Ur an idiot for buying this: 1995 Audi Ur-S6 project

[Djinn]

Great work keep it up

[Darkyoshi154]

Yeah, that's the Gears & Beers Meet. It's at Redbrick Brewing after C&O, and then they occasionally have a meet at Dry County Brewing in Kennesaw. You should join DurtyDubs FB to see better details.
I also crept your insta and realized that I have seen your car before... feel like a fool for looking at this thread and somehow missing your sig and profile pic.

Sending nice thoughts towards you and your german basket case!

[kevvy_dawg]

Keep the updates coming.. I'd love to see this stanced..

P.S: I hope you burnt that old handbrake boot.

[TheTynosaur]

I'm not an audi fan but I love these old ones. There's a guy here that used to own a big turbo one of these cars and I don't think I've ever heard a better sounding car

[GrantLDN]

Love this. N75 always cause a whole world of problems, get to Audi and buy a genuine one, don't mess around with aftermarket.

Looking forward to see what you can pull off with this.

[rightfullrudder]

Well guys, here's an update of the past few weeks!

Drove the car to Treffen South, a cool VW show at Atlanta Motor Speedway. I was.... overshadowed by something else in attendance.

Here's me:



Here's the other guy. GT3071R, lots of rare parts, spotless, same color S6.



Later that day, went by my buddy's house and there was some alcohol involved and we decided to improve the car. Rustoleum gloss lacquer for front bumper and gloss plastidip type stuff for roof, temporary of course but the roof and bumper were fugly.

In progress





Finished, not perfect but the dull bumper sucked. Now just need to find the grill piece.






Sort of unrelated, I work for NAPA in the distribution center in Atlanta and I was sent to Houston to help out after Hurricane Harvey. Everything was super backed up for obvious reasons and while in the hotel bored out of my mind I bought probably the last set of unused S6 floor mats in existence, lololol. Lipstick on a pig but hey, I did need mats...





Still trying to track down this damn boost issue. Don't really have a lot of pics because I never remember to take them but I replaced the throttle body, throttle position sensor, sprayed brake cleaner on hoses while idling to check for leaks, etc etc etc. Pulled whats known as the Michelin Man hose to the intercooler because it was covered in gunk and they're known to leak. After 30 mins in the sink I wasted a lot of time because it was totally fine. Ordered the right N75 valve and put that on, still not fixed.




Found a set of sorta scarce A4 DTM edition Ronals that I picked up super cheap with tires, put them on and I think I actually like these better. 18x8 vs 17x7.5. One of the OZs is bent I later found out, so that's kind of a bummer. Also found out I'm not allowed to work on my car in my apartment complex, which is a double bummer. Meh. I'll figure something out!

[hinrichs]

"new" wheels look good, sucks you still haven't found the boost issue.

[storey618]

Still trying to track down this damn boost issue. Don't really have a lot of pics because I never remember to take them but I replaced the throttle body, throttle position sensor, sprayed brake cleaner on hoses while idling to check for leaks, etc etc etc. Pulled whats known as the Michelin Man hose to the intercooler because it was covered in gunk and they're known to leak. After 30 mins in the sink I wasted a lot of time because it was totally fine. Ordered the right N75 valve and put that on, still not fixed.

could be diverter valve line from intake (they were shit for many years) or just a bad diverter. its real easy to make a boost leak tester. i made mine from a pvc end cap, drilled a hole, then siliconed a metal valve stem into it. to check pressure i would just hook my boost gauge up to one of the inlet pipe ports

[rightfullrudder]

"new" wheels look good, sucks you still haven't found the boost issue.

Thanks man, I'll get there eventually. We are pretty confident it's something relatively simple but it's not easy to find out what that simple thing is!

could be diverter valve line from intake (they were shit for many years) or just a bad diverter. its real easy to make a boost leak tester. i made mine from a pvc end cap, drilled a hole, then siliconed a metal valve stem into it. to check pressure i would just hook my boost gauge up to one of the inlet pipe ports

Diverter has actually been replaced but one item on my list is to actually pull all hoses and check. Because key cycling fixes it temporarily and it's intermittent Im leaning toward it not being a physical leak, but still plan on pressure testing it when I can go over to my buddy's shop! Thanks man.

[rightfullrudder]

Here's an update in which a lot gets done but very few of the original problems actually get fixed. But still a lot gets done. And low.

Shortly after the last update I went to my friend's shop to see if we could figure out what was going on with the car before I drove it to Gatlinburg for Slammedenuff. We pressure tested for boost leaks to figure out the boost issue and found air leaking from the intercooler Michelin man hose. Tightened the shit out of it, drove the car, pulled great until BAM it hit overboost fuel cut. Felt like someone grabbing you by the neck and pulling you backwards lol. We threw another ECU in it to see if that helped but it didn't.

Here's that pesky overboost code...



Rear emblem sticker replaced and rear bumper (spray) painted to get rid of the white patches and stickers.



Drove the car about 4 hours to Gatlinburg and back, stopping in Asheville on the way back to buy a Ben Swann stage 2 ECU for the car. Handled it like a champ, doing its 5psi thing less often but now doing the stupid overboost fuel cut we created by trying to stop it not boosting enough lolol. The S6 was a pretty funny addition to the Violent Clique house, but I figured I may as well take the fun car to the mountains and just use it as a beer run/mountain taxi vehicle.

Somewhere in the Smokies...



Parking was definitely tight at the cabin.



The following week I was on the way home from work and noticed smoke coming from the engine. I figured I popped a coolant hose or something, but realized it smelled more like hydraulic fluid. Sure enough, there was an explosion of power steering fluid under the hood. One weird thing about these cars is Audi figured there was no point having a vacuum brake booster when the car is in boost the majority of the time. The brakes and steering are both hydraulically assisted using a common power steering fluid reservoir.

The carnage:



Couldn't see where the fluid was coming from so cleaned everything off and started and revved it. Oh that's it. The X-plug in the power steering pump. Fortunately it's a $12 part with O-ring. It happened again a few days ago because the new O-ring broke too so I keep like 5 of them that are the right size in my car now!



Also, this 034Motorsport 1.9bar wastegate spring came in the mail. There was only one left. For those that don't run giant weird external wastegates, this spring sets the limit of mechanical boost before the wastegate opens. It's about 13-14psi where stock was 5-6psi. The pro is that boost builds much quicker and you gain a few psi on the top end, the con is that if something fails you can still boost 14psi lol. I have to admit half the reason I bought this is so it's less annoying to drive while I figure out the boost issue.



Turns out with this tune I bought (intended for use with a 1.9bar wastegate spring) overboosts to like 27-28psi on my car which is insane and bordering on not safe. It's not the tune's fault. The car feels like a fucking rocket ship mostly because of the torque -- I don't use full throttle right now just to be safe but I don't really miss it. If everything is working right (22psi) I estimate somewhere around 300hp and 350 torque which isn't bad out of this little turbo. I have to figure the boost issue out still but it is a lot more fun while I figure it out!

Okay, now for the big part. Yesterday I drove the car back out to Solo Motorsports to swap subframes and lower the car. My buddy has a relatively rust free front and rear subframe sitting around and I offered to buy it plus some weird German lowering springs. The subframes include pretty decent bushings, and the rear one had the struts, springs, diff, control arms, axles, pretty much everything still attached so we decided to just swap all of it except for rear brakes. As a bonus, it included non seized E-brake cables!

Friend who was helping has a really sweet 1992 V8. I love this thing. Such a mafia mobile. Kinda fitting because he's a chain smoking Romanian.



Front subframe out:



Rear subframe out. Look at how trashed every single bushing is. Also fucked axles.



New rust free subframe going in!



Look at all this fucking rust. This was like a 2 x 1 foot pile of rust.



Here's the 50/50 when we realized how low this was going to go. The springs were last used in like 2011 and he forgot how low they were lmao.



We started working at 9am and got done around 9pm last night. There was a long delay where the front subframe mounts and strut mounts were completely broken so we had to drive out to Dunwoody and jack his parts Avant up onto wooden stumps to pull his off. The only other major hitch was Dremeling through a brake line trying to cut a bolt out lol. The good news is I found the unobtanium lower bumper grilles and stole them from his Avant to put on so the front end of the car finally looks kinda normal -- coupled with the front emblem I picked up.



Finally here are some finished daylight pics! Goes without saying that a lot of work is still needed but I absolutely fucking love this car and I love driving it and figuring out what's wrong with it (which is a lot). I won't lie, I did less than half the work (brakes, struts, buying beer, hitting rusted shit with hammers) but learned a whole lot. We probably would've been done a lot faster if he had just done it himself but I wanted to do as much as possible. Needs firmer struts badly, needs axles badly, and needs an alignment so bad it's hilarious. Oh, and the boost issue never got fixed. I feel a lot better about the integrity of the car in general though and it looks pretty cool now IMO! Thanks for reading guys.

[Fruttolo]

I am not an audi fan an particularly not a "big audi" fan, but I love how you progress on this project, so much passion for an impulsive bought troublemaker LOL
Definitely following, it's so much better looking on 18s and lowered springs

[Ceedark]

Honestly, this is awesome. This is the first build thread I've read for one of these and it looks like you're at least enjoying fixing the various issues.

I love a detailed thread that shows the process of fixing things up rather than just "update, got new wheels" etc.

[hinrichs]

Wow, looks 100x times better lowered down now. Crazy how much rust was under that thing on the old subframes. Glad to see your chipping away at it and enjoying it at the same time.

[Mehowski]

This is bloody awesome.

[storey618]

looking good bro! you have alot more audi ambition than i do lol i just started working on mine today after 2 months of sitting.