offroad allroad
02-25-2013, 08:54 PM
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offroad allroad
Was laying in bed the other night, thinking to myself... I really don't have enough going on. I need another project! Something to take it along with me and the motorhome. Had purchased an astrosafari van a while ago and rallied the **** out of it, but decided that it really didn't meet my needs. So started collecting parts to put my little CJ5 together. But it's so damn small, and I've got four big dogs to haul around. Feeling a little bit like Goldilocks, decided that probably wasn't the right choice either.
Spent a few months shopping for a station wagon. Ended up buying a 1987 Mercedes 300TD, but this allroad popped-up a few days later and had to jump on it. Price was too good to pass up, even if all the maintenance-related horror stories turn out to be true.
This is a 2002 with the 2.7L twin turbo engine and tiptronic auto. Has 160,000 miles on it, but came with a stack of receipts from the local Audi dealer. Last major service was at 152,000 miles and had the timing belt replaced at 109,000 miles - at a cost of $7,500!?! Jeezus, no wonder people are giving these away. Hoping to get at least 20,000 miles out of it without any big expenses. Guess we'll have to wait and see, but am cautiously optimistic as it's actually still in pretty great shape, was owned by someone who was able to afford to have it serviced by an Audi dealer, and it seems to run great.
So naturally, the first thing I did was tear it apart.
Spent a few months shopping for a station wagon. Ended up buying a 1987 Mercedes 300TD, but this allroad popped-up a few days later and had to jump on it. Price was too good to pass up, even if all the maintenance-related horror stories turn out to be true.
This is a 2002 with the 2.7L twin turbo engine and tiptronic auto. Has 160,000 miles on it, but came with a stack of receipts from the local Audi dealer. Last major service was at 152,000 miles and had the timing belt replaced at 109,000 miles - at a cost of $7,500!?! Jeezus, no wonder people are giving these away. Hoping to get at least 20,000 miles out of it without any big expenses. Guess we'll have to wait and see, but am cautiously optimistic as it's actually still in pretty great shape, was owned by someone who was able to afford to have it serviced by an Audi dealer, and it seems to run great.
So naturally, the first thing I did was tear it apart.
02-25-2013, 08:55 PM
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The allroads are only rated to tow something like 3,000lbs, but evidently the exact same vehicle are rated to tow 5,000lbs everywhere else. No idea why. Not planning on pushing those limits, but needed to get a receiver hitch sorted out. hmmm. But nobody makes one. At least, not a proper 2" receiver hitch, and the brickety-brackety 1.25" receivers that are available bolt to the sheetmetal under the spare tire. There's a euro hitch available, but that costs over $800 and uses a wacky round-shaped vertically-mounted receiver.
Was in a hurry to get down to watch by brother Robo-Boogie go race King of the Motos and wanted to use the Audi to pick up an M101A3 trailer while I was down there. Didn't have time to design and build a nice custom hitch. Thought I'd run out of options, but found this thread on audiworld. Looked like a pretty solid setup. The guy had obviously put a lot of time and effort into designing it. Seemed like a decent value too.
But he didn't have any in-stock. Dammit. Sent him a message, explaining the situation and asking if he might consider selling me blueprints. Was honestly kinda surprised when he replied, and agreed. He made the whole thing too easy for me. A few clicks through paypal and I was looking at Solidworks files. But more than that, he'd provided me with full manufacturing blueprints, material/cut lists, and detailed instructions. Very thorough. And very much appreciated. Thanks again Justin!
Was in a hurry to get down to watch by brother Robo-Boogie go race King of the Motos and wanted to use the Audi to pick up an M101A3 trailer while I was down there. Didn't have time to design and build a nice custom hitch. Thought I'd run out of options, but found this thread on audiworld. Looked like a pretty solid setup. The guy had obviously put a lot of time and effort into designing it. Seemed like a decent value too.
But he didn't have any in-stock. Dammit. Sent him a message, explaining the situation and asking if he might consider selling me blueprints. Was honestly kinda surprised when he replied, and agreed. He made the whole thing too easy for me. A few clicks through paypal and I was looking at Solidworks files. But more than that, he'd provided me with full manufacturing blueprints, material/cut lists, and detailed instructions. Very thorough. And very much appreciated. Thanks again Justin!
02-25-2013, 08:56 PM
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And then it turned out that I didn't end up having to drive the Audi down to KOM in the end after all. Which was good because it needed new tires and knew that I'd regret buying tires without checking to see what it might clear. Not planning on getting too crazy, but want to be able to get 'out there'. These allroads have an adjustable height air-ride suspension system, so they already have pretty good ground clearance (up to 8.2").
The first thing I wanted to do was measure the brakes to see if they would clear this template that I downloaded from Team Dynamics website. I'd read that their 15" Pro Rally wheels clear the big brakes on WRX's, so figured that would be a good place to start. Plenty of clearance. Over 1/4". But evidently some of the earlier allroads are equipped with larger, more powerful, front calipers and I have the smaller/****tier ones. In any case, I'd really like to run something smaller than the stock 17" rims. 16's would be ok, but 15's would be even better.
Those Pro Rally wheels are pretty rad, but felt like I had to eliminate cheaper alternatives, including stock takeoff wheels and less expensive aftermarket wheels before spending that kind of money. The allroad uses Audi's standard 5 on 112mm lug pattern, but the offset is unique. ET25, vs. 35-45 on most other applications that I've found. So that forces me to run spacers. Not a problem, just something to factor into the budget because the Team Dynamics wheels are all custom-made to order. America's Tire/Discount Tire is also the US importer so I wouldn't have to pay to have them mounted if I bought a complete wheel/tire package through them.
The aftermarket for smaller wheels has really dried-up. Bigger is better and all that. OZ Racing is making some of these Sparco wheels in 15 and 16" sizes, but they don't make 15's with the right lug pattern and they don't make anything narrower than a 7" wide in 16's, and those have an offset of ET35. The price is right, but you get what you pay for and these are all gravity cast and the load ratings for their 16" wheels are only 1278-1488lbs. Dunno how that compares to OEM wheels, but that seems low? Audi does make some nice looking 15-16" wheels and I'm thinking that might be my best bet at this point. Really hard to justify the additional expense for custom 15" wheels.
The first thing I wanted to do was measure the brakes to see if they would clear this template that I downloaded from Team Dynamics website. I'd read that their 15" Pro Rally wheels clear the big brakes on WRX's, so figured that would be a good place to start. Plenty of clearance. Over 1/4". But evidently some of the earlier allroads are equipped with larger, more powerful, front calipers and I have the smaller/****tier ones. In any case, I'd really like to run something smaller than the stock 17" rims. 16's would be ok, but 15's would be even better.
Those Pro Rally wheels are pretty rad, but felt like I had to eliminate cheaper alternatives, including stock takeoff wheels and less expensive aftermarket wheels before spending that kind of money. The allroad uses Audi's standard 5 on 112mm lug pattern, but the offset is unique. ET25, vs. 35-45 on most other applications that I've found. So that forces me to run spacers. Not a problem, just something to factor into the budget because the Team Dynamics wheels are all custom-made to order. America's Tire/Discount Tire is also the US importer so I wouldn't have to pay to have them mounted if I bought a complete wheel/tire package through them.
The aftermarket for smaller wheels has really dried-up. Bigger is better and all that. OZ Racing is making some of these Sparco wheels in 15 and 16" sizes, but they don't make 15's with the right lug pattern and they don't make anything narrower than a 7" wide in 16's, and those have an offset of ET35. The price is right, but you get what you pay for and these are all gravity cast and the load ratings for their 16" wheels are only 1278-1488lbs. Dunno how that compares to OEM wheels, but that seems low? Audi does make some nice looking 15-16" wheels and I'm thinking that might be my best bet at this point. Really hard to justify the additional expense for custom 15" wheels.
02-25-2013, 08:58 PM
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While it was up on jacks, decided to remove the shocks and cycle the suspension to get a better idea of exactly what we're working with here. From everything I'm reading, the air suspension is less-than-reliable and expensive to fix. There's nothing wrong with the air suspension on my allroad right now, just thinking ahead. Mostly because if I do anything that affects wheel-travel, that will affect tire clearance.
Had to go buy something called a 'triple square bit' in order to remove the front air shock from the upper mount, but otherwise it was all pretty straightforward. Once the shocks were out of the vehicle, cycled them to full-compression using a hydraulic press because they have internal bumpstops and I wanted to take measurements at FULL-compression.
The front suspension uses two ball-joints on the upper/lower arms out at the spindles. Very curious as to why. Understand that it's going to create a floating pivot-point, but wonder what the designers were trying to achieve by using them here in this way.
The way the spindle is shaped is going to make fitting oversized tires tricky.
Disconnected the vehicle height sensor linkage and the swaybar so I could cycle the suspension freely.
Front suspension cycles clean and tucks up all the way up into the wheelwell until the rear upper balljoint makes contact with the wheelwell sheetmetal. The rear upper control arm is getting pretty close to the upper shock mounting bracket at that point, and the front upper control arm is not too far behind. Didn't remove the disassemble the balljoints, so don't know how close they were to binding, but they were not the limiting factor.
The stock tires clear at full-full-full-compression too. At least when they're pointed straight ahead.
When the suspension is cycled full-compression with the stock shock, the stock size tire (measured 26.375") barely clears the the outer lip of the plastic fender flare (by about .125") when the wheels are turned in either direction.
Tire clearance is better everywhere else, and there's still about an .625" of clearance between the top of the tire and the metal part of the fender up inside the wheelwell when the front suspension is at full-compression (with stock shocks) and the wheels are at full-lock (in either direction). It's not real likely that the wheels would ever be turned any significant amount when the suspension is bottomed-out like that, am only relating what I found out.
The only other place that clearance gets tight is at the back/inside of the tire/wheelwell. There's only about .5" clearance between the tire and the wheelwell/firewall at full-compression and full-lock.
But there's really not too much to be gained on the compression-side up front anyway. Only about .3125" additional shock stroke, which results in about .5" additional wheel travel. Would be inclined to leave well enough alone there, at about 7.875" total wheel travel stock. Could squeeze another inch out of it, but without much (any ) room left for any kind of fudge-factor.
Oh, and the suspension cycles really clean, with minimal camber change (less than 3 degrees total camber change) and very mild CV angles (outer CV at 16 degrees up at full-compression & 14 degrees down at full-extension). Didn't get a chance to measure CV plunge or bump-steer.
Moving on to the rear suspension, I was ready to acknowledge that Audi had done a great job and that there wasn't much to be improved on. Then I cycled the rear suspension to full compression. Wow! It sucked waaaay up there. Much further than the stock shocks allow, to the point that it's absolutely unusable (there's all kinds of tire/fender interference). But it's still clean travel, without any super funky camber/toe changes, horrible CV angles, etc.
Was thinking about how to take advantage of some of that untapped compression travel, thinking there might be some major performance gains there. But my head just about exploded when I cycled the rear suspension to full extension. Un-fawking-believable. The stock rear shocks appear to cycle about 4.1875", which results in about 6.5" of total wheel-travel. Less than the front? Seems like it, yeah. But an 8.5" stroke shock would result in a whopping 13.25" of total wheel-travel with a total of 8 degrees of camber gain and CV angles at 14.5 degrees (up, only 5.5 degrees at outer including wheel camber) at full-compression & 21 degrees (down, 22 degrees at outer including wheel camber) at full-extension). Not sure what kind of angles the stock CV's max-out at, but this looks really promising. Thinking it might not be a bad idea to lower the rear subframe a little bit so I can allow the suspension to cycle a little further on compression and obviously let it droop-out a little (lot) further too.
The tire/fender interference is all on the outside and there's actually plenty of clearance on the inside (relatively speaking), so might not be a bad idea to suck the rear wheels/tires in a little bit. Skinny tires are going to to be the key to making this work.
Called 2Bennett and Arnott last week and they both make aftermarket air shocks and coilover conversions for these allroads. Looking forward to following-up with them to see what we might be able to do about fitting-up some longer-stroke shocks.
Had to go buy something called a 'triple square bit' in order to remove the front air shock from the upper mount, but otherwise it was all pretty straightforward. Once the shocks were out of the vehicle, cycled them to full-compression using a hydraulic press because they have internal bumpstops and I wanted to take measurements at FULL-compression.
The front suspension uses two ball-joints on the upper/lower arms out at the spindles. Very curious as to why. Understand that it's going to create a floating pivot-point, but wonder what the designers were trying to achieve by using them here in this way.
The way the spindle is shaped is going to make fitting oversized tires tricky.
Disconnected the vehicle height sensor linkage and the swaybar so I could cycle the suspension freely.
Front suspension cycles clean and tucks up all the way up into the wheelwell until the rear upper balljoint makes contact with the wheelwell sheetmetal. The rear upper control arm is getting pretty close to the upper shock mounting bracket at that point, and the front upper control arm is not too far behind. Didn't remove the disassemble the balljoints, so don't know how close they were to binding, but they were not the limiting factor.
The stock tires clear at full-full-full-compression too. At least when they're pointed straight ahead.
When the suspension is cycled full-compression with the stock shock, the stock size tire (measured 26.375") barely clears the the outer lip of the plastic fender flare (by about .125") when the wheels are turned in either direction.
Tire clearance is better everywhere else, and there's still about an .625" of clearance between the top of the tire and the metal part of the fender up inside the wheelwell when the front suspension is at full-compression (with stock shocks) and the wheels are at full-lock (in either direction). It's not real likely that the wheels would ever be turned any significant amount when the suspension is bottomed-out like that, am only relating what I found out.
The only other place that clearance gets tight is at the back/inside of the tire/wheelwell. There's only about .5" clearance between the tire and the wheelwell/firewall at full-compression and full-lock.
But there's really not too much to be gained on the compression-side up front anyway. Only about .3125" additional shock stroke, which results in about .5" additional wheel travel. Would be inclined to leave well enough alone there, at about 7.875" total wheel travel stock. Could squeeze another inch out of it, but without much (any ) room left for any kind of fudge-factor.
Oh, and the suspension cycles really clean, with minimal camber change (less than 3 degrees total camber change) and very mild CV angles (outer CV at 16 degrees up at full-compression & 14 degrees down at full-extension). Didn't get a chance to measure CV plunge or bump-steer.
Moving on to the rear suspension, I was ready to acknowledge that Audi had done a great job and that there wasn't much to be improved on. Then I cycled the rear suspension to full compression. Wow! It sucked waaaay up there. Much further than the stock shocks allow, to the point that it's absolutely unusable (there's all kinds of tire/fender interference). But it's still clean travel, without any super funky camber/toe changes, horrible CV angles, etc.
Was thinking about how to take advantage of some of that untapped compression travel, thinking there might be some major performance gains there. But my head just about exploded when I cycled the rear suspension to full extension. Un-fawking-believable. The stock rear shocks appear to cycle about 4.1875", which results in about 6.5" of total wheel-travel. Less than the front? Seems like it, yeah. But an 8.5" stroke shock would result in a whopping 13.25" of total wheel-travel with a total of 8 degrees of camber gain and CV angles at 14.5 degrees (up, only 5.5 degrees at outer including wheel camber) at full-compression & 21 degrees (down, 22 degrees at outer including wheel camber) at full-extension). Not sure what kind of angles the stock CV's max-out at, but this looks really promising. Thinking it might not be a bad idea to lower the rear subframe a little bit so I can allow the suspension to cycle a little further on compression and obviously let it droop-out a little (lot) further too.
The tire/fender interference is all on the outside and there's actually plenty of clearance on the inside (relatively speaking), so might not be a bad idea to suck the rear wheels/tires in a little bit. Skinny tires are going to to be the key to making this work.
Called 2Bennett and Arnott last week and they both make aftermarket air shocks and coilover conversions for these allroads. Looking forward to following-up with them to see what we might be able to do about fitting-up some longer-stroke shocks.
02-25-2013, 08:59 PM
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Today I worked on the rear bumper/receiver. Removing the stock rear bumper is pretty straightforward, except that the way it clips into the body on the sides made me afraid that I was going to break something as I tried to pull the bumper away from the body. Fortunately Josh's instructions included a few helpful tips that weren't in the instructions and he suggested loosening these phillips head screws in order to make it a little easier to pull the bumper away from those clips.
Pacfab cut-out all these brackets for me last week and I was able to get all the formed pieces put together today.
Think I'm going to ditch the vertical receiver and just cut a hole in the stock bumper so I can poke the 2" receiver straight out the back. Seems like it will work more better and am going to wrap the rear bumper with a low-profile rolled tube bumper anyway. Probably a swing-out spare tire carrier too (no room for a fullsize spare in the stock location).
Pacfab cut-out all these brackets for me last week and I was able to get all the formed pieces put together today.
Think I'm going to ditch the vertical receiver and just cut a hole in the stock bumper so I can poke the 2" receiver straight out the back. Seems like it will work more better and am going to wrap the rear bumper with a low-profile rolled tube bumper anyway. Probably a swing-out spare tire carrier too (no room for a fullsize spare in the stock location).
02-27-2013, 09:06 AM
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Spent some more time working on the rear bumper yesterday. Took a long time to get the bumper support all fit-up right and aligned with the receiver hitch. But the plastic bumper fits to that aluminum support, so if it's not perfect, it's going to look all wonky. Fits really well though.
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02-27-2013, 09:07 AM
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Going to try to get the plastic bumper all trimmed-out and fit-up today, and am going to pierce two pieces of 2" tubing through the bumper to mount a real simple 1.5-1.75" rolled tube bumper and swingout spare tire carrier.
Think I'm going to mount the 1.5-1.75" tube bumper to 1.75" tubes that will slide into those those 2" stubs that will be welded to the receiver hitch. Thought about using something like Camburg's tubing clamps, but I want the rolled tube bumper to wrap around the plastic bumper and fit real tight. So am thinking I might just tack-weld the tubes into place (on the bottom) once it's all assembled. Unless anyone has any better ideas?
Going to use a short piece of 3" x .25-wall tubing to make a slip-fit collar for the receiver hitch that will support the center-section of the bumper.
Think I'm going to mount the 1.5-1.75" tube bumper to 1.75" tubes that will slide into those those 2" stubs that will be welded to the receiver hitch. Thought about using something like Camburg's tubing clamps, but I want the rolled tube bumper to wrap around the plastic bumper and fit real tight. So am thinking I might just tack-weld the tubes into place (on the bottom) once it's all assembled. Unless anyone has any better ideas?
Going to use a short piece of 3" x .25-wall tubing to make a slip-fit collar for the receiver hitch that will support the center-section of the bumper.
02-27-2013, 10:18 AM
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Looking good. I was thinking that you would put the horizontal receiver under the main tube to get it a little lower, but this works too. Will there be enough clearance with the plastic bumper cover on to get the hitch pin in the hole? I can't remember off hand how thick the plastic cover is.
02-27-2013, 08:51 PM
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Looking good. I was thinking that you would put the horizontal receiver under the main tube to get it a little lower, but this works too. Will there be enough clearance with the plastic bumper cover on to get the hitch pin in the hole? I can't remember off hand how thick the plastic cover is.