Audi 5000 Revival V - Odds and Ends

The car is almost ready to go down the road, but there are still a few little things to take care of.  The fuel filler neck was flaking with rust, and I was worried it might be leaking gas. Fortunately, it wasn't rusted all the way through, and it was only the paint flaking off. 

I used naval jelly to dissolve the rust like I did on the valve cover, then repainted it an unassuming shade of gray.

Underneath the car, this muffler insulator has seen better days:

Luckily I found a new one for $1.50.

An interesting thing about the front suspension is that there are factory stock camber plates for camber alignment:

Anyway, here's the finished result:

It looks pretty much the same as when I started, but it certainly drives a lot better.

Audi 5000 Revival IV - Timing Belt

The timing belt on this car actually doesn't look too bad, but without documentation of a recent change I really can't trust it. This will leave you stranded if it breaks, and potentially damage the engine. Audi mounted this 5 cylinder engine as far forward as possible, so to make my life easier I decided to remove as much of the front end as I could:

That's a little better. The accessory belts come off by loosening the mounting bolts, and then unscrewing tensioning bolts on the alternator, power steering pump, and AC compressor. Then to get to the timing belt, you just remove the front cover and unscrew the crank pulley. Yup, just unscrew the big bolt holding on the crank pulley:

Uggh. Apparently it's torqued by the factory to over 400 ft-lbs. With that much force, I can't simply put it in gear to hold the crankshaft in place. I might break the transmission. There's a special, hard to find tool meant to hold the crank pulley, but I'm not spending $150 on it. Instead I wedged a prybar against the notch in the crank pulley, and then jumped on my breaker bar to loosen that horrible bolt. With that out, the old timing belt could come off along with the crank sprocket and accessory belt pulley.

I decided to take the extra time and remove the rusty valve cover for repainting. The gasket was starting to leak anyway, so why not? Here's what the camshaft looked like:

 

The camshaft seal was starting to leak, so I replaced it while I was in there:

 Time to clean the oil and grease off the valve cover:

 I used naval jelly to dissolve the surface rust before painting it with black grill paint:

 

With the cover reinstalled, it looks a lot better:

And here is that horrible crank bolt: 

 

A curious thing about the timing belt on this engine - the water pump is the belt tensioner. It has two slotted bolt holes letting you rotate the pump in order to provide tension on the timing belt. It's a very strange arrangement, and the water pump makes a seal against the flat engine block with a large O-ring.

Now with a new water pump and belt installed, I can start reassembling the front of the engine. The timing marks weren't easy to find, so I just put matchmarks on the old belt and transferred them to the new one so the cam and crank will still be lined up. Then I pried against the water pump to tension the belt and tightened the water pump bolts to lock it in place. I also added some sil-glyde to the new water pump O-ring so it could slide across the engine block as needed.

Tightening the crank bolt was a little tricky, but I managed to nail some 2x4's together to brace against my pry bar:

Then I put my foot on my breaker bar and called it tight enough. With the engine back together, all that's missing is the rest of the front end:

Job done, cheers!

Audi 5000 Revival III - Brakes

The brakes on this car need attention. On very old cars, the calipers get corroded around the piston seal and can get stuck in place. This results in a stiff brake pedal that doesn't do very much braking. Replacement calipers are not even available for this car, but new seals are.

Getting the caliper pistons out was tricky. Normally I blast them with air from my compressor, but these wouldn't budge. I had to heat the aluminum part of the caliper on my stove to expand it enough to let the piston pop out.

Now I can clean the seal grooves and the piston with a wire brush. I like to install the new seals with a thin layer of Sil-glyde, which is compatible with brake rubber. This lets the piston slide in without trouble.

The outer dust seals on these VW style calipers are tricky to install. They need to tuck into a groove in the caliper, and they also fit tightly onto the caliper piston. The best way I found to install it was by first sliding the dust seal onto the edge of the piston, then tucking the seal into the groove on the caliper body:

Then with the dust seal fully seated in its groove, you can start pushing the piston into the caliper. If you did it right, the piston should slide in by hand with careful force.

As a finishing touch, I wire wheeled the rust off the cast iron portion and painted it with barbecue black paint:

The other side is the same process. Finally, I reinstalled the calipers with new flexible hoses and brake pads.

The rear drum brakes weren't working so great either. The wheel cylinders are fortunately easy to change, and don't require fully disassembling the brake shoes. Just remove the hold down springs and pull the shoes out of the way:

Now there's two 5mm allen screws and an 11mm brake line nut holding the wheel cylinder on. Good luck if they're rusted. A long time ago I ended up removing the entire brake and stub axle assembly from my brother's '84 Jetta in order to drill out the little screws holding the wheel cylinder in place. You don't need to go that far though. If the 5mm allen screw is stripped, hammer a 12 point 3/8" socket onto the head, or use a 3/8" bolt extractor. The latter option worked perfectly for me. Here's my prize:

Lucas parts are only the highest quality, as evidenced by the fact that one piston was seized in place, and the other one leaked.

The brake lines were another issue. One of the rear lines has two compression fittings on it:

Uggh. It would have been less work for the previous owner to just replace the whole 5' section with a new line. Well, now I get to do it. I ended up buying a pre-flared line because I just couldn't get a good bubble flare with the rental flaring tools. 

Securing the new brake line to the car body was actually rather easy. Since some of the metal retaining tabs had rusted away, I used insulated P-clips and rivets instead. To rivet the clips in place, I drilled holes into the car body:

 

It's important to paint the exposed metal after drilling to prevent corrosion (which is where the black paint smudge is). Next I installed a 3/16" rivet with some added anti-corrosive spray to secure the new line:

This is a much better method than using self-tapping screws. Now what's left is to connect the replacement brake hoses and bleed the system of air.

With new wheel cylinders, caliper seals, brake pads, hoses, and the new hard line, these brakes work a lot better.