mk4 GTi v6.0 - v8 RWD Edition

Little background, then lets get into the fun part.

I've owned this car since it was new, drove it off the lot with 13miles (I think), while pulling the plastic off the drivers quarter panel a silver dollar size paint come with it....prefice to my paint woahs.  It was my daily driver for close to 3yrs, then I took it off the road to pull the fenders so I could stuff wide tires under it b/c I wanted to start doing auto-x and track days.  To put it likely that turned into a 4yr project that resulted in a widebody that apparently looked good to VW people, so I took another a tangent down the VW show car "scene" lol.

The car ended up being featured in a few magazines, S3, Eurotuner and PVW, with ranging engine/driveline set ups from, BT 1.8T fwd to BT 1.8T AWD, to Compound Turbo Diesels AWD

That brings us to present day'ish, a few years ago I got to thinking about the next version of the car, I had a B6 S4 Avant at one point and I always loved the sound of that car, so I thought it would be a fun swap/fab project, it would sound great and do smokey burnouts, perfect, right?  I sourced an 2004 S4 Cab 6spd, gutted it, pulled every wire from headlight to tail light and scrapped the shell.

.....I'll stop here and whore some photos of the car over the years

2009 - S3 Mag - BT 1.8T (GT2871R, 630cc injectors) FWD

S3_issue_16_01_GTI by fouckhest, on Flickr

S3_SoWo by fouckhest, on Flickr

S3 by fouckhest, on Flickr

2011ish Eurotuner - BT 1.8T 02m w/Peliquin, AWD swapped

eurotuner-may-2010-issue-in-stores-this-week by fouckhest, on Flickr

eurp_1005_12_o+2002_vw_gti+front_view by fouckhest, on Flickr

eurp_1005_06_o+2002_vw_gti+engine_shot by fouckhest, on Flickr

PVW - 2013 Compound Turbo Pumpe Duece TDi (BW S247 over Garrett GTB2056vk ), 02m w/tdi gearing

pvw_cover by fouckhest, on Flickr

mkiv-tdi-pd100-compound-turbo by fouckhest, on Flickr

Houck's Mk4 VW GTI Widebody TDI on BBS RS Wheels - -¬ Sam Dobbins 2015 - 1113 by fouckhest, on Flickr

Houck's Mk4 VW GTI Widebody TDI on BBS RS Wheels - -¬ Sam Dobbins 2015 - 1005 by fouckhest, on Flickr

Now to present day, no need to bore anyone with the s4 teardown

I had the engine mounted in the car, over the original mk4 subframe, but the geometry of the spindles with the OEM rack interfiered with the engine, but I thought I could get a mustang rack or miata rack to work, but the more I thought, read, I didnt want to flip the OEM spindles/hubs from side to side, I knew the steering would never be right.  That led me to seek out a new front suspension, landed on BMW 3 series.  The mk4 golf and e90 have similar track width (with in 1"), so I sourced a subframe and dug into how I am going to mount it.

Original engine location

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

another look with the donar subframe

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

In the midst of pulling the engine I've convinced myself that if I am going to put this much work into this car, I owe the justice to see how far back I can push the engine, with the hopes of reasonable weight bais and being able to call it a mid-engine layout

Early mockup with the subframe and shows how much tunnel and fire wall have already been removed

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Fouck yes!

This is gonna be GOOD 

From here I knew I was going to have to start understanding caster & camber and wanted to be able to set those up independent of the engine for now.  Buddy came over and we discussed how to start eliminating degrees of freedome and variables.  To start I made a mock-up wheel to work on subframe position as it relates to the wheel opening.

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Next was to determine how to hold the spindles to start dialing in caster and camber, so dreampt up a way to make a set of mock-up struts out of some threaded rod, turnbuckles and some hardware

Machined down some tube, made a pair of aluminum bushings to fit into some old air bag top hats i had

Mock-up struts by fouckhest, on Flickr

mock-up strut

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

I had to source a new subframe due to the one I initially purchased being bent, picked that up monday night, cleaned it up tuesday night and got things up on the table just in time to leave for dinner last night, good/bad, I am going out of town tomorrow for the weekend, so I wont make any progress, but wanted to get my thread started 

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Also had a good market place score over the weekend, found someone selling front only KW v1 coils, figure these will be a good starting point for when the car gets on the ground

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

preach said:

Fouck yes!

Dusterbd13-michael said:

This is gonna be GOOD 

Thanks guys, Im excited for sure

Looking forward to seeing more of this project. 

subscribed

Can't wait to watch this one! 

I recognize this car. Saw it at Eurofest years ago

Audi is sad that you aren't sticking the engine way in front of the front wheels. 

"In the midst of pulling the engine I've convinced myself that if I am going to put this much work into this car, I owe the justice to see how far back I can push the engine, with the hopes of reasonable weight bais and being able to call it a mid-engine layout"  OHY this right here has my vote and with your previous executions will be following along closely

Oh hell yeah! Subscribed

Awesomesauce.

Very cool. I love the CAT paint job on the TDI setup

buzzboy said:

I recognize this car. Saw it at Eurofest years ago

Oh wow!  That was a long time ago, I'm even lurking in the background!  Do you live in the GSP area?  That event was great, that specific year was funny, there were a group of Ferrari guys that couldn't get enough of the car, was kind of funny given the pedigree of most other cars that show.

Thank you everyone for the kind words, very excited for this project and to share here, I've really grown to enjoy the GRM community!  

My best friend grew up in Spartanburg. We brought his Volvo 122 and Leyland Mini Pickup to the show that year. I think Jaguar was the showcase marque that year?

buzzboy said:

My best friend grew up in Spartanburg. We brought his Volvo 122 and Leyland Mini Pickup to the show that year. I think Jaguar was the showcase marque that year?

Oh nice...Honestly, I dont remember, we always went just to make a point that VW was a euro car so tried to bring out a few and mix things up....unfortunately that show has fallen off, they held it at a local golf course for a few years, that was cool, but logistically it was annoying to get in/out....last year it was at the BMW CCA facility, showing was weak and the admission fee was high...bummer

I did miss one side project I recently took on, which was to see if the set of brakes I had purchased a number of years ago were going to work with the set of wheels that were also purchased a number of years ago....

Brakes were purchased at a time when I was planning on more show car things...but since I have them, I wanted to see if they would work....and I love a good bracketology project....long term plan will be to fire up and learn fusion 360 and have these machined from aluminum...but some steel will work to get me rolling and hopefully stopping

Big boy calipers

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

mocked up over some e90 335 front rotors...long(er) term, I may redesign them as I'm told that some newer model BMW are an easy rotor upgrade

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

early CAD templates

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

nuts & 1/4" steel hacked up with an angle grinder and some we precision TIG welding lol

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

Fitting nicely behind the "good deal" Work Meisters...when I say "good deal" they were on CL for close to 2yrs, watched them start at ~$3k, finally picked them up for $1200.  18x9.5 square and 5x100 PCD....I've always loved this wheel, and now with this car being driving/track focused its great to have a square setup

Untitled by fouckhest, on Flickr

fouckhest said:

Original engine location

This makes me feel tingly and wrong in all the right ways.

Carry on.

holy carp.  Loving all iterations, but excited for this next one the most! 

Go on....