The Project Pad

I read through the instructions in the Bentley but they say something to the effect of "slide the panel to the rear", as if they're talking about a glass sunroof with a separate thing you slide forward when you don't want the sun on your head. Or are they referring to the inner panel of the sunroof? Can anyone tell me specifically how to remove that panel? If it matters, this is the tilt/slide sunroof with a crank to open & close it.

If you push back on that panel hard enough it will disengage some clips and then it should slide back easily. IRRC You have to remove the entire mechanism to remove that panel. At least that's how it is on a T44.

Yeah... I'd sort of forgotten when reading the manual and writing my post that the "interior trim" is in two parts - the inner bit that tilts up with the sunroof panel, and the outer bit that doesn't.

In this case it's the "inner bit" that the fabric is falling off of, although I suspect the other one can't be far behind. :(

On that dog bone shifter dealio. Remember what sizes you used?

For the rod part, I used M8 stainless threaded rod.

I'll try to double-check when I get home but I think the ends were McMaster part number 9416K79 which are "gas spring end fittings" for M8 rod (duh) and 10mm balls. Those are zinc-plated steel - they have stainless ones (p/n 9424K12) but they're 20 bucks a pop. And as you can see in the photo, I used (stainless) nuts to lock them in place.

Well this probably is not terribly exciting to some as it's been done quite a bit before, but I now possess my own homemade crank locking tool! And thanks to the always-brilliant work of Dave the machinist (DE80q) it turned out really nicely.

I think I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking...




Now all I've got to do is change the darn timing belt! Given that I have absolutely no idea of the mileage on it.

I actually bought all the parts when I moved the engine from my 4KQ to this car, but ended up not doing it due to lack of time and funding to buy the tool. I didn't really want to rent one in case I found other trouble while doing the job which would mean I'd need the tool for longer. Now I can take as long as I want to do the job... well except that Dave needs it too, but I'll leave the cat-from-bag-releasing to him about that...

Well today I took on one of my most dreaded jobs on this car: the timing belt!

Since it's been written up 100 times on the 'net, I won't go through the whole procedure here but there (IMHO of course) are some interesting highlights.

The first "fun part" of course is getting the damper pulley bolt loose. I had a 6-foot piece of pipe to use as an extension for my breaker bar but then I saw something in the garage I thought would work better... something that can provide quite a bit of force in a controlled fashion:

Yep, a floor jack! That photo was taken just before the bolt broke loose, and you can see how much that 3/4" steel rod was bending. It took about an inch more lift from the jack and the bolt started turning. Which is a good thing because if it had to go one more inch it would have hit the headlight!

After that getting the bolt off was pretty smooth sailing. I've done ones in the past where you have to crank the bolt out turn after turn with tons of force, but this one wasn't too bad once broken loose.

One thing I realized rather late in the game was I needed to worry not only about getting the bolt loose, but getting it torqued properly when I reinstall it! Luckily a little kludging did the job again:

What you're looking at is a 3' length of 3/4" iron pipe with a 1/2" drive socket welded to one end to allow attachment of a torque wrench. The other end of the pipe slips over the breaker bar and is held with a setscrew to make sure it doesn't spin. The pipe multiplies the torque by a factor of 3, so I just dialed up 125 ft-lbs. on the wrench and I was golden. Incidentally I see the figure of 380 ft-lbs. a lot for the torque on that bolt, but the AAN manual calls for 450 Nm without the special tool which translates to 331 ft-lbs. But just to ensure that it's tight enough even if my extender isn't calibrated to 0.1%, I targeted 275 ft-lbs.

The other thing of note that came from this is the discovery of yet another cheesy aftermarket part. When I got the AAN engine I had bought all the stuff to do the timing belt, including an "FEQ" ("First Equipment Quality") tension roller. I didn't have the tools at the time to do the TB but I threw the roller in there since it was easy and I planned to do the TB soon anyway ("soon" ended up being 2-1/2 years later!).

Anyhow here's a photo of that wonderful tension roller:

See all the "slime" inside? That's grease that's leaked out of the bearing. It was also loose and noisy, having been in service for a whopping 10,000 miles. I guess "First Equipment Quality" is not exactly first quality equipment. So I've got a FAG one on order and the car will be coming apart again in a few days...

Nice work on the floor jack, might have to try that sometime. Always better to apply and remove torque in a smooth and controlled fashion. Makes me shake my head when I see guys at work torquing up valves with a herky-jerky motion. Granted, 500# by hand gets tiring by the 16th nut on the 3rd or 4th pass, haha.

So... can anyone school me on the subject of windshield leaks?

For a while now ... a few months but definitely not as long as I've owned the car, whenever the car sits out in heavy rain I get water dripping from the trim at the top of the windshield. I'm 95% sure the leakage is around the windshield itself - the sunroof seems to close properly, the drains are clear, etc.

Looking at the Bentley, I get the impression that keeping water out is mostly the job of the trim/seal around the windshield and not the glue that holds the glass. I'm wondering what chance I have of fixing the problem by simply replacing that seal... does that sound possible?

Or am I just being dumb thinking there could be a DIY fix and should be talking to a glass person?

If anyone's ever paid to have this done I'd also love to know what the cost was. I'd like to do this right, but if it's going to cost $hundreds I might just gob some RTV in there...

Local windshield shop had some aftermarket seal material, replaced mine on the rally car labor included for like 50$. Check your local glass shop.

I think I would take it to a good glass shop I believe audipete has recommended http://www.villageglassmith.com/ Is the windshield original or has it been replaced?

It's been replaced... and there are some signs that the work was not done very well. There's some tarlike sealant in places between the trim and the glass that doesn't look like it should be there at all, and is deteriorating. Although it's mostly on the sides, and the leak is on the top.

The frustrating thing is I don't have insurance coverage for the glass on this car so I'd be paying out-of-pocket for a new one. That, and making sure they get the right glass/trim as it seems glass shops are notorious for not knowing that FWD and quattro models use different parts...

Well this week I don't have anything Earth-shattering (or Audi-shattering) to report but a couple of minor items of interest.

First, on the subject of windshield leaks. Or more specifically, the subject of how to fix windshield leaks in 5 minutes for about a nickel:

What, you expected duct tape? I use only the best... electrical tape!
Yeah it's a little unsightly, but it's only temporary and it works! We had about 3" of rain a couple of days ago and the car was outside for about half of it... and nary a drop was found inside the car.

The other tidbit is related to water found in another location... the engine:

I didn't notice until I'd completed the timing belt job... part of one of the blades on the water pump impeller was broken off! I don't think it happened when I did the TB... the broken surface is rusted so it's probably been that way for a while. It sure baffles me how that could happen though. Other than that, there was nothing wrong with the WP - the bearing was tight and quiet and it didn't leak a drop. The scary part is there's probably a little chunk of cast iron loose in the cooling system... somewhere...

One thing you haven't seen mention of here in a long time is my cruise control. Quite a few pages back you'll see that I did what I thought was a clever job coupling an actuator to the top of the accelerator pedal arm. And it does work... in fact it holds speed pretty well. But due to the "stiction" in the cable and whatever else, it doesn't actuate the throttle very smoothly... if you look at the boost gauge when the CC is engaged the manifold pressure jumps all over the place. So I never used it very much.

Well I'm glad to say with a TON of effort I've found a better solution. I actually managed to mount an actuator in a position analogous to the stock AAN location but offset to match my relocated throttle body. It was NOT a fun job... I had to pull a lot of parts off the car, and basically could only get my hand to where the actuator and bracket are located through one opening... which was real fun when I had to hold the actuator in place while making alignment marks to weld the bracket. But now that's all over and I have this:

It doesn't look like much but that bracket holds the actuator in *exactly* the right place to link to the throttle body. The top of the bracket mounts with a spacer to one of the M6 holes in the side of the block, and the bottom goes under the head of the upper bolt holding the engine mount bracket.

You can't see much of it, but here's a shot of it installed:

I'm waiting on a new plastic bushing from ECS since it would be crazy not to replace it at this point, but when that arrives in a couple of days I can button this thing up! :-)

Looking good Eric! I love all the little things you have done to yours to make it as fully optioned as it can be. Keep it up.

Make sure the "shaft" for the actuator isn't rusty; if so it can bind in the bushing, which keeps the throttle open...

Good point!

Your post actually got me to thinking, and I did some searching about zinc plating. I don't think I'm patient enough this time, but here's a guy in NJ who specializes in "restoring" old auto parts... looks like he does good work: http://www.yellowzincplating.com/

Joy! :-)

The cruise-control job is done, and it works _way_ better with the new actuator setup.

One thing I didn't mention in my last post about this is the fact that the space where the actuator rod goes used to be occupied by a tube carrying pre-throttle air to the idle control valve. So while the biggest challenge was getting the actuator installed and working, that tube had to be dealt with too.

Luckily with creative reworking and positioning of the air tube, I was able to keep it in about the same location - just held up out of the way of the actuator rod. Here's what it looks like completed:


I also wanted to toss out a little free advice... I'm sure you all will find it worth every penny.

One thing I'm absolutely obsessive about when I do car projects is using stainless steel as much as possible, especially fasteners, and especially especially in the exhaust system. I was recently reminded why I do that... this isn't an Audi thing but still pertinent.

About 12 years ago I did the exhaust on my Saab, and installed a few band clamps. With one clamp I had some stainless bolts & nuts that worked with it, but I didn't have enough for the other clamps so I used the hardware that came with them.

So fast-forward to about 3 days ago. The exhaust needed some work, and at the time I'd installed the wrong type of clamps (I used clamps made for butt joints with lap joints). So I decided to replace the incorrect clamps.

On the clamp with the SS hardware, the nuts broke loose easily with a hand socket wrench, and after loosening them about 2 turns with the socket I was able to spin the nuts off with my fingers. Here's what they looked like:

Just to reiterate, those nuts & bolts have been on my car's exhaust system for 12 years, including plenty of winter driving on salted roads.

For comparison, this is what the (non-stainless) hardware looks like on one of the other clamps:

Maybe a better term would be "chunks of iron oxide that used to be hardware"?

Okay folks, once again I'm suffering from Audi-related confusion. Not major, but maybe someone can help?

For the first time in approximately forever, I tried installing the plastic panel that goes above the passenger's footwell. On the left rear ("rear" = toward car's rear) it attaches with a screw, and in the front it sits in a white clip. And on the right rear, there's a hole for a screw that looks like it used to have a screw... but there's nothing for it to screw into!

See:


Clearly I'm missing something (besides my marbles)... but what is it? In ETKA it shows a couple of brackets that maybe I'm missing, but it's not clear which one or both I need. BTW if anyone's parting a car and has the part(s), I'd love to buy 'em! Or a photo of how it's supposed to look... maybe I could make something.

There's a bit of plastic on the glovebox frame where one of those metal clip on nut things go.

Attachment ( 46801 ) : IMG_5325.JPG


Attachment ( 46809 ) : IMG_5328.JPG

Kewl... thanks! :-)

If I had an actual functioning brain, I would have tried putting the glovebox in...

Well I had a bit of an eye-opening experience recently!

I've always had the sense that on my car, especially since I did the A/C, the cooling fan ran an awful lot. But I have no indicator to show when it's running so I didn't know the extent of the problem.

Over the last few days I've been making some tweaks to the engine tune (because I can never leave well enough alone) and taking logs. While reviewing one of the logs, I realized I can see how much the cooling fan runs by examining the coolant-temp trace... and the answer is it runs *a lot*.

Here's "exhibit A":

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