well, my wife took a three day trip to see family, and while she was out, I had free reign over my time. I had some friends from Indy over, and we hacked into the a4.

First and foremost the engine came out, I have no photos of the process as we were all a little occupied, butI snapped some photos this morning of the dash roughed in. I took a factory piece, fiberglassed in the heater controls, and then redrilled the piece for 3 gauges.
Thought I'd post progress pics of the dash, the piece comes back out, and will get trimmed in CF hopefully sometime next week. I broke 2 tabs, so the face screws won't be visible onceI repair them, and the holes by the radio opening will have plugs that flush into them. it's in raw black primer, and only has a rough finish on it at the moment.

The heater controls are wrapped up, relocated (done previously) butI had to resolder the ribbon cable, and then made new mounting tabs and trim pieces for the opening where the ashtray used to be.

thoughts and impressions are always welcome. I'll post more as things progress... - oh yeah, one of my college buddies brought me a xmas present... CF b pillars! schweet.



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me like....

 

Not bad, i would have put a double din in there though.

 

Excellent work! Everything is looking good.

 

Tacky IMO! But it's all about if you like it or not. I prefer more a factory look with hidden gauges, i.e. boost vent guage. But at least its very functional.

 

well, I thought about a more sleeper look, but I'm planning on taking the wood trim belt lineoff and going with brushed alumninum. I think once that's done it will blend more with the interior...I just looked at the photos again, the car's a mess inside... that doesn't really help any with the look when combined with black primer.

Hey question, the car had heavy steering, and I thought it was just a dying power steering pump. after looking at the steering rack, It looks fairly worn to me (with 185k miles it should be). What are the lifespans on the steering rack units? are they servicable or just a toss and replace kind of item?

 

a rieger kit would really look great with those cf pillars

 

Looks cool. What's the plan with the engine? Which engine is it?

 

Looks good. You really need to detail your car.

 

LOL the car really does need a detail, but given it's current condition, I'm not overly concerned. the swirls look as bad as they do right now because i stripped all the old glaze and polish to better asses it's overall condition. I'm guessing this spring i can get about 90% paint correction out of it, the hood's chipped beyound repair, but a painted CF OEM hood is in the works.

The engine was a 12v 2.8, and i really debated what to do, and was thinging of a total rebuild of it, but it's just not worth putting money into. it has no space for turbos, and the supercharger options are a money sink. Sorry to everyone running a PES system, but i can build a monster motor swap and run standalone for the retail 5g's that system costs... I'm seriously consitering doing a swap to the 1.8 motor. The blocks are cheap and the parts are available.You can't find the 2.7 s4 engine for anything less that rediculous.I'll probobally reuse the 2.8 5 spd trans and do an ECU/harness swap to run a 1.8 BT fully built. I've got some time to camp on the thought though.

I'm going to spend the winter cleaning the engine bay up, and tyding up a dozen previous owner's work... interior really is my winter project. I ordered 2x2 twill today and will be overlaying all the beltline, and the new dash pieceI made, as soon as the material gets here. apparently all the "global CF shortage" crap i got from some places was legit... I was told it's a combo of the military and the new boeing 787 dreamliner??? who knows...