The Project Pad

I've actually known this S4 for many years before I aquired it. During highschool, I worked for a slot car track and the owners were a married couple with some serious racing experience. The wife actually held several world records. Anyway, they both had C4's. His and hers, if you will. Her's was a 1993 100csq while he sported the S4. They had a pretty substantial collection of cars, and were looking to unload the 100 right when I was shopping for my first car at age 16. Needless to say, I jumped on it and rocked that as my car all through highschool until finally getting sold when I went away to school.





Fast forward a number of years, I was looking for a fun car. I remained good friends with the owners and they would have dinner with my family a few times a year. He had actually been trying to sell the S4 for as long as I can remember, but nobody was biting at his asking price. It had recently started to be neglected. The wife developed some serious cognitive issues/early onset of dementia and they fleet of cars was now spread across a single driver. I popped in one day to see him. He asked me if I wanted to buy the car. I already had two vehicles at the time, but we struck a deal and I picked it up that weekend. There were some serious cosmetic issues. It didn't earn garage space (9 car garage), but that never scared me. i had personally driver the car to Audi for numerous service appointments and it always got what it needed.

*random cool fact*
Some cool people have been in this car. A number of Ambassadors, Vanessa Williams, Jesse McCartney, John Mara, Bernie Williams, Adam Graves, Funk Master Flex and a bunch more I'm sure I'm forgetting.
*/random cool fact*







It came home, got a timing belt right off the bat as well as some headlights, corner lights, and other basic maintenance. The paint had serious sun damage on the horizontals. Not wanting to shell out for a paint job, we opted to wrap the entire car in vinyl, obviously taking some inspiration from the well known "RS2 Blue".













It came with TPS chips and an RS2 EM, which I drove for a bit until I dropped an MTM1+ ECU in it. That was the setup for about a year, when I decided to grab an RS2 Comp turbo and upgraded the original MTM1+ chipset to RS2 chips though Joe Hoppen for a small fee.

greattttt








Fast forward another year or so, and I decided to start messing around with VEMS. The car has for all intents and purposes not been driven in about half a year. The plan right now is to make the most out of this RS2 Comp turbo with E85. I just sold my A4 as I'm working in NYC right now and really don't even need a car. However, I'm entertaining some offers that would exchange my train commute for a more traditional 20 mile driver by car. Which bring me to 2 reasons why I've decided to stay with this turbo:

1. I'm realizing I don't have the time to go much beyond this setup at this point in my life. Between working 50 hours a week and studying 30 hours a week for the CFA exam, I need something somewhat simple/reliable (at least in comparison to some of the other stuff going on around these parts )
2. I'd rather direct what would be spent to go beyond this to something from the mid 90's with a slanted hood.

So, here's what I'll be going to Marc's with some point soon:
-Refreshed head with MLS HG & ARP Studs
-7A cams
-034 LWFW (TBI - To be installed)
-SB Stage3 clutch (TBI)
-RS2 EM & comp turbo
-Scat rods (TBI)
-LS2 Ignition
-FMIC
-005 Pump
-60lb injectors
-VEMS (duh )
-Stromung Gen4
-3" side exit dump (TBW - To be welded one weekend when I refill my bottle )

Other details just for fun but not really related
-Lowered on bilsteins w/H&R 29800's
-034 trans/motor mounts
-928 Big Blacks w/A8 rotors and HPS pads
-245 GForce tires on B5 Avus'ses's



Special thanks, in a VERY particular order , to both Marc & Ed for always having intelligent answers to stupid questions

Marc thinks this turbo will flow 34 peak PSI, potentially making 400wtq which is why rods are going in.

So, as I chip away at getting the car ready to go to EFI Express sometime in the next couple weeks or so-ish, feel free to drop comments/ideas/etc - it's all appreciated.

Two questions off the bat you could help me with:
1. When I had the head done, I changed the valve guides and seals, but the machinist (does all the work for our Audi dealership) said the valves were in great shape and didn't really need to be changed. Had I known I'd be going this route now, I would have put in new oversized valves, so I'm a little concerned about the exhaust valves but hoping E85 helps with this.
2. I think I'm going to do rings when I put the rods in. I know I need to hone the cylinder walls in order for them to seal properly. My question is, can I do this with the block still in the car with a hand drill? I actually have a friend who is an expert brass instrument technician and (albeit on a much smaller scale) get's beautiful cross hatching on the instruments I've seen in his shop so he'll be doing that for me. What else is worth doing while I have the block taken apart?

Sounds like you have some pretty good plans! By the way, I love how your car looks in that color, pretty fantastic! As for throwing new rings in, I HIGHLY recommend honing the cylinders, otherwise the rings might not seat properly.

Sweet S4! It's cool both when a car has a history like yours does and, specifically that Funk Master Flex road in it. Also vinyl wrap looks great! Is that actually the Audi color code? I'm looking at it as an option, if you don't mind me asking, where did you get yours from and what did it run in materials? I'm seeing $600-$1k in materials, and my only problem with that is it's closing in cost ways to just shooting the car. However, vinyl does seem to be a lot less work when you include priming/prep work which my car needs a LOT of. Again, nice S4, I'll be watching the progress

Finally seabass!

1) for what it's worth, I did inconel exhaust valves on my head, I really don't want to deal with a dropped valve. You might be fine, for a while...if the head is still off and apart it's be really tempted to drop either oversized or at least stick size inconel valves in.


2) yes. I've not done it but I know that there are lots of guides etc online. The main thing is keeping the crank clean I think.You can always wash/blow it off later though.


forward to seeing some rs2 numbers on e85!

Thanks for the replies fellers! Vinyl certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I like it. Materials came from Hexis USA, and was about $450 to my door from CA to NY. Anyone who is really interested, PM me and I'll put you in touch with someone there. Beware, it's a lot of work (Ed knows )

I think the plan (if Marc green lights it) is to keep the head with original valves and in the interim snag another head and send that off to be ported with new oversized valves and just pull a 1 day swaparoo since its my only car at the moment (see how long that lasts).

Looking good!
That should be a great streetable setup.

So the plan is to swap in the newly built head before we go to Marcs?

No. Later. Towards fall.

Ahhhh... another unique 20vt coming our way towards New England... Marc's running out of room... I must go help and park some at my place...

S4Pirate wrote:No. Later. Towards fall.

You'll have to retune or just not get the full potential out of a built head

Man, the colour of that 100 was freaking DOOOOOPE.

chaloux wrote:Man, the colour of that 100 was freaking DOOOOOPE.

...not sure if serious

Yeah! On my phone it looks kind of gray/green... just a hint of a sort of tealish colour. Is it just gray?

Yup def a great color. It aslo looks like its got a stromung in the pic of the rear. If only had an aan.

LOL thanks for the shout out (or was it a jab?)

He's just upset his ecu had HIV

Safe to say, my new ECU won't be hanging out with your sister.

Lol nice

Ended up with a 7A LWFW when I thought I was getting an AAN fitment. Not the end of the world, glad I didn't order a clutch yet. Worked it out with the seller. Weigh's in at 10lbs on the dot...so 2lbs lighter than what I thought I'd be running. Got a lesson in static vs drag launch torque holding from University of Marc too.

Yeah but... That's sweet. 7a style ftw, free torque upgrade huge styles

Waiting for some clutch parts to trickle in. Will likely be throwing in the flywheel and southbend clutch next weekend.

Looking for some feedback on a few things related to installing rods. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.

It seems kinda dumb to not do rings. I'm going to do a leak-down test and get some numbers but where should I be drawing a line in the sand as far as whether it's worth doing or not? I'm leaning towards new rings regardless, so I'm starting to do some snooping around on how to hone the cylinders so they seal properly. I'm definitely not pulling the block so it will be done mounted in the car. Is a Flex-Hone acceptable/recommended? Anybody have one they want to loan me?

Well, the clutch is half broken in. Install went smoothly. I have a spare head going to the machine shop in the next week or two depending on how fast parts get here.

Looking for some opinions on this. I'm planning on sticking with the original main bearings simply because I'm somewhat short on time and don't want to pull the motor. Is that pretty stupid at this point?

My understanding is main bearings typically fail from detonation/lack of oil pressure. Am I seriously tempting fate here or have others gone that route and been ok?

Speaking of oil pressure, seems like many don't change oil pumps on rebuilds. Is that not necessary? I know on other cars, that's usually part of the routine.

Getting close...er. Should gain some serious traction in the next few weeks as I'll have a lot more time to spend in the garage.

Well, it's been a very busy few weeks but the dust has finally settled. Got the CFA exam out of the way and wound things down with work in preparation for a new adventure. I have this week off and spent some time getting the new head ready for the machine shop. Nothing too fancy, gasket matched the intake ports and feathered it in/cleaned up and finished with an 80 grit. Just did some minimal smoothing on the exhaust ports and worked my way up to as close of a polish as I could get.

I had so many boxes arriving the last 2 weeks, and had my head buried in other things I didn't realize I was missing my new valves. Was a little ticked with Integrated Engineering after calling yesterday morning to check on my 2 week old order to learn they were out of stock on the valves and hadn't sent me any kind of order update. Apparently I had someone relatively new behind my order, which lead to the breakdown in communication on their part. Anyway, have to hand it to them for eating the overnight shipping costs on it so they could get here today and the machine shop could start working on the head.





Finally had some time to get a full bottle of c25 yesterday too. I have to weld up a mount for a larger intercooler I snagged (24x12x3) and also weld up the exhaust cutout. Should have rods from Marc getting here Friday, so I will have the block ready to go for those. Doing a flex hone, new rings, and rods/rod bearings. Hopefully all goes smoothly Friday night/Saturday and we can start breaking the car in sometime Saturday or Sunday.

I just hit the 500 miles mark on my southbend, so it's perfect timing. I plan on using the moto-man process of breaking the motor in but one thing I wasn't sure on is is there an ideal amount of boost to run during that break in process? We were thinking of doing something like 15 lbs, but I don't know if it would make sense to run more/less so open to feedback on that.

We are heading to Marc's on the 29th (Will aka DubistS4 and myself) so we need to get some e85 base tunes done the following weekend. Should be a fun couple of weeks coming up. Will be nice to be able to romp on the car again.

nice work, git r dun!!

Very nice, good to see Integrated stepped up to overnight stuff