On Sunday, I bid farewell to my old friend… it was a tough decision to make, but in the end I think it was the right decision. Still didn’t make it any easier to see the ‘ol bird go away, though. I received payment for the A4 on 16 Sept, but it didn’t feel “real” until Sunday. I spent the previous weekend cleaning out the remainder of my stuff in the car and packing all the spare parts into it for the new owner, but when the driver came on Sunday to take her away – it finally hit me.
And off she went… to Minnesota and her new owner!
What made this even harder for me was my son (who I was holding) going – “Daddy’s car! Daaadddy’s caaar going bye bye!!!” This, followed by whimpering (he spent much time in that car crawling around, pretending to drive, etc.). I will not lie, I had a tear in my eye. Lots of great memories with that car! But when one chapter closes, a new one quickly begins… so the best way to get over that loss is to look at the new fun ahead!
Little backstory: August of 2015, I got an email of a club member looking to unload his RS4. He was experiencing a heavy misfire at higher RPMs. After sending it to his private mechanic, the guy told him the motor was toast and he needed a new harness to the tune of $9K. This mechanic then told him that he’d happily help him sell the car for a commission to someone he knew if he decided he didn’t want to repair it. The PO then sent it to Audi of Silver Spring to get a second opinion. The mechanic did the same tests, moved around some coil packs, stuck a borescope down the cylinders, and came up with the same verdict – new engine required…. But if he wanted to sell it, the mechanic would happily give him an offer!
So needless to say, the PO wasn’t feeling so warm and fuzzy about the whole ordeal, so he reached out to the club, and I got the heads up he was looking to unload his RS4. After a few email exchanges and a few phone calls, we came to an agreement. With my trusty AAA card in my wallet, my cousin, 18mo old son (at the time) and I made the drive up to Audi of Silver Spring to check out the car and pick it up. I knew the PO from a few track events, and I had seen the car – but I was still in shock that I was soon able to call it my own! The PO was the original owner, purchasing the car in mid ’06, and had every receipt of work he’d done on the car.
After a quick walk around, I made the call for the tow truck. The car ran, but the CEL was flashing, and she just sounded… well… not happy! It had a lumpy idle that you’d expect out of a cam’d muscle car… def not the refined sound you’d expect from this rev-happy RS!
After an hour of pacing the dealership, my son helping the dealership guys wash a car (or attempting to), finding every single dirty place to stick his hands, and attempting to remove all the rings from the cars in the lot (the rings on the 4000 were loose, and he found it good fun to tug on them – so he figured all of this fancy 4 ringed things should come off too!)… the truck arrived!
And the ‘ol bird making it home:
After this point, I spent some time doing minimal diagnosing (i.e. pulling codes, and overall just tinkering under the hood). I know the PO told me the mechanic was chasing a misfire by swapping around coils, but when I pulled codes it showed misfires on ALL cylinders! On top of that, it’d go from no cel, to flashing cel, to solid cel. Something was def screwy. Unfortunately, the car sort of sat at this point for a good 6 months+. I had major rust issues on my Mountaineer, so the garage was reserved for that repair… which of course took longer than it should have as well!
So she sat… and got snowed on…
This was the crazy snow we got in Jan ’16 – and foolishly I thought I’d have time shortly to work on the car, and the snow would turn into an ice bank, so I decided to dig the car out and not leave it in its icy cocoon. In hindsight, this was more for exercise than action!
Fast forward to March/April time frame – spring was in the air! The Mountaineer was finally repaired, and I had time on my side… so I pulled the car from the parking pad and got it ready to be washed and put into the garage.
And now it was time to start having some fun!
Now that I had the car in the garage, it was time for me to start digging into the engine. Unfortunately, I found a lot of “man handling” by the previous mechanics, as the harness plugs on a couple of the coil packs was literally shattered from them “brut forcing” some of them apart. But that aside, it was time to stick a scope down into each cylinder to confirm my suspicion – something foreign made its way into the engine!
I started in cylinder 1 and worked my way back. Cylinder 1-3 had some strange (though light) scoring on the cylinder walls. Nothing major, but something wasn’t right. Additionally, each cylinder almost looked washed down with oil/gas (streaking), so you could tell that it wasn’t firing 100% correctly as well… and then I got to cylinder 4. I’ll let the picture speak for what I found!
NOT pretty! And the top of the cylinder wall looked like you took a screwdriver too it and stabbed at it hundreds of times! So yeah… engine is toast! I looked at the driver’s side as well, but that was squeaky clean. So the damage was limited to this side.
So at this point – I needed to start looking for a motor. When I first picked up the car in August, I had been searching forums and eBay for anything available. To my amazement, there was a brand new block out in CA listed. Since I hadn’t confirmed that it truly needed a motor (I didn’t trust the mechanics and needed to see it for myself) I wasn’t ready to act on it. Additionally, I was waiting to sell off the 2nd flipper car I had picked up to help fund this endeavor! My plan was to snag the new block, find a used pass side head – since I’m sure the head looks like the cylinder, rebuild the driver’s side head and have a brand spankin’ new motor. I go to my ‘watched’ list on eBay to find that… $hit, they pulled the block and listed it “sold.” I was bummed out, but decided to give the shop a call the next morning. To my surprise, it was actual EuroSpec Sport who had the motor, and to my delight – they actually still had the block… AND new heads! So after some negotiation on my part, we struck a deal. I think I caught them at just the right time, b/c they were in a new push to start liquidating some of their stock that’s not moving. So I was able to get the entire setup for not much more than they wanted for the block itself!
Now, since I haven’t really messed with a motor this “new,” I decided that I’d have them ship it to my folks’ house in PA, where I will soon bribe our long time Audi Mechanic/friend to help me assemble the motor. So a few days after payment, the box arrived at our family business and was quickly scuttled away to a storage unit to await assembly. Mid summer, I was able to head up home to visit the family, and the motor. It was quite a clean little package, but there was fun within!
Mmmmm…. New and shiny!
At this point though, I couldn’t move forward with the new motor until I got the old motor out. So shortly after confirming the motor was shot, it was time to figure out how to get the motor out of the RS. I’ve taken apart all sorts of Audis, but it stopped at the B6… and even then, it was a timing belt only. I’ve never removed a motor on a new B chassis car, only the Type 44 (old 200s), C4s (UrS cars), and my 4000. But hey, you see one, you’ve seen them all… right? How hard could this possibly be?
So a quick call to my buddy, and he was happy to help tear apart the car with me… It starts simple… remove bumper
Then 4 hours later, spillage of fluids (no blood though)… the nose was off and stored away in the garage:
And this was what I was left with…
This is where I stepped back and looked in awe of Audi’s engineering. They REALLY crammed this stuff into this engine bay! And 3 radiators?!? Really? WITH individual after run pumps? I started to get a little threatened at this point looking at all these hoses, connections, etc. This is going to get interesting.
At this point, it’s the end of April, and I was about to start renovating our only full bathroom in the house at the beginning of May – so needless to say, the car took a back burner for a few more months!
Fast forward to the end of August, and I took a day off of work and decided “this needs to get done.”
I started by crawling around the car trying to figure out exactly what needed to come out in order to drop this motor. In summary… all if it needed to come out! Did I mention they really shoehorned this into the engine bay???
So out came the secondary/tertiary radiators and their after run pumps:
And out came the control arms so I could drop the trans/subframe/engine all in one piece:
With all the mechanical stuff disconnected (or so I thought), it was time to dive into the wiring. Audi did sort of make this simple. Despite the fact that there are 2 ECUs to run the motor (again, really?!?), you can disconnect both harnesses and wrap them up and put them on top of the motor to be disconnected/removed later. So this part was relatively modular… but as usual, there was yet another WTF Audi moment – in order to get to the last bolt that holds the main ECU cover on… you have to REMOVE the wipers and loosen the cowl so you can move it enough to get to the bolt! Again, really?
And after 5ish hours (give/take), she’s ready to be removed:
And from here, the car sat again for a few more weeks… until this past weekend, where the heart was finally removed! After the previous 5 hour stint, I had everything disconnected (again, so I thought) so that the only thing holding this into the car was 12 bolts…
So I hooked it up, and started the process of dropping the assembly:
And out she came!
So what was that ONE connection I missed? Why the coolant hose that fed the heater core at the BACK of the motor that I completely didn’t see (shocker). Apparently the plastic fitting wasn’t strong enough to suspend the 600lb assembly!
Add one more thing to the “shopping list” I guess!Engine bay looks so big now… heh
At this point, it was time to start pulling the motor apart. I figured I’d start with the pass side downpipe to see what I could find. Given past reading, I just assumed that one of the screws from the intake manifold backed out and got sucked into the motor… but much to my surprise, that wasn’t it!
What do I spy with my little eye?
Why it looks like it wasn’t a screw, but a flap! Now, I’m not sure if this is an intake flap, or the divider flap in the HEAD. Given the small amount of material, I’m banking on intake flap. Thankfully, I have a very low mile one waiting to go in (thanks, Mike!)
So downpipes were popped off, and it was time to separate the motor and trans. All bolts were removed, and I started to separate… only to find that there was yet another, one more thing I needed to pull before separating. Soooo, add a new flywheel timing sensor to the shopping list as well! I knew that it was good practice to remove these on the old 20vt/20vt 5 cylinder motors, and I even though to myself “you should remove that,” but I didn’t… and as I pulled them apart I heard a “crack” and the top of the sensor came falling out of the transmission. *sigh*
Anyways… after some struggling (angle of engine on hoist plus trans made the input shaft bind slightly, so it was tough getting it assembled completely) I succeeded!
And then the fun began of stripping down the motor. Harness was relatively easy to get apart, and after some tinkering, I was able to get the coolant main feed plus EGR stuff removed as well (again, shoe horned!!!!)
So with that, I have everything pulled off the motor that I think I’m ready to have removed, and stored away for safe keeping.
From this point, I need to assemble a shopping list of all the ancillary parts that I’m going to need to reassemble this beast. With the sale of my trusty B5 A4, this will now fund that shopping list. Once I acquire all the necessary parts, I need to plan a weekend w/ our mechanic/friend to head up to PA with the old motor and swap parts around to assemble the NEW motor that’s patiently been waiting.
It’ll probably be a bit between updates from this point, as kiddo #2 is due anytime between now and the end of Oct, but things have been slow and figured that now was as good a time as any to start a new project thread
