Bringing my TQS back to life!

[Gops]

Coming along nicely gops!

Thanks Rav! Come down to see it one day!

Had such a long weekend on this car. Dad and I started to remove the gearbox a week or so ago, and on Saturday we managed to remove the gearbox with great effort to reveal a complete **** up of which was my fault!

It’s clear as day it’s coming from the shaft… but I then found:

I didn’t fit the ****** seal! And yes I slapped myself for making this mistake! The seal came off with the old sleeve so I didn’t fit it on the new one…

So fitting the new seal:

I fitted the guide I removed as it did no miles, just cleaned it up. The clutch is fine and so is the friction plate with no oil on it at all. So with that fitted we’ve put back the gearbox which is never easy but my dad is a right soldier and we’ve managed to get it back in secured to the mounts and front shafts back in! We did find a small leak on the rear diff however I can’t see where this is coming from, it could be we installed the seal incorrectly, but that can wait. I’ll get that off another day.

Next week, I’ll have the new thermostat, new pipe to the oil cooler and coolant temp sensor. Will also assemble the car back together and hopefully get it driving. I need to bleed the brakes and clutch before I do that so I’m off to buy the sealey bleeder!


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[Gops]

Good evening all!

So it’s been a right weekend! It started off with trying to get the car ready to start back up. Getting everything worth such as the exhaust and cat back on the car after doing the gearbox. Honestly it was such a pain in the **** and I give people dues for doing that job.

So I don’t have many pics but everything was put back together and started. I changed the coolant pipe from the oil cooler and it stopped the leak there. Also put the thermostat in and it’s keeping to temperature. The main thing was the oil leak which has been cured! It’s all sorted thank god for that!

So once that was done, I attempted to fix the oil temp sensor wiring

Pretty chuffed with that! Anyways onto the brake bleeding:

The sealey bleeder is fantastic! It’s really good. With the brakes bled and bumper back on, the time has come to give it a test!

Finally took it out of the garage and onto the drive way, really pleased to say it drives fantastically! I couldn’t give it any beans as it’s still running in, but initial runs show lovely progression of power.

So now it’s back into the garage and it broke down!

The cclutch pipe popped off the slave and it’s all because of the clip holding it on. I did think when I put it on, that it wasn’t really strong but I put the old one back on and all is well.

Few issues, throttle body keeps coming up as error when I do an adaptation which is annoying so will have to look into that. The bigger issues is I have no electric windows. It’s such a farse as both front and rears do not work. Tried a few things including the two 30A fuses but I am getting 12V at the motors so it’s unlikely that. The switch I have a spare and the same, nothing. So I went home, I couldn’t think straight so I’ll tackle it another day. I’ll try to see if the key fob works to close the windows. The next will be the CLP as that seems to be the source of evil in some cases. I did reconnect the connectors but nothing. It has no corrosion at all. So no idea at the moment, will try and individually run the motors and see where the problem is. This car just keeps giving me problems!

Anyways, until the next time!


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[Sandra]

Some good progress there @Gops

 

[Gops]

Thanks Sandra!

Few updates on the car, so the electric windows was baffling me as I bought some fuses which did nothing. So I started to understand how the system works and in short, everything runs off the drivers side door switch. The window kill switch has a 12v feed from the CL pump which should be active when the ignition is on, but these for some reason go bad. I did buy another pump but again no luck at all. In the process of swapping out that pump, I ruined my pump so I need another for sure.

What I did do was find a 12v ignition feed to use on that circuit and splice that into the wire

Hey presto! It works!! So now I have power windows I need to get this back up, I can’t use the CL pump so I have ordered another one (this time the right part number!!) but until then I need to get everything back together

So with everything nice and neat, I put the car back together and took it for a little test and it works perfect. There are a few issues but it needs an MOT first.

Next step - MOT

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[Sandra]

Awesome work Gops. I’m sure it will get an mot. Look forward to your next update.

 

[Gops]

Thank you Sandra!

Well good news is it passed the MOT!!!

Car was fantastic getting there and back, power felt good, I need to check for leaks though as I think I have one or two leaks somewhere…

I’ve taxed the car and was about to take it for a spin, but white smoke and coolant was the issue!!

So took it back into the garage

It seems that the heater matrix pipe has popped off the coolant housing. The clip I used must not have been the right one because the o ring is missing and when I try and pop the pipe back on, it won’t stay. So it’s lucky that it lasted this long, I’ll order a new pipe from Autodoc tomorrow and fit it over the week. I will also have to get the cluster over to cluster uk as it’s playing up.

Also I have the central locking pump which works! Just need to code the key to it and see how that works!

We’re getting there!!!!


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[Gops]

Good afternoon all!

It’s been some time since I posted on here and there’s been so many updates… I will fill you all in on the latest as there’s been loads!!! Still working on the thing so once done I’ll get some pics up… in the meanwhile, I can say I’ve rebadged it to the appropriate spec!

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[Gops]

Afternoon all!

So where do I start? Since I last left you all, the car had a massive coolant leak which was a pipe from the coolant flange to the heater matrix. Also, I had issues with the cluster so i had sent that off and found out that it was completely messed up and un recoverable. So we managed to fix the pipe but the issue was the cluster, I physically couldn’t find one. A few I seen on eBay and bought, fell through.

Going forward a few weeks… dad and I ended up buying another A4 for a reference car, since we had a few things missing. It was in such good condition that we thought we’d keep it until we found a major issue with the suspension. It wasn’t worth fixing as it needed around £600 worth of parts and the car being £1200 it’s just not worth it.

So what to do now.. well seen as though it’s in really good condition, the only thing we could do is use it as a parts car. Was a real shame but there was one big thing I could get from it, absolutely every single panel!!! It would save us 1000’s!!! Parts for these cars are scarce..

So the stripping began…

Bonnet first:

Then it was the tailgate.. one thing I had to do was swap over the harness but as it’s apart of the cabin, I needed to splice the entire harness in.

Then it was the doors. Everything needed swapping over, but the door only needed the card swapping.

Doors off!

And then doors on!

The drivers door was hardest with the barrel and lock.

So… next was the rear bumper and as I’m pedantic… the badges!!!

Then it was the front wings…. Literally the hardest thing!
Wings off:

Wings on:

It looks like a different car! I already had taken off the roof rails so they’ll be going on soon….

Next, I had a little gem in the donor car:

Auto dimming rear view!! I haven’t plumbed it in yet, but I will.

The next was the engine cover (did this before the wigs)

Lastly is getting the bumpers on and lights.. the lights are a little tricky to align and i think one of them needs going back to trups as I can’t set it high enough. It’s my fault as I closed the old bonnet on the light and it seemed to dislodge something.

Obviously, I sent the clocks away as they were IDENTICAL!!

Once back, there will be more things being swapped and there will also be a lot of things for sale if anyone needs anything…


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[Gops]

Well we have it done!

I had some issues getting the clocks and the immo to accept the PCM. I’d got sick of it and was recommended to go to stealth racing, to which Vince had removed the immo. He did a fantastic job and it worked first time!

Had taken everything possible out of that donor car and scraped it

Also had the tracking done along with the AC

And now she runs! I’m not at home, so my dad is slowly running her in.. the AC works perfect, the car runs smoothly. There will be a lot of work being done to the chassis components but that I will do as time goes on. I will overhaul each corner from suspension to control arms and bushes so that she runs perfect!

But for now we’ll get her run in!


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[S3 Rav]

Awesome work gops! Can't wait to see this for real!

You continue having the hard life in Thailand!

 

[Gops]

Awesome work gops! Can't wait to see this for real!

You continue having the hard life in Thailand!

It’s such a hard life. Hard work here. But somehow I will survive

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[Gops]

So it’s been pretty good going with the car. She’s had a bath:

Runs lovely, however the AC compressor has been making loads of noise recently. It was brand new refurbished, so I’ll get in touch with the guy and see if there’s anything he can do to help. It’s only noisy in idle which is bizarre.

The second issue I have is an overheating issue. The car has been fine up until today. It’s never overheated but today when in traffic I seen the gauge go to 100c. When driving it calmed down to 90 again so when I got back to my dad’s, we changed the Thermostat incase that was just stuck, but when we ran it again it just went over 90c after a while.

I checked the Pusher fan to see if it works and it doesn’t engage, not even with the AC on. I checked the inline and seen 0v when the car was around 90c. When it hits 96 then the pusher fan inline sees 14v but doesn’t engage. I get some bizarre readings when checking resistance, sometimes OL, sometimes 1 and then 900ohms. So I’ve othered another radiator fan from Autodoc. For good measure we’re going to change the viscous fan coupler as well incase that’s gone bad also..

So for now she’s off the road, she’s just had her oil change back to 5w-40:

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[S3 Rav]

Car looks mint gops!

 

[Gops]

Car looks mint gops!

Thanks Rav! Actually got her back on the road today! So we changed the viscous fan and it made such a massive difference that you can feel the difference in the amount of air it’s pulling

The Secondary fan came today with some coolant so we got to fitting that.

I checked it and it works fine, plumbed it all back in and the car is steady 93-95C on VCDS. The pusher fan didn’t even engage so the viscous is doing its job. The pusher did engage when the AC was on
And is whisper quiet so that’s a relief!

All is good, car feels really good and pulls strong. Not sure what power it’s running but I think it’s not half bad! Could do with a map but not sure that’s even possible nowadays but we’ll see when I book it back in with Bill!


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[S3 Rav]

Car looks awesome, if anything better in real life gops!

Nice mini meet we had the other day! Hope you don't mind me posting the pic.

 

[Gops]

Car looks awesome, if anything better in real life gops!

Nice mini meet we had the other day! Hope you don't mind me posting the pic.

These look awesome! Was good to see you, car looked gorgeous!!


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[Gops]

Small update this time.. I’ve not done very much to the car, just running it in and so far I’ve clocked 1700 miles. The car is running really sweet, hoping to get it on the dyno soon.

I’ve been dying without any sound or navigation as I travel quite a lot in the car, so managed to get an apple carplay system for £50 on eBay and gave it a go:

It doesn’t actually look that bad and works fine for what I need it for! Sound isn’t too bad, the speakers need updating but that’s not the priority just yet.

There are some niggles I need to fix, it also needs new suspension systems including all arms and bushes, so I’ll be compiling this in the coming months.


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[S3 Rav]

Nice nice.! What's the sound like? I've got to do something with the sound in the s3 too. Likely do the double din conversion I think.