Eric's '90 80QT: rustic bits

[DE80q]

Very interesting. I never checked the gland nuts on the front struts, because I didn't install them. I've always attributed the nasty clunks I have going to to the drive line not being properly aligned. I will have to check into this.

[elaw]

So... can someone school me on 100mm inner CV joints?

Up to this point I've gone through life blissfully thinking they were all the same (and the same as the ones on the center driveshaft). But today I'm changing a front inner due to a torn boot and encountered this:

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Audi 100mm inners different DSCF1463sm.JPG [ 314.31 KiB | Viewed 913 times ]
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On the right is the one that was on the car, on the left is one from my "stock". I can't find a partnumber on either one.

The outer part of the right-hand one is about 2mm taller. The height of the inner parts of both appears to be the same, although you can see they differ a bit in appearance. I have no idea which is correct for the car... when I built the car I basically tossed all the CVs from the car and several other sources into a box, then selected the best-looking ones to go on the car.

I realize what's "right" is probably a little unclear since the car has a different transmission (016 vs. 01A) and possibly different suspension (mostly CQ vs. 80) than it was built with.

But if anyone knows, I'd like to understand the difference betwen these two.

Thanks!

[elaw]

Wow... nobody has any thoughts on those CVs?

As luck would have it, I went to replace the other inner boot over the weekend and the CV felt a little loose. I had no more of the type of joint that was in the car (right-hand in the above picture) so I installed one of the other type. It fit okay and so far there have been no problems.

And on to another topic: 016 transmission selector shaft seals. Mine appears to be leaking like a sieve... I last topped up the tranny oil about a year ago, and this weekend when I checked it took almost a quart to top up. And the transmission is very well lubricated... on the outside.

The question is: how hard is it to replace the seal with the tranny in the car? Bonus points for BTDT from anyone with an 016 in a B3 chassis, but I imagine B2 would be similar. I did some googling figuring there must be some discussion on this somewhere on the intarwebs but didn't really find anything.

[elaw]

And now on to today's issues...

The car has been making a squealing noise for a while that I suspected was the driveshaft center bearing. After all, I had two bad ones, why not three?

Well, good news is it's not the driveshaft bearing. Bad news: left front wheel bearing! Well, it's over 2 years old so I guess it's had a long life... :frustrated:

Anywho, the question is what brand to replace it with. GAP offers "Original equipment FAG, SKF, INA or NSK brand.". Partsgeek has FAG kits. Or there's OE for about 2x the price. Is it worth paying extra for OE?

Not that I expect it matters but I've got CQ front suspension bits so it uses the 82mm bearings.

And another unrelated item: rear (and center for that matter) diif lock actuators - they're NLA, right? I find it odd that ETKA still lists them (p/n 857711995a) but they don't seem to be available anywhere.

[yodasfro]

FAG wheel bearings are good. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=40884

[elaw]

Hey thanks!

I actually have one or two of those Mercedes actuators but it always bugs me that all 3 bolt holes don't line up. That and the "PITA factor" of having to thread the shafts. But I probably should just get over it...

[DE80q]

I would stick with FAG or SKF.

[elaw]

Hello all and happy new year!

There's not much to report on the car... it's mostly just been working. The suspension seems to have developed about 1000 different rattles and creaks/squeaks which are driving me nuts since I can't figure out their cause. Hopefully I will eventually!

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Here's what I'm here to talk about... yesterday I went out for a drive in the Saab, and when I got home I found an 01E transmission in the back of the car. It's the damnedest thing!

Although it's going at a glacial pace, the 07K project is still going. And I'm really on the fence about using the 01E vs. 016 transmission. I'm convinced the 016 *could* be used but of course it would be a lot harder than making the 01E work. So I'm debating it... but when this 01E came up for sale locally for $150 I figured the smart move would be to grab it so I did.

Anyhow... on to my question. I'm pretty familiar with most of the 01E-into-B3 issues, having read the thread here and a lot of people's build threads. But there one thing I can't figure out for my particular situation, and that's the length of the front halfshafts. I'm completely familiar with the inner CV size problem... it's the *length* of the shafts that I'm concerned about.

And here's the worst part: I can't for the life of me remember what shafts I'm running now! All I know for sure is I currently have mostly CQ front suspension bits including 82mm wheel bearings, machined UrS hubs, and an 016 transmission with 100mm drive flanges.

Can anyone at least get me started here? Are the 01E halfshaft lengths the same as the 016 or 01A?

[DE80q]

From the reading I did, you don't need to change CV shafts to go from 01A to 01E. With you running the 82mm wheel bearing, you might want to find a pair of RS2 shafts. They will be a direct bolt in with the 01E you just picked up. Other wise you need to get the rear diff output flanges from a B5 to run the 100mm inner joints.

Knowing you have an 016 now, did you have to change CV shafts to put that in?

[elaw]

Knowing you have an 016 now, did you have to change CV shafts to put that in?

That... is an excellent question. I wish I had an excellent answer!

The truth is I just don't know. I've looked through all my notes and really can't tell.

I *think* how it went was that when I bought the 016 I figured the shaft layout would be comparable to a later 4KQ where the fronts are the same as the rears, just swapped side-to-side. I think what happened next is I bought a set of 4 CQ shafts, figuring the fronts would be spares and intending to use the rears in front, on opposite sides as in the 4KQ.

Then I think I discovered the rear axles would not work on the front because the front setup I'm using has the 82mm wheel bearing, and the hub and the part of the CV that goes into it are correspondingly larger than the setup on the
rear that uses the 75mm wheel bearing.

The only other way I can figure it out is this: I started with a pile of axles that included a full set from the 80, a full CQ set, and the full set of of my old 4KQ. The 4KQ ones would not fit at all since the CV-to-hub setup is different (CVs held with nuts instead of bolts). The CQ rears would not fit since the CVs would not mate to the hub (75mm vs. 82mm difference discussed above). All 4 of the axles originally on the 80 would not work since they all used 75mm wheel bearings. So by process of elimination, I must have used the CQ fronts?

But with my crummy memory and lack of notes, it's possible I did something different and don't remember!

From the reading I did, you don't need to change CV shafts to go from 01A to 01E. With you running the 82mm wheel bearing, you might want to find a pair of RS2 shafts. They will be a direct bolt in with the 01E you just picked up. Other wise you need to get the rear diff output flanges from a B5 to run the 100mm inner joints.

If 01A shafts will work, and what I wrote above is correct, then I should be set as 01A shafts are what's currently in there. I'll be a very happy camper if that turns out to be true... RS2 axles are pretty hard to come by and costly from what I understand.

I've got the 100mm-inner-CV thing covered as the 016 currently in the car has 100mm flanges on it and I can just swap them over.

[elaw]

Hello all and happy spring!

Today's issue with the rocket-powered marshmallow is the steering rack. It's leaking a bit, and has always had this issue where it binds a little when the wheel is exactly centered, but lately that issue has grown much worse and it's making a "squeak-like sound" when it binds. So I'm thinkin' the car might like its rack replaced.

The obvious answer is send it out for a rebuild but my fundage is very limited right now plus I'd like not to have the car off the road for as long as that would take.

There's someone parting a '94 in the swap meet so that leads to my question: will or will not a B4 rack work on a B3 car? I've searched and seen some talk about it here but couldn't find any post that definitively said "I put a B4 rack into my B3 and it worked".

So has anyone been there and done that?

[DE80q]

You can put a B4 rack in a B3, but there may be hose change needed.

On a side note, I have a good B3 rack if you want it. Just needs a new boot.

[elaw]

Hello all and happy weekend!

One thing that's been an issue for a long time with this car is the steering rack, and it's gotten bad enough that I've decided to undertake the painful process of replacing it (extra-painful with the A/C and ABS hardware I've managed to put in the way of accessing it).

I think I've figured out how to undo almost everything... except the nut everyone loves: the driver-side one of the two holding it to the firewall (the one nearest the valve body). I could swear I've seen some discussion here recently of that one but I can't find it! Can anyone point me to a thread, or offer any tips on a tool setup to get that sucka loose?

And for your amusement, or in the (IMHO) incredibly unlikely case someone's had this issue before, a story...

Sometime last summer, the car started making a noise that I narrowed down to the left front wheel area. It's sort of a squealing noise, speed-dependent. The obvious answer is the wheel bearing, but I've replaced a lot of bad wheel bearings and never heard one make a noise like this. Usually a bad bearing makes a "rumbling" noise that will vary with loading, like when you turn the wheel or accelerate or brake. This noise is higher in pitch, and does not vary at all with loading. What it does vary with is temperature... the noise went away all winter! Sadly when the weather got warmer recently it came back.

But here's the weirdest part: 3 weeks ago I took the car to the car wash. When I drove into the car wash it was making the noise. When I drove out it was silent! Seriously... not a peep from the thing. I hoped it had magically fixed itself as it stayed silent for about 2 weeks, but the noise is slowly coming back.

I do know it's not the CV (inner or outer) because I took the axle out to replace a torn inner boot and looked the CVs over very carefully, flexed them, etc. and they seem fine. Because of the high pitch of the sound I thought it might be one of the boots themselves but I sprayed them with WD-40 and there was no change in the noise.

Has anyone got any thoughts on this one? :?

Edit for one more data point: I actually thought it might be related to the ABS tone ring, so I hooked a pair of headphones to the sensor and set the wheel spinning... and the pitch of the tones did not match - the squeal was higher in pitch than the ABS tone. So I'm fairly sure it's nothing related to the tone ring.

[elaw]

Well I changed out the rack over the weekend and here's a bit of followup...

Overall the job was not as bad as I expected. Detaching the tierods from the rack I expected to be easy and it was. Removing the nut holding the rack to the firewall, the passenger-side one, I expected to be easy and it was. The other firewall nut was easy too... when done from underneath! You'd have to be crazy to attempt to remove it from the top. My car has the procon-ten deleted and maybe that makes a difference? But I was easily able to get a regular-length 17mm combination wrench on that nut from the bottom, broke it loose by prying against the tranny with a short length of 2x3, and once loose I got it the rest of the way with a short 17mm combination wrench.

The two bolts+nuts holding the rack to the wheel well were more difficult than I expected... the suspension strut does a very good job of obstructing both of them. I didn't take the wheel off and don't think it would have helped. A good old-fashioned Allen wrench on the outside and a 13mm combination wrench on the inside did the trick... very slowly.

Re the hydraulic and steering-shaft connections... if you look in the Bentley it says not to remove the rubber boot between the valve body meets the firewall. I think that advice is nuts! After disconnecting the steering shaft, you can easily remove that boot by popping the plastic tabs that retain it from underneath the car. And with it off you get very easy access to disconnect the hydraulic lines (and reconnect them later), and when you do disconnect them, you don't get a load of PS fluid in your face as you would if you were under the car! As a substitute for your face, you'll want to put a pan under the car to catch that fluid unless you like having a wicked messy driveway. :wink:

The part that ended up being hardest for me was actually getting the rack out of the car! But I think that problem is probably unique to my car due to how I did the engine swap. I've got the A/C accumulator mounted high up near the center of the firewall, and the accumulator and its hoses both were in the way of removing the rack... I ended up having to discharge the system and remove the accumulator. There's also a large bundle of wires with very little slack going from the firewall to the back of the engine that was a problem, but I eventually managed to maneuver the rack around them.

What bums me out the most is there were 3 issues I was hoping to fix by replacing the rack, but one of them isn't fixed. The old rack was leaking... that of course should not happen with a rebuilt rack. It would make strange whirring/whining noises sometimes and that appears to be fixed too.

But the steering has always bound just a little right in the center and that issue is *not* fixed. It's very subtle... I bet 4 out of 5 average drivers wouldn't even notice. But if you're moving down a straight level road and move the wheel to the 11:00 or 1:00 position, it won't return to the center. I guess I'll have to continue searching for what's causing that. :(

[lorge1989]

Your detailed updates are nice, I should probably consider doing something like that just I remember my thought process and what I did/didn't do to the car!

How long since you had the car aligned?

[elaw]

How long since you had the car aligned?

Um... forever?

Well really not that long... I got it aligned right after I put it on the road following the major work, so late 2012. And with how little I drive, that works out to about 15K miles ago.

But the problem has existed the whole time... it just seems to have gotten a bit worse lately.

Between the binding and some creaks/clunks in the suspension I've never been able to figure out in spite of many hours spent checking and tightening things, I've got my eye on the upper strut mounts. I ordered one of these a while back: https://www.quickjack.com/car-lift-systems/bl-5000slx-portable-car-lift.html and it's supposed to arrive at the end of this week, at which time I'm going to change out those mounts.

[DE80q]

The binding issue really sounds like the strut mounts. Mine where quite notchy when they were going out.

[SEStone]

These cars run very little caster which gives vague on-center feeling. Also make sure none of your tie rods are bound up. If the alignment shop tightened them with the balljoints not 'horizontal', it can bind enough to give poor self-centering behavior.

Sam

[mr_aj_johnson]

been a while since I've been on the interwebs. I don't think you are that special in your steering rack replacement. I had the radiator, brake master, everything off the drivers side of the engine bay and it still doesn't quite just slip in and out. Not that bad but not on my list of favorite things to do.

[elaw]

So... in the process of working on the car recently I discovered my front strut bump stops had disintegrated at the ripe old age of two years.

Oh well, they were aftermarket, so I decided to pony up and buy OE ones - I think the partnumber is 893412131B. So I order a couple online and... apparently they're NLA!

Does anyone have a recommendation for B3 front bump stops that don't suck?

[PRY4SNO]

Sachs or Boge.

[elaw]

Sachs or Boge.

Any idea who (preferably in the US) might carry those?

I'm seeing CRP, Meyle, FEQ, and Febi for sale... and they're all about $3.00 each and I'm sure they're junk. Haven't seen Sachs or Boge anywhere. I've looked at GAP, PartsGeek, Rock Auto, FCP Groton, ECS, and a few others.

Is it worth checking with different dealers to try and find an OE one? I figure nowadays the dealers are all linked together by computer so if one says it's NLA that means nobody would have it but maybe I'm wrong?

[DE80q]

What brand were the ones that failed so quickly?

[elaw]

Edit: I thought I didn't know what brand the old bump stop was, but realized I hadn't thrown it out. It's a Meyle part... photo below. Never been abused, about 2 years / 10K miles on it. Effin' amazing. BTW although I haven't removed it yet, the one on the other side is in the same condition so this one's failure isn't a fluke.

What I've done since is order a couple of these: http://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php ... 77&jsn=330 - given how Rock Auto does their listings I'm not 100% confident it'll fit, but I've got my fingers crossed. And it's made by Sachs so hopefully it might last.

[PRY4SNO]

Whoops. I was thinking strut mounts, but hopefully your new bump stops work out better!