Re: urQ: Cooling questions ....

[dlawson@ball.com (Dave Lawson)]

Steve,
>He has an RS2 turbo installed in his car ... but it turns out that I can
>keep up with him fairly well with a relatively unmodified QTC.  He says
>that he has been told that the limiting factor in his set up is the stock
>intercooler.  I told him that AFAIK most urQ owners used the OEM IC (how's
>that for acronyms!).  He was thinking about getting an IC for an S4 and
>trying to work it into his car.  He said he knew of someone that had moved
>the oil cooler to be in front of the Rad & A/C condenser so that they could 

>fit a larger IC ... sounds weird to me.  Anyone willing to divulge their
>secrets?  :-)

Not sure what the S4 intercooler look like or the sizes. I do remember that
the Treser modified cars had an oversized intercooler mounted in the
stock location, but was angled to get it in there. Abt mounted it's larger
IC in place of the aux radiator. And on the 28psi 20V ur-q of Mr Davis, he
mounted a very large intercooler in place of the front grill. Have
heard/seen others doing the 20V swap stuffing a 91 200 IC in there.
A few people have moved the oil cooler around, Ben Howell and Dan
Bocek come to mind, so it has been done. If you are planning on this, he
should spring for a larger oil cooler as well.

>[as an aside, he was also told that the Euro fuel distributor was necessary
>to be able to crank the boost up much without worrying about lean-out prob-
>lems.  Does anyone know about any differences in the FDs?  Is it possible
>to swap in a FD from a newer 5k/0.2k motor?]

I will be swapping in the 89 200 FD into my ur-q in the next few weeks. Not 
real
sure of the differences at this point, other than part numbers. There must 
be
some internal differences.

>On a similar vein he was wondering about eliminating the aux radiator that
>the urQ has in front of the engine ... I told him that he would probably
>need to increase the size of the standard radiator.  Any tricks that anyone 

>has used here?

I was told by John Bekius that its is indeed needed and you are asking
for additional cooling trouble by just removing it. I have seen a few
oversized main radiators in use, mostly for the 20V swaps. These aux
 radiators are used on other apps including the 87 GT with 2.3 engine and
 the '90 20V CQ, so they must have been put there for a reason. But maybe
audi put it there so you can spend $150 for a f***ing lower radiator hose.
[Oops, regaining composure...] There are other 'upgrades' one can do
to the main radiator to improve its cooling efficiency like installing the
larger 5000TQ radiator fan motor and 7 blade fan. I hear this helps.

>Last, but by no means least, he had heard that someone had added a ventila-
>tion port to allow heat out of the left side of the engine compartment.  He 

>was not aware of exactly what had been done, but it sounded like this 
person
>has added some cut outs in the firewall and hood in front of the 
windshield.
>I told him that it seemed to me this would be a high pressure area ... so I 

>wouldn't think much air would be coming *out*.  I told him that the better
>candidate would be to add any exhaust vents behind the wheel wells ... Has
>anyone heard of someone who did such a mod to a QTC?

Nope. But the sport q's did have the vented hood to help cool down things
a bit. The high pressure area by the windshield makes sense, this is where
the A1/A2 ur-q rally cars had their air inlets.

>It sure seems to me that the person that is providing advice is mainly try-
>ing to get this poor urQ owner to pay big bucks for stuff that is 
relatively
>untested ... I keep telling him that he should get on the q-list, but he
>says that he doesn't even have a computer.  My thinking is that he would
>recoup his investment in a cheap computer very quickly by joining the list!

Sounds kinda like someone is readin' the Abt parts catalog from 85 or so.
Knowledge has progressed in 10 years and there are better solutions.

 -
Dave Lawson  dlawson@ball.com
Boulder, CO