85 UR quattro

8 minute(s) of a 211 minute read

So, to continue the saga, the reason the car was sitting on the street instead of in my driveway was that I couldn't get reverse, nor, for that matter, 1st or 2nd! It was allright when I left the shop but by the time I was nearing home, about 20 minutes, 1st became 3rd and I kept stalling at the lights 'cause it don't like to set off in 3rd. Shift lever was feeling a bit woolie too.

I nursed it back to my shop the next day, got it on the lift and found the shifter bushing, #27 in the picture below, had distintergrated. This must have hapenned gradually over a number of years and I guess, with the elevated temperatures lately, it just crossed the threshold of being able to move the selector shaft enough to find the outermost gears. Once I fix this it should feel like a short shifter compared with the long throw that I thought was normal.

The bushing is, of course, no longer available but I found out that 034 Motorsport are making them and I also picked up an OE one from a guy on ebay UK along with some other goodies (see below). Now I have a lifetime's supply.

Apparantly, the short rod, #35 often fails and they are NLA too. Mine seems fine thankfully. The ball on the top of #33 can come loose too but again, mine seems good. It was a little tight in there above the tranny and after finding water in my basement last night I said "Sod this" and booked it in at Auto Europe. As much as I like to work on my cars I just don't have time to tackle this fiddly job with all the other stuff crumbling around me right now. Thank god my Jeep's fixed; and the Subaru moves under its own power too now, sort of.

Some stuff I dd take care of myself though:

I managed to get a gas strut for the trunk. Apparantly it needs two to support the weight of the trunk and that huge spolier and if you only have one like I had it will crash down on your bonce while you are deep in conversation with your spare tire. OUCH!. Couldn't find an OE one at a decent price so went with a Stabilus to match the other side. So much nicer than the stick I was using. Much more civilised.

I've been trying to track down a fuel smell for some time now. It was often there but seemed to be worse with the windows open and after taking some corners, particularly left handers. It was worse the more fuel was in the tank too, I think. Initially I suspected the long breather pipe that goes from roughly the middle of the tank to the filler neck. The original one was very soft so I thought it might be sweating if not actually leaking. I replaced it with a bit of basic hose temporarily and thought it made a bit of a difference but later realised that might have been wishful thinking. I may yet put the original hose back on.

Later I discovered that the gas cap was getting wet with fuel after spirited drives so I replaced the fuel cap gasket with an OE one from the dealer. So far (not very far actually) so good. Fingers crossed. No picture; it's a round piece of rubber with a big hole in the middle. Use your imagination.

When I initially test drove the car the passenger side window stopped working. Well, not completely. It would just go down a couple of inches, make a horrible grinding noise and stop. Fortunately it decided to go back up so I bought the car anyway. So I finally got a chance to get inside the door motivated by the increasing temperatures and lack of air conditioning in the car. Door card came off easily once I located all the screws and clips (didn't braek any either )

I was happy to find that the wire that pulls the window mechanism had come derailed from the bottom pulley and with a bit of effort I managed to get it back on there. It works now but does make some funny noises sometimes. The same noises the driver's side makes so I figured they are factory. Job done!

While I was in there I took the opportunity to have a look at the door lock mechanism. The button was going up and down when I operated the driver's side lock but the key was doing nothing in the passenger side, not that one ever uses the key in that side. It did cross my mind that perhaps it was a design feature then I realised, why would they have a lock. Anyway, brain back in gear it soon became apparant that the little plastic ear on the back of the lock had become detached from its actuator rod. Two minutes and a skimmed knucle later it was back on and working as Audi intended all along. Look:

While messing around in the cabin with the various ***** and switches I found out that my blower fan goes to ELEVEN. Well, it goes to four but that's amazing as the the panel only indicates 3. It works too; fan goes even faster! I can't for the life of me figure out why the switch goes to 4 while the panel only goes to 3. What were they drinking in Ingoldstat in the mid-eighties?

I put back the undertray that giudes air to the intercooler. It came with the car but not actually attched to it. I had to do a bit of rally-rigging with some zip ties as it's missing a couple of screw holes now.

Part of my ebay UK haul was a pair of new sun visor clips in more or less the original color. A snap to swap out but they totally transform the car. Handles as if on rails. OK, they hardly made any difference, even to the visors, but it feels good to have replaced more broken stuff.

More UK parts: dash vents, middle and sides. Only my middle one was broken but it's good to have spares right?

Broken vent. All flippity floppoty:

New vent. All nice and together. You can see the tabs that hold it in place too....

....so I know where to stick my screw driver.

Maybe I should just leave it like this:

Nah!

Man, that was a lot of venting.

In the category of interesting aside did you know, Wikipedia says "The Illuminati, a Bavarian secret society, was founded in Ingolstadt..." and my business is called Team Illuminata Motorsport. Coincidence? I'm saying nothing. Schtum!

Now, off to Auto Europe with you Stiggy (Hmm. I think I just named my car)