My Audi project

[Jehannum]

So, pretty much immediately after meeting @CapriMikeC last April at Radwood and commiserating over that hooptie turbocharged life, number three rod exited the chat from my 311,000 mile Audi UrS6. It had been a while coming. In May of 2020, the head gasket let go. I got it back together with a new gasket, but I'm pretty sure that the hydrolock event did some damage, as the engine vacuum was never really adequate after that. But, I pulled my best "we'll just ignore that for now, I've got other things on my mind" and kept on keeping on, until 2023.

The car is fairly rare. Despite their spiritual successor (the minivan) doing gangbusters sales in the late '80s and early '90s, the station wagon market pretty much languished after the glory days of the Vista Cruisers and they developed a bit of a stigma. To put it in classic Mopar parlance, mine is one of about 30-ish in pearl white that came to the US market in 1995 (or one of 15 with black leather interior). According to various sources, there were as few as 200 or as many as 500 Audi S6 wagons that came over in 1995.

It also has a bit of a provenance in the community, and was owned by a fairly high profile guy who did some interesting things to it. He purchased all the Porsche engine bits that make an RS2 (a smaller body Audi wagon with a very similar 5 cylinder engine that Porsche collaborated on), moved them onto the car, added an "Intended Acceleration" chip tune to the Motronic unit, added a massive Apikol intercooler, added a Southbend clutch, and added Porsche Boxster 986 brakes (which fit over 312mm Audi A8 rotors).

Here it is at Radwood Austin (hat tip to Mike for taking these):





The damage:




Because I'm stubborn and I never buy cars that I don't love, I decided it wasn't going to get parted out, and to get on with rebuilding it.

 

[Jehannum]

So, after nearly dying on the trip home when a tire blew out on the U-haul car trailer (and finding that two of the remaining three were way, way out of round, and hadn't been replaced in 7 years), I decided that it was time to yank the thing into the early 20th century by abandoning the Motronic system for a standalone, installing an ethanol sensor for flex tuning (since I don't foresee ethanol going anywhere anytime soon), replacing the RS2 fuel injectors with some injector dynamics ID1300s to support more power while being ethanol-safe, and adding a modern turbo to the mix.

My goal isn't huge power numbers, but rather a fun street car that isn't over-stressed by a turbo pushing 28PSI of boost way outside its efficiency window (which is what the K24-7200 was doing when I got the car). So, I landed on the G25-660, which is supposedly good to 660HP on 1.4-3.0L engines.

I also, of course, had to figure out how to get rid of that massive hole in BOTH sides of the block, so I called a guy named Jeff Gerner who runs Four Ring Performance Engineering to fund his hobby of running Audi 5 bangers at the salt flats. He agreed to do a motor for me, provided I source a good block. After plumbing the depths of the Audi groups on Facebook, I found one that was running before the car around it was wrecked just a couple hours away from FRPE's shop. I had that one disassembled, hot-tanked, and delivered.

Together, Jeff and I decided to run a stock compression ratio, with his custom rods and pistons, and his borderline OCD assembly habits.

So, the engine at FRP:









Then he put the long block all the way together, put the timing belt on, and shipped it back to me.

 

[Packard V8]

Thanks for sharing. It's an interesting project and demonstrates yet again there are an infinite number of rabbit holes in the universe.

jack vines, who builds and sometimes drives old weird shite

 

[Bigblue&Goldie]

My dad says an inline 5 Audi was one of the best cars he ever owned. He convinced me to buy an Audi for my wife and it was the worst car I ever owned. There's something about Audi's I still love though....

Cool project, I look forward to updates.

 

[Jehannum]

Then I got busy for the entire summer after the head coaching job on my summer league team was thrust upon me, so it went dormant for a while. Then I caught melanoma growing behind my right ear. Then my son got hit by a car on his bike on the way to school.

However, I did eventually get back on it.

While I was recovering from surgery on my neck, I put the ECU harness together (there is a jumper harness that goes from the Motronic connector to the two ECU Master Black plugs that I bought), which involved pinning in a wideband O2 sensor, an oil pressure sender (safety 3rd), and an ethanol content sensor.



Thank goodness the world standardized on Bosch top feed injectors, because this fitment was spot on.


Or, if you post your feet on facebook, you end up with weird stuff like this:

 

[Jehannum]

However, with the joy of finding solutions, comes the pain of finding your own solutions, when you blaze your own trails.

In this case, it was fitting a modern turbo designed in the last 5 years to a manifold with a flange for a KKK turbo designed in or around WWII.

Started with a water-jet cut KKK flange:


Then, I fired up my pre-war Atlas Craftsman to make it fit my 2" pipe that fit inside the V-band flange for the turbine inlet:




I left a bit of tube on it so that I could find the closest fit I could without interfering with the nuts.


And voila, the turbski is attached to the manifold.


Not pictured, where I had a friend use his sparkler glue gun to TIG the stainless stuff all together.

 

[Jehannum]

Fortunately, I have a great (and I mean really great) local hose company that worked with me to braze AN bungs on the hardlines coming off the fuel rail. They also were able to put new inverted flare 16mm fittings on the other side. The ethanol sensor lives right in the middle of the fuel return line, which tells the ECU how much ethanol is mixed in with this particular batch of gas.



They also made me some PTFE hoses for the turbo oil feed and return, while using the original flanges for the block-side, and as much of the original bent tube as possible.

Original bend with a -4AN fitting on one end, and a new PTFE braided hose for the oil feed:


-10AN PTFE braided stainless hose for the oil return, with the original flange brazed to a bung:


I had done the work to make the black rubber braided hoses for coolant feed/return. I also added a hardline that goes behind the timing cover to a coolant manifold under the intake manifold, which substitutes for a terrible, unreachable hose that everybody hates replacing, but is now nickel/copper 3/8" line on an AN fitting for me.

At this point, I was ready to put it in.


No, wait, the other thing. The engine, I was ready to put it in. **** it, I can't make that sound not dirty.

 

[Jehannum]

My dad says an inline 5 Audi was one of the best cars he ever owned. He convinced me to buy an Audi for my wife and it was the worst car I ever owned. There's something about Audi's I still love though....

Cool project, I look forward to updates.

I think the I5 Audis were the last really great ones. My dad had an I5 that he traded for a 2.7T V6 in 2001, and man. He hated that thing.

VW/Audi have only recently gotten their collective poop in a group with regards to the 2.0L engines, what with their rounds of incredibly self-untensioning timing chains, leaky PCVs, and terrible electrics from the early '00s straight on up to about 2014.

 

[Packard V8]

VW/Audi have only recently gotten their collective poop in a group with regards to the 2.0L engines, what with their rounds of incredibly self-untensioning timing chains, leaky PCVs, and terrible electrics from the early '00s straight on up to about 2014.

Must also mention the plastic waterpumps which fail immediately after the warranty expires. They lost a class-action law suit over that one.

Then, they got a bad batch of rear coil springs. That is a part anyone should be able to make last forever. The Audis are the first anyone's ever seen just fracture.

jack vines, who has an Audi. So far, so good.

 

[240sxguy]

Cool build keep it up! I always loved that bodystyle.

 

[slowtwitch73]

I had an 84 4kq that I would kill to have back. The one where the rear window defrost wires said 'quattro'.

 

[Jehannum]

After all that attention to the engine, I had to address an issue I had with the transmission. Some brilliant previous owner had put a stainless bolt into the aluminum case to hold the slave cylinder on and then not put any anti-seize on it. I had to replace the slave some years ago, and had sheared the bolt off in the housing. Normally this isn't a big issue, because external slave cylinders are usually mounted on the bottom where you're able to access them, but on Audi/VW 01E transmissions, they're on top, nearly completely inaccessible. There's even a special VW tool that's basically an 11mm socket that's about 8" long that fits over the bleed ****** and allows you to get at it without mangling your digits.

All of that is to say, I made a complete hash of blind right-angle drilling the sheared bolt out, and I'd gotten by with a semi-floating 13mm shoved in the hole with a couple metal zip ties around the case holding the slave cylinder down. Nothing's more permanent than a temporary fix that works, after all.

So, I extracted the transmission, had a local machine shop do their business, fill in the hole that I butchered, then stuck a new slave cylinder on (because I was replacing the clutch anyway, might as well do the whole job from soup to nuts).

The offending bolt is there in the middle of the picture, underneath the slave cylinder.


I also washed the hell out of the engine bay, because the exploding engine had left a lot of goo, everywhere.


Then I found out that the gaskets cross listed for my Audi don't actually fit. They fit later versions of the 01E, but not this one, for some reason, so I got to make some using my Cricut.



And to make things easier on me later, I added a remote bleeder. Probably use it about once in the rest of my life, but whatever. It's there now. It's attached via a -3AN hose down to a 10mm x 1.0mm inverted flare fitting to -3AN adapter on the slave cylinder.

 

[240sxguy]

Cricut for gaskets? Genius. I'm unsuccessfully struggling to ignore the z.

 

[Jehannum]

Cricut for gaskets? Genius. I'm unsuccessfully struggling to ignore the z.

I love my Zs. The '92 is similarly built up. The '71 runs on good old DCOE webers.

 

[240sxguy]

I love my Zs. The '92 is similarly built up. The '71 runs on good old DCOE webers.

I misread the other post with your Z32 in it and thought that was someone else's garage. Nice.

 

[Jehannum]

Jumping back, once I'd made the breakout harness for the extra stuff I wanted to put on the engine (ethanol content sensor, oil pressure sensor, wideband O2) to make the new ECU work its absolute hardest, I needed to make an engine bay harness and get those things run out to where the sensors lived. I'm not a "let's hack up this perfectly working 30 year old harness and see what we can stick where" kinda guy, so I made a subharness that runs out a new hole in the floor through a waterproof grommet.

First, I abused my step bit to go through a bunch of asphalt sound deadening.


Then I pulled way too much wire through, because I probably had about 4 feet of extra length just to make sure everything got to where it needed to be. I found some nice "painless" braided sheathing that fit in nicely with everything else.


Then because it's a German car, I put Deutsch connectors on, which sounds kind of like "Germany" in German. It's also what I had on hand, and they're really nice to work with. Besides, the O2 sensor kit came from the vendor with one.



Then I got the stock ECU box to go back. in its location (over the hole I'd just drilled, and mounted the ECU way at the top to avoid any water leakage that tends to happen there in these cars. The jumper box is mounted below in the stock location of the ECU. The other stuff is just original wiring or extra length (on the vendor-supplied O2 sensor harness).



Then I closed everything back up so that the carpet can go back over 'er and ran the USB tuning cable out the same hole the engine bay harness goes in.


And finally the payoff:

 

[Jehannum]

Of course, that's all kind of burying the lede, which is that things feel much more rewarding when heavier chunks come together.

So, I hung the motor, put on the new clutch (Southbend, stg 4), and started checking fit by dipping it in the engine bay. It turns out I had some work to do, so I got my die grinder and removed a little bit of the unibody around the turbo oil drain (because hey, it's not a project until you've bashed/bled/ground the **** out of something). It has a beefy subframe on either side of my ******* though, so I'm not as concerned as I probably should be. However, to minimize the amount I had to trim, I turned out some 5mm taller motor mounts from some spare aluminum stock I had on hand.



Plenty of clearance, right?



Then I seated 'er for well and good.





After a bit of a time jump, I got the accessory stuff reassembled, which took some thinking because it turns out my carefully planned out positioning of the oil pressure sender (aftermarket) interfered with all the things.

So after a re-think, I put a 90° 1/8 NPT to -3AN, ran a -3AN PTFE line up to where the solenoid for the evap canister used to be, and mounted the OPSU there. The broken wires in the foreground were a fun surprise for me to deal with later. They feed the exciter on the alternator and the dash coolant temp sender, and I did replace them.



Then I filled it all up with oil, coolant, mounted the accessory belt and put the front of the car back together.

 

[Jehannum]

With that win, it was time for a big setback, when I realized that the seal separating the HVAC plenum from the interior was in a somewhat deteriorated state. Normally not a big issue, but with the car stored at a jaunty rake like that on the ramps, well, things got to be an issue. It first manifested as the alarm going off once every hour, and randomly locking and unlocking the doors (which these cars do with a vacuum pump, because electric actuators were too expensive in 1995).

This is underneath the back seat, where the battery lives on these cars. At the bottom of the picture is a foam enclosure for the central locking/alarm system.


So I did what any good German car owner would, and threw the central locking computer into some rice for a few days and then hosed it down with Corrosion X.

Except for the immobilizer (which is, conveniently, controlled by a single relay under the dash), it works perfectly now. I jumped the relay for the immobilizer, so meh. It's just a normally open relay that keeps voltage from reaching the starting solenoid, which I noticed because when I went to prime the oil system (plugs out, watch the oil pressure, crank the car over), it didn't.

However, after jumping the relay and then a new starter, eventually the priming went ahead, which lead eventually to this:

It's street tuned now, limited to 5 PSI of boost for about the next 80 miles, and due at the painters at the end of the month for some love on the front end.

 

[Xti04]

Wow ! The old school s6! I remember the first 5 cylinder S4 i drove had tons more power than a 2.7 t S4. I was like how did they top making this to produce an twin turbo v6 with less grunt? Hated those cars in my dealer days and they were few and far between but once I drove one I got it. Love the project keep it up!

 

[Jehannum]

Wow ! The old school s6! I remember the first 5 cylinder S4 i drove had tons more power than a 2.7 t S4. I was like how did they top making this to produce an twin turbo v6 with less grunt? Hated those cars in my dealer days and they were few and far between but once I drove one I got it. Love the project keep it up!

I suspect why they stopped with the I5 was the amount of investment it would take to put things like cam phasers and OBD-II on, to keep up with other "high tech" vendors and the EPA. The one I own is a "1995.5" which was basically Audi saying "we're going to make a '96 S6 without OBD-II".

Then they realized that once they added OBD-II and digital EFI got less brittle, it was easier and more space efficient (in terms of length) to put their 4.2L V8 up there, which makes more power than the I5 with better fuel economy, and the rest is history.

 

[Xti04]

The 4.2 never had the awesomeness of the 5 cylinder until they made the rs4. Those were fun cars.

 

[Jehannum]

The 4.2 never had the awesomeness of the 5 cylinder until they made the rs4. Those were fun cars.

Yeah, I won't argue against that one. I love my 20 valve turbo 5 cylinder, and the turbo is definitely ready to play me the song of its people, which is something I'm really looking forward to.

My dad had one of the terrible 10 valve turbo 5 cylinder Audis with the Bosch mechanical CIS injection (pre "S" anything), and I thought it was hotter than bird **** on a black car. I remember one 4th of July, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, the car was basically brand new, and I had just seen MacGyver pick a car's door lock with a paper clip. I was holding a lit sparkler, and thought "woah, this would be awesome to pick the lock with!" as 8 or 9 year olds are wont to do, and basically welded the passenger door lock together. Whoo was he mad at me. Looking back, I can see why.

 

[Jehannum]

My punch list after the street tune was:
1) pull pin 41 from the Motronic connector to black 10 on the ECU Master Black, because while their "plug and play" adapter had provisions for powering the AC clutch, it had no provision for reading whether the AC had been demanded by the climate control.

2) pull an aux output into the engine bay to trigger a relay for electric fans. The fan clutch had gone tango uniform, the fan itself was missing plastic, and they're somewhat difficult to source.


(so that's why it was making clackety noises)

Fortunately, a neighbor had a 32/36mm fan clutch wrench for his kid's BMW and between that and my death wheel's spanner wrench, I was good to go.


So, wiring round two:
I pulled the hot and ground wires into a 4 pin deutsch connector, because I cut them off to get the jumper out:


Then I did my "chthulhu" wiring inside the ECU compartment to get everything where it needed to go.


No arcs, no sparks, and it still runs, so I must have done something correctly.

Next job: bend up a shroud for the 16" spal that's going in where the clutch fan used to be, mount my solid state relay on the frame rail next to the headlight so that I can power the fans. There's an OEM 10" electric fan that I've sort of ignored in the grand scheme of things, because Audi powers it with their "324" relay along with the water pump that's supposed to run after the car turns off, but those things have never worked on this car, and the 324 relay is NLA. So now I'll get to see if I can run it off the ECU instead.

 

[pelletman]

In 1990 I wanted to get rid of my 88 Mustang GT convertible and replace it with a nice 4 door sedan, for business purposes. It was not so long after the "unintended acceleration" fake fiasco so the best deal I could find was an 87 5000 CS Turbo Quattro. I loved that car and I fell in love with Audis and Quattro in the snow. It was gold over tan alacantra, and I did a stage one Intended Acceleration ECU. Took it to Lime Rock with the Quattro Club. Put a bunch of miles on it and then sold it to a friend, my next one was a 91 200Q. That one I put a bigger turbo (RS2 maybe?) and an Intended Acceleration tune. Took it to Lime Rock, ended up in the infield going 100 MPH backwards, that was fun! I am tall and my head hit the roof with a helmet on so I bought a 92 S4, silver over black and that was my favorite of all my uR-S cars. It had a stiff suspension and handled great, and I never did any mods. I loved that car, but I found a 95 S6 and sold the 92 to a friend. His brother took it to Boston one day and it burst into flames. It was the car that caused the famous fuel line recall on the S cars. The 95 I drove for quite a while and my son did too. I think it had about 250K when we finally parted with it. I got tired of fixing it, but it was way more reliable than the 5K and the 200. I was always fixing them. I loved my S Cars and I do miss them. All of them were sedans. Glad to see you keeping yours going! I have a D3 A8 at the present time, and I love it too.

 

[Jagmandave]

I've had Audis in my driveway since about 1978 when I bought my first new one - a 78 5000 4 speed. That car was absolutely wonderful and I put about 90K on it before I sold it.....I worked for an Audi dealer from 72 on so I had my share of Demo Foxes, 100ls, 4000's, I even had an 83UR Coupe at one point. Since then I've had my own coupe GTs, 5000 turbos, regular 83 5000s, 4000Q, a 92 100CS, then a 2004 Allroad 2.7T tip and the latest a 2014 Smallroad 2L Turbo. I think we'll always have one in the driveway as my bride won't drive anything else.......

I've done my share of repairs on them, rebuilt the auto trans in the 83, replace broken exhaust manifold studs and liquid motor mounts on the Coupe GT, wiring issues, vacuum lock issues, window winder issues and so on, but I still love the cars.

 

[Jehannum]

In 1990 I wanted to get rid of my 88 Mustang GT convertible and replace it with a nice 4 door sedan, for business purposes. It was not so long after the "unintended acceleration" fake fiasco so the best deal I could find was an 87 5000 CS Turbo Quattro. I loved that car and I fell in love with Audis and Quattro in the snow. It was gold over tan alacantra, and I did a stage one Intended Acceleration ECU. Took it to Lime Rock with the Quattro Club. Put a bunch of miles on it and then sold it to a friend, my next one was a 91 200Q. That one I put a bigger turbo (RS2 maybe?) and an Intended Acceleration tune. Took it to Lime Rock, ended up in the infield going 100 MPH backwards, that was fun! I am tall and my head hit the roof with a helmet on so I bought a 92 S4, silver over black and that was my favorite of all my uR-S cars. It had a stiff suspension and handled great, and I never did any mods. I loved that car, but I found a 95 S6 and sold the 92 to a friend. His brother took it to Boston one day and it burst into flames. It was the car that caused the famous fuel line recall on the S cars. The 95 I drove for quite a while and my son did too. I think it had about 250K when we finally parted with it. I got tired of fixing it, but it was way more reliable than the 5K and the 200. I was always fixing them. I loved my S Cars and I do miss them. All of them were sedans. Glad to see you keeping yours going! I have a D3 A8 at the present time, and I love it too.

Coincidentally, mine got to me with the RS2 bits swapped on and an Intended Acceleration tune. I can't believe it made it to 311,000 miles that way at 28 PSI of boost on that poor little K24-7200.

 

[Ton ton]

I'm assuming this engine is gasoline powered. I have a Jetta TDI. Neat project this far. Thank you for taking us along with you on the rebuild.

 

[MrPink]

Awesome to see another V.A.G owner/enthusiast here. I have had my slew of them over the years settling on the MK4 VW platform.

You are doing an OEM repaint right?

 

[Jehannum]

Awesome to see another V.A.G owner/enthusiast here. I have had my slew of them over the years settling on the MK4 VW platform.

You are doing an OEM repaint right?

Yeah, stock LB09 going on the hood, the bumper, the bumperettes, and blended on the fenders.

 

[Jehannum]

After dumping the clutch fan, I went and found a good 16" Spal that fits nearly into the original opening.


Then I ran a new wire for it, to a relay in the fender well:


Then added a nice sealed connector and mounted the original shroud back up:


I confirmed it works, kicks on at 85°C, kicks back off at 80 (plus on all the time the AC is on). Not sure if that's where I want it for good and all since the thermostat opens at 87°C, but for the time being, it answers the mail. Now I can drive it safely enough and get the last of the breakin mileage on it before it goes back to the tuner.

 

[Jehannum]

I drove it to work today, and it didn't explode.

That's a step in the right direction!

 

[Bodj Built]

This thread is AWESOME. While I love the reliability of mechanical fan clutches, they just rob sooo much power. I had one on my 4.3L GMC sonoma prerunner and the fan always stayed on for some reason, even with a different fan clutch. Switched over to electric fans and it felt like a rocket ship.

 

[Jehannum]

This thread is AWESOME. While I love the reliability of mechanical fan clutches, they just rob sooo much power. I had one on my 4.3L GMC sonoma prerunner and the fan always stayed on for some reason, even with a different fan clutch. Switched over to electric fans and it felt like a rocket ship.

Thanks!

I've had bad luck with clutch fans, though I still run them on a couple of my cars. In my 300ZX, the water pump casting broke (never buy Duralast pieces, lol) and the clutch fan on the end of it helicoptered up into the radiator and then exploded, ruining my hood. On my GTO, I never could get a decent enough shroud/fan combo to keep the 462 cool, so now it looks like this:



That said, the 240Z and the 300ZX both still run them, though if the one on the Audi works out in the summer, I might swap them over too.

 

[Bodj Built]

Let's see the 300zx! I've always loved those.

 

[Jehannum]

Let's see the 300zx! I've always loved those.

This one is mine:



I curate a wide variety of old slow cars

 

[Bodj Built]

She's a beaut! My cousin had one and it ripped.

 

[mikegt4]

Nice Audi project, I have owned 3 Audis over the years, all 5 cylinder's which proved to be very robust. My 1987 5000CS lasted 300K before the suspension and sub frames rusted away. I still have a ur-Quattro that I acquired back in the mid 1990's, rust free, a novalty for ur-Quattro's.

 

[Xti04]

Worked with a guy who had an ur quattro. He let it go for a b5 s4 avant. At the time 20 years ago I didnt quite realize what he had or I would have bought it. After seeing Walter Rorhl attack Pikes Peak in one I understood what made it so special.

 

[Boosted1]

Love the red 300Z. I have one too so i am bias.

 

[cannuck]

So, pretty much immediately after meeting @CapriMikeC last April at Radwood and commiserating over that hooptie turbocharged life, number three rod exited the chat from my 311,000 mile Audi UrS6. It had been a while coming. In May of 2020, the head gasket let go. I got it back together with a new gasket, but I'm pretty sure that the hydrolock event did some damage, as the engine vacuum was never really adequate after that. But, I pulled my best "we'll just ignore that for now, I've got other things on my mind" and kept on keeping on, until 2023.

The car is fairly rare.

Here it is at Radwood Austin (hat tip to Mike for taking these):



Because I'm stubborn and I never buy cars that I don't love, I decided it wasn't going to get parted out, and to get on with rebuilding it.

A rare car indeed! SO JEALOUS that you have it in a place where body cancer does not take it out of circulation after 20 years or so

You KNOW your thread is going to drag out other members' Audi stories, so I guess I will give you the very short version.

My first "crossover" from the air cooled world was at a factory training session winter 71/72 where a couple of us snuck into a back room and came across the first SOHC 1.5 meant for the Audi 80 (Scirocco would also launch in EU with same engine) we were sure it was the new 914 replacement for a mid engined car, but of course we later got it as '73 Fox. I left the fold far a few years and came back as dealer GM in '76 and had to deal with the iffy quality issues of 100LS, but the arrival of the C2/5000 was a genuine game changer. No need to buy one with demo always on hand, but it defined for me what a great sedan should be. Have owned a few C2s - a LOT of C3s a trouble free 100 LS (all bought used after I left the fold) but IMHO the highest development of personal transportation (and one of the most beautiful designs every mass produced) is the early C5 Avant in 2.5 TDI, manual, quattro configuration (that we never got here!!!!!! - thus my end of any desire to buy more Audis - except for the ONE thing I coveted so much but Neckarsulm never made - an A8L Avant tdi. Today, still have one C2 FWD TDI sedan tucked away and DD is literally THE LAST Q7 TDI sold in Canada. Our only B platform today is a 2009 Passat Variant (a fantastic car itself) that one kid owns (in my shop for rad replacement as we speak).

I hope modern day VW enthusiasts can appreciate that VW was busy building their own FWD inline engine when the acquisition Audi/Auto Union meant the embarrassment of an M-B designed engine in a VW car (F103) - so they were given marching orders to make a new in house engine - the brilliant EA827 series that became the whole underpinning of every SI and CI engine in VW/Audi cars to this very day.