Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Jun 29, 2020 13:18:21 GMT |
Hi guys, I haven't really been active here in a while, but with my newest purchase I figured it was about time I started another thread. With the current COVID situation I've been working from home since late February. Work has also generally slowed a bit, which means I have even more time than usual to look at cars for sale. Occasionally, I even went and looked at the cars in person, instead of just on the internet. But most cars I looked at (all over the place really, Ford Probe, Mercedes 190E, BMW E36, Toyota Corollas and Celicas) were either too bad or we couldn't agree upon a price. Cue last Saturday. I was hunting through car ads again and stumbled upon this Audi. Advertised as 'straight body, engine runs, but battery does not charge' with some pretty meh pictures. They wanted 600€ for it. I sent them a message and on Sunday, I ended up having a look at the car in person. And what do you know, the body actually is in very good shape. No spots of rust, not even a single dent to be found. The paint needs a major correction, as is to be expected. The rear bumper needs to be replaced as it got melted off when a car behind the Audi caught fire a few years ago. Interior is pretty good too, with the only major issue being a big paint stain on the rear bench and door panel. But I should be able to clean that up. The engine runs, but not very well. It needs quite a bit of attention. Now for some pics and some details:   It's a 1987 Audi 80 1.9E with 135.000kms on the clock. The 1.9 petrol motor was only made until 1988 when it got replaced with the 2.0E. It's apparently not all that common, so I expect there might be some issues with specific parts, but nothing too bothersome, I hope. The car is a pretty early model and very bare specc'd. Basically the only option I've seen so far is the fog lights, apart from that it's pretty bare. It doesn't even have a passenger mirror! I bought this together with my dad as a nice project for us to fix up, have a bit of fun with it when it's done and then sell it on and use the money to buy the next old car. It'll be a relatively slow fix up, as we won't be working on it at full throttle, just whenever we're in the mood to tinker. We're picking it up tomorrow and I'll post up some more pics once I've got it sitting in my garage! |
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Last Edit: Jun 29, 2020 13:19:26 GMT by Dr.AK
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Jun 30, 2020 19:14:19 GMT |
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shin2chin
Part of things
Making plop cars slightly better
Posts: 816 
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Jun 30, 2020 20:44:20 GMT |
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I love this era of Audis and this one is particularly base spec. Top stuff, interior looks amazing. What's happened with that rear bumper though?
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Last Edit: Jun 30, 2020 20:45:07 GMT by shin2chin
1977 PORSCHE 2.0na 924
1974 VW Beetle 1600
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Jun 30, 2020 21:07:16 GMT |
A parked car behind the Audi caught fire a few years ago and it melted. There were some sharp edges on the melted portion, so the previous owner simply cut it out  |
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Took care of the worst visual offender today  Snagged myself a used rear bumper, for just 35€.    Couldn't leave it at that and needed to see how it'd look with some love and so went ahead and used some Beyond Black to restore it a bit. Not perfect and I'll likely re-do it anyways later, but it's very motivating to see it looking loads better already.   Have taken a proper look at the paint as well. Should be able to polish up everything but the boot lid as the clear coat's melted there. So that needs new paint or a replacement lid in matching color... but I do kinda want to paint it, I think. We'll see. Engine actually runs better than I thought after a closer inspection. It just sounds like plop. Most of that comes from the generator which has a bad bearing and is louder than the engine. Apart from that the engine ticks a bit, which likely stems from the hydraulic lifters (is that what they're called? My technical English is not the best...), so it shouldn't be that much effort to get it purring like a kitten. |
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Time for a little update! I started taking it apart. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but the engine ran but didn't sound healthy. Sounded like the hydraulic lifters to me.     To get the lower timing belt cover off, the crankshaft pulley has to come off. Figures that the previous owner already rounded off one of the screws...  Got myself these nifty spiral nuts for removing rounded off bolts. They work a charm and I can't recommend them enough.  You just put the nut on and start turning it with a bit of pressure and it eats into the screw head until it starts to turn. Neat.   Once I had the timing belt off, I took out the camshaft and got a look at the lifters. I've learned that they are okay when you can't really compress them. Three of these can be basically compressed by just looking at them, so they are the likely suspects for my noises.     I took the alternator apart as well, but it's quite worn and a new one does not cost a fortune, so it's not worth it to refurb it. Going to be ordering a new timing belt, aux belt and new lifters soon. Then throw everything back together and see how it runs. I expect it'll run a lot smoother than it does now... |
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PhilA
Posted a lot
Byte Wizard
Posts: 3,979
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Jul 30, 2020 11:51:23 GMT |
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Brings back memories, we had a 1988 1.8S automatic in the same color, only things visually different being the front fog lights and ours had side repeaters in the front wings.
I can just smell that engine though, every VAG lump gets the same acrid vanished oil stink and the top ends always end up glazed brown.
Hopefully that one runs better than ours did, though it was sold with 275,000 miles on and the carburetor was a bit worn. Fuel injection should help that out.
Phil
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Jul 31, 2020 16:49:56 GMT |
Excellent choice, the Audis of this era are the best: Zinc body, sturdy build quality and minimal amount of easy-to-break equipment. The 1.9E engine is a rare engine indeed, did it come with a KAT? Many countries got the 1.8S and 1.8E only back then. Here's mine, a late 1986 base spec 1.8S carb, retrofitted a power steering, remote locking and coupe alloys. |
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Citroën DS 21 '66, Renault 16 TS '73, Scimitar GTE '74, Audi 200 turbo '84, Merc 190E '88, Peugeot 205 GTI '88, BMW 735iL '89, Fiat Tipo '89, Sylva Jester '01
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Almost a year with no update After my last post, I gave the timing belt cover and valve cover a lick of fresh paint as I was waiting for parts. For the timing belt cover I got to use my friend's sand blasting cabinet.           Then all my parts came in. - new hydraulic lifters - new generator - timing belt and rollers - aux belt      After that I got a new waterpump as the old one had a bearing failure and sounded like a squealing pig.       I discovered a faulty temperatur sensor and got to swapping it out. Due to an error while ordering at first I received the wrong one (the lower one, but I needed the one above), so I just replaced both.  I also discovered some faults in the vacuum system, a few broken hoses and connectors. Most problematic was this, which is the active coal filter (not sure if it's called that in english?). It seems Audi used a specific one for this engine and only one other, so it took a bit of searching but I managed to find one with the connector still attached. However, no pics of this as of yet, only of the broken stuff.   I have since cobbled together a fix using some new connectors - it's not pretty but it works. I'll take some pics once I'm back in the garage. After that it sat for a while as I wanted to get the Porsche back on the road before continuing with the Audi. Most recently, two weeks ago I finally got a start on checking the suspension and brakes now that the engine runs.     Basically, brakes are complete garbage, all four shocks are garbage, one of the drive shaft boots is torn and there's grease everywhere, but at least the wheel bearings seem good and the other suspension bushings don't look too bad either. I've had a check and it seems parts are readily available and plenty cheap, so it shouldn't be too big of a task. |
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artem
Part of things
Posts: 18
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Great work you've done! Good to see someone still keep those cars and treat them well. I love the simplicity of those early B3 cars with small ammount of factory options, they have kinda special charm.
As for brakes, I had ATE front brake calipers, same as yours, and it was super hard to find parts to maintain them, so I ended up swapping them to Lucas/Girling calipers (also brackets), for which you can buy spare parts easily
Good luck! Will watch for updates
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Great work you've done! Good to see someone still keep those cars and treat them well. I love the simplicity of those early B3 cars with small ammount of factory options, they have kinda special charm. As for brakes, I had ATE front brake calipers, same as yours, and it was super hard to find parts to maintain them, so I ended up swapping them to Lucas/Girling calipers (also brackets), for which you can buy spare parts easily Good luck! Will watch for updates Yeah, it's kind of refreshing. A honest, bare necessities car. Interesting about the brakes - I've only just ordered discs and pads along with shocks, but have been putting off ordering stuff for the calipers until I am in the shop sometime this week to see if they need replacing or can be overhauled. Let's see what I can find! Thanks for the heads up! |
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Aug 14, 2021 22:21:06 GMT |
 Finally got around to do some more stuff on the Audi. My goal for today was to change the CV boots, front shocks and maybe do the brakes but... things weren't as simple as expected. First I took the struts out.  The drive shafts did not want to come apart from the struts, so I had to take out the whole assembly and then got them out with some convincing.   Then it got complicated. The joints on the drive shafts need to come off to swap the boots. The repair handbook states "give the end joint a whack with the hammer to drive it off the shaft". Yeaaaaaaaaaah. No such luck. In the end I even hit it with a 10-kilograms sledgehammer and it simply would not come apart. Apparently there's a lock ring inside the joint that you need to drive the joint over so it comes off. As you can't reach it, hitting the joint is the only way. But if this locking ring decides to tilt and jam the whole assembly there's no way you're getting it off with a hammer. I'll have a see to how I'm going to split the joint from the shaft, but it should be doable. I'll ordner new joints anyways, so I'll likely just destroy them to get them off. Apart from that I commenced on splitting the struts. This went off without a hitch and I got the old shocks out easy peasy.   But as all the stuff is not looking pretty anymore, I decided to give it some love before-reassembly. I'll clean up and de-rust the struts, the drive shafts the brake shields and the subframe and give them a lick of paint before re-assembly. I also discovered that I need some more things: the wheel bearings are shot, the strut bearings are done for, I had to cut off the tie rods... so I'll need to order some more parts. As the car is just being handled as a side-project it might be some time until I get around to it. I do hope to get it back on it's wheels this year, but we'll see. |
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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 Got those silly joints off! In the end I decided that since one of them was making noise anyways, I'd just go ahead and destroy them. So we went to town on them with the sledge hammer and got them off. This here's the silly ring that got stuck and kept them so firmly in place:  Quickly installed new CV boots on the inner joints (luckily those are still good). Next up for the drive shafts: Ordering some new outer joints and give them a lick of paint where needed.  |
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Where did you get your lifters from? I need to get some for our coupe GT at some point in the future.
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Aug 18, 2021 10:02:14 GMT |
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I just looked up the parts number (audi.7zap.com) and sourced them from ebay, actually. I believe they were made by INA.
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imanon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7
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Aug 18, 2021 19:02:22 GMT |
Then it got complicated. The joints on the drive shafts need to come off to swap the boots. The repair handbook states "give the end joint a whack with the hammer to drive it off the shaft". Yeaaaaaaaaaah. No such luck. In the end I even hit it with a 10-kilograms sledgehammer and it simply would not come apart. Apparently there's a lock ring inside the joint that you need to drive the joint over so it comes off. As you can't reach it, hitting the joint is the only way. But if this locking ring decides to tilt and jam the whole assembly there's no way you're getting it off with a hammer. I'll have a see to how I'm going to split the joint from the shaft, but it should be doable. I'll ordner new joints anyways, so I'll likely just destroy them to get them off. When I replaced a boot on my B3q, after removing the hub bolt and cv joint from the hub, I put the hub bolt back in all the way until it touched against the driveshaft end then tightened a bit more until the pressure overcame the locking ring and pushed the driveshaft out. |
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Last Edit: Aug 18, 2021 19:04:26 GMT by imanon
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Aug 18, 2021 19:40:39 GMT |
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Your B3 was likely a 88 or later model, I'm guessing? The earlier ones had it slightly different, with no hub bolt. The drive shaft is just pressed into the hub and has a thread on the end where a nut sits. Only the later models had it with the bolt. But on these ones it would have likely worked as you described, no doubt!
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Aug 24, 2021 19:43:05 GMT |
Got in some wrenching today after work. Got around to moving the jack stands as they were blocking access to the subframe and then proceeded to take out the subframe together with the control arms and sway bar.  Expected the engine mounts to stay on the engine as I did not remove the screw holding them from the engine - then of course one fell on my head as it simply came apart. Good thing new ones are already on the way.  Pretty oily underneath, I suspect the oilpan gasket is at fault. Luckily it's pretty accessible now.   Going to de-rust the subframe and give it a lick of paint. New bushings, obviously. Need to source a shop press before, though. |
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Dr.AK
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 356
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Aug 31, 2021 11:10:29 GMT |
Some weird stuff showed up...  Oh, ahhhh, it's a shop press!  Got the bushings out of the subframe  and also pressed out the wheel bearings.  Then I got around to taking off the oil pan, as it was leaking pretty badly.   Next up, I gave the fly wheel cover a lick of paint.  Then I set about cleaning everything up a bit, as it was getting disgusting wrenching on the oily and greasy mess calling itself the engine (and the transmission as well).     That's where I'm at now. Currently waiting on some paint supplies to come in so I can derust and repaint the subframe and some suspension parts. After that, new bushings and bearings go in and I can re-assemble the front end. Although I'm thinking about taking off the exhaust headers while I have the subframe off now, as it allows pretty good access to all of the bolts, and there's some exhaust leak coming from there. |
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Last Edit: Aug 31, 2021 11:11:23 GMT by Dr.AK
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