Audi Coupe GT rolling resto

I've not done alot on the GT recently and probably won't get much done for the next few weeks now. I've got a set of discs/pads to fit to a Vectra today, then college want me to go to Eastern Trucks in Stallingborough for a couple of weeks on a work placement, plus I've got to find time to fit new brake lines to a Merc C class at some point as well.

The one thing I have done to the Coupe is fit a new clutch fluid reservoir, the baby bottle bodge had started to leak slightly and air was getting in so I bought a motorcycle one off ebay and fitted that instead



At some point I'll get round to making up a proper mounting bracket for it but that can wait til I buy a load of steel to weld up a rust hole in the boot floor. Does anyone know where the best place to buy steel is?

have a word with lemski (liam) - he has just bought a big sheet of 2mm plate for £30 i think

Been a while since I've done anything to the Coupe but with the MOT being only a month away I figured I should start poking round and seeing what it'll fail on...

First thing was the front suspension, at slow speeds on full lock you hear a clunk and the car shifts slightly so there's something not quite right. Turns out that the bottom balljoints on both sides are about knackered as well as both track rod end balljoints. Oh yeah, the anti-roll bar bushes have perished as well



None of this is really a surprise considering how long it was stored, but it's expense I can do without at the mo

Then I started checking the sills and chassis for rust and this fell off



It's the o/s/f jacking point, it should be attached up here



Fortunatly the previous owner is a good welder and has agreed to fix it.

Other than that there's a couple of niggly problems like the horn not working again and a perished exhaust hanger.

Now I just need to save up the money for the parts since in typical Audi fashion nothing is cheap, but at least once it's all done it'll drive properly again!

glad to see another update. i am sure you will get everything sorted.

just noticed the post about the central locking - good work

lewis1641 wrote:glad to see another update. i am sure you will get everything sorted.

just noticed the post about the central locking - good work

Cheers fella, hopefully I'll get it sorted fairly soon as a friend who's in the parts business is going to try to get me a discount on what I need. Although it's looking like I might have to polybush the anti-roll bar as standard parts are NLA

I haven't driven it for a few weeks now as it really isn't safe, it does all kinds of weird and wonderful things going round corners or hitting potholes

At least I'll be able to come along to meets again once it's fixed, I still haven't had a good look round your mk2

my mk 2 is best viewed from a few paces back. or underneath i suppose

I've had a busy day today! I thought I'd make life easy for myself by ordering everying I need from GSF since they said they had everything in stock. I ordered 2x brake drums, 2x rear wheel bearing kits, 2x track rod ends and 2x bottom ball joints. Got to GSF to pick them up only to be told they only had 1 bearing kit but I'm not in a rush to change the drums so no great problem. Plus they gave me a nice big discount so I wasn't going to moan about it.

When I got home I started stripping the car and checking all the bits were right. First problem came when I compared the drums, GSF have supplied 180mm drums and I've got 200mm on the car so I phoned them back up and was told that the drums I need are actually gonna cost £40 each + vat and will take a week to arrive. That's a bit too much for me so the drums will have to wait even longer now. Next problem arrived when I checked the ball joints. o/s/f is correct but the n/s/f is wrong, so I'll have to take that back as well.

On the plus side though I've managed to track down some anti roll bar bushes from Pete Reeve @ Quattro Corner. He's a really helpful bloke and knows his stuff about old Audi's.

Time for some pictures

Anti roll bar off, it practically fell off the car when I undone the nuts, the bushes were that worn:



Next I pulled the wishbones, note the uneven wear on the brake disc in this pic, looks like i've got a sticky caliper which explains some of the funky handling when braking



Discovered that the wishbone bushes were fucked as well as the previous owner having welded the balljoint to the wishbone:



I now need two new wishbones complete with bushes and a pair of brake discs

The only other problem I've come up against is the track rod ends won't release from the struts so I'm gonna have to buy a ball joint spliter and try that.

I've been on the verge of slinging tools at the car after all this, but once I've fixed it all it'll be worth it for that first drive when it actually goes round corners properly!

The Coupe's birthday has come early



I've got
2x front lower wishbones
2x bottom balljoints
2x track rod ends
2x rear wheel bearing kits
1x exhaust mount
Set of anti roll bar bushes
Push button switch for the horn

Trying to find parts for this car has been a nighmare, It's taken over a week and 8 different companies from all over the country to get the above parts. Unipart even managed to supply me with rear drums with the wrong pcd and wishbones for a different car, although they did get the correct track rod ends, problem was I'd told them not to order them as I'd found them cheaper from GSF

First job was to refurb my anti roll bar. I cleaned the rust off with a wire wheel on my angle grinder then gave it a couple of coats of paint. The inner bushes are easy to swap, just warm them up in hot water then slide them over the ends with plenty of washing up liquid. The outer bushes put up more of a challenge though. I'd asked my local garage to press them in but they didn't have the right adaptor so after asking on the Classic Audi forum I ended up making this:



Basically it’s a threaded bar with a big socket that goes behind the arb, a metal tube that acts as a guide and stops the bush from spreading outwards then a big washer to pull the bush downwards and into the arb. Then after lots of swearing I ended up with this:



Next job was to change the track rod ends. Had to use a blow torch to heat the locknuts up and then undid them with some stilsons. Also make sure to count the number of turns it takes to get the old ends off so you can get the new ones on in roughly the right place. I’ve got a bit too much toe in now so I’ll need to get the wheel alignment done

Track rod end replaced:



Then I fitted the ball joints into the wishbones, these are adjustable for changing the camber so I’ll have to get that set as well when it goes for a wheel alignment.

I then bolted the wishbones to the subframe and the hubs. One tip is to not do the wishbone to subframe bolts up fully tight until the car is on the floor again. This means that the bushes won’t be strained with the suspension at rest.



Last job was to bolt the arb back up



Other than the work on the front suspension I’ve also re-wired the horn to a push button on the dash, the one on the steering wheel only works when it wants and I can’t be bothered to pull the wheel off and find the fault.

The only things I need to sort out now are to replace the rear brake drums and bearings as well as a bit of welding on the driver’s sill, then it’ll hopefully pass it’s MOT!

Previous owner popped round the other day as well so I asked him when the discs were last changed due to the wear on the inside edge. He reckons they're meant to be like that as that's how he brought them. Still not convinced they're right though

Good work bud

looks like a lot of sweat blood and tears.

i hate it when you hit that point of wanting to smash things up. i am really bad with mechanics and short tempered - once threw an axle stand through the windscreen of my beetle because i couldnt get a wing bolt undone lol

calmed down a bit now mind

Haven't actually done anything to the Coupe recently as I've been down in Plymouth visiting the other half's family. But I have come across a website ( www.howmanyleft.co.uk ) that claims there's only 65 Coupe GT's on the road and another 95 that are sorn'd. Not sure the info is completely accurate but it goes some way to explaining why I've only seen 1 other Coupe in the 6 months that I've owned it!

Again I've not done much, except cleaning a load of electrical terminals as it was struggling to start and run. She's much happier now.

Also I've had the tracking done by my local garage (Binbrook Motors).

The one interesting thing is that I've acquired a spare engine and ancillaries from a bloke on the Classic Audi forum for £20. I'm going to collect it on Thursday and I'll post some pics up once I've got it. He says it's done about 100k miles so if it's decent I might re-build it with performance parts and drop it into the Coupe, otherwise I'll strip it for parts

I've now picked up my spare engine for only £20. The bloke was only selling it because he'd picked up a 20v 7A engine. I've had a check over of it and it seems to be in good condition. I've stuck a bit of oil down the bores to make sure they don't rust and turned it over by hand a couple of times to make sure it's not siezed.

Now it's just a case of saving up lot's of pennies so I can begin the rebuild with a few performance parts. As standard the KV engine should be around 135bhp. Hopefully with a ported and polished head, bigger valves, a 272 cam and possibly a lightened/balanced bottom end I should see the exciting side of 170bhp and a truck load of torque. This might be a bit optimistic but I can dream

Anyway, here's a pic of the engine in it's new home



Other than the engine the welding on the driver's sill has been done. Didn't get any pics of that though as I forgot to take some and I've now put the sill cover back on. The welding was done by the previous owner and it's top notch, far better than anything I could of done. Once I've got some more welding gas I'm going to tackle a bit of rust I found on the boot floor, it won't be seen so my messy welding isn't going to matter.

So now she's nearly ready for MOT, all I've got to do is replace a worn brake drum and that should be that. I'll be gutted if it doesn't pass as I've already spent a fortune getting it this far.

I seem to have fixed the problems I was having with my back brakes being unbalanced .

Then I decided to poke round a small rust hole in the boot floor to see how much of a repair it'd need. It rapidly went from the size of a 1p to this:



Bollocks!

Looks like I'll have to buy some more welding gas tomorrow

It's almost time for the dreaded MOT! It's booked in for Monday at 10:15 so I've been charging round getting the last few things done to the Coupe.

The hole in the boot has now been welded up. I was going to do this but the previous owner came round and took pity on my pathetic attempts. All he wanted in return was dinner because he couldn't be arsed to cook!

Here's what the boot floor looks like now, the colour match is completely off but it's hidden by the carpet so doesn't really matter



While I was cleaning up the underside ready for welding I decided to take the rear bumper off for better access and discovered yet more rust. Fortunately it's only surface. I'm not gonna have time to deal with this at the moment but the plan is clean all the rust off, apply Kurust to stop it coming back and spray it up again. I'll probably give it a coat of underseal as well since I think it's been caused by stones flicking up against the back bumper and then against the valance



Next problem came when I put the rear wheels back on and decided to check for play in the bearings. Both sides have excessive play and even with nipping the hub nut up slightly it was still there

I bought a set of rear bearings a couple of months ago so figured I better change them



The pic above shows the new bearings installed. You can see some cut outs just above the outer bearings, these are there to make removing the old bearings easier. Just use a hammer and punch to knock them out.

Putting the new inner bearing race in can be a bit of a challenge if you havent got the correct tools like me. In the pic above you can also see the old bearing race, I used this to knock the new one in. Be careful if you try it this way as you can get the old race jammed back in the drum along with the new one!

The outer bearing is far easier because it's smaller. A 30mm socket is a perfect fit and you can use the socket to knock the race in. Just make sure it goes in square



Now it's just a case of re-assembling. Problem is I think I've left my grease in a mates van so I'll have to leave putting it back on the car until tomorrow

Hopefully it'll pass it's MOT now as I need it for college on Wednesday

The Coupe is now MOT'd!

The only thing it needed was the n/s/f caliper striping and cleaning up as it was binding slightly. That took a grand total of about 15 minutes to do and now it's passed

Had a couple of advisories as well. The n/s/f tyre is close to the limit and there's still a tiny amount of play in the n/s/r wheel bearing.

Ended up having to trace electrical gremlins again yesterday. I checked all my lights last night and found some issues with one of the rear clusters but a quick clean up of the terminals and a couple of new bulbs sorted the problem. Doing this also had the added benefit of making my 'lights on' warning buzzer come back to life. Didn't even know the car had one, so then spent 10 minutes trying to work out what it was!

I've missed driving this car, felt great to take it to college last Thursday and give it a proper run again

The next thing to be repaired on the Coupe is the horn. It's meant to have dual tone horns on it but for some reason the low tone was missing which makes it sound really pathetic.

A quick scout on ebay nabbed me a new pair at a knock down price so I wasted no time in getting them fitted



The old one was looking worse for wear, the plastic trumpet had cracked and the metal parts had rusted badly



The new ones were nice and easy to fit. I just had to do a little bit of extra wiring and find a bolt to mount them securely



Next up on the list is to give her a proper clean inside and out as she's a right mess. I hate cleaning cars though so it might be a while before I get round to it

Update time!

I got bored one day last week and decided to sort my centre console out as it’s never been attached properly so I took it all out and refitted it. While it was out I figured it was a good time to check why the oil temp gauge doesn’t work. After checking the wires for power etc... I worked out it wasn’t getting a signal, so then went about looking for the sender and found it had been replaced with a bolt . Fortunately I’ve got a spare engine sat in the shed so started nicking bits off that.

Here’s the missing sender:



Nice simple fix and all my VDO gauges now work as they should

Next thing to look at was the charging system. It’s never been great but recently I’ve only been getting around 12.5v at the battery with the engine running. Since the majority of problems I’ve had with the Coupe have been down to dodgy wiring the first thing I did was a voltage drop test and soon found the culprit:



This was the live wire that ran from the alternator to the starter motor, it pretty much fell apart when I took it off the car. I’ve replaced it with a length of 16mm black wire I had kicking about but once I’ve got some spare cash I’ll put a proper red cable in for simplicities sake. The black cable should be good for about 110amps so shouldn’t cause an issue for the moment.

While I was down there I took a good look at the alternator. The pulley was rusted to hell and the bearings were grumbling slightly, so that got swapped for the one off the spare engine as well.

Original alternator:



The upshot of this is that the original alternator could only put out a paltry 55amps while the spare is good for 75amps

I now have a much healthier 13.8v charging voltage which is still slightly on the low side but far better than it was.

Next up was sorting out the rear speakers. The sound quality was crap so I started testing the speaker wires for resistance knowing this car has extreme wiring gremlins. My guess was right so I set out changing them for some I’d bought on EBay.

Getting the rear seats and shelf out was an absolute pig of a job and it was pissing down with rain so didn’t take any pics of this one, but now everything is back together with new wiring the sound quality is much better.

I’ve also just received a new set of front speakers, they’re Vibe Edge ED204’s. At the moment the GT has got the original 3.5” speakers in. The new ones are 4” so it’s taken quite a bit of modification to fit them in.

New speakers:



The original idea was to make some custom pods that would allow the speaker to fit flush with the dash. Unfortunately the new grill wouldn’t fit in the space between the A pillar and the clocks so I had to work out a way of fitting 4” speakers in 3.5” holes.

First job was to remove the old speakers:



As you can see the grill is molded into the speaker so I had to cut it apart to re-use the grill:



Then I set about enlarging the holes in the dash to take bigger speakers but still be able to fit the original grills in to keep a nice stock appearance. After quite a bit of fettling this is what I’ve ended up with:



Very happy with the result!

I ran out of light doing the driver’s side so I’ll try to get the other done tomorrow before college.

Thanks for reading

Not fucking impressed

I've spent hundreds of pounds on this car and more hours than I care to remember only for this to happen in the college car park

Si_CoupeGT wrote:Not fucking impressed

I've spent hundreds of pounds on this car and more hours than I care to remember only for this to happen in the college car park

Thats rubbish mate! Feel sorry for you!
You found who done it?
Hope you get it sorted, been enjoying reading this so far lol!

Jord_C wrote:Thats rubbish mate! Feel sorry for you!
You found who done it?
Hope you get it sorted, been enjoying reading this so far lol!

Yeah, a 19 yr old in a silver Astra, in all fairness to him he stopped instead of driving off. His mother has agreed to pay for the damage rather than go through the insurance. Her bodyshop reckon it's repairable but it's split the door skin at the bottom and creased the metal, plus fucked the door lock and electric window. I'm waiting on a price for a complete second hand door that I've been offered, just need to confirm the paintcode for it.

Si_CoupeGT wrote:

Jord_C wrote:Thats rubbish mate! Feel sorry for you!
You found who done it?
Hope you get it sorted, been enjoying reading this so far lol!

Yeah, a 19 yr old in a silver Astra, in all fairness to him he stopped instead of driving off. His mother has agreed to pay for the damage rather than go through the insurance. Her bodyshop reckon it's repairable but it's split the door skin at the bottom and creased the metal, plus fucked the door lock and electric window. I'm waiting on a price for a complete second hand door that I've been offered, just need to confirm the paintcode for it.

that really sucks maan... u'l get it sorted though its just a massive annoyance as u rlli have keep nice things nowa days

The other party has decided to give me the money to repair my door now. They originally wanted it repaired at Grimsby Car and Van Centre who were only going to knock the dent out and re touch the paint. They weren't even going to replace the door lock and rubbing strip. Grimsby C&V Centre even had the cheek to say 'It's an old car, what does it matter?'. Fucking cunts, I'll never be dealing with those cowboys again. When I phoned the other party to let them know I wasn't happy and parts needed repalcing they threatened to phone the police on me!?! I said that was fine,and I'd call the insurance while they called the police. They suddenly changed their mind and agreed to pay me in full for what I've priced the repairs up to be.

Moral of the story then kids?

If some twat hits your car don't try to be nice, just phone the insurance and let them sort it

Si_CoupeGT wrote:The other party has decided to give me the money to repair my door now. They originally wanted it repaired at Grimsby Car and Van Centre who were only going to knock the dent out and re touch the paint. They weren't even going to replace the door lock and rubbing strip. Grimsby C&V Centre even had the cheek to say 'It's an old car, what does it matter?'. Fucking cunts, I'll never be dealing with those cowboys again. When I phoned the other party to let them know I wasn't happy and parts needed repalcing they threatened to phone the police on me!?! I said that was fine,and I'd call the insurance while they called the police. They suddenly changed their mind and agreed to pay me in full for what I've priced the repairs up to be.

Moral of the story then kids?

If some twat hits your car don't try to be nice, just phone the insurance and let them sort it

glad your getting it sorted now dude was a shame to see it like that but it'l soon be back on fine form....

and there all dicks saying its an old car so it doesn't matter... some people really dont not the point and meaning behind an older car they have so much more to give that a new car will ever have and an old car has soul and thats the way it'l stay

Hi all,

My new door arrived this morning so hopefully over the weekend I'll be able to crack on with the change over! The new one is in pretty much mint condition although it is a different colour which doesn't matter too much as the whole car might be getting sprayed next summer! Here the are the pictures the seller sent to me:









I've also managed to finally put my hands on the trims for the n/s headlight and the lower bumper grill which should tidy the car up no end