Figured I'd give a quick update to this thread as it's been a while.
The UrQ has been doing nothing lately. We gave it to our mechanic for a month and he made it run like a charm again. A fellow Geeker/QWer (Nathan) was kind enough to loan us his chipped ECU to make sure that ours was faulty (which it was), and car has been running like a dream ever since. With that said, this isn't stopping us from restoring it!
The last major task for us was to pick up the heart of the beast. I originally bought a beautiful red UrS6 to part out back in July last year from a friend. He upgraded to a M5, and this 'ol girl wasn't getting used:
I originally wanted my sis-in-law to drive it while we waited to part it out, but she didnt want anything to do with a stickshift car, so I ended up keeping it with me for a while. And I drove it... and I fell in love with it. Then my brother came down to take it north to Watkins Glen for a track event.... and he drove it... and he fell in love with it. THEN my dad drove around while we were up in Watkins glen... you're getting the picture. Turned out, even though I got a screaming deal on this car, it was just TOO nice to part out. So we ended up getting another car to drive around in... lol.
Since then, I continued shopping around for a new donor. As luck would have it, a friend in the DC area had a freshly rebuilt AAN from a '92 S4 sitting in his garage waiting a new home. He had an UrQ project of his own, but never did the swap. Not only did he have this freshly rebuilt, zero mileage motor, but he also had the hulk that went with it!
So after a few months of chatting, we struck a deal. 2 weeks ago, my dad and I collected yet one more parts car for the UrQ project:
The motor in all its goodness:
And then off to picking up the pile:
and loading
and loaded, ready to roll!
After loading and driving back to my place, I realized we did a horrible job w/ the weight distribution, so we ended up turning it around so that the trailer wasn't wagging everywhere! WOuld have made for a looooong trip for my folks towing it back to PA if we didn't fix that.
So this brings us to last weekend.
After some serious a$$ busting on Saturday this past weekend, my dad, brother and I were able to tear apart this S4 faster than I ever anticipated doing. After one unfortunate mishap involving my hand and a razor blade (pics to follow), we got some biz handled w/o a doubt.
I started of Sat morning just planning on removing a few pieces and leaving the rest for another day. Being that we were going to pull the drivetrain (what was left of it), I figured it was best to leave the car on the trailer and just work on it there vs putting it in the garage:
My mother told me that our front yard started looking something similar to a back-woods redneck. Needless to say, I was skating on thin ice at this point, so we needed to work fast... lol.
Big ticket items we wanted from the car that weren't pulled were the seats, their respective wiring harnesses (power and heated), and the sunroof assembly. After a bit of hotwiring of the seats, I was able to get them out and get to cutting out the carpet... this is when I learned my valuable lesson, which I know all to well and don't listen to, USE THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB!!! I used a razor scraper to try to cut the carpet out b/c my dad didn't have a box cutter laying around. Well, even though I was using it so the blade wouldn't slip out, instead the razor separated from the holding clip (leaving that portion in teh scraper and the blade free). Needless to say, the razor is equally sharp on the covered side as it is on the exposed, and I gave myself a serious gash (deep!) on my pinky!
After a 30 min delay for butterfly stitches and cleaning the wound, we were back in action, but with a very sore finger. I probably should have gotten stitches, but didn't feel like dealing with the emergency room all morning, honestly.
At some point, I'm assuming this car had some sort of infestation of flying ants, as there were ant poison traps all over the car and the floor was covered in this:
I think at some point, a goose of sorts made it in too, b/c this was behind the pass side seat... lol
SO needless to say, I wanted to cut the rug out as soon as possible so we weren't rolling in bug and bird $hit all day long... car really started to reek once the sun came up too... Ah the joys of parting out a car!
But after a LOT of wrestling and a fair bit of swearing, I was finally able to get the wiring harnesses out for the power and heat to the seats. My lord what a rats nest!!! Can't believe how many wires were involved with the memory seats, but those got snipped as we're not putting the memory seats in the UrQ... just power and heat
power seat harness:
and as the day progressed:
At this point, we had pulled everything we needed from the interior and engine area (PO already yanked the motor and harness), so it was time to get this puppy in the air so we can pillage the rear subframe/diff and front suspension as I had buyers for pretty much all that stuff.
Rear diff removed:
And time to start cutting for a S4 owner that got rearended and needed some sheetmetal:
And finally, all suspension removed:
After this, we dropped the car on blocks and strapped her down.
I had planned on bringing it to the scrap yard on Monday, but we've been getting some last minute requests for some of the bigger items
(doors, etc), so we need to pull those before the car goes to the crusher. Hopefully my dad will have time to pull that stuff tonight so Friday we can free up the trailer and get the hulk off our driveway... lol.
It was sad to see the car in this state, but it was far far far past gone when we picked it up. So it'll go to all over to keep other S-pigs on the road
.
Figured I'd share with you all. This was the last bit of major parts collecting we needed to do before we could start stripping the UrQ down in prep for restoration. We still need a trans (PO took it for his other project car), so looking for a 01E that's in good shape, but otherwise we can continue on without worrying too much. At this point, it's getting 3 of us together and coming up with a time table, a budget, and a place to tear the UrQ down so we can get it prepped and ready for body work. We've decided if we want to continue living we can't do it at my parents' house as my mother might end all of us, so that's going to be one big thing that needs to get figured out before we start tearing things apart
Hope ya enjoyed the show... not sure when the next update will be, but it will involve some carnage and an UrQ!
...??
}