85 UR quattro

[team illuminata]

This is my new to me 85 URQ I recently purchased from Curt Egerer. Curt was very kind to store the car at his facility till the weather was more conducive for driving it the 90 minutes to my shop. Great guy, thanks again for a great car. So here is what I know about the car: "One of the best examples of the classic ur quattro available. Very rare Canadian car. Original Tornado Red paint with black leather interior. 1 of only 17 quattros imported to Canada in 1985! Desirable and rare non-sunroof version. 167,000 KM. Clear Michigan title. Retains original metric instruments - I did not convert anything when I imported this car to the USA. Over the course of the past 3 years, this car has been totally sorted out by Phil at Auto Europe in Birmingham. Phil was an Audi mechanic back when these cars were brand new. I basically gave him permission to check and correct anything that needed attention. The car was great when I bought it, but it's even better now! New hard fuel lines, clutch and slave cylinders, hydraulic bomb, alternator, starter, water pump, timing belt. tires, battery, master cylinder, rear differential bushing, center driveshaft bearing, etc., etc. The car has a modified head and a modified ECU to allow use of the Euro wastegate spring. A joy to drive. This must be what it was like to drive one of these cars brand new. No rattles or squeaks. Strong performer." Certainly couldn't take issue with any of that and I've known Curt for a few years as a customer at my shop and when I worked at Auto Europe. I was just starting to think about buying a classic when this showed up. I thought I might import an Opel Manta from Europe. That's the car I had when I moved to the US around 20 years ago. I thought it was time to get one back. But then I saw this and it was obvious this was the car I should have. I grew up watching Group B rally in the forests in England and the quattro has always been my favorite Group B monster. Just the noise alone is enough to get my heart racing. Indeed, as I like to tell people, this car is why I now own a motorsports business and race RallyCross, autocross etc. Plus, it would be good that the car stay in Michigan where Curt could keep an eye on it. I’ve had the car here for a couple of weeks now and driven it a couple of times. My goals for the car are to keep it in its original condition while fixing some of its issues and not-quite-original features. My list is already long but does not reflect the condition of the car but my mental condition of list making and nit-picking. Here are the highlights of what needs attention IMHO: Restore leather seats Hot starting issues Small dent in hood Should it have Center console? How much clutch is left? Oil change Passenger door lock inoperative Driver’s window seal loose Handbrake boot fits poorly Fuel leak smell Passenger window sticks at 2” drop Pass seat adjuster loose Vent broken center Passenger door pocket coming away Rear diff damp-reseal Right rear wheel creaks Wipers slow Gearbox play, mounts? Rust spots, leading edge of hood, and fender in engine bay Wrong headlights Door bars missing A/C removed engine bay, replace Trunk carpet screws missing Engine under tray missing right side Radio too new and blingy Upper front strut mounts loose Rear brake lines rusty Front ball joints Lower control arm bushings iffy Left front cv boot getting brittle Volts-volt and oil temp meters behave oddly Door carpet coming away Non-original steering wheel Trunk strut inoperative. Key fob light Exhaust crooked Jack missing Speaker cover loose Non-original speakers I might need help with some of these. Prepare yourselves for many questions. Obviously some of these are urgent and necessary, others trivial nit-picking but you can’t beat having a list. I’m sure it will grow rather than shrink even if I do check some off. I still find it immensely ironic that, considering that I’m so into rally, have a rally related business and love to drive sideways that I bought a car that I can neither drive in the snow or on the loose. I guess I’ll have to limit my fun to wet roundabouts, the three or four that exist in SE Michigan. I may do the odd autocross in it or maybe a track day. Do they have track days for classics? I already took it round Waterford Hills track at the recent track day but only during the parade laps at lunchtime. Twas quite fun. Probably, this is what I’ll do most with the car. Just take it to local motorsport events and shows so people can enjoy seeing it. I am going to slap some BRAID wheels on it and a discreet windshield banner in white “BRAIDUSA.com” though as it has to earn it’s keep somehow. These are the wheels that are on a boat in the Atlantic right now. What do you think? I chose them because they are very reminiscent of the works wheels used on the S1, at least in my opinion. I ordered them in the same specs as the originals. I’ll use the Kumho 225/50-15 tires that came on the OE Ronals. Curt also gave me a set of BFG 215/50-15 which was the OE size but I’m not sure what to do with those yet. Hopefully I’ll remember to update this page with news of the car's development and outings. Meanwhile, if you have any questions or suggestions let me know. I’m all ears, as some of you already know.

[ralleyquattro]

Nice! Robert Gross' old car. Very nice example. Congrats. Robert was contemplating buying it back from Curt. Guess you beat him to it.

[team illuminata]

Originally Posted by ralleyquattro

Nice! Robert Gross' old car. Very nice example. Congrats. Robert was contemplating buying it back from Curt. Guess you beat him to it.

Yes it is, thanks.

I need to get hold of Robert. Is he on this forum?

[team illuminata]

My new BRAID wheels come in on Monday along with a couple of hundred others.



I'm not sure what tires to put on them. Currently I have some Kumho AST 225/50-15 on the original Ronal aloys and a set of unmounted BFG in the original size of 215/50-15. The easiest thing to do would be to put the BFG on the new wheels then I'd at least have two working sets available. The "proper" thing to do might be to put the 225 on the BRAIDs and the 215 on the Audi wheels for "originallty's" sake. However, both sets of tires are going to age out before they wear out so one set is just going to be sat there wasting away. Perhaps I should get rid of one set but which. 215/50-15 are quite hard to find now but I like the look of the wider 225.

What to do?

[ralleyquattro]

Originally Posted by team illuminata

Yes it is, thanks.

I need to get hold of Robert. Is he on this forum?

Sorry, he's not on any Audi forums, he's a Porche guy.

email me and I'll give you his email address.

Cheers

[team illuminata]

Originally Posted by ralleyquattro

Sorry, he's not on any Audi forums, he's a Porche guy.

email me and I'll give you his email address.

Cheers

I tracked him down, thanks.

[team illuminata]

Had the car detailed by Ray's Auto Detail in Pontiac this week. It was already clean by my standards but now I understand what really clean is. After using his clay bar Ray made the paint as smooth as a baby's bum. I've never owned a car I had to keep clean; my other car is a rallycross beater. I don't even own any cleaning supplies or equipment except for a bucket! I have a lot to learn.

[team illuminata]

Well the wheels finally came in and I immediately slapped some tires on them and bolted them on the car. What do you think?



Then I took it out to the lake for Memorial Day.







In case you're curious the wheels are BRAID Serie 6 R 3 piece, 15x8 with 225/50-15 Kumho tires.

[team illuminata]

Sorry chaps, it's been a while since I have had chance to update this thread. I'd like to think that since putting the BRAID wheels on the car our sales have gone through the roof and I have just been too busy fulfilling orders to post. Well, that's only half the case, I've also been kept busy keeping cars on the road. None of my four cars, including this one, have been behaving themselves so far this summer but at least it gives me plenty to write about here. So what's been going on? Well:

The first hiccup of the season became apparant when the car became hard to start. I'd noticed lately I'd had to turn the key a little more "aggresively" sometimes but then it became impossible to get the car to turn over at all. Thankfully it did this at the shop and not 1000 miles from home. It was clear contact was not being made in the ignition switch and all kinds of horrors about getting a new one and taking apart the steering column went through my mind. As it turned out it was surprisingly simple to sort out on both fronts. First off, my local O'rielly's had the switch on the shelf. God knows why but bless their little Irish souls non the less. Now, to put it in. I approached with trepidation but needn't have. AllData give pretty explicit instructions.

Remove the steering wheel, column shround and indicator stalks. Then pry off the spring washer that holds on the spring and you are left with this:


Then you remove that pinch bolt and the ignition switch housing slides up the column and lands on your bench:


Just remove that small phillips head screw to relaese the switch and pop in the new one. Needless to say, assembly is the reverse of disassembly but getting the spring wash in place was a little tricky. I used a 19mm impact socket and a hammer to drive it home. You don't need a lot of force, probably because you are supossed to use a new washer but once the steering wheel is back on it can't go anywhere.

Job done. Car's good for the summer but maybe I should just change the oil first. How hard could it be?

So I put the car on lift and look where the oil filter should be and bloody hell, there's two of the buggers! I was so stunned I forgot to take a picture! So off to the store to find a second filter. Apparantly it's for the turbo. Why ddin't you guys tell me about this? Well, just before taking off I decide to have a look around under there and WTF is that all over my nice new BRAID wheel?



CV grease. That's what.


Oh man. Ah well. new axle, 20 minutes of a job. How hard could it be. Well, I couldn't find an axle but I did find a CV boot. No, not at O'rielly's this time but my friends at Auto Europe hooked me up with one from Worldpac. Not OE but something appropriately German. They even slapped it on for me once I got the axle out which was a bit of a trial due to the lack of space to manouver it around.

Undo these at the tranny end


Take of the brakes and axle nut


then realise there's not enough room for the axle to slide out of the wheel bearing.


Have a cup of tea and then get creative with the jack.


Voila. Off to Auto Europe with you.


Strip the old boot. Remove the C clip and hit it with a BFG, gently of course.


Put on new boot. Run back to shop. Forget to take photo. Installation was the reverse and simple but being in there did inspire me to take on refurbishing the front suspension. So went on a quest for upper strut mounts, anti roll bar bushings, lower ball joints and even some strut inserts.

Drove the car home that night to celebrate. Look, it even made it. But there is a reason it is on the street and not up the driveway.


More on that later. I need a rest.

[team illuminata]

So, to continue the saga, the reason the car was sitting on the street instead of in my driveway was that I couldn't get reverse, nor, for that matter, 1st or 2nd! It was allright when I left the shop but by the time I was nearing home, about 20 minutes, 1st became 3rd and I kept stalling at the lights 'cause it don't like to set off in 3rd. Shift lever was feeling a bit woolie too.

I nursed it back to my shop the next day, got it on the lift and found the shifter bushing, #27 in the picture below, had distintergrated. This must have hapenned gradually over a number of years and I guess, with the elevated temperatures lately, it just crossed the threshold of being able to move the selector shaft enough to find the outermost gears. Once I fix this it should feel like a short shifter compared with the long throw that I thought was normal.



The bushing is, of course, no longer available but I found out that 034 Motorsport are making them and I also picked up an OE one from a guy on ebay UK along with some other goodies (see below). Now I have a lifetime's supply.



Apparantly, the short rod, #35 often fails and they are NLA too. Mine seems fine thankfully. The ball on the top of #33 can come loose too but again, mine seems good. It was a little tight in there above the tranny and after finding water in my basement last night I said "Sod this" and booked it in at Auto Europe. As much as I like to work on my cars I just don't have time to tackle this fiddly job with all the other stuff crumbling around me right now. Thank god my Jeep's fixed; and the Subaru moves under its own power too now, sort of.

Some stuff I dd take care of myself though:

I managed to get a gas strut for the trunk. Apparantly it needs two to support the weight of the trunk and that huge spolier and if you only have one like I had it will crash down on your bonce while you are deep in conversation with your spare tire. OUCH!. Couldn't find an OE one at a decent price so went with a Stabilus to match the other side. So much nicer than the stick I was using. Much more civilised.

I've been trying to track down a fuel smell for some time now. It was often there but seemed to be worse with the windows open and after taking some corners, particularly left handers. It was worse the more fuel was in the tank too, I think. Initially I suspected the long breather pipe that goes from roughly the middle of the tank to the filler neck. The original one was very soft so I thought it might be sweating if not actually leaking. I replaced it with a bit of basic hose temporarily and thought it made a bit of a difference but later realised that might have been wishful thinking. I may yet put the original hose back on.



Later I discovered that the gas cap was getting wet with fuel after spirited drives so I replaced the fuel cap gasket with an OE one from the dealer. So far (not very far actually) so good. Fingers crossed. No picture; it's a round piece of rubber with a big hole in the middle. Use your imagination.

When I initially test drove the car the passenger side window stopped working. Well, not completely. It would just go down a couple of inches, make a horrible grinding noise and stop. Fortunately it decided to go back up so I bought the car anyway. So I finally got a chance to get inside the door motivated by the increasing temperatures and lack of air conditioning in the car. Door card came off easily once I located all the screws and clips (didn't braek any either )


I was happy to find that the wire that pulls the window mechanism had come derailed from the bottom pulley and with a bit of effort I managed to get it back on there. It works now but does make some funny noises sometimes. The same noises the driver's side makes so I figured they are factory. Job done!


While I was in there I took the opportunity to have a look at the door lock mechanism. The button was going up and down when I operated the driver's side lock but the key was doing nothing in the passenger side, not that one ever uses the key in that side. It did cross my mind that perhaps it was a design feature then I realised, why would they have a lock. Anyway, brain back in gear it soon became apparant that the little plastic ear on the back of the lock had become detached from its actuator rod. Two minutes and a skimmed knucle later it was back on and working as Audi intended all along. Look:


While messing around in the cabin with the various ***** and switches I found out that my blower fan goes to ELEVEN. Well, it goes to four but that's amazing as the the panel only indicates 3. It works too; fan goes even faster! I can't for the life of me figure out why the switch goes to 4 while the panel only goes to 3. What were they drinking in Ingoldstat in the mid-eighties?


I put back the undertray that giudes air to the intercooler. It came with the car but not actually attched to it. I had to do a bit of rally-rigging with some zip ties as it's missing a couple of screw holes now.


Part of my ebay UK haul was a pair of new sun visor clips in more or less the original color. A snap to swap out but they totally transform the car. Handles as if on rails. OK, they hardly made any difference, even to the visors, but it feels good to have replaced more broken stuff.



More UK parts: dash vents, middle and sides. Only my middle one was broken but it's good to have spares right?

Broken vent. All flippity floppoty:


New vent. All nice and together. You can see the tabs that hold it in place too....


....so I know what to stick my screw driver.


Maybe I should just leave it like this:


Nah!


Man, that was a lot of venting.

In the category of interesting aside did you know, Wikipedia says "The Illuminati, a Bavarian secret society, was founded in Ingolstadt..." and my business is called Team Illuminata Motorsport. Coincidence? I'm saying nothing. Schtum!

Now, off to Auto Europe with you Stiggy (Hmm. I think I just named my car)