Starting a new Build Thread: 2000 B5 A4 1.8T Quattro ATW

[slunky]

Because I had such a productive day today, I decided it was time for a build thread. It's been 8 weeks and 1 day since I bought my first car, and what a car she is. Having just recently gone through a stressful breakup, it was nice to fall in love so quickly.

A bit of backstory: I call her "The Professor's Car" because I bought it from an academic. The name may change after a while as the bond grows, but for now, that's suitable. I'm the proud 2nd owner of this gem. With 83,957 on the ODO at sale, I knew I was getting a bargain. Before I was able to drive her home, we had to replace the breather hose and secondary air intake, since the car failed the first smog test. My brother and I put in a day's work, I haggled the seller down to $3,640 from $4,000, and I drove home happy. To be more specific, I didn't actually drive her home, because I couldn't; I've been licensed for 7.5 years but never learned to drive stick. My bucket list included driving stick, and besides the improved fuel economy and "cool" factor, I wanted to be able to better control what the car was doing, and be better able to know what the car was trying to tell me. I always felt removed from the driving process in an Automatic, especially in my dad's '99 B5. Buying a manual was part of my search parameters, and I knew I wouldn't be able to test drive a car before I bought, so it had to be the right one. She was the right one.

Here's my project list and the work which has already been done. I'll be posting pictures of these projects as they continue over the next few years. With 84,000 miles on the dash, I could very well run her for a decade or more.

• Breather hose and secondary air intake: DONE
• Tune Up: New coolant, new coolant tank, new valve cover gasket, new spark plugs, new oil filter, new oil, clean fuel injectors, new fuel injector seals, new throttle body gasket: DONE
• Replace driver's side window regulator: DONE
• Seat rail cover and seat belt button replacement: DONE
• Sport steering wheel: DONE
• Replace rear taillight: DONE
• Tighten e-brake:
• Drain rear differential and replace cracked seals and fluid: DONE
• Sport suspension: DONE
• Replace cluster LCD: DONE
• Strip shift molding and color match to trim: DONE
• Tint windows: DONE
• Cup holder: DONE
• Chrome exhaust tips: DONE
• OEM rubber floor mats: DONE
• Replace cracked CV boot on driver side: DONE
• New wiper blades: DONE
• New Wheels: DONE
• Dash camera: DONE
• Replace cracked front grille: DONE
• S4 grille: DONE
• New clutch, flywheel and throwout bearing: DONE

My goal here is to keep much of the car stock and only to add the modifications which Audi offers (Sport Package, etc) while making the car the best it can be. I'm not interested in racing or sideshow style, only in making the car a pinnacle of quality and an example of what the B5 can be. Any advice, cross posts, or other contributions to help my cause are welcome. The purpose of this thread is to track my work, grow reader knowledge, and document the process of fine-tuning a beautiful piece of German engineering. Enjoy!

Day one


Before the smog job


Tune up: fuel rail and injectors


Better?


After and before:


Done:


Celebrating America's independence with a clay bar and wax:


Wax makes a difference:


All clean


Today's work:

[BaseDrifter]

Oh hello. Yes, this is the third B5 in our family, we've got a fleet of them! I've been trying to knock out as much of the maintenance on them as I can while I have the time. Three B5s need just a little bit of upkeep effort…luckily this car had the timing belt done recently. My dad's 99 is just about due.

We knocked out the steering wheel and window regulator in about 3.5 hours today, luckily (or unluckily) I have already had practice with the window regulator as it failed in my car last year. Steering wheel swap was a breeze.

[Poopie]

Nice project man! I have a 2000 a4 for parts. Let me know if you need anything else on your list. I have sport sway bars that are slightly thicker i will sell cheap if you want. They will be a little pricy to ship.

[slunky]

Nice project man! I have a 2000 a4 for parts. Let me know if you need anything else on your list. I have sport sway bars that are slightly thicker i will sell cheap if you want. They will be a little pricy to ship.

I guess shipping depends on location. I'm over here on the best coast. Do you have anything on the list that hasn't been marked "pulled" or "pending"?

My CD player gives "Error 1", but I use CD's so infrequently that I'm not willing to pay much for a new deck. New speakers however...(my car doesn't have premium sound).


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[slunky]

Today, I did something small but fun. My shift boot panel (the plastic surrounding the shift boot) had started to peel away and was rather sticky and ugly. Today I used a spudger and my fingernails to scrape away the "soft touch" finish on the panel and expose the hard plastic underneath. Lemme know what you think.

[MPOW33R]

Im in Walnut Creek, 10 miles from you, I have never used REAR Eibach Pro Kit lowering springs and
Front OEM Sport springs unused in box . PM Me if you want em

[slunky]

Well, it happened out of nowhere. After owning my car for less than 6 months, I was attempting to go up a steep hill. I tried to accelerate from a standstill on an incline, and I could feel the clutch slip. I could smell it, too. I got off the hill and went home. My brother told me it was glazed, and it felt like there was very little "bite" left. To test it, we took it onto the freeway at 45MPH in 5th gear. I floored it. The RPM's accelerated from 2200 to over 4000. The car did not move. It was time, I knew. I babied the thing for another week or so until the clutch kit arrived in the mail.

The clutch kit I ordered is the same one that the shop down the street would have used if I had wanted to pay them $160 an hour for the labor. Instead, I struck a deal with my local mechanic and got it done for well under a grand. This is the kit we opted for: http://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-B5_A4-...utch/ES251027/

It came with a flywheel, which was great. The existing flywheel was a stock dual-mass flywheel. It had been resurfaced 9 years ago. This new one is single mass, so it'll be a bit less cushy and forgiving, but I'm fine with that.

We put the car up on jacks, jack stands, and ramps, and set to begin. Here she is before the biggest operation of her life with me.


This was how we got underneath. We had 4 jack stands on the subframe, used cinder blocks and wood to brace during certain tasks, and had service ramps on the back wheels as a safety precaution.


The transmission. We purchased a transmission jack for the shop.


Old flywheel.


Old clutch plate. Worn down to the bare metal. Additionally, the plate itself was moving laterally across the mount. Really, really bad.


Detail.


New flywheel and pressure plate.


Comparison of old friction disc and new sprung hub friction disc.


Surgery.


Done. Against all odds.


All the credit goes to my local mechanic, basedrifter.

[BaseDrifter]

I ran into a couple problems on this job that I hadn't planned for. The first was that I could not swing the axles to the side (or up) because the CV joint wouldn't clear the edge of the axle flange. I tried moving the CV joint around, I tried turning the wheel to lock in both directions, I tried to pull the axle toward the outside of the car, but had no luck. I didn't have this problem on my car. I ended up removing the pinch bolt so I could pull the spindle out far enough to get the clearance to tie the axle off to the side.

I was hoping to not have to remove the DP and cat, but I ended up doing so and wished I had just done so from the start instead of trying to work around it. With the passenger side transmission bracket removed sliding the DP/cat assembly in and out was no problem and I didn't have to break the DP to cat connection. Having the cat out made putting the upper passenger side bell housing bolt in easier as well.

For whatever reason, the original owner of the car had the clutch replaced around 30k miles. When I pulled the transmission off I found the pressure plate bolts were already stripped by whoever did the clutch the last time. I tried shaving down a 7mm hex bit and then pounding it in, this just rounded the holes out to a larger size. What ended up working was pounding a 12mm 12 point socket onto the outside of the bolt. A quick zip with the 1/2" impact gun and the bolts came right out. Very useful trick! Much better than trying to cut a slot in the head or drilling them out.

The last "issue" was dealing with the pilot bearing. I don't have the slide hammer tool to pull the bearing out, but I did have some bread. I had heard about this method on other forums as well as here on AZ. I first tried to push it out using grease and a 9/16" rod, but the grease was able to slip out between the bearing and rod. The bread worked great though, shoved some pieces in and the bearing hammered right out. Saved me $60 and some drawer space from adding another tool to the collection that would be rarely used.

Here's a couple more pictures and a video of the pilot bearing removal.



Stripped pressure plate bolts.



Clutch and flywheel removed.



Video of the worn out clutch.



Pilot bearing halfway out.



Bearing out, bread taking its place.



Tasty!



Video of the pilot bearing removal.



And the new bearing installed. The paint pen marks on the new flywheel bolts were to keep track of which ones had been torqued and stretched.



Now I get to do the clutch on my car! (At some point in the near future.)

[slunky]

This thread deserves a little update.

The first order of business with the car of late was to replace the fender damaged in the hit-and-run accident I was victim of at the end of January. The damage wasn't bad, and was mostly confined to the fender. I was able to find a junkyard fender for $24 which matched perfectly. Put it on in about an hour.

The next task was to pull, drain, and replaced the seals on my rear differential. I knew when I bought the car last June that the seals were leaking and would need to be replaced. Barring the clutch job, this was the most challenging job we've faced on this car so far (and hopefully for a while).

Here's the differential when it first came out the back of the car:



Draining the oil:



With new seals, ready for re-assembly:



A friend of mine was in need of coilovers. I found a set online for $250. I got the guy down to $200 for a set of ST's which had been sitting since he bagged his Avant. Unfortunately, I didn't know what I was looking at. The rears were blown completely. Still, my friend is running them for the time being until he can get them refurbished. In exchange, I bought off him his OEM "Sport" suspension from his '01 B5. They're in ok shape. The rears don't come up on their own very quickly, but I think they'll work out.

Here they are:



Lastly, a friend was looking to get rid of his Avus wheels since he got OZ's. I've been in love with the 17'' Avus on the B5 since I first saw them. He told me he'd hang onto them for me. Picked them up off him for a nice even 3 bills, with 4 tires of questionable life. I'll update this thread with pictures once I resolve the tire situation and get them installed. Car is finally shaping into what I foresaw myself doing to it last year when I bought it.

Here's the wheels. Left one still has gunmetal plastidip on it. Right is stripped, the way I'll run 'em:

[R490]

Good progress! Like the notion of a relatively stock, cleanly modified build.

[BlueBoostedAudi]

Looking good!

[M-Hood]

The paint pen marks on the new flywheel bolts were to keep track of which ones had been torqued and stretched.



Now I get to do the clutch on my car! (At some point in the near future.)

Are those 10.9 flywheel bolts or OEM bolts? Because 10.9 flywheel bolts shouldn't be stretched like a OEM bolt, they just get torqued down to a 85 ft lbs.

[slunky]

Good progress! Like the notion of a relatively stock, cleanly modified build.

Thanks! Keeping the car stock-ish was the goal from the get go. I'm not trying to make it look like an S4 or anything else. Just adding parts I think provide improvement.

[slunky]

Hard to believe, but the car is approaching its first birthday. I thought I'd use this chance to upload a few pictures as she stands today. She's come a long way in less than one year. Enjoy the pictures below!

Day 1:


This weekend:


Day 1:


This weekend:


Day 1:


This weekend:


Day 1:


This spring: (boost gauge on the left now)

[Nzila8]

Looks good sir, is that with the 50% tint?

[slunky]

Good eye. It is indeed. Honestly I would have rather gone 40%, but I didn't know how it would look. The law out here says no front tint at all, so I'm already bending the rules. But I figured it was not as noticeable. And it really does make the car feel cooler inside.


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[cclarkb5]

Love the interior colors. Always appreciate an almost stock restoration. Wheels look great too, very clean.

[Believer]

Nice thread! Love what you are doing with the car. Question about the diff seals you did; which seals in particular did you end up doing? I assume the drive flange seals, which others?

[BaseDrifter]

Are those 10.9 flywheel bolts or OEM bolts? Because 10.9 flywheel bolts shouldn't be stretched like a OEM bolt, they just get torqued down to a 85 ft lbs.

They're the bolts that came with the Valeo clutch kit and I did stretch them a little less than 90 degrees.

Nice thread! Love what you are doing with the car. Question about the diff seals you did; which seals in particular did you end up doing? I assume the drive flange seals, which others?

All the rear diff seals were replaced. The front driveshaft flange seal, axle seals, and o-ring that seals the two halves of the diff case together.

[slunky]

Today I finally installed a short shifter, ziptied my wonky RS4 grille, and replaced a driver's door handle spring. Here's a few pics of the job today:

The before:


The old shifter:


My next April Fool's Day joke:


Parts everywhere:


Shifter in place:


EDIT: Here's the final product. In need of a boot and knob:



Also, here's a picture of my grille as it stands, ziptied in all it's glory:


On to the axles, sway bar endlinks, and boost gauge electrical wiring!

[Nemudrof]

Very clean car)
Where did you get tune for ATW engine?

[slunky]

Very clean car)
Where did you get tune for ATW engine?

I got it from my brother on Christmas. I'll ask him.


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[slunky]

Perfect looking.

Thank you!


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[slunky]

Snapped a few pics after the wash today.




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[charmk]

Hi, your car looks great!
I'm curious, what shortshifter did you install and where did you get it?
Also you mentioned that you replaced door handle spring - you had to buy another handle or bought spring somewhere separately?
Thanks!

[slunky]

Hi, your car looks great!
I'm curious, what shortshifter did you install and where did you get it?
Also you mentioned that you replaced door handle spring - you had to buy another handle or bought spring somewhere separately?
Thanks!

I just got an eBay short shifter. It usually sells for around $40-$50.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...obalID=EBAY-US

The door handle spring I took off a car at Pick N' Pull. I took apart the door card of a rear driver side door. I figured that would be the least-used spring. It isn't perfect, but it's a lot tighter than my old one was. I can walk you through how to access the spring if need be.


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[charmk]

I know how to replace a spring, just didn't know if they are sold separately :) but thanks.
Was it difficult to install the shifter?

[slunky]

Shifter took about two hours. There is a really big snap ring that required the purchase of a new set of snap ring pliers. The hardest part is dropping in the new shifter and getting it to seat properly in the linkage.


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[slunky]

Did the front axles this weekend. I bought the car knowing the driver's side CV boot was shot, but I've managed to put an additional 8000 miles on it. The time came for it to be replaced, and I got a deal from a friend of a friend for two non-OEM axles, cheap. Bought the grease from O'Reilly's and the gaskets and bolts from ECS and got to it.

Here's the blown driver's side boot (top):


Here's the new axle about to go in:



Here's the installation happening:


I feel much better about driving the car knowing the axles are properly greased.

I'm almost at the point where I've accomplished most of what I wanted to do a year ago when I bought the car. I can still think of a few upgrades to do: 034 snub mount, an exhaust (Borla = LOUD? Milltek = Nice, but pricy), A8 Brakes...but for now I'm just set to enjoy the car.

If this was your car, what would you do next?

[M-Hood]

I ran into a couple problems on this job that I hadn't planned for. The first was that I could not swing the axles to the side (or up) because the CV joint wouldn't clear the edge of the axle flange. I tried moving the CV joint around, I tried turning the wheel to lock in both directions, I tried to pull the axle toward the outside of the car, but had no luck. I didn't have this problem on my car. I ended up removing the pinch bolt so I could pull the spindle out far enough to get the clearance to tie the axle off to the side.

Just a little tip for next time and for anyone else pulling the transmission. The axles will clear the transmission flange once you start to pull the transmission back away from the block or just move the transmission slightly to 1 side to get the axle out on the other side and then the other one will come out. No need to do anything with the control arms. Another trick is to just jack the suspension up for that side and the axle will then come out away from the transmission flange.

[BaseDrifter]

Thanks for the tips Mike!

[Believer]

Where did you guys get the 9/16" rod for pushing the pilot bearing out?

[BaseDrifter]

Where did you guys get the 9/16" rod for pushing the pilot bearing out?

That was just one of those things that was laying around the shop. You should be able to get a piece of roundbar from your local hardware store.

[B5 Quattro]

Wow. Looks good. Keep it up

[19birel]

Really nice progress so far! the car looks great on those Avus wheels, kinda makes me imagine how someone would've modified one of these 15years ago when they were new.

In this pic your steering wheel looks a little rough


I'd recommend picking up some leather dye like this stuff here HERE and using it to restore the worn leather. We got a three spoke leather GTI wheel for my dad's old MKIV Golf that I currently daily while I work on the B5 and it looked like your Sport wheel does now, but after that leather dye it looks like new, I did that probably 1.5 years ago and it's held up perfectly so far. Just get that stuff and cover all the leather on the rim of the wheel and you'll be set!

Can't wait to see more!

[slunky]

I'm actually really glad you sent me this post. I was just thinking about pulling another wheel from the junkyard if I can find one in better shape. Of course, I'd rather avoid having to buy another wheel. I'll have to take a look at this product, but if it works as you say, I'll be buying it! Can you show me a before and after picture?

Really nice progress so far! the car looks great on those Avus wheels, kinda makes me imagine how someone would've modified one of these 15years ago when they were new.

In this pic your steering wheel looks a little rough


I'd recommend picking up some leather dye like this stuff here HERE and using it to restore the worn leather. We got a three spoke leather GTI wheel for my dad's old MKIV Golf that I currently daily while I work on the B5 and it looked like your Sport wheel does now, but after that leather dye it looks like new, I did that probably 1.5 years ago and it's held up perfectly so far. Just get that stuff and cover all the leather on the rim of the wheel and you'll be set!

Can't wait to see more!

[slunky]

Really nice progress so far! the car looks great on those Avus wheels, kinda makes me imagine how someone would've modified one of these 15years ago when they were new.

In this pic your steering wheel looks a little rough


I'd recommend picking up some leather dye like this stuff here HERE and using it to restore the worn leather. We got a three spoke leather GTI wheel for my dad's old MKIV Golf that I currently daily while I work on the B5 and it looked like your Sport wheel does now, but after that leather dye it looks like new, I did that probably 1.5 years ago and it's held up perfectly so far. Just get that stuff and cover all the leather on the rim of the wheel and you'll be set!

Can't wait to see more!

I just ordered it yesterday!

[down_n_dapper]

Heres a decent looking DIY I've been studying while considering restoring my own wheel, show pics when you do it! Car looks fantastic btw

Linky Linky Clicky Clicky

[slunky]

Think I can do the job without removing the wheel?

[down_n_dapper]

Think I can do the job without removing the wheel?

I wouldn't want to risk staining other things in the car with the dye. Might be a messy job so probably best to remove it

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