So after much deliberation, and many, many hours of reading of the builds, I have come to terms with needing to vent and explain my situation. I am the PROUD owner, and I use this term lightly, of a 1999 Audi A4 Quattro. This car had 218,000 miles on the supposedly stock 1.8 turbo and tiptronic transmission upon purchase a month ago. Now, I know the question is going to come up, but the reason I bought the car is it was cheap and I needed a new DD, but again this story goes into many details that will hopefully come up at some point.
Background
My original DD found its way into a concrete barrier, on a very slippery when wet bridge, with 75% treadlife tires, and FWD. Remarkably the car was still driveable, sort of. The car was a 2004 Scion xB 5 speed, fun to drive, even more fun to show off. Insurance company did a total write-off on it and handed me a check that day, awesome. Now to find that perfect car, I always liked the AWD cars and this little black gem just happened to show up in my price range. Test drove the car and paid cash money for it
On the drive home the car decides its not quite ready to make it to its new home yet and promptly lets me know by shredding the tread off the passenger side tire. Fine, it wins round 1, Round 2, my wife who has been following me all the way, helps me look for the jack and tools to take the tire off. Round 2 goes to the car, No jack, No tools. Luckily my wife's Corolla has a jack, but no lug wrench... oh the irony here. Seeing as how it is 12 am and there wasn't a car in site we called AAA, had an agent on his way and BAM, a good Samaritan shows up with a 4-way. Tire comes off, Space saver goes on, I get caught by little sharp strands hanging off of what is left of the tire, and we are back on our way home.
Check engine light comes on at this point, I don't care, I'm a mile from home and bed sounds good since I have to work a couple hours on a Saturday. My wife goes and gets a tire put on the rim and gets it remounted while I am at work. 2 hours later and I am on my way to figure out the CEL. I stop and grab a new OBD2 scanner and find out the code is actually 3 codes. Fix all the issues as best I can with what I got with the car and no more codes.
Issues
So far I have had only a few issues.
Issue 1: Mass Air Flow sensor failure, fix: plug it in, cleared all CEL codes.
Issue 2: Low boost to intake, Vacuum leaks are not this cars friend. On top of that, the turbo to intercooler hose has a beautiful split in the seam, that can't be good for boost pressures.
Issue 3: Exhaust leak, work in progress. Apparently, a PO had attempted to repair this once, All of the nuts holding the manifold on were finger tight, and the 3 bolts holding the turbo on were completely loose allowing the turbo to move around and destroy the threads on one bolt, and heat a second bolt to such temperatures that it just snapped as soon as I touched it with a wrench.
Issue 4: Cracked Exhaust Manifold, replacement part in hand cleaned, prepped, coated and ready to install.
Issue 5: Broken bolts in turbo housing, gotta love a good machine shop.
Issue 6: Filter Box Melted. OK, this one sucked all the fun out of the work on this car. Factory Air box had not been properly positioned or bolted in. It had been rubbing against the turbo. Luckily for me eBay had a new listing, a factory air intake system out of a VW Passat. This should also fix Issue 2.
Issue 7: Headlights cracked, easy fix right? Wrong, entire bumper cover had to come off to replace them.
Issue 8: Factory head unit missing, electrical work, good deal, the single DIN DVD player from the Scion fit perfectly into that hole.
Issue 9: Factory muffler has a hole in it, needless to say for $65, I promptly cut the factory muffler off and replaced it with a high flow glasspack and dual tip. It still looks factory from the rear but sounds so much better considering a previous owner had a cheater pipe made to replace the catalytic converter. I love living in an area where we don't have to worry about emissions testing, yet.
Issue 10: Rear brakes, easy fix until the pilot bushing for one of the calipers gets stuck, Autozone had the bracket but no guides. Pull-a-Part to the rescue. Thankfully, VW was kind enough to use interchangable parts on alot of their cars.
Issue 11: Oil Leak, found a leak on the valve cover that I had not noticed proir to purchase and teardown of the exhaust, really noticed it when cleaning the head for the new manifold gasket to be installed. Added to my list of must do soon.
Time to get to work:
