1989 Audi 80 B3

Although the car was painted, the wheels remained untouched. Rusty factory steel rims with old winter tyres were making me depressed every time I looked at them.

Audi 80 B3 had a great variety of factory rims, 14s and 15s for the Sport Edition. I chose 14 inch factory Ronal Aero-Design - simple and stylish. I had to buy 7 of them, before I got the complete set of 5 rims and 5 central caps. These caps turned out to be quite rare, so i had to buy 2 extra rims because of them.

This is how the rims was looking when I bought them. Rest 5 of them were looking pretty much the same:




Next, I picked 5 more or less circular rims out of 7 and took them to straightening and then to sandblasting + powdercoating:



The result turned out pretty good, except for 2 things: first - clear coat layer came out pretty thick, so the Audi badges on central caps "drowned" in clear coat, and second one - the color tone of silver powdercoat paint is not matching the original color of the rims, but I think it's just me being overly picky.

The next thing i've bought was the set of Pirelli Cinturato P1 tyres, with factory dimensions of 175/70R14. I сhose Pirelli tyres because the vintage scale model kit of Audi 80 by Fujimi have the same ones . 1/1 scale next to a 1/24 scale:



The spare wheel was also fitted and secured in the trunk with special factory plastic bolt: VAG 853809377



I also bought a set of fresh wheel bolts: VAG WHT001812 12pc



And just in case... a set of anti-theft bolts: VAG 4F0071455



Much better now!

Those wheels do wonders for it. I realy like em. I've been thinking about getting those for mine, actually. But still a lot of stuff to do before that

Thank you! Actually, there are more and more people here in Russia that are restoring and keep these cars in great condition, so I can say some guys have succeeded more than me

Factory hubcaps are great too! They give a car a more classic look. I got me a set by the way

Thank you!

After cleaning, I inspected the engine bay and found some rusty metal parts. I took off the fan frame and some brackets and took them to powder coating shop.
This is the small part of painted parts: front engine mount, steering rack brackets, brake lines bracket and suspension spring plate


Cleaned the fan and the rest of the plastic parts as much as I could, and assembled them all together:


I bought this stickers for engine bay while ago, so it's finally time to use them  I ordered some of them by mistake, for example I don't have catalytic converter, so I don't need an orange sticker on valve cover. Also I have a different fan motor, so I won't put this sticker on mine. These are not factory made but quality is really good.


Fan frame is on it's place:


Put stickers on restored parts. Not all of them, I will apply them as I'll restore other parts. I also bought new battery cover VAG 893915437. Looks neat with cover now.


Looks much better now but there are always things to improve 

Thank you! Yeah, it's fun to discover and collect these factory options, I think there is no two similar Audi 80, every one has it's special touch

You are doing some brilliant work here. Where did you get those new stickers if I may ask? I'd love some of these for mine sometime down the road.

Bought this wiper mechanism for only 6$, mine was okay but all covered in 30y.o. grease and dirt. So I decided to refresh the mechanism I've bought and swap it.


I disassembled and inspected the mechanism, turned out it was in nearly perfect condition, no sign of rust and wear.


So the plan was to clean aluminium parts and to refresh paint on mechanism and wiper motor. I painted mechanism frame with epoxy primer and then with 2k black acryllic paint. As for motor shell, I also applied the epoxy primer and painted it with black enamel paint with 3 layers of 2k clearcoat. Last layer of clearcoat was applied dry to create semi-matt surface.
After all parts dried, I assembled the mechanism back together using Mobil XHP 222 grease, and also cleaned all electric connections with Liqui Moly 7510 Kontaktreiniger cleaner.
Final result:



I also didn't forget about motor sticker


New and old wiper mechanism. It turned out they are slightly differs: restored one was produced by Bosch and the old one was produced by SWF. SWF wiper motor has rivets on it's cover, so you can't really maintain it without drilling them out.


Installed:


It's important to adjust the mechanism before turn the wipers on, otherwise blades will go downwards under the bonnet
I've adjusted it this way: untightened the nut on wiper motor shaft and manually rotated the mechanism (without the motor shaft) intil blade shafts reached its bottom dead centre when shafts stops to rotate. Ones this was done, I tightened the nut on wiper motor shaft and thats it.

Hello! I was paying small attention to suspension and brakes, so they started to make strange noises. All rubber bushings were still original factory parts so there were signs of dry cracked rubber and deformation, as well as wheel bearings were making noises and shock absorber were no longer absorbing the shocks

There were a lot of work to be done with suspension, so I came up with the idea to buy spare set of suspension and restore it separately from the car. In that way, the car won't hang somewhere in the workshop without the ability of being moved and I can spend as much time as I want to rebuild all parts properly.

Furthermore, using this chance, I can install the latest factory modification of suspension for the B3 chassis - rear axle with disc brakes, front struts with the larger and more durable wheel bearings, and latest version of anti-roll bar that attaches to the struts.

So this is what I've managed to find:

1) Rear axle assembly — 8G0500047. With disc brakes and calipers + track bar 895505173A




2) Front struts assembly from 1991 chassis — left strut 893412033E + right strut 893412034E. Also with steering knuckles — 893407241R left knuckle + 893407242R right knuckle.
This is the latest version of front stuts — steering knuckle has bigger (75mm) wheel bearing and is bolted to strut, not welded like in earlier modifications. Struts also have bracket for anti-roll bar link.



3) Subframe – 893199313M. There are several versions of subframes, depending on quattro or non-quattro, 4-cyl or 5-cyl engine, gearbox type. Mine is the simplest without any additional brackets.

4) Anti-roll bar from 1991 chassis — 893411309E. It's 23mm thick and bolted onto the struts using links. Earlier versions were bolted to suspension arms.

I dissasembled all parts and extracted all rubber bushings and bearings to sandblast and powdercoat them.



After sandblasting:



After powdercoating in factory-look black satin paint. Don't worry, purple and gold calipers are not mine




Subframe:



Some smaller parts are no longer available for order, so they were aqua-blasted and zinc-coated.
Before:



After:




See you next time!

Thanks! I haven't noticed any difference in incoming noise with that boot lid liner installed (it's still noisy ), so I think I've bought it just because it's rare part.

My car came with rear drum brakes originally, but I thought that it's a good chance for upgrade and found a spare axel with disc brakes. Looking ahead, I can say that it was worth it, brakes became more responsive and predictable. The only thing is, I haven't installed ABS system yet, so this might be a bit tricky at winter, but as far as I know, not all B3s were equipped with ABS when rear disc brakes installed.