Curt's A3 1.8T progress thread... Again
- Thread starter Curt
- Start date
Cheers dude. Yeah very, all you need is the facelift light units and some orange bulbs (as the standard are clear with orange lenses). Just make sure you can get hold of some with in-line pins, when I did mine, all of Halford's ones were offset for some reason... I had to get those horrible chrome ones, luckily with a trade card they went down from £4.99 down to like .99p!
They were from AndyMac, who has now sadly passed away
. I wouldn't bother with the rears though, personally. It's only for fill and the standard speakers are fine for that... IMO of course.So it's been a while... Audi was off the road from February as it ran out of MOT and tax, and I couldn't afford to sort the issues I knew it had. So it sat in my workshop for a few months... Which made it nice and dusty:
After I sold my Celica I used the cash to get this up and running.
After ordering a plethora of parts I started on the first job, cambelt and water pump. Went with a gates kit as I know and trust them, got it fairly cheap too. This didn't go very well... No matter how much I soaked it in Plusgas and worked it back and forth, one of the bolts holding the aux tensioner on snapped:
Much fun. Access wasn't good and it wouldn't budge at all, so I conceded and removed the alternator, air con compressor and PAS pump from the bracket so I could replace it.
With that done there was quite a lot of space:
After that joy I cracked on and did the rest of the job, cambelt removed:
Put it all back together and started fitting the new bracket... Only to find it was slightly different where the A/C pump mounted. As it didn't work anyway, I sacked the pump off and got a shorter aux belt from the motor factor.
Next was the brakes, discs and pads all round. Whipped the front discs off and decided to drill out the grub screw which a previous owner had kindly snapped. This made aligning the discs, spacers and rather heavy wheels fun, so thought it made sense.
Drilled:
Tapping:
Tapped:
With the fronts done, I moved onto the back, which put up more of a fight... Both rear calipers and one slider was seized, which amazed me as I changed the rears not too long ago including a new carrier, because of sliders. But with plenty of penetrating fluid, a larger vice and plenty of hard work, got there eventually.
Then moved on to the suspension, as my coilovers were shot and there was all sorts of play. This went fine and without incident. Some before and afters:
Could only afford JOMs again which were fitted with new Lemforder top mounts and bearings:
Old helper springs make handy caliper rests, BTW...
...and Basil made use of the old box:
After that, I had to replace a broken headlight. This was more hassle than you'd expect, due to the mounts breaking off and then having no way of gripping the rusted bolts and stop them spinning. Out came the grinder. The other headlight was also not very well, an adjuster wheel had somehow come off and the whole reflector could move in and out :/. So with the help of melting the plastic on the other broken headlight, I used a soldering iron to swap it over and then plastic weld it back to the good headlight:
All off (bumper was removed to adjust):
After I sold my Celica I used the cash to get this up and running.
After ordering a plethora of parts I started on the first job, cambelt and water pump. Went with a gates kit as I know and trust them, got it fairly cheap too. This didn't go very well... No matter how much I soaked it in Plusgas and worked it back and forth, one of the bolts holding the aux tensioner on snapped:
Much fun. Access wasn't good and it wouldn't budge at all, so I conceded and removed the alternator, air con compressor and PAS pump from the bracket so I could replace it.
With that done there was quite a lot of space:
After that joy I cracked on and did the rest of the job, cambelt removed:
Put it all back together and started fitting the new bracket... Only to find it was slightly different where the A/C pump mounted
. As it didn't work anyway, I sacked the pump off and got a shorter aux belt from the motor factor.Next was the brakes, discs and pads all round. Whipped the front discs off and decided to drill out the grub screw which a previous owner had kindly snapped. This made aligning the discs, spacers and rather heavy wheels fun, so thought it made sense.
Drilled:
Tapping:
Tapped:
With the fronts done, I moved onto the back, which put up more of a fight... Both rear calipers and one slider was seized, which amazed me as I changed the rears not too long ago including a new carrier, because of sliders. But with plenty of penetrating fluid, a larger vice and plenty of hard work, got there eventually.
Then moved on to the suspension, as my coilovers were shot and there was all sorts of play. This went fine and without incident. Some before and afters:
Could only afford JOMs again which were fitted with new Lemforder top mounts and bearings:
Old helper springs make handy caliper rests, BTW...
...and Basil made use of the old box:
After that, I had to replace a broken headlight. This was more hassle than you'd expect, due to the mounts breaking off and then having no way of gripping the rusted bolts and stop them spinning. Out came the grinder. The other headlight was also not very well, an adjuster wheel had somehow come off and the whole reflector could move in and out :/. So with the help of melting the plastic on the other broken headlight, I used a soldering iron to swap it over and then plastic weld it back to the good headlight:
All off (bumper was removed to adjust):
Headlights everywhere:
Before putting them back on I found some yellow film laying around, so tinted them as I could:
I had to buy a cat for the MOT, so fitted that. This wouldn't fit to my existing system, so had to remove it entirely to make some "adjustments" (hit with a hammer).
It's a pretty **** factored part.
Also changed my vacuum hoses to purple silicone, as they had perished quite badly.
Then it was time for the MOT. I knew it would fail as it had an ABS and air bag light on. I'd checked all I could but needed them to scan it for codes. It did fail, but only on those 2. Air bag light went out (had been on since I changed my interior) and stayed out, ABS was put down to N/S/F speed sensor. £13 and half hour later I had it changed and back down the garage, with a pass. Result!
I had a lot go wrong on me but got there in the end.
So, time for a wash:
Then just recently I swapped out the yellow for purple, still not convinced but it's growing on me (doesn't look very good in the photo):
That's about it really... If you've read all that, cheers.
Before putting them back on I found some yellow film laying around, so tinted them as I could:
I had to buy a cat for the MOT, so fitted that. This wouldn't fit to my existing system, so had to remove it entirely to make some "adjustments" (hit with a hammer).
It's a pretty **** factored part.
Also changed my vacuum hoses to purple silicone, as they had perished quite badly.
Then it was time for the MOT. I knew it would fail as it had an ABS and air bag light on. I'd checked all I could but needed them to scan it for codes. It did fail, but only on those 2. Air bag light went out (had been on since I changed my interior) and stayed out, ABS was put down to N/S/F speed sensor. £13 and half hour later I had it changed and back down the garage, with a pass. Result!
I had a lot go wrong on me but got there in the end.
So, time for a wash:
Then just recently I swapped out the yellow for purple, still not convinced but it's growing on me (doesn't look very good in the photo):
That's about it really... If you've read all that, cheers
.
