Re: Audi GT Coupes (was re: More Audi Questions)

["Gary G. Erickson" <erickson@teleport.com>]

Scott brought up some interesting points, and I'm just going to pick
them out and answer them with my own experiences.

Scott Fisher wrote:

> the inline 5 appears to be a
> stout, durable and enjoyable engine at many levels, with hundreds of
> thousands of miles readily available with even fair maintenance.

Scott's not kidding here.  I finally gave up on waiting for my existing
engine to die and yanked it out of the car with over 210K miles on it.

> And for the record, I would LOVE to be proven wrong on this point.
> Please... somebody prove to me that there's a $200 widget that I can
> bolt onto the car that will give me 40% more power.  Please. :-)

Well, if you add a zero to that number, it is doable.  ;-)   I added up
most of the prices associated with the conversion, and for just the
engine swap it was just about $2000.

My project came closer to $4000 since I also did a brake upgrade,
wheels/tires, a rebuilt turbo and a Setrab oil cooler with custom
Aeroquip plumbing at the same time since the car's main use is track
oriented.

> They came with 14 x 6 alloys initially, and apparently 16 x
> 7 is possible without too much modification to the fenders.

Just to pick nits here; a 16x7.5 wheel wearing 215/40-16 rubber will fit
without any problems.  The only time I have any rubbing in the rear is
if the trunk is loaded or I have a pair of football players in the back
seat.

> Or using a 10V (that's
> a single-cam, 2 valve per cylinder, 5-cylinder engine) with turbo, which
> is even cheaper but may cause problems in California, or other states
> that follow our lead regarding smog laws.

This should be possible since Duane Hale's former car (4kq with MC
single knock sensor) was converted by 2Bennett and registered in
California prior to being purchased by a fellow in Washington state.

You'd just need to do a bit of research to see what kind of
documentation the referee's want to see and what parts will be coming
under scrutiny.

> The problem there is cost.  Someone on the list recently cited a $4500
> price tag for a 20V engine, versus $1600 for a 10V turbo.

I can't speak to the 20V engine, but the 10V price seems high.  If you
are actually going to do a turbo conversion, you want to have the car
available to you so that you can see how it was originally installed and
so you can remove the pieces yourself.  

I know that my project would have been five times more difficult if I
had just gotten all the parts in a box in the mail rather than getting
to remove them from the car myself.

I would expect that you should be able to find a running example of a
5kt for $1000 or less.  Look for a FWD turbo with automatic
transmission.  The tranny's die really easily and make the car almost
worthless to the individual trying to get rid of it.

> In an early
> Coupe, you're limited to front-wheel drive (short of some serious
> floor-pan welding to add the quattro hardware; at least one lister has
> done that), which gives you a practical limit in this chassis of
> probably 170-190 bhp.

I'm not sure I'd buy into that.  With decent rubber on the car, I don't
have any traction issues with my turbo FWD GT.  Currently running a
stock computer providing about 165 horses hasn't been a problem at all. 
I'm going to try swapping the 1.8 bar computer from my (early '89--K26
turbo) 200q into the GT and we'll see what kind of traction issues I
get!  <grin>

And you can always explore the option of installing a Quaife limited
slip differential if desired.  

Though if you are buying a car for this express purpose, the 4kq would
be the car to get.  My conversion happened in the GT since I already had
a good example of the car and wanted to see what more it could do.

> '90-'91 Coupes are more nicely appointed, and seem to
> sell in the $8k range (plus or minus 25% or so), and while they're about
> 3100 lb, they already have the quattro bits in place.  So in theory you
> could swap in a 20v turbo engine out of one of the S-series cars, modify
> that further with chips/exhaust/etc., and end up with the power/weight
> ratio, plus traction, that you're after... for probably not much more
> than $20k by the time you're done.

Brandon Hull just completed a swap very similar to this using as many
OEM parts from the european S2 as he could.  I seem to recall he posted
a total cost of around $26K including labor and purchase of the car. 
Anybody have the exact figure?

I'm not sure if that helped, or just served to further confuse the
issue.

later,

-Gary

'84 4kq
'85 turbo GT coupe
'89 200q