Audi 5000 Revival I

This is primarily a bike blog, but I thought I'd like to document my current four wheeled project (if only for my own memories).  My brother bought a low mile 1983 Audi 5000 that evidently sat for years and years. 

 

The body and interior are in great shape, but the mechanical condition is another story: 

• The gear shifter can only reach gears 3 and 4
  
• It leaks gasoline
• The hydraulic clutch leaks and doesn't fully disengage
  
• Timing belt says VW Audi on it and is probably the original from '83
  
• Brakes are stiff and incredibly weak
• One of the axles is leaking grease
  

There are a few other odds and ends, but these are the major problems. Unlike bicycles, cars are mostly made of parts that are bespoke to a particular car model. And when a car has been out of production for over 30 years, well good luck finding replacements. Sometimes you even have to custom make your own replacement parts.

After checking the shift linkage, I happened to find a broken link sitting on top of the transmission. I'm really lucky to have found it, otherwise I probably never would have figured out what I'd need to fix this linkage. It's a simple part, basically a 133mm long rod with two socket ends to fit the 10mm ball studs on the transmission. 

 

You know what else fits a 10mm ball stud? Hood struts. I happened to have a pair left over from a Nissan Maxima, which I decided to cut and join together with a coupling nut. First I needed to cut threads onto the strut rods using a die:

To make the replacement shifter link, I just had to screw the ends of the hood struts into a coupling nut until they were 133mm center to center, then lock them down with jam nuts (just like setting a bike wheel bearing):

I'm proud of it, and the shifter feels like new with the replacement rod installed. Next order of business is dealing with the fuel leak. It's coming from the fuel accumulator, which is like a pressure regulator for old Bosch CIS mechanical fuel injection systems. Removal was tricky, since the fuel lines were very rusty and the nuts would not spin off the flare ends.  I ended up cutting off one of the nylon fuel lines and unscrewing the fitting from the accumulator. Then I spun the whole accumulator off the remaining fuel line going to the pump.

I wish I could have used a torch to loosen up the nuts on fuel couplings, but considering that these are fuel lines and there were gas vapors everywhere this would have been the worst idea ever. I ended up bashing them with a hammer and also using a c-clamp axially to free up the nuts. After pressing the fuel fitting back into the existing plastic fuel line and repainting the mounting bracket, the new accumulator is installed (and no more leaks):

There is plenty of work left to do before this car is driveable again, cheers.