Hey guys,
So after almost three long months of working, i have rebuild my motor. New head gasket, head bolts, valve cover seals, random o-rings throughout the engine, crank bearings, rod bearings, piston rings, kickass spark plugs, fluids, fuel filter, oil filter, rebuilt heads (done by a shop), hot tanked block, machined surfaces. I also took out all of the lifters, opened them up and cleaned them in a vibrating kerosene bath for a few days (close to a week with regular changes in kerosene) and put them back together properly (with oil, I also compressed the lifters when submerged in oil until no more air bubbles came out). I replaced all of the vacuum piping throughout the engine as it was previously in pieces with many, many many rips, tears or just spots with no piping at all. The vacuum piping was carefully installed with the assistance of diagrams provided by parts source. I also painted the engine if that makes any difference (so much prep work *soab*)

So after all of this hard work, the engine finally runs (after a fixed oil leak from the from main seal and a few coolant leaks) but there is no power. I have a lot of lifter chatter but i understand that this is normal with a rebuilt motor to have this. Even so, after about a total idle time of 15 minutes and drive time of about 20, the lifters still havent pressurized and there is still chatter. The chatter is getting better but ever so slightly when i start it again.
So finally to the problem, the car can move on its own power and even make it up hills with a few people in it, problem is the motor will NOT reach 3000 rmp and if it does it is a really, really labored 3000 rpm. some performance upgrades that were done was a catback exhaust system off of ebay, cheap, but being cheap i guess means just less metal, the exhaust is pretty close to straight pipe ( you could drop a golf ball clear through the resonator and/or muffle. I also put a new high flow K&N air filter. the motor can maintain proper temperature (exactly 90 degrees C) as well as proper oil temperature. I checked the codes and there is no knock on any of the cylinders as well as no misfiring. there are no leaks anywhere as i just painted the engine and would easily be able to spot any leaks. Another quick note, when i timed the engine, I used the camshaft holder to hold the cams in position (tool only fits on one way, when the cams and in the proper position) while i moved the crankshaft into position by lining up the notch of the crank pulley and the arrow provided.
Please help! i have spent so much time and money and time on this car. I need to get this soab running so i can drive to work.

 

Ya I know this is an old post but still giving this advice, I'd double check the cam timing using the bar as well as the timing pin for the crankshaft and not relying on the balancer marks incase it slipped. I recently acquired a a4 with the 2.8 that I bought with the heads off due to it having a broke valve spring, well putting it back together I lined up the cams with a bar I made but used the mark on the balancer, after tensioning the belt I turned it over by hand and it felt weak on compression, so being OCD like I am I relined the cams then used a 1/4" extension to check the crank, and sure enough it was off about 20 degrees, retimed it with the crank locked in position, balancer mark ended up being about 3/4" from the pointer.

 

I been meaning to find out how difficult it was to do a.rebuild on 2.8l 12v. Runs.great but is starting to smoke a little when throttling down, probably leaky valve seals. I have been viewing parts on eBay. I would like to see if anyone has set up a checklist of the popular parts needed.