Thanks for the kind words, I need to do a major update of the build thread. Car is running and running VERY well, presently in Northern Michigan for the month of August and then on to S-Fest later this month. Drove it over 2500 miles from Arizona to Michigan without issue and have been really ...

Got the car out of the storage in mid-July after a long June break for some work up in Washington St. The plan originally was to fabricate custom down pipes and install the exhaust in one shot but a couple of hitches prevented that. First problem was the center prop shaft I sourced from a 1994 ...

After a long six weeks of clean-up and running new lines and modifying existing A6 things to work with the new powerplant the V8 was ready to go in. Enlisted the help of a couple friends and we had it done in around 2 hours:

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee127/islingtonboy/_MG ...

Well the past 2-3 weeks since the engine pull has seen quite a transformation in how the engine compartment looks. It was certainly an oily mess with about 16 years of daily driving and a leaking V6 and especially the power steering rack which must have leaked a case of fluid over the past decade ...

Finally the big day arrived for the old V6 and auto transmission to come out. Was fortunate to have a DIY rental space with lifts/tools provided for $20 an hour. Made it A LOT easier to get the exhaust, drive shafts, all the small bits out of the car before the engine/trans could be removed as a ...

Well it certainly has been a long journey getting to this stage but I now have the engine close to being install-ready. I've gotten a lot of parts from Germany over the past month and now some final assembly to do and then we can bolt the engine and transmission together! Originally I had planned to ...

After a nice summer away I've had a chance to make a few mods. After getting a look at a real-deal S6 Plus on the east coast I realized I needed to modify a few things. One thing I definitely needed to change was a the old 110 amp alternator, decided on a 120 amp A8 version with the rear air duct ...

Finally got the engine off of the stand and back onto the rolling pallet. I get nervous with all that weight and shiny stuff on a slightly flimsy engine stand so I'm glad it's back on terra firma now. Used the old engine mounts and some wood blocks to get the whole shebang off of the pallet enough ...

Well now that the 01E project is done it's time to re-focus on the heads for the V8. These are the ABZ heads I got from my donor engine, they definitely were in need of a rebuild and I had a chance to clean up the intake ports a bit last summer but they've sat in boxes since. Finally got the time ...

Got a shipment of parts from Germany finally, some small bits for the V8 and all the synchros for the gearbox. I'll be using the upgraded composite synchros for all gears, here's a comparison of the older brass style vs. the new composite style for gears 3-6:

http://i234.photobucket&#46 ...

Started my rebuild on my 6-speed EDU manual transmission that came out of a 2000 A6 2.7tt up in the Northeast. This is the later version of the original 01E 5-speeds found in all UrS4/6 cars but the 6-speed found in the C4 S6 cars in Europe was never offered over here. This particular iteration of ...

It's been several months since my last update, quite a bit has transpired on the project but all for the good. Work on the road and being away from my build space has prevented any actual progress on the V8 project but a lot of parts have been acquired out of Germany and practically everything I ...

Well, Stage 2 of the build begins. Had several weeks off to visit family and get some parts powder coated. I had gotten the donor parts from the ABH and ABZ engines bead-blasted and made a trip down from Northern Michigan to Ohio to visit a friend's factory where they powder coat hundreds of parts a ...

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee127/islingtonboy/IMG_3155.jpg

I've been planning on an engine swap in my '97 C4 A6Q Avant for a while now and hopefully this will be a useful build thread for the V8 guys out there. In a perfect world I'd just import an S6 Plus from Europe ...