Hello everybody. My names Chris and this is my 91 Coupe quattro
I bought the car as a stock 20v coupe quattro in the winter of 2009. That photo was probably taken in 2010, after I first put the car together in my parents garage with a stock AAN and a k26/3071 tuned to 25psi by Marc. I'll spare the long winded details but currently I'm living in my newly built house with a decent sized garage/work area in the basement. Finally wrenching can resume, and I look forward to sharing my progress with you all. Also I might have a lot of questions to ask.
Welcome to my new work area. 3 years back I was renting some shop space 10 minutes from my house. It was nice, but I didn't get much done on my car there, and instead only managed to work on everybody elses cars (including my brothers ABZ A4). After that I had a year of no garage, no tools(in a storage trailer), and no motivation to pull the motor and beef it up for more boost. That was my ultimate goal. Up until now the AAN in my car was untouched. It had a fresh timing belt and head job from Force 5 so I ran it as is, but always dreamed of building it (or my spare AAN block) with new bearings, ARP hardwares, rods, etc.
Once I sealed the floor and moved a bunch of my tools over, I wasted no time at driving the coupe to its new home, and yanking the engine.
Here's a quick test fit of the SQ replica manifold Obviously with this setup I'll need a new downpipe, oil/coolant lines, intake/boost plumbing.
Afterthought wrote:Looking good! nice shop space! I find myself working on things alot more now that I don't have to drive to my shop and can work at home.
Thanks! I've been watching your coupe build on both forums I think. Nice job!
At this point in time, this is where I stand with the project; I've got several sub projects going on with the car including the engine build, fuel system refurb, and my dreaded sub frame captive nut issue. In my eyes, taking my time and getting the engine assembled correctly is most important, so that's where I want to keep my focus right now. I decided to build the engine that was currently running in the car, as opposed to building the spare AAN I had. I stripped the motor down to the bare block and brought it to Larry's machine shop in Groton. They cleaned it, mic'd it, gave the bores a light hone and decked the head gasket surface. Only issue that arose was balancing...
I dropped off my clutch, flywheel, crankshaft, front pulley, new H beam rods, stock pistons, rings, and clips to be balanced. Since the only information I had on this subject I learned from reading topics here and on other forums, I was hoping Larry's would know what to do. Shortly after dropping my goods off, I get the call from Larry's saying he didn't know how to properly balance the crankshaft and that it would be better off leaving it ,since it was only a few grams off. They did claim to have 0 balance the rods and pistons. I say ok. Looking at the rods and pistons I couldn't see where material was taken off to balance them. I feel funny going back to Larry's and asking them to show me where, but how else am I gonna know that the work I paid for was done? Also I had my pistons labeled to the correct cylinder when I dropped them off. When I picked everything up, they were no longer labeled and I have no way of knowing which bore to put which piston in. Larry's said not to worry since they were all pretty close and all within spec. Should I worry about this?
Mcstiff wrote:Looks great, is the turbine output as close the the inner fender as it looks?
Yes it is very close. In the picture, the header isn't fastened tight to the head so it is pulled away maybe a half inch, but either way it's very tight. I'll snap some better pics when I have the engine in the car again and things bolted up properly, but it looks like I might wanna cut and reangle the V band outlet slightly. It is a mystery to me that 034 sold a downpipe that bolted right in. Looks to me that there is little to no room for a down pipe to bolt up the way it is now.
Glad to see you here! Been wondering where your Bamboo quattro went...
Wish I had some decent perspective to offer on your machine shop woes, but I'd still go in and ask the "dumb" questions... worst thing you lose is some time and gain sleep in the process. Worst case scenario, is you are dissatisfied and don't go back... so who cares what they think of you at that point?
Find me on Instagram @pry4sno
|| 2010 Golf Sportwagen TDI /// #farmenwagen || 2002 Dodge Ram 2500 24vt 4x4 #bertancummins || 1992 80 quattro 20v /// Eventual AAN'd Winter Sled || 1990 Coupe quattro /// Because Racecar
Small update: I've been moving at an extremely slow pace but am still making progress. Last week I took my time with a pair of vice grip pliers and removed all the exhaust studs without any trouble. I took the cams and lifters out and then brought the head to Larry's to be decked flat. I also have a pristine 7a head with cams and a tight cam chain. I plan to drop the 7a cams in the AAN head but was going to reuse the AAN lifters. I kept them numbered to which hole they came from, but I read that I should keep the lifters with their cam. Should I use the 7a lifters in the AAN head ? or stick with the lifters that came with the head? Also which chain? Both felt equally tight compared to a third AAN head I have.
FWIW, I swapped 7a cams into my otherwise unaltered AAN head and saw no negative side effects. I've put roughly 10k miles on this setup and nothing has changed for the worse in the valvetrain AFAIK. I also reused my old stock chain (minimal play, inspection showed minimal wear, yay frequent synthetic oil changes) but general consensus is that it's cheap insurance to throw a brand new chain in if you are upgrading cams and you have a high mileage chain... Marc stocks them for $30 on his website.
Thanks for the tips guys. I'm picking up my cyl head today after work and can continue bolting things together. I'm excited to put this back in the car, but I just thought up another problem. I bought these low quality engine mounts from 034 that seemed to loosen up not long after installing them. I couldn't beleive that both of them came out of the car looking like this.. What are my options for mounts?
You're not alone... same thing happened to me after 7500km.
Get in touch with Jared at HPR for some quality mounts at a fair price. He goes by Angry Taco on here and MG. You may already know him as the 20v troll.
Find me on Instagram @pry4sno
|| 2010 Golf Sportwagen TDI /// #farmenwagen || 2002 Dodge Ram 2500 24vt 4x4 #bertancummins || 1992 80 quattro 20v /// Eventual AAN'd Winter Sled || 1990 Coupe quattro /// Because Racecar
PRY4SNO wrote:You're not alone... same thing happened to me after 7500km.
Get in touch with Jared at HPR for some quality mounts at a fair price. He goes by Angry Taco on here and MG. You may already know him as the 20v troll.
My 034 mounts didn't separate, they collapsed. I also ordered a set from Jared.
Right now Jared is swamped, so if Mark has them in stock, I would order them from him.
"If you can't find one, make one"
Dallastown, PA 1991 Audi 80 quattro (20vt project) 1991 Audi Coupe Quattro (project: my first 20v) 2007 Mitsubishi Raider(Dakota in disguise) 2019 Chevy Cruze RS hatch (wife's little red sporty car)
Thanks guys, I got the stiffer HPR mounts coming from Marc. But here's a question/issue I've been having since I first picked up this AAN from Force 5, 5 years ago. Pretty much, when I first swapped the motor in the coupe I didn't touch anything since it had a new timing belt and fresh head. But, the timing belt always tracked too far forward and hung off the front edge of the cam pulley. It ran like this forever and it did make me nervous at first but it never came flying off even at 7k rpm. Everyone who saw the car mentioned about me either needing or not needing the washer between the crank pulley and cog gear. Now that I'm putting the timing belt on I am having a problem. Here is my 7a pulley with the 034 trig wheel that I tac'd back in place then sealed over with jb weld...
and here's the cog gear which I'm thinking I have on correctly
Hopefully I can explain this clearly cuz I'm pretty confused.. That washer on my finger in the first pic does fit nicely inside the cog gear with it installed on the crank. But then the crank pulley doesn't sit flat against the cog gear since the pulley has a step same size as the washer that fits into the cog gear and allows the pulley and gear to be flush. Without that washer in the cog gear, the crank pulley goes on too far and the 034 trig gear touches parts of the oil pump preventing me from putting it on. Sooo, I can't put it back together without the washer, and theres no way I can leave the washer in place because there would be a 2mm gap between the gear and pulley. What am I doing wrong?!
I look forward to seeing what you're up to.
