kainy

Hey guys. I kinda trashed my 2004 3.0 TDI 4F Sedan, enough for the insurance company to make me sell it on parts and then scrap it.

After considering some alternatives I decided to again get an A6 as close as possible to the old one, for as less as possible, as basically the damages were almost only at the front right suspension and some panels. So engine, trans, all kinds of extras were completely fine.

I managed to find a very close, and actually with some extra... extras, 3.0 TDI Avant, which actually even had the same interior. Sadly it was with manual trans, which at first I though would be awesome, but the manual on this car is just awful... don't recommend it to anybody! Transferring the automatic gearbox from the sedan is already figured out, but a few other things require some more investigation

1. The seats in the sedan weren't electric, but were heated. But on the Avant, the seats are electric, and are not heated . From what I've saw, disassembling the seats and exchanging the cushions won't be that hard, but what I don't know is what is the situation with the cables. For now I've removed the seats from the sedan only and saw that under the seat there are 3 or 4 couplings, and the seat used all of them. There were some missing pins on the jacks, so I figure, that the cables for the electric seat are using does empty pins, and it should be enough to just combine both cables in one jack. The other question is, besides the climatronic panel, do I need to change any other module, for the car to have both electric seats and heated seats?

2. The sedan has a solar powered sunroof which I definitely want to retrofit in the avant. Aside from the sunroof itself, what else do I need to get from the sedan?

3. As the avant has bluetooth phone module already, I'll be selling the one from the sedan. As far as I know, the bluetooth module can be retrofited after that in the glovebox, connected to the CD (CDs). The questions, does the communication cable for the bluetooth module go anywhere to a jack, or it is spliced somewhere from the main line, thus I have to cut it and give it with the module. Same goes for the optic cable. As far as I know I cannot cut it, and I hope it does connect somewhere else, so I can disassemble it.

4. Similar question. The sedan came with dual CDs from the factory. Thus there is only a splitter for the optic cable, but both communication cables come from a main one, which goes some where. Does it go to a jack, or I should cut it too (I replaced one of the CDs with an AMI and want to move it to the avant, which has only one CD).

5. What I shouldn't remove from the interior (the part I'm going to be disassembling before giving the car to a service shop for the rest) so that the car can still be turned on (immobilizer to be unlocked)

6. Can the motor for changing from low to high beam, from the right headlight, to be used in the left headlight?


Well... These are the "fights" I started for now. Will probably have more questions, when if I decide to take anything else from the old soldier . I'm definitely not gonna be able to document the disassembly of the car, but I'll try to document all the retrofits I do, and post them after that. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

kainy

Hey guys, I wanted to share some experience with retrofitting the tiptronic

The local Audi dealership claimed it to be impossible, but I guess they just didn't want to get involved . Regardless they needed to help a bit, too.

Essentially the end result is a complete success in replacing the manual transmission with the tiptronic one (GZW). Though the key thing here was that I had a complete donor. I believe it would be quite a hassle to acquire all the parts separately and the cost would make it not really worth it.

I won't go into details, mostly because I haven't done the retrofit personally, but mechanically wise the retrofit was not a hassle at all. Under the car, the only thing that could be left was the rear differential, which eventually I needed to replace anyway as it wasn't performing well, shaking the car after certain RPM. Everything else around the gearbox needed to be replaced - aircon radiator (has additional outlet for the gearbox cooling), heat shields, front differential and the PTU. The front bracket that holds the gearbox (we call it a "donkey"), the drive shaft, and the 2 front axels (not sure about the rear ones). The Engine ECU was not changed, just recoded, but about that later

The biggest hassle was with the wiring... On one hand because the manual basically does not have any and on the other because the service shop did not excel very much in this area. Luckily someone, good with Elsa, gave a hand and everything was done. The trickiest part was with the ABS unit. It did not require replacing, but the cables there weren't easy to retrofit. Pedals and Gear shifter were basically plug and play, again with some extra wiring for the shifter. The stupidest thing was that the whole front interior had to come out (dash and everything) as the wiring loom as just one big loom which goes all through the front. Of course we wanted to do everything as it should, so no cables spanning through the floor

At the end the recoding part wasn't as easy as a had hoped. Removing the CP from the gearbox proved difficult, mainly because there was some back and forth for adding some missing wiring . After that all that was left was to explain to the car that it is now an automatic, and not a manual, which was left to the guys at Audi. After couple of tries they managed to do it.

After all now the car looks and feels as if the tiptronic was factory installed. The only thing the Audi dealership couldn't fix (and I'm still looking for a solution) is that the key does not get locked in the ignition if the car is not on Park. Thus I can remove it when it is on N or D, which creates some funny situations

And because everybody asked me why the hell I'm doing this:

1. I don't like the manual gearbox on that car with that engine. It is no fun at all
2. The automatic gearbox is quite robust and easy/cheap to maintain or replace with a second hand one if need be
3. The cost of maintaining the manual gearbox is huge in comparison and for me is not worth it - 800 to a 1000 euro for a clutch + flywheel, which with my driving style and this gearbox's behavior I would need quite often
4. The cost for the retrofit was... 300 euro + 45 euro for the recoding at Audi.
5. Refurbishing the torque convertor is ~300 euro, a full gearbox refurbish is around 1000-1100 euro and a second had one is between 500-700 euro
6. From the research I did, the manual gearbox is not strong enough (without upgrading) to handle proper remapping. In any case the life expectancy of the clutch + flywheel would come down significantly. At the moment I have the car at a 500nm/280hp (prognoses, I will put it on a dyno soon)

Well that's it. The next one on the list is the sun roof as the summer is just behind the door

cal3thousand

Well, that's certainly an interesting situation to be in. Sounds like you had quite the adventure. Thanks for sharing

beep-beep

did you keep the clutch pedal in place?

otherwise I would agree that it is hard to compete with 6sp automatic. And it does not make much sense to drive A6 with manual.

kainy

No, I had to remove it to fit the pedals for the automatic (the brake pedal is bigger, thus no space for the clutch), and of course there was no point in keeping it . It was a bit of a hassle to tell the car that it does not have a clutch anymore, and that was mostly because the service shop did the hardware conversion before the coding, which led to errors in the ABS unit, which I needed to clear in the Audi dealership (vcds didn't cut it).

Nevertheless, for my surprise, the car was perfectly drivable before recoding it a bit flashy with errors, but worked nonetheless.