Audi S2 Coupe Project-Time Flies

Wow, time flies when you’re…um…working too much. Somewhere around May-August 2009 I did the suspension and bushings. I was living in CA at the time, so it was just a weekend here and there when I was back in Utah.
The following finally made it onto the car…
H&R springs
Bilstein Sports
034 Solid subframe bushings
034 Street Density Strut Mounts
Powerflex Control Arm Bushings
…but there are still some items that I didn’t get to…
Ball joints
CV boots
TREs
Everyone knows how fun removing old bushings can be…It’s one of those things that, for me at least, took a while to get through the first couple (due to poor approach), but by the last one, it was only taking about 1-2 minutes to get them out. The hole saw drill bit makes quick work of removing the interior sleeve, and allows the cold chisel or similar to bang out the outer sleeve.

I tried the homemade tools with metal pipe fittings, but they could not break the sleeve free before they themselves broke free. I also partially burned through a few, but that was also not that effective, and highly unpleasant.

Then once everything was out, it was a nice opportunity to clean things up a slap on a fresh coat of paint. The subframes, control arms, and strut housing were all painted black.

I also drilled a small hole on the bottom of my strut housing as this seemed to be a good idea with the inverted strut design. There has been some issue with water getting in and not getting out.

By August of last year, I had everything pretty much ready to go back on. Here are the assembled struts ready to go in.

I made sure everything was nice and clean before going back in. Did I mention I don’t like to work on dirty stuff. Unfortunately, I have spent a lot of days cleaning parts. Sitting in the yard, degreasing and scrubbing.

Also around this time, I pulled apart a manual climate box that I sourced from Force 5. I yanked out the evaporator, installed a new heater core and replaced gasket. I also removed all of the old material from the flaps and put new foam on them. The last thing was to make a block off plate for where the AC lines entered the box for the evaporator. It is pretty much ready to go back in the car, but it is currently sitting under the car while the dash is on top of the car.

Sometime last year I also picked up these parts from GAP to do front and rear strut braces. I just need to mock them up with the bars for location, prep and weld them in.

I have been back in Utah since November and have made some good progress on the car over the past 6 months or so, at least for me as I still have to split time between the car project and house remodeling projects. But I just finished the laundry room (with a nice BIG utility sink for washing…um…oh nevermind.

I picked up an STR manifold for $120 shipped (I mean how can you pass that up), and I thought I would try to work it into the engine build-up. I have 2 3B manifolds too, but didn’t like the idea of using them. I’ll probably just try to sell them at some point. Here it is as it arrived; not too bad of a piece, but it did require some work and manipulation to fit.

First, the wastegate didn’t clear but really wasn’t a surprise as it was previously documented with a similar modification. I also had to dremel a fair amount of casting flash inside the manifold. There were some pretty big ‘flakes’ in there, but went away easily.

The tapped holes for turbo mounting were some standard like 3/8-24, which actually taps to M10 pretty nicely. The bigger issue was with the wastegate mounting. Aside from the flange interference shown above, The hole pattern was off a little and the studs were probably about 2-3 deg from perpendicular. Enlarging the holes on the wastegate solved the one problem and tightening it down seemed to straighten things out well enough.

There is still a lot for me to catch up on, so I’ll try not to wait 6 months for the next update…