Kirk's Lifted Audi CQ: Audi Expo 2017

[PRY4SNO]

Love the battery box, super stealthy oem+ style.

[the german]

Thanks! that was pretty much the goal

[the german]

My wife was out of town this week which means I had lots of free time to work on the car. I have a number of things going in parallel right now so I'll try to post stuff in an order that makes sense so it's easier to follow.

I mentioned my axle length woes earlier, where I determined that the B4 Cabriolet axles I plan to use are too long with the new trans and the CQ suspension. In the true spirit of scope creep, (and since I want to use off the shelf service items like axles) this led me to the conclusion that I should make a set of custom tubular front control arms to fit my exact specification. Naturally.

Based on my preliminary measurements, I made a crude set control arm extender plates to test out my theory with what I thought would be the correct length.



When I tried using the adapter plates, I encountered two issues:



1. The axles are hitting the strut housing waaaaay before full droop

2. The inner CV joints of the left and right axles I have behave very differently

Investigating #2, I took the sealing cups off the backs of the axles and found the issue. One of the axles has a plunging tripod style CV, while the other has a plunging double-offset ball style CV. The tripod style is limited to ~15* of angle before the axle shaft starts hitting the inner edges of the cup while rotating, while the double-offset ball style is rated to handle as much as 25* and still function properly. As I'm sure you have worked out by now, the double-offset ball style CV is what I want.



Since the axles I have came from the junkyard and needed new boots anyway, I decided the best thing to do would be order a set of brand new ones from RockAuto (~$50 each) and hope that they have the ball style inner CVs that I want. Those should arrive tomorrow so we will see!

Next up is the axle hitting the strut tube issue. I made a half-assed attempt at fixing this previously by trimming some extra material off the housing and re-welding it. Clearly not enough as I'm now hitting more than 2"-3" above full droop.

Since I extended the strut tubes as part of the lift and thus have extra space to play with, making a big chop and relocating the "floor" of the strut tube seemed to be the best solution.

I chopped a 45* off the bottom of the tubes which bisects the inside edge of the tube and leaves the mounting point welds in place.




I then machined a set of inserts to weld inside the (now open) strut tubes. This is made from 2" x .188" 4130 steel tube.


Made a few disks for the new "floor" (also .188" 4130 steel)


Welded them together


Then welded them into the strut tubes. I set the new piece ~.2" inside the edge of the strut tube and fillet welded it as that is much stronger than setting it flush and butt welding them.


Then made and welded in some pieces from .125" 4130 steel to replace the structure we cut away between the mounting ears and the tube. Overall this should be MUCH stronger than the stock weldment was to begin with.


And here they are all painted and pretty!




I'm letting the paint cure overnight, then in the morning I can re-assemble the strut housings with the shocks and see how much I need to trim off my shock spacers.

[ringbearer]

It's no mobility scooter but I sure like it!
Great fab work and use of oe parts too.

[the german]

It's no mobility scooter but I sure like it!
Great fab work and use of oe parts too.

HA! Why thank you, and yeah I think I peaked with the mobility scooter. It's all downhill from here...

[the german]

This morning I took a quick trip to work so I could cut down the shock spacers, which ended up needing ~3" off after yesterday's strut tube modification.


With those cut I re-assembled the strut assemblies (this time using O-rings to seal the tops because I found moisture inside when I took them appart), then re-installed them in the car for a test fit. They work as intended! This is still with stock control arms which don're really work, but I measured the angle on the axle shaft and it's at 15* for normal driving and goes all the way to 35* under full droop. I may need to install limiting straps to keep from busting CV's when the wheels come off the ground while playing.



The axles I ordered from RockAuto were delivered around noon, and unfortunately they have tripod style inner CVs which are no-bueno for what I want. For double the price of the RockAuto ones, I went to the local O'Reilley's and ordered two different brands (one right, one left) so hopefully one of those will give me what I need. They should be here tomorrow afternoon so keeping my fingers crossed.

With suspension on hold, I turned to the intercooler. My original thought was to do the typical FMIC thing everyone does for these cars, so for $15 I picked one up off Craigslist that came off a dodge truck. However, with the winch on the car the packaging sucked and it would have hung down stupidly low and not allowed me to use my front skidplate.

In looking for other cheap options I stumbled on a picture of a SAAB intercooler which led me down a whole SAAB forum bunny trail. I found what I thought might be the perfect solution in an OEM intercooler from an early 2000's SAAB 9-3. They use large, thin intercoolers stacked in front of the radiators. I picked one up for $47 shipped off eBay and it arrived yesterday. Here it is, in the orientation it goes in the 9-3. Even came with some nice shrouding.



Preliminary test fitting looked very promising, but I had to pull the winch out a bit to get the access I needed for installation. I'm installing it upside down from the SAAB application, and I could not have made it better If I had tried. It is *Perfect*.



Miraculously, it even has little hooks molded onto it which line up and snap into the molded hooks which mounted the AC condenser on the B5 radiator. I can't believe it! It's like they were made for this!!



Continuing the awesomeness, that nice OEM shrouding that came with the intercooler even fits on to close out the airspace on top and bottom.





This got me pretty excited, and I completed the installation by finishing up the top mount for the radiator which attaches to the core support. This was another good excuse to use my fancy new rivnut tool.





Next was plumbing. Once again, the fitment and configuration of the intercooler made this incredibly easy. All I needed was (2) reducers from 2.5-2", (1) 2" 90* elbow, and a handfull of t-clamps. The hard piping I made from 2" OD x .065" wall T304 stainless tube because I have a ton of it laying around which I got for free. I don't have a bead roller for the ends, so I just welded a bead around each end to make a locking feature.









While the suspension is giving me fits, it was really satisfying to have this work out so well.

[DE80q]

What kind of boost pressured do you plan to run? I have seen those plastic tanked intercoolers literally explode the tanks beyond OEM pressure. Other than that, great job setting things figured out! The AEB into B3 mounting solution may come in handy for me soon.

[chaloux]

Wow I just caught up on this thread. A few things got me lol - Saab forum rabbit hole, and shipping that driveline for $16!!! That's nuts.

Things I really appreciate that I wish I could do: your fab work. Hot damn I need to learn to weld. You can just do anything, it's such a huge advantage. And nice work on the intercooler. Hopefully it doesn't explode like Dave warned against.

[the german]

What kind of boost pressured do you plan to run? I have seen those plastic tanked intercoolers literally explode the tanks beyond OEM pressure. Other than that, great job setting things figured out! The AEB into B3 mounting solution may come in handy for me soon.

That would definitely suck! I hadn't though about that so I just did a quick check: the 9-3 ran 13-14 psi stock, with a stage 1 tune bumping that into the 21-22 psi range. I have a "stage 1" GIAC tune which gives me peak boost of ~18 psi. I don't see any reports of blown up stock IC's on the SAAB forums, so hopefully I'll be fine.

Thanks for the input and kind words!

Wow I just caught up on this thread. A few things got me lol - Saab forum rabbit hole, and shipping that driveline for $16!!! That's nuts.

Things I really appreciate that I wish I could do: your fab work. Hot damn I need to learn to weld. You can just do anything, it's such a huge advantage. And nice work on the intercooler. Hopefully it doesn't explode like Dave warned against.

Hahaha I'm glad you got a chuckle, and thank you!

It probably shows from my silly projects, but I really like making stuff. You are spot-on about having a welder, it opens up a huge range of possibilities. The first real job I had was in high school as a metal fabricator/welder, which I somehow talked my way into after a 5 minute lesson with a MIG welder in my neighbor's driveway. That really opened my eyes. You should go check out your local tech college; most offer welding courses for relatively cheap which will teach you the basics. From there it's just a matter of practice!

[the german]

OK, I couldn't spend the whole long weekend working on the car. It was just too nice outside. I spent most of the day in the mountains going on a ski tour up to the base of a rock climb, doing a free solo climb, then skiing back down. Ya really can't beat these views!



When I got back I checked into Oreilley's for the axles I ordered and both had tripod style inner CVs so I returned them on the spot. I have a theory that the double offset joints were used on the older cars from the factory, but all the replacement ones will have tripod style joints because they are cheaper to manufacture. My current plan is to try and find some older auto Audi's in the junkyard and see if they have the right CV's. If so, I'll just steal the CV's and swap them onto the axles I have with some new boots and grease.

Since the front of the car is all done, I re-installed the front end bits and got it looking like a real car again! the bumper cover only required a little bit of trimming where the charge pipes are to fit back on correctly. This is a welcome sight after having the thing torn apart the last few month, and the visual progress is giving me a false sense that there isn't much work left to do.

[the german]

Ok, I need some help!

I went to the local wrecking yard this morning to see if the axles on a 1991 Audi 100 there had the correct inner CV's and once again there were the tripod style. Does anyone out there have axles from an automatic Audi with the style of CV shown on the left in this picture? The one on the right is the tripod style which is great for a normal car, but doesn't work for me. I someone out there has a cabriolet with these, I will trade you a brand new set of axles in exchange for your used ones!

Please let me know if you have anything that may help, and thank you in advance!

[Einbilden]

Sorry, no help with the axels. But wow on the parts and their fabrication/execution.

[jretal]

Nice work! I used that intercooler on my 4000 as well, b/c it was great to fit and still leave room behind it. It held great at 14PSI all day (and many track events). I had planned to up the boost and see how it survived... but it didn't fair well to starter fluid and a backfire into the intake a few years back when Hank and Marc were trying to help me get the car running properly at Carlisle... lol

[DE80q]

Nice work! I used that intercooler on my 4000 as well, b/c it was great to fit and still leave room behind it. It held great at 14PSI all day (and many track events). I had planned to up the boost and see how it survived... but it didn't fair well to starter fluid and a backfire into the intake a few years back when Hank and Marc were trying to help me get the car running properly at Carlisle... lol

I really thought it looked familiar! That was a bad day for your 4k, was one hell of a pop!

[ringbearer]

Strap it to help hold the tanks on!

[jretal]

I really thought it looked familiar! That was a bad day for your 4k, was one hell of a pop!

Heh, yeah... but thankfully Hank didn't get hurt when it went. He was right there, and thankfully it popped on the side he wasn't standing!

It had enough force to shatter my poor e-code!

[the german]

And here I though I was so clever in finding this solution!

You basically had a bomb go off in your intake, I'm glad nobody was hurt. I've seen aluminum intake manifolds blown up by a starter fluid backfire which was rather impressive.

[jretal]

And here I though I was so clever in finding this solution!

You basically had a bomb go off in your intake, I'm glad nobody was hurt. I've seen aluminum intake manifolds blown up by a starter fluid backfire which was rather impressive.

I've only seen it used on the B2 body, not the B3... so you're an innovator/pioneer for the B3 chassis... how's that? I had taken the idea from a guy on the old AW boards that had used this IC on his MC1'd CGT. Given my experience at the time, it took minimal fabrication to make work, and I could install it given the limited fab equipment I had! Your solution is a LOT more elegant than what I came up with! lol.

And yeah, nothing would have survived that blow... car was backfiring at the tailpipe at 3k rpm (had the ECU set up to fire the coil non-stop as couldn't figure out what phase the distributor was in when firing) and mix that w/ too much starter fluid (it was coming out the exhaust... from teh poor running/backfiring) and one burp and she went boom.

No blood, only my tears... lol. At least it didn't scratch/damage the fresh paint

[Foscora]

Ok, I need some help!

I went to the local wrecking yard this morning to see if the axles on a 1991 Audi 100 there had the correct inner CV's and once again there were the tripod style. Does anyone out there have axles from an automatic Audi with the style of CV shown on the left in this picture? The one on the right is the tripod style which is great for a normal car, but doesn't work for me. I someone out there has a cabriolet with these, I will trade you a brand new set of axles in exchange for your used ones!

Please let me know if you have anything that may help, and thank you in advance!

If it can "help" a bit, my 1983 5cyl B2 has those.

Potato quality pic


IDK when they changed for the tripod ones, but I'd say around 1986-7, atleast on euro models.

EDIT : can confirm, I climbed a pile of junk to retrieve some 1987 2.2 Coupe B2 FWD parts :


I'd gladly ship you those but I'm afraid shipment would cost you way too much :(

[the german]

Thank you for looking!

Unfortunately the manual transmission and automatic transmission joints have a different connection to the transmission. From what I've seen, older manual transmission axles commonly have ball style joints, but automatic trans axles tend to have tripod joints.

I'm shipping the set of axles I have to a shop in Florida that thinks they can help me. If that fails, I may have to make an adapter to go from the automatic bolt flange to the manual pattern.

[Foscora]

Oh right, I thought the outer "automatic/manual gearbox specific" part could be disassembled from the inner one. My bad, I misunderstood the "inner" part of "inner CV joint"

[the german]

No worries, I really appreciate you trying!!

[the german]

OK, it's been a little while without an update as I've been trying to come up with an axle solution. No resolution on that yet, but I have a tentative plan with parts on the way so more on that later.

While I'm on hold with that, I decided it was a good time to take care of the skid plates. I started off with the front skid plate tonight, and will do the transmission one next.

Starting with the rear mounting point, I used the stock undertray brackets which bolt on over the front ARB. I welded a rectangular steel tube (0.125" wall) between the two to make it quite a lot more solid and give me a nice structure to bolt to.



I drilled 4 holes in the rectangular tube and installed M6 riv-nuts to create my mounting points. Here it is installed:
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Next was the front mounting points. I am mounting to the tubular bull bar, so I made a handful of brackets from T304 stainless rectangular tube.


Then welded them to the bull bar and once again used M6 riv-nuts:




I cut he head off and ground a sharp point into the end of a few M6 bolts to use as a transfer punch for marking out the skid plate. Here it is all drilled and counter-sunk.


And installed on the car. There are a total of 10 M6 stainless bolts holding the front skidplate on. I used countersunk hardware so there is a smooth surface without bolt heads to hang up on. Overall I'm quite happy with the fit! I need to trim about 3" off the front of the skidplate where it stick up proud of the bumper, but otherwise I'm happy.

[lorge1989]

That looks great. I need to tackle something like this, but much less heavy duty to protect the underside of my car in the winter. Rivet nuts are awesome. Did you tack them after pressing them in?

[the german]

Thanks! Riv-nuts are awesome; I'm glad I finally bought my own tool for this project. I did not tack them in; I've found best practice is to just swage them in so they can be easily drilled out & replaced later on if needed.