[urq] RE : WR Aluminum Engine

[Steve Eiche]

FWIW, the block was used in some early ur quattros, as well as some 100 
taxis in Germany in a carburetted short-stroke 1.9L configuration.  I 
will let you guys find the engine code yourselves. :)  One of the 
complete taxi motors with super low km sold on ebay.de last year for 176 
Euro.  The buyer then stripped off the head, and re-advertised it as a 
Sport quattro block.  It sold for over 1000 Euro.  I missed out on 
getting it the first time when my bidding program failed to get the bid 
in in time (rrrrr) and didn't bother at 1k Euro.  It would have been 
worth experimenting with for the $400 or so that it would have cost to 
buy and ship the first time, but at $1300 it wasn't worth the risk to 
me.  I still have the picture from the listing if someone is interested.

My guess is that the taxi block would be a good one to get if you could 
find one, as it was likely to be the least stressed in it's life. I 
_think_ that the deck height was the same as the 2.2l, and the bore was 
79mm, so using a 86.4mm crank and 81mm pistons should work assuming that 
the sleeves were thick enough.

Rumor has it that there are also (at least) two different aluminum 
production version blocks out there used in the ur quattros and Sports. 
  Some are prone to cracks and are to be avoided, while the other 
"improved" version is very strong.  I have no idea how to tell the 
difference...

Steve

Jim wrote:

I totally agree with you on that one Brandon. All of my info came from 
Aelred Smith, the original owner of Dialynx Performance in the UK. He 
and I are friends, and what I wrote is what he told me a long time ago 
when I was hunting for one of these blocks. I would think that Audi 
would have complete engines ready to transplant with little down time 
for the customer. From what I understand, the alu engine was replaced 
with an iron engine. That might account for there being both an iron and 
aluminum block designation for the WR. Historians, please chime in!