My 1985 4000 turbo quattro project

[Rogviler]

Some notes on the turbo side louvers... I found an excellent reference picture for the standard version: Unfortunately at the moment I'm stuck with CIS, so rather than seeing a mean turbo through the slots it'll likely just be a nice view of the intake boot and fuel distributor. But a man can dream... The original SQ hood cutout comes to a point at the back, but I'm kind of digging the version they used on the rally cars, which was flat with just a little angle at the back: Since it's all custom, I might as well make it how I like, right? As far as the construction, given how much of a pain it is to maintain straightness and precision when large sheets of metal are being welded, I'm thinking about building a sort of box first, in the shape of the overall cutout, with walls maybe 1/2" tall or a little over. Then I'll weld in all the slats, and finally I'll cut a hole in the hood and weld the premade louver box in. Hopefully that'll be easier than trying to weld each slat in while the metal of the hood is warping and buckling... I'll probably use some thicker steel as well, 1/8" if I can. You can never have too much sturdiness when it comes to the heat around a turbo. -Rog

[Rogviler]

Right now the car is nose in the air with the engine out, plus I have it up on ramps in the front, and man I keep looking at the back end...



I'd kill to have the whole car half that low!

-Rog

[jh0104]

this is an awesome project! keep the updates comin in!

i got an 85 cgt that im working on as well... need to upload some pics to my photobucket for ya

[FPBBrandon]

Keep it coming! You're really tempting me to abandon my Bitter and get back to my Coupe GT.

[jh0104]

Originally Posted by Rogviler

I'd kill to have the whole car half that low!

-Rog

fyi you can literally slide a set of rear springs from an a4 in the rear. makes it sit about 4" lower - about where yours sits now buddy. i have a set of tien rears out of a a4 that i put on my cgt for a while. i got 17"'s tho so they rubbed and i had to take them out.

o and it doesnt ride like sh** either, now the fronts, thats a different story to get them that low lol

[Rogviler]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement!

I'll have to check out the springs. Now that I've gotten my welding practice in I might do some DIY coilovers. I just know it's hard to get these to sit super low because of the suspension geometry, so that's toward the bottom of the list since it's such an uphill battle. Most "lowering springs" I've seen boast a .5" drop. Woo. I could load the car with groceries and probably get it lower than that.

Right now I'm working on a good throttle cable solution, something I haven't seen mentioned at all in other swap guides. It seems like it's one of those things that everyone figures out differently, but it would be nice to know an easy version and then if you want to get fancy with it you can.

-Rog

[Rogviler]

It's been nonstop rain here for several days, so I haven't done much on the car. I did manage to pick up the steel that I'm going to use for the turbo louvers. Now my SQ hood project total is up to $62.

So:

3000 - 62 = $2938 saved

I don't anticipate having to buy anything else. I'm not going to count paint and body filler, as the whole car needs that anyway.

One thing I was thinking about and thought I would mention before anyone else does is that around 1988, Audi went to a fully galvanized body with all of their models, which has continued to this day, according to all my research. This is important to know because welding galvanized steel and breathing a lot of the fumes can make you sick for a day or two (sometimes longer).

A lot of people will tell you that older Audis, such as the 4000 and early 5000s were galvanized, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of that, either while doing my own bodywork or through any official literature. I think people say that a lot because these cars are fairly rust-resistant. But I think this is just due to good quality steel, and good prep, primer, and paint at the factory. They most certainly do rust though.

Even if they were galvanized, it's easy to prep the metal to minimize the zinc fumes involved. And the other thing is that "zinc shakes" or "metal fume fever" is mainly seen in occupational welders, so the small amount of exposure involved in doing some minor welding on a car body shouldn't even cause the presentation of symptoms.

So for these cars it's not something to worry about, but if you happen to be doing some welding on a 90 or 200 on up then you might want to take a few simple precautions if you're so inclined.

-Rog

[Rogviler]

Still raining, but I just couldn't resist getting a start on the second stage of the hood project...

I build the frame to hold the turbo louvers out of 1" x 1/8" steel strip.

The finished product:



I went all over town trying to find a 90-degree welding clamp, but nobody had one. So instead I picked up a piece of angle steel and made my own. You have to knock the corner off so you don't accidentally weld the pieces you're working on to the clamp, then use C-clamps to hold it all together. You want to leave the outside corner open so you can fill it with weld for a strong joint.

Here's all of the above illustrated:



It was a nice change from welding sheet metal. Welding on something that doesn't burn through in the blink of an eye is like being on vacation. It's almost relaxing.

Now for the part that sucks to lay out...

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the louvers fit in. They're not only angled from the top-down view, but also from the side, obviously. This makes spacing them out kind of a challenge.

I'm using 1 1/2" strip for the louvers and I want seven of them with full slats at each end, more or less matching the rally car reference above. I couldn't really see a pattern, so after playing around with it on paper, then on the computer and back to paper, I finally figured it out. Looking from the top, the louvers aren't 1 1/2" wide since they're angled. I figured out that they'll come out to be 3.5cm (I use metric when I want to be precise), so I cut strips of paper 3.5cm wide and started taping them to a pattern I made. To my surprise I was able to fit exactly seven of them with no gaps:



I can measure from this onto the real thing and in three dimensions it will result in perfectly spaced louvers (they're angled so they won't actually be touching).

But before I start this, I need to shape the box I made, since the hood isn't flat if you look at it from the side. I'm just going to cut the hole in the hood, drop the box in, and mark the curve that the hood has. It's not much, so I'll probably just use the grinder to take it down to the correct profile. This is the reason I used 1" stock for the box rather than something skinnier.

The only part I'm dreading now is welding the 1/8" box to the less than 1/16" sheet metal of the hood...

-Rog

[Rogviler]

I got the hole cut and marked the frame so that it could be cut down and have the right shape to the top of it.

Frame cut:



This was simple to do by wrapping tape around the whole outer edge, then setting it into the hood hole, marking it with a pencil, and then I cut along the line with an Xacto knife. I peeled off the part of the tape where I was going to be cutting off. This left a nice edge to follow with a grinder fitted with a cutoff wheel.

BTW, this is the ONLY thing I would use blue masking tape for. For actual masking, use the green 3M tape from your local auto parts or paint store. It seems like the blue stuff is only good for not sticking when you want it to and sticking like glue when you're trying to peel it off.

Anyway, then I changed my original plan. Instead of finishing the frame with the louvers in it and then welding it in the hood, I realized how difficult it would be to properly weld and finish the frame edges with the louvers in place, so I just welded the frame in by itself:



This way I can get it nice and blended into the hood and then add the slats. I still haven't decided how pretty I'm going to make the underside. I mean, I'm building this car to drive and have fun with, not to park on the grass at various meets with the hood propped up...

But welding the frame in was easier than I thought. I had forgotten that it's actually easier to weld thick to thin than it is to weld two thin pieces. Still nothing like thick to thick, but fairly simple. The trick is to start welding on the thicker metal and then just barely catch the edge of the thin stuff, moving quickly.

Also, make sure your welder is set to the power level that you would use if you were just welding the thicker metal. If you set it to weld the thinner metal then you'll just eat away the thin stuff before a good weld even starts to happen. The higher power setting, when used correctly, is actually harder to burn through with. I guess the thick metal acts as a sort of heat sink, taking excess heat away.

And that's all until I can pick up some more wire, which conveniently ran out when I had about two inches left to weld on the frame.

-Rog

[Rogviler]

I'm almost done putting the slats in:



I got one more in after I took this before the sun went down. Now I just have the little one in the corner.

Ultimately, after all of my planning and trying to measure it out as precisely as possible, none of the measurements were quite right in the real world and I ended up doing them more or less by eye. In the end I think this will work out fine, since of course people are going to be looking at it rather than measuring it out on a piece of graph paper.

Obviously I have quite a bit of cleanup work to do, but it's nice to be closing in on the end of this project. With this done and back on the car I'll feel a lot better putting the engine in, especially with snow coming...

I think what I'll probably end up doing for the inside is to just fiberglass all the weird little places that aren't so attractive, making it all nice and smooth, and then cover the whole underside of the hood with heat shield mat.

Does anybody know of a good caulking/glue material that matches the stuff they used at the factory to bond the hood skin to the support frame? I was thinking seam sealer, but I forget if that stuff is hard or if it's more like soft rubber.

-Rog