Storage Unit Rally Build - Week 12: Clutching Straws

We spent this week clutching at straws, curly straws at that! No, actually, we made a curly clutch line that goes between the slave and master cylinder. We have no idea why it’s this shape but Audi went to a lot of trouble to make it so we thought we should too! We were going to use the original one but it’s in really good shape and will make a great spare for our '85 road car so we decided to get bending. Hope it doesn’t drive is round the bend.



According to math this thing is enormous before you bend it. Nearly 3 foot long!



We needed to find something suitable to form it round. The jack handle will do.





It was actually easier than we thought it would be.







And it added up fitting pretty well. Don’t worry, we have a new master cylinder, somewhere. Pat on the back!

 

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.

RENNLINE
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?