used a bluetooth load cell designed for rock climbing training and clamped it to the center of the wastegate flapper arm.


Playing around with different springs and levels of preload I found that the minimum strength spring that could hold 48lbs of force resulted in a cracking pressure of 22psi! This means that in order to guarantee I didn't have any wastegate opening before desired, my minimum boost pressure would be almost 20psi. I've driven cars with manual boost controllers and super heavy wastegate springs and they suck to drive. On top of that, tuning them can be a major pain in the ass. Luckily I figured out a pretty slick solution to the problem.

I converted the Mamba wastegates to a twin port style and will use a 4 port wastegate actuator. I had thought of doing this a long time ago, but I couldn't think of a simple way to seal the lower half of the wastegate that wouldn't require some pretty precise and tedious fabrication. Luckily, rummaging through my collection of unused seals, I found that a valve stem seal from a 6.8L Ford Triton motor has an ID of 5.5mm, which is just barely smaller than the wastegate actuator arm. The OD of the valve stem seal is also an almost perfect fit into the lower half of the wastegate canister. I tapped the existing unthreaded hole on the bottom half of the actuator canister to 1/8NPT and used a 1/4" hose barb. I milled a recess for a washer that would hold the valve stem seal in place. The other side of the valve stem seal is held in place by a washer, being pressed on by the wastegate spring.






With the dual port setup I am able to use a wastegate spring that results in only 9psi of cracking force, but can hold more than 50lbs of force at 10psi of boost pressure. With this new setup my minimum boost should be less than 9psi, assuming that the wastegate orifice is large enough. I should also be able to make whatever boost pressure I want, without any worry that the wastegate is blowing open.

To make sure that the new setup was reliable I connected the new 4 port turbo control valve to a switch and 12V. I connected a regulated 35psi of air pressure to the boost side of the TCV and actuated the wastegates 100 times. The bottom of the right side actuator has a small leak above 15psi, but it's not enough to be concerning. Here's a video of the test:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5G90hfl1Oyk

[Tightmopedman9]

I installed an oil pressure gauge when the rebuilt engine went in the silver car. When hot, idle oil pressure was quite low. Corrected for barometric pressure, the lowest idle oil pressure I ever saw was 6psi (I did see 2.4psi at 10,500' once). My oil pressure off idle was always greater than RPM/100, so I wasn't too concerned about it. I did play around with oil types and found that Rotella T6 5w-40 gave me the highest idle oil pressure. Also, for anyone curious about the factory low oil pressure warning - it seems to operate on a delay as I never saw it go off when my oil pressure was low, but rather some time after.

With the engine needing to come out I decided it would be a good time to upgrade oil pumps, so I picked up a TDI pump (059 115 105H) from the UK for ~$100 shipped. When I took apart the stock pump I found quite a bit of scoring on the gears, but I didn't see any evidence of scoring on the teeth, as far as I could tell. Now that I'm looking at this picture, I'm wondering if the interior gear is installed incorrectly? Should there be an embossed square visible, like the external gear?



Fixturing the TDI pump on the mill was a bit of a pain and in the end I could only get it flat to .0007" from mounting hole to mounting hole - probably fine, lol.





I turned some spacers on the lathe and hand lapped them to within .00005" of each other.



The pump outlet mates up to the block via a machined surface - I figured a small bit of anaerobic sealant there could help prevent leaks.

[S4VAGE B5]

Now THIS is inspiring work..!! I'm north of Denver in Berthoud and I do a bit of tuning myself. Along with also having a C5 allroad which will be going under the wrench this winter. I've owned/built of few B5 S4's, 1.8T's, B8 S4's, VR6's, etc.. I would very much like to see your AR in person!! I'm also hoping you have some more updates for us!

[_Sam]

More plz. Make Allroads cool.

[Tightmopedman9]

I'm pretty sure the B7 RS4 clutch kit I had fitted wouldn't be able to handle the power I'm hoping to make, so I got a ACT clutch kit from a friend. The torque rating of this kit, AA6-HDG6 is 590ft/lbs, which might be on the edge if that rating is at the crank, which I assume it is.



I had a bit of oil seepage from the RMS. I think it was coming from the seal itself, but it was hard to tell. After doing some reasearch on the issue I realized how common of an issue RMS leaks are on these engines. I decided to use the old style rubber seal and copper sealant on the paper gasket. I reused the RMS flange, but found it was a bit warped, so I lapped it on a piece of glass.




Fingers crossed it doesn't seep this time.

I'm not sure if this is common with the 01e, but I couldn't shift into first gear unless the car was completely stationary. I figured since I'm already this deep I might as well rebuild the transmission. I got JHM's full rebuild kit. The inside of the transmission looked immaculate, with no discernable wear on any of the gears. Even the 1-2 shift collar looked fine.





One of main reasons why I wanted this car was so that I could have a RWD bias and do some drifting. I've had this JHM LSD sitting on my shelf for 2 years, so I figured I should probably get it in the car. The fit was excellent and I didn't need to make any adjustments to the preload or shims.




The rear diff bushings were totally shot, so I replaced them with some strongflex poly bushings. I definitely had a rear end clunk, so it will be nice to get rid of that.

[Audibot]

Awesome work dude! Definitely inspiring!