Purchasing and manual swapping? Worth it?

[R490]

So, it's been a while since I was last on here. I've owned several Audis/Volkswagens over the years and after driving a truck for the past couple years, I'm ready to get a project on the side.

My first car was a silver B5 A4 and I've been wanting a B5 S4 for ages and they're few and far between in acceptable stock condition on Craigslist. I've found one that I like, but it's tiptronic and has some issues. Looking to pay probably $2,300 for it, running and driving. But I'd have to swap it, and I know I can't be super picky with my selection.

Has anybody here been able to successfully swap their S4 using basic tools, and sticking to a budget.

Thanks, and hoping to be able to post more!

[bergtho]

...and sticking to a budget.

Not been possible here.

[R490]

Not been possible here.

I use that term loosely, lol.

But for the swap in itself?

[DolphinV8]

Depends on your budget. Aside from the swap kit itself, you likely have to replace a bunch of other parts when the engine and transmission are out.

[R490]

Depends on your budget. Aside from the swap kit itself, you likely have to replace a bunch of other parts when the engine and transmission are out.

A couple grand, give or take. Obviously, I'm more interested because I like these cars a lot rather than the value of the finished project.

I'm fine with sourcing my own parts, I found some DIY guides and it sounds like something I'm capable of doing with what I have.

[james 408]

The idea of swapping a car cause you got it a couple grand cheaper is completely absurd even if you value your time at nothing. Are you high?

show me the budget you're even trying to stay within, what have you included in the build? Let me guess, you've eyeballed half the parts you need and are somehow unable to take a $2500 + $2000 and realize that's the same price as one already MT... that sound about right? Enjoy the partout.

Look I've seen it a million times, especially in budget builds. I tried to come up with a way to ls swap a drift car, because i priced the base shell, the kit, the engine, add in a bit for peripherals, okay looks like 10 grand. That's what everyone said, that's what it looks like to the average idiot... and yet every shop I talk to says that's not even close. Well I spend 30 minutes filling in that budget, with actual parts and prices and peripherals, and guess what, it's 25grand in parts alone. I've read it a million times that I can do it for 10 grand, but guess what, there wasn't a single one who'd done it, ever. The engine alone didn't even exist at the prices people were budgeting, the market price was double. And guess what, it doesn't just plug in there with the $2k swap kit, there's 5 grand in peripherals, which have another 2 grand in peripherals you haven't thought about yet. And you haven't even done anything to reinforce/repair anything at all. Low and behold the market is flooded with "all you have to do is ___" incomplete swaps that are total shit shows people are parting out. The same thing in the s4 market, they're all shitbuckets with nonfunctioning builds and cut corners if it even runs at all.

Bought the most complete one I could find, owners says its perfect blah blah, nothing but problems. Luckily I wasn't dumb enough to expect it to work, every corner cut was snapped within 5-20k miles, every single peripheral snapped/broken. Ended up rebuilding the entire thing. Oh look he used home depot bolts on the budget driveshaft connecting the 100k drivetrains, snap. Oh look the budget exhaust is leaking everywhere within 2 years. Oh look the axles snapped. Oh look the wiring is rats nest. Oh look it overheats. Oh look it blew the 100k used engine. Oh look he's got budget brakepads on there that are downright dangerous. Oh look the speedo doesn't work. Oh look there's a rust hole underneath the brake master from it leaking all over while he took 5 years to beg/borrow/steal parts to try to get his budget build together. It's the same shit every time.

[R490]

The idea of swapping a car cause you got it a couple grand cheaper is completely absurd even if you value your time at nothing. Are you high?

show me the budget you're even trying to stay within, what have you included in the build? Let me guess, you've eyeballed half the parts you need and are somehow unable to take a $2500 + $2000 and realize that's the same price as one already MT... that sound about right? Enjoy the partout.

Guess I struck a nerve with you?

I looked at this to gauge what I need, with a couple exceptions: http://audis4parts.com/audi-s4-tip-t...sion-swap-kit/

[james 408]

sure, and what does everyone whose done it end up spending? you're friggen high. Guess what all the ls swap kits advertise? the same bullshit.

And yeah, idiocy triggers me. It's not the swap that bothers me, it's the stupidity about it.

There's an ancient chinese proverb that goes something like: You make as detailed a budget as you can possibly make, build in some cushion, and when you're sure you're right, double it and you might be in the ballpark.

[R490]

sure, and what does everyone whose done it end up spending? you're friggen high. Guess what all the ls swap kits advertise? the same bullshit.

And yeah, idiocy triggers me. It's not the swap that bothers me, it's the stupidity about it.

Okay okay, chew an asprin. From searching around, it sounded like people have been able to do it for under $2,000. (You can say I'm high if I had indicated I wanted a shop to do the work.)

I'm not trying to swap an Lt1 or whatever into something, I'm considering swapping a transmission from a B5 S4 into another B5 S4. If I'm not able to do that, then oh well I have an automatic S4. Thank you for your suggestions though, it sounds like you have a lot of experience with swapped cars.

[james 408]

do some research. the kit alone, add fluids, add the parts the kit tells you aren't included, add taxes and shipping and all the while you're in there crap. Open a spreadsheet. Now go back and read forum posts from people who have done it. Add that to the spreadsheet as needed, no doubt the estimate goes up, it always does. This is the nature of budgeting. And most certainly the nature of car modding.

[R490]

do some research. the kit alone, add fluids, add the parts the kit tells you aren't included, add taxes and shipping and all the while you're in there crap. Open a spreadsheet. Now go back and read forum posts from people who have done it. Add that to the spreadsheet as needed, no doubt the estimate goes up, it always does. This is the nature of budgeting. And most certainly the nature of car modding.

I was considering using a master list from one of the swap sites and buying everything from that list on my own. There are plenty of B5 S4 partouts to go around, as you said.

[james 408]

I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying the odds are not with you, and it probably doesn't pencil. Look on the forums, the 2k number is the low end, parts only, and what I'm telling you is, if I tally receipts, I'd bet anything that figure goes up.

[Dfloods4]

I had a friend locally do a manual swap.

First bought the needed parts much like the list from audis4parts from a guy locally to us for about 1800. He put k04’s on at the same time since the stock turbos on the auto car had 150k on them and didn’t want to do all this work to just have turbos fail so at the same time he put in a clutch and flywheel 1200. Engine and trans mounts 300. The bushings on the manual linkage were old and had to replace 300. Got it all buttoned up and running a week later the 1-2 synchro on the used manual trans that “shifted fine” “low miles” when he bought it went out. Everything got pulled and a 600 jhm rebuild kit went in.

Not including time labor he spent doing this was in about 4K.






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[csobel]

So, granted my experience is with a slightly different transmission but...

The DIY’s do not capture the actual difficultly of doing this swap. Some of them take wiring shortcuts that don’t actually work (we tried them particularly with the clutch cancel switch and cruise control), and then you have to troubleshoot electrical diagrams for a tip harness vs manual wiring.

The clutch pedal assembly has a lot of little parts on it and the one I got was missing half of them. You don’t realize which until you’re half way into it and you actually have to wire things. The rest of the assembly parts had to be ordered direct from Germany because they aren’t available here. That was the tip of the iceberg..

Tranny
Clutch pedal assembly
Oops the assembly wasn’t complete parts — clutch cancel switch, cruise control switch, clutch spring, spring boots, new bushing for clutch pedal
AA tip swap electrical adaptor (highly recommended)
Other electric supplies you WILL end up using
Reverse switch broken on tranny, needed new one
Driveshaft
Rear diff
Front axles
Shifter trim
New hardware for axles, driveshaft, new seals for axles etc
Clutch/Flywheel and TO bearing
Transmission spacer
Manual steering wheel, which then needed new clock spring
Manual harness was swapped in when we had problems getting the clutch cancel switch to work
Shifter linkage and shifter surround
Shift boot and knob
More hardware that’s missing from all the above
I’m probably missing stuff but that was everything we got minus stuff that was specific to the B7 tranny we used.
Update — added Transmission mounts and diff mount.

I paid $1500 for my S4 which was the only thing that made all the above remotely worth it, and now having a better tranny.

Could you do the swap for $2000? I would be willing to bet you money if you did it would be a really shoddy swap job — not that the work you would do would be bad, but it would be missing all the small stuff that differentiates a hack job from a well executed manual swap. Just know way more stuff is going to come up than what you can see and plan for right now. That’s no bad reflection on your skills or ability; just how it goes with these projects — you don’t know what you can’t know.

Good luck and post any questions you have!

[R490]

So, granted my experience is with a slightly different transmission but...

The DIY’s do not capture the actual difficultly of doing this swap. Some of them take wiring shortcuts that don’t actually work (we tried them particularly with the clutch cancel switch and cruise control), and then you have to troubleshoot electrical diagrams for a tip harness vs manual wiring.

The clutch pedal assembly has a lot of little parts on it and the one I got was missing half of them. You don’t realize which until you’re half way into it and you actually have to wire things. The rest of the assembly parts had to be ordered direct from Germany because they aren’t available here. That was the tip of the iceberg..

Tranny
Clutch pedal assembly
Oops the assembly wasn’t complete parts — clutch cancel switch, cruise control switch, clutch spring, spring boots, new bushing for clutch pedal
AA tip swap electrical adaptor (highly recommended)
Other electric supplies you WILL end up using
Reverse switch broken on tranny, needed new one
Driveshaft
Rear diff
Front axles
Shifter trim
New hardware for axles, driveshaft, new seals for axles etc
Clutch/Flywheel and TO bearing
Transmission spacer
Manual steering wheel, which then needed new clock spring
Manual harness was swapped in when we had problems getting the clutch cancel switch to work
Shifter linkage and shifter surround
Shift boot and knob
More hardware that’s missing from all the above
I’m probably missing stuff but that was everything we got minus stuff that was specific to the B7 tranny we used.

I paid $1500 for my S4 which was the only thing that made all the above remotely worth it, and now having a better tranny.

Could you do the swap for $2000? I would be willing to bet you money if you did it would be a really shoddy swap job — not that the work you would do would be bad, but it would be missing all the small stuff that differentiates a hack job from a well executed manual swap. Just know way more stuff is going to come up than what you can see and plan for right now. That’s no bad reflection on your skills or ability; just how it goes with these projects — you don’t know what you can’t know.

Good luck and post any questions you have!

Thank you, that is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for.

So as I kinda touched on above, my idea was to find a list and source as much as I can locally/from ebay so I can kinda try and get some quality control for what I'm getting. Any thoughts on that approach?

Also, how long did it take you to get everything figured out?

[csobel]

Thank you, that is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for.

So as I kinda touched on above, my idea was to find a list and source as much as I can locally/from ebay so I can kinda try and get some quality control for what I'm getting. Any thoughts on that approach?

Also, how long did it take you to get everything figured out?

It was about 9 months, which included 2 months of a good shop trying to figure the remainder out that I couldn’t. We did a 0A3 swap along with stage 3/built engine though so the level of complexity was increased a good deal.

The hard part about parts lists though is that I didn’t really know things were missing until I was actually doing the install and wiring. Then things start to pop up like, hey this pedal doesn’t have a spring, or yada yada.

To answer your question, is it worth it?

I think it could be in a couple scenarios. Scenario 1 is you already own a tip S4 and it’s in great condition and you want to go stage 3 and swap rather than getting rid of the car and buying an unknown.
Scenario 2 is you can find an otherwise really nice tip S4 for dirt cheap (well under 2k) with a broken tranny or engine and it’s all coming out anyway.
I don’t really see it being worth it in any other scenario. The manual swap will really only increase the value of the car if it’s well done and actually seems like it’s a manual car rather than a butchered cow. My 2c

You’re welcome to start a build thread or post more here if you start collecting parts!

[lebrondog6]

Wait for a 6mt car. The hassle and money will even istelf out. Unless this auto car is sub 80k. Your just doing extra work. A nice b5 s4 6mt sedan fetches 4-6k stock with anywhere from 120k-165k miles. Look for something stock and not stage 2. Preferably with maintenance receipts. Its hard but can be done. My 2 cents is that it doesn't make sense to do all the work if your not saving any money.

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[CJ_]

I bought a clean Auto Avant with low miles and swapped it. It took me a weekend to swap it and have it driving again. About another day or two of working out any kinks/wiring/coding. Did k04s while I had the engine out. I did have a complete donor car though. Build is in my sig

[lebrondog6]

I bought a clean Auto Avant with low miles and swapped it. It took me a weekend to swap it and have it driving again. About another day or two of working out any kinks/wiring/coding. Did k04s while I had the engine out. I did have a complete donor car though. Build is in my sig

Assuming you've also had lots of b5s lol.

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[R490]

Wait for a 6mt car. The hassle and money will even istelf out. Unless this auto car is sub 80k. Your just doing extra work. A nice b5 s4 6mt sedan fetches 4-6k stock with anywhere from 120k-165k miles. Look for something stock and not stage 2. Preferably with maintenance receipts. Its hard but can be done. My 2 cents is that it doesn't make sense to do all the work if your not saving any money.

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That's for sure an option. My only issue is that stock ones (for cheap) are incredibly rare where I live. I had a C5 A6 2.7t with a 6 speed for a while because that was the closest thing I could find to a clean B5 S4. (It blew up and I wasn't in love with it enough to fix it.)

[2380S4]

http://audis4parts.com/audi-s4-tip-t...sion-swap-kit/

All parts in a kit with a rebuilt transmission and other options...

[DolphinV8]

Manual steering wheel, which then needed new clock spring

Manual sw is optional and the tip clockspring works as well.

A couple grand, give or take. Obviously, I'm more interested because I like these cars a lot rather than the value of the finished project.

I'm fine with sourcing my own parts, I found some DIY guides and it sounds like something I'm capable of doing with what I have.

$2g might be possible but it's not going to be enough to make it reliable. I would at least rebuild the axles and transmission and a new flywheel and clutch are a much as well.
With that being said, I don't think it's worth it since the car you are looking at seems to be in bad shape already?

[JustManson]

Just buy a manual. There are plenty out there... why bother swapping it if you can just buy a manual and be done.

Not worth it IMO.


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[raswin]

If you don’t mind I will chime in... I originally purchased a 2001 A4 Avant 5spd with a bad engine so I decided to make it an S4 wagon. Through out those months I was stock piling parts. I purchased an engine from audis4parts.com, I was going to keep the 5spd until I could find a 6spd tranny. I bought a set of s4 skirts, I even bought s4 lower door logo. Then a year later I found a beautiful rolling frame. It was a 2002 Avant, just what I wanted. By that time I had already bought a 6spd transmission locally. So far I spent $2300+ on the engine which included shipping, this engine was a engine swap kit, which included all the parts to swap 2.7 in a vehicle with a 2.8. $600.00 for the tranny locally, $250 for a rear diff, upgraded engine and transmission mounts another $250. I was able to ship the rolling frame when I sold the black Avant. So the parts collection continued after I received the rolling frame. I decided, with all the money spent so far on those listed parts and others I have not. Why waste all this time putting in used turbos and other used parts, to me, that made no damn sense. So instead of buying a used drive shaft in which I know I would have needed to buy a new support bearing anyway, I decided to get a one piece. I also bought me some new turbos, in order for it fit I had to buy new downpipes and had originally bought new exhaust for the black Avant. Do the math with that so far, I have yet touch on any maintenance yet. Regardless if I was going with Ko3 or bigger, you have to make sure you cover all maintenance. These cars are almost 20 years old, some of these parts have been on the car since it left the show room. It would be highly counter productive to throw all these used parts back on an almost “20 year old car”. I’m still not done buying parts, and I’m closing in on the $10,000 mark with all the parts I’ve bought. Most are all new OEM or upgraded parts. I remember when I had the insane idea that I would turn that A4 Avant in an s4. I was told to save my money and buy an S4 Avant. I live In Florida, so it was very difficult to find an B5 S4 Avant. So I said screw what everybody said and I’ll make it happen. After a year of buying parts, I tallied what I spent, I could have bought a well maintained S4 Avant. So to end my ranting, it is impossible to go budget with theses cars, especially if you are doing a swap.


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[TheCraigC]

OK, I'll give you my $0.02. I have an 02 Avant that was an auto. I bought a manual swap kit from AudiS4Parts with a JHM kit. 2200 shipped? Then I had to spend $90 in fluids for the rear diff and tranny. $850 for a southbend stg 3 endurance clutch. $250 for a used LWFW with new friction disc. Had a bitch of a time wiring the two clutch switches until it clicked - a lot of hard to understand guides or missing pictures. I still haven't figured out how to wire reverse. You could buy a reverse wiring harness adapter from advance automation for like $75 afaik.
I am into the manual swap at least $3400. I am sure I am missing some bits and pieces, but AudiS4Parts makes a well built kit. I do not believe I needed to get any additional parts to make it work.
I bought the Avant for $5500
I spent god knows how much on k04s and everything else to run on E85...

Was it worth it? I feel like it. I enjoyed the experience. I feel like I saved a couple bucks since manual avants aren't cheap. On a sedan it is hard to say it is worth it.

[csobel]

OK, I'll give you my $0.02. I have an 02 Avant that was an auto. I bought a manual swap kit from AudiS4Parts with a JHM kit. 2200 shipped? Then I had to spend $90 in fluids for the rear diff and tranny. $850 for a southbend stg 3 endurance clutch. $250 for a used LWFW with new friction disc. Had a bitch of a time wiring the two clutch switches until it clicked - a lot of hard to understand guides or missing pictures. I still haven't figured out how to wire reverse. You could buy a reverse wiring harness adapter from advance automation for like $75 afaik.
I am into the manual swap at least $3400. I am sure I am missing some bits and pieces, but AudiS4Parts makes a well built kit. I do not believe I needed to get any additional parts to make it work.
I bought the Avant for $5500
I spent god knows how much on k04s and everything else to run on E85...

Was it worth it? I feel like it. I enjoyed the experience. I feel like I saved a couple bucks since manual avants aren't cheap. On a sedan it is hard to say it is worth it.

Dude those clutch switches gave us hell during the swap haha! Glad to hear I’m not the only one.

[raswin]

It is worth It if it’s done the right way. Not when you have a budget like what was proposed by OP.


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[2380S4]

It is worth It if it’s done the right way. Not when you have a budget like what was proposed by OP.


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I am going to agree with this statement and I will be finding out in the near future.. Speaking as someone who has owned both 6SPD and now a TIP, the manual is worth it. To some early points of finding an Avant in manual in the specs is getting more and more challenging, to the point they may not exist any longer. Given the age of the platform. I looked for a while and finally found a TIP Avant close to what I wanted, the interior alone made me buy it...

I’ve done spreadsheets comparing Audis4parts kits to finding everything separately.. It’s about the same for the most part.. I plan on using Audis4parts and possibly having them do the swap, as I can’t find anyone close to me to do it yet... They are pretty well known for doing them not only in the B5S4 but also in a few A/S6 Avants... I have a budget for the swap and will try to stick to it, but I have been in the B5 S4 world long enough to plan for additional costs or “while you are in there” increases...

After not having a B5 for 3 years and getting back into one.... It’s still a fantastic, fun car even with a TIP... Once I get a few more needed items addressed then it’s onto the swap...

[R490]

Thank you everybody for the suggestions!