Audi UR quattro Rally Build

Storage Unit Rally Car Build - Week 13: Axels & Heater Lines

AXLES

One day we are going to find a new building and will have to push this thing back out and into the trailer. With the axles out the wheel bearings flop about so we didn’t want to struggle with it again like we did, pushing it in. We decided now was a good time to reinstall the axles, even though we haven’t refurbished them yet.



Don’t worry, we cleaned them up a bit. We’re not peasants.

When we dug them out of hiding it soon became apparent that there were two long ones and two shorter ones. But where did they go, front and rear, left and right, where? It turns out, opposite corners!



We’re sure there’s a good reason but just for giggles we did try to install one in the wrong place, just because, well, we’re idiots to be honest. It was too long.



HEATER PIPES

The 45* bends we were waiting for from Pegasus Racing came in so we got to finish heater pipe installation.



We’ve also located a brand new double grommet for the bulkhead!

Week 14 of the Storage Unit Rally Car Build

IACV (Idle Air Control Valve)

Yep, we’re now struggling to find things we can install while working in the storage unit. Picking at straws so to speak. Next on our list is therefore the idle air control valve. IACV. If you don’t already know, this ECU controlled valve bypasses the throttle at idle to allow it to, well, idle. Of course, with our fancy aftermarket intake manifold it won’t just bolt back in place. There is a connector for it at the back of the manifold be we’ll still have to tee into the intake tract before the throttle at some place. Here’s the valve with its rubber mounting ring and the nifty bracket that it sits on.





It is quite heavy so we think we should try to mount it using the OE bracket if possible. The inlet to the manifold is towards the back directly underneath, but whatever the IACV mounted off before is no longer apparent. So, we contrived a bracket extension off the engine mount arm as there were already three threaded holes in that. Engage CAD design mode.





We’re not really setup to make this in our storage unit so we’ll either make it later or outsource it. The inlet is a straight-ish shot to the back of the intercooler end tank but we’ll need to weld a bung on for it so, job stopped!

SEALS

Our searching through various boxes for various parts revealed the window and aperture seals so we decided to take inventory and install some because, well, we’re running out of things we can do and we have to keep moving forward somehow.

Door seals



Windshield seal



Under hood cowl seal





Trunk seal



The rest of the window seals are already on the respective windows hidden away, somewhere. These pieces seem to be still in good shape and were surprisingly satisfying to install.

Storage Unit Rally Build - Week 15 (Quick Update)

I'm back to working on the fan mount. You may remember that our beautiful afterthought of a fan shroud would not allow us to fit the actual fan as it interfered with the frame rails because we didn’t think it through. So, we ordered up six of these fan mounting brackets and went to town.





The fan is quite weighty so we thought some vertical hanging type mount would be a good idea. We cobbled one together.



That’s better.



Fits too!

Week 16 of the Storage Unit Rally Build

It's been cold so we felt inspired to hook up the heater controls. This week we learned all about “Bowden Cables”! These clips are hard to find new but we found some.



And dug out the rest of the system.





The control sliders went in easily but hooking up the cables and clamps was a bit fiddly. Surprisingly satisfying once done though.











Now we just have to figure out how to direct the air from the heater box to various body parts and bits of glass.

Week 17 of the Storage Unit Rally Build: A Sharp Intake of Breath

We’ve been back and forth on what to do about an intake system for the car for ages. We’d like to have our cake and eat it too but we just can’t see a way to get there. This is what we’d like to have:





As used on the works rally cars. It looks iconic and sucks air from the high pressure cowl area where, conveniently, there are louvers in the hood above for that very purpose. There are a few problems with this. Firstly we have a MAF sensor to incorporate in the intake track, ideally in the stock location as we have an aftermarket U shaped intake tube that houses connections for all kinds of other bits and pieces that we need. This really doesn’t mate up to that.



Secondly, if we did this it really would have to be made of carbon Kevlar to pass muster and making one from scratch would be very expensive and time consuming. You can, in theory, buy one but we’ve heard it’s of dubious quality and it still wouldn’t mate to our MAF sensor.

We tried prototyping an alternative route to the cowl that goes down the bulkhead to an existing 3” hole before doing a 180 into the passenger compartment and back up through another existing hole in the cowl. We think we could terminate this into an oval shaped pancake filter with a lid. It would probably work and we think we could make it look half decent but our fear is that it would just look like a poor substitute for the original.









We could just whack a bloody great cone filter on the end of the MAF sensor and declare “job done” but there are a few problems with that too. It would be sucking air from right next to the turbo and also be right under the hood louver that lets hot air out of the engine bay and, not great, water in. So we dismissed this too. Here it is mocked up with a small filter.







We looked at modifying some OE intake boxes but they don’t seem to be suitable either.



So we’ve settled. Settled on another U bend with a cone filter behind the headlight. This is not under the louver so should stay dry and it gets a good cold air feed from the grill and light surround. We also think we can shield it from the engine bay quite easily and, although it is a bit rigged it will hardly be visible so it doesn’t matter if it looks it.







If nothing else it will do to get the car running. Maybe we will revisit this later, or not.

So after we took that deep breath in the last update we stood back and assessed where we are in the project and found a great way to shrink our to do list: put it on a photocopier and hit REDUCE.



Kidding aside, we have got it down rather a lot but it’s still quite daunting to think about what’s still in front of us. And this is just the dry build phase! Still, Press On Regardless, as they say.

We have moved the car out of the storage unit now so that is a good thing. It was fun seeing what we could achieve in there but towards the end we were getting frustrated and running out of worthwhile things to do. Here it is looking resplendent in its new surroundings.







We didn’t waste much time cracking on once we got it in the new building. Admittedly we did start with some trivial jobs. First order of business, get the hood prop installed. Because we could.



Then we made a bracket for the idle air control valve and installed that.









We also managed a couple of other trivial but satisfying installs this week. The right turn signal lens and dip stick are now in!





Next we went through the car and installed p-clips on all the brake lines and fuel lines we’d put in it. These were temporarily secured with self-tapping screws but will later be replaced with threaded inserts, after paint. Remember, many of these lines are temporary as well.







We told you it wasn’t going to be very exciting. We saved that stuff for the next update, we promise.

This week we turned our attention back to the heater control panel which we hadn’t installed because it needed refurbishing. The plastic was faded and the legends needed a good clean.



So we split it in two, gave it a good scrub, re-made the legends, hit it with some plastic paint, slapped it back together and installed it.











With that looking spiffy we thought we’d tackle the vents. The works cars used some OE vents mounted either side of the center console. We couldn’t fit ours because we still have the ignition key barrel and the inlets on ours are on the sides and we needed them to come out of the rear.





Fortunately you can buy generic ones on the interweb that are the right width and are fed from the rear.



The only way we could come up with to mount them was to use some low profile allen screws up through the dash panel above but in order to do that we had to disassemble them first.





Then file the mounting tangs flat so they would fit flush.





And then just a little more fettling before they fit perfectly and look like they belong there.









Of course now we needed to feed some air to them. They’re no good just looking pretty. They need to function too. We ordered a few feet of flexible ducting from Pegasus in the size we thought would fit. One end fit inside the outlets in the air box and the other, with a bit of padding with some tape, fit on the inlet to the vent. Looks very professional in our opinion.





We also wrangled the convoluted plastic tube for the side vents into place but we don’t know if we will be able to retain it as it passes right behind the dash where, ultimately, hundreds of wires need to go. For this reason we didn’t bother terminating them yet but did offer up a piece of silicon hose to mimic he orientation.

It’s been an interesting and satisfying couple of weeks with the car. We checked off a few smaller things from the list and opened up some big things.

Right after our last update we received this package from Rennline. Based in Vermont, Rennline manufacture and sell specialized parts for mostly European cars. They are very well known for the Porsche parts, many of which we have on our 911 rally car, but also have parts for Audi, BMW and other marks. And clearly they have pars for our Quattro rally car.





The first item that grabbed our attention was a shiny tow hook. How could you miss it?



We had to modify it to mount it on the rear of our Quattro by bending it at about 45 degrees and, of course, that cracked the powder coating but, luckily, we had a can of Rustoleum that was an exact match.









The front might be a bit more of a challenge however.





We also got excited by the battery and mount Rennline supplied. We assembled it and played around with a couple of potential locations.





Trunk:



And back seat area.



Not sure yet. What do you think?

Brake Bias, Period Correct USB Ports & Throttle Cable Mounting

Distractions over we turned to our last remaining issue to solve on the center console: where and how to mount the brake bias knob and the period correct USB ports. So we can sync our Walkman of course! Time for a bracket.











Then we thought the next logical project would be the throttle cable because, well, we felt we could finish it. You may remember that we had previously rotated the AAN throttle body through 90 degrees to clear the hood but we now realized that would put the linkage in a difficult place to reach with the throttle cable so we put it back where it should be and made some room for it with a Dremmel.





This allowed us to use the bracket supplied with the intake manifold and the intended threaded holes but it then seemed that the outer cable was too short so we rigged up a temporary “outer cable lengthener thingy” at the bulkhead to see if that would help.





It kinda worked but seemed like a very inelegant solution. Then we realized that our 10V throttle cable was mounted way further from the throttle body on that engine than on ours and our problem was the location of the throttle cable bracket. So we moved it. Of course we mocked it up rally-style with some big-arse cable ties first but it seemed to work so we got the drill and taps out; metric of course.

Prepping for Custom Stainless Exhaust and Skid Plat Design

We are honored to have a friend of ours agree to build us an exhaust. It’s going to be 3” stainless steel with one muffler at the rear and as similar looking to the works cars as possible. Of course, that meant we had to build a skid plate! Well, not exactly but we did need to see how much room we would have around it so we mocked one up.

First the rear support bar which spans the chassis rails behind the gearbox. We used some rather flimsy aluminum tube we had lying around which made it really easy to flatten the ends.





Our surrogate 3” exhaust tubing fit through but it might need to be lower.



Next, we turned our attention to the front support. We thought we would see if we could mock up a reasonable facsimile of the works support using PVC conduit, even though that would be a little larger diameter than the steel tube we’d ultimately be using. How hard could it be?













Not bad eh?





Next, we need an actual plate. Fortunately, we are a Corbeau seats dealer and their seat boxes are perfect for mocking up skid plates. Our plan was to try to replicate the molded Kevlar are whatever exotic material this one was made from, but in aluminum plate. This might be a three or even four Hobnob project!



Well, you don’t know until you try so we put the kettle and our thinking caps on and had a Hobnob. First, we made a masking tape mold off of our 1:18 model. Then we put that on the photocopier and hit x18! (no, we didn’t)



As convoluted as the works plate appears, if you study the it carefully you can make out many flat looking facets to it. Most obvious is the center section that is about two feet wide. We realized that if we took a long piece of box this wide and put two bends in it we would have the essential structure down. Moreover, if we weld some 2” wide rims on it might look quite similar. So that’s the plan.









We were pretty happy with this so far and decided that maybe this idea had some legs. We pushed on with mounting the cardboard plate to the PVC support bars so we could remove the box and axles stands. To do this we made some clips out of some thin aluminum sheet and bent them around the bars. They worked rather well unless there’s a slight breeze or somebody sneezes too closely!









So that was the basic structure sorted. Now we just needed to widen it; and form the upturned sides! A bit more Corbeau cardboard and loads of Hobnobs and Yorkshire tea later we had this:













Lovely. Right; what shall we work on next? Mud flaps? First, we’ll have to put the kettle on!

The car took a big leap forward recently and, as a result, we are now exhausted.



We asked our friend Scott Banes if he’d like to build us an exhaust and we were honored that he said yes. Scott is a local rallycross and rally competitor who has owned about a gazillion Subarus and we’ve always been impressed with the work he’s done on them. We thought it would be good for him to glue metal together on something else for a change. Plus, his shop is only about 30 minutes from ours so it was an easy tow. He only had the car for the weekend too which was great.

Beforehand we talked bout trying to mimic the Group B cars exhaust as much as practical without going nuts. This meant a 3” stainless with one back box but we also wanted to try and incorporate a catalytic converter. After showing Scott all the pictures we had he liked the idea of keeping the down pipe and wastegate dump separate till under the car and thought he could even incorporate the removable plate some of the works cars had and the muffler support bracket, like these:



We left him too it.

It was a tight squeeze but he nailed it. The works cars had an enlarged transmission tunnel so their exhaust could go over the axle instead of under it. We gave Scott permission to BFH a bit more room for the cat if he needed to be we didn’t want to have to refabricate the tunnel. As you can see he managed to get both the cat and the extra pipe in, though we have no idea what we’ll do with that hole in the dump pipe.



He would have pulled off the muffler bracket to but didn’t have any suitable rubber bushings to hand so rigged something up for now. We’ll come up with something later, hopefully.



We were very pleased with the attention to detail Scott took with the way the exhaust exits the back of the car. Both the location and angle of the tip are perfect.





Now, if we could just get him to help with the rest of the car!