B5 in the Burgh - Silver Timeline

[reb55]

Hey guys, I wanted to join the crowd and start my timeline even though my car's hardly impressive at all.

So to start with an introduction my name's Ryan and I'm from Pittsburgh (any B5ers wanna come chill in the burgh with me?) I got my 99.5 2.8 in October of last year but haven't had enough $ or time to really get much done. On New Years eve, I made the fateful move of shifting to 2nd instead of 4th. Such a noob move and still have no idea how it happened. A lot of you guys on here gave me advice on to where to order parts for my head rebuild and some other valuable information. Thanks guys!.

So.. I figured I'd rebuild the heads and try to make everything neat. Here's some pics of where it's at today:









I got a new coolant tank just haven't put it in yet. Still checking to see if I have any leaks so just running distilled water/ watter wetter for the time being.

I also have some 18 Enkei's that are black. I think they're pretty nice... I got a great deal on them but they're et53 so I'm running 1 inch hub adapters on them. Need to get some new tires and they're back on. I'd like to get some STs in the near future and a custom exhaust (2.5 no cat to y to 3 inch muffler. I'm also planning out a wire tuck and maybe a heat shield for the air filter. What do you guys think. Oh also I'm gonna get some HIDs hopefully but I think I'm leaving the amber in my lights. I kinda like it haha. Any advice guys?

[reb55]

Oh and if it's ever 2am, you're changing brake pads, and you don't have a 6 inch c-clamp you can improvise like this lol



Couldn't find a 6" c-clamp at 2am so I used the old pad, crescent wrench, bolt with wide flange nut, and needle nose pliers. the wide nut sits against the pliers and the bolt pushes the wrench against the pad to compress the piston. this contraption worked very well

[vr6pwns_me]

looks decent under there. I'll be up in the beaver falls area by the end of the year/fall.

[reb55]

thanks man! School just ended so I'll be back at my internship Monday. Gas prices are gonna suck

[Mihai_A4-B5_]

very nice dude! wat i wouldnt give to have a nice clean engine bay

how does it drive now with the rebuilt head??

[reb55]

It drives really strong as far as the engine goes. I put all new control arms in but there's still a clunk coming from the right side. I believe its the shock so I'm just gonna hold out and deal with it till I get my STs haha. But yeah the engine definitely pulls like it should. But more importantly its clean haha. You can get yours there it just takes a lot of work. I'll be doing a whole lot more on mine still

[demonmk2]

wow, you did a great job on that engine/bay looks good

[reb55]

thanks! The 2.8s plumbing is ugly to put it nicely. I did the best I could by running some red vac lines and using some stainless steel for the pcv line. its kinda ghetto rigged but actually looks nice so as long as it does its job I'm happy with it.

Next up I'll be plasti - dipping some of the crap on the right. Hate to copy but Nick (Lazer Viking's) car has inspired me to do so. Go take a look at his million page thread and somewhere in there you can see how awesome black plasti dip can really make it look.

[reb55]

Interior Shot



I got a double din cage of the guy who sold me my heads I rebuilt. I plan on putting a pioneer head unit in it and putting an n64 in the glove box lol. Mario Kart would be cool for long road trips. I really like how the pioneer avh-4200 has cutomizeable leds so it will match my red audi lit interior very well. I may see if there's a way to hook up the H.U's lights to the dimmer switch too although that may take too much.

Also plan on installing a short throw shifter, new cluster, new headliner, and a, b, and c pillars...

[SomeDayS4]

lookin good, photography looks good as well.

[rickyb5r]

how'd you get your engine bay so clean? mines so dusty/oily and gross looking

[reb55]

how'd you get your engine bay so clean? mines so dusty/oily and gross looking

Well when I rebuilt everything I told myself that I didn't want to put everything back together if it was going to be all nasty. Had the heads and valve covers washed in a hot bath then painted them so they're red and clean. Cleaned mostly everything else with throttle body cleaner (Watch out with this stuff as it is not friends with paint) and rerouted a couple wires... It should look even cleaner by the end of next week after I paint some more stuff and re route more wires

[Mihai_A4-B5_]

definitely going to watch this

tell me for the pcv line did you modify the valve covers to have threaded exits for that braided metal line you have?? looks cool...wish i wud've thought of that before dropping $100 on OEM plastic POS!

[James Himself]

i just watched man vs food: pittsburgh. i almost left the house for primanti brothers. i havent had that sandwich in so long

[reb55]

definitely going to watch this

tell me for the pcv line did you modify the valve covers to have threaded exits for that braided metal line you have?? looks cool...wish i wud've thought of that before dropping $100 on OEM plastic POS!

For a while I had a heater hose running for my pcv. I ended up going with a barb that was slightly smaller than the opening on the valve cover and jb welding it in. Then I smoothed it out and painted it and it holds up pretty well. The other side is ghetto rigged ill put up a pic of that when I get home. I originally wanted to use AN fittings and have them welded on but for an N/A car that just wasn't practical. I suppose if you find a slightly bigger barb you could tap the valve cover and thread it in. There's a decent amount of aluminum to work with there

[reb55]

i just watched man vs food: pittsburgh. i almost left the house for primanti brothers. i havent had that sandwich in so long

I haven't had one in maybe a month. Where else did they go besides primantis? Maybe this weekend ill go snap a pic of my car infront of primantis for you haha.

You gotta come out here I've been following your thread for a while. Maybe we can arrange a gtg at primantis. Still trying to find some Pittsburgh vortexers... saw a b6 with a euro plate and pulled him over yesterday but he seemed clueless on the whole Audi scene. Just bought his car that way

[reb55]

Does anyone following this use tapatalk?
What are the benefits? I've been typing all this crap on my phone just viewing it in browser and it kinda sucks ...

[audixride]

Does anyone following this use tapatalk?
What are the benefits? I've been typing all this crap on my phone just viewing it in browser and it kinda sucks ...

damn that is one clean engine bay..

tapatalk is annoying in my opinion. I used it when i had a Mk4 GTI and was always on the vwvortex forums, but it takes forever to load if you're not on wifi

[MarcMiller]

damn i remember when you posted how you shifted from 3rd to 2nd. I did the same thing..i had my car for like a week and i missed 4th and went into 2nd at redline. worst thing ever. My car surprisingly has no problems at all. i have a 2.8 and its been pretty reliable.


any plans as far as exterior?

[reb55]

damn i remember when you posted how you shifted from 3rd to 2nd. I did the same thing..i had my car for like a week and i missed 4th and went into 2nd at redline. worst thing ever. My car surprisingly has no problems at all. i have a 2.8 and its been pretty reliable.


any plans as far as exterior?

Haha yeah that was on new years eve It certainly cost a good penny to fix but I'm glad I did take care of it. I learned a lot through the whole rebuild experience and also had the opportunity to clean the engine to the degree that it is.

Exterior plans: Fix the side molding crap that's all messed up. Any recommendations of where to get the molding? Also drop the car on some ST's or maybe something better depending on money. And put my wheels I have for it back on soon as I through some new tires on it. Had had 512s on them but they are very worn out. Anyone know where to get 225 40 18 512s??? Oh and I'll put HIDs on it and possibly get an S4 bumper. New exhaust and shaved trunk too. maybe a euro trunk?

In the meantime just cleaning up the engine wiring and painting some stuff black. Also putting some expanded mesh in the grill to try to match my rs4 grill. Trying to make it not look like rice. We'll see... Oh and I just finished the brake calipers. Just painted them red. I think they'll look nice through my black wheels. I'll put pics up as this all happens.

[a4qt]

looks good man

[KinkySlayer]

Hey guys, I wanted to join the crowd and start my timeline even though my car's hardly impressive at all.

So to start with an introduction my name's Ryan and I'm from Pittsburgh (any B5ers wanna come chill in the burgh with me?) I got my 99.5 2.8 in October of last year but haven't had enough $ or time to really get much done. On New Years eve, I made the fateful move of shifting to 2nd instead of 4th. Such a noob move and still have no idea how it happened. A lot of you guys on here gave me advice on to where to order parts for my head rebuild and some other valuable information. Thanks guys!.

So.. I figured I'd rebuild the heads and try to make everything neat. Here's some pics of where it's at today:









I got a new coolant tank just haven't put it in yet. Still checking to see if I have any leaks so just running distilled water/ watter wetter for the time being.

I also have some 18 Enkei's that are black. I think they're pretty nice... I got a great deal on them but they're et53 so I'm running 1 inch hub adapters on them. Need to get some new tires and they're back on. I'd like to get some STs in the near future and a custom exhaust (2.5 no cat to y to 3 inch muffler. I'm also planning out a wire tuck and maybe a heat shield for the air filter. What do you guys think. Oh also I'm gonna get some HIDs hopefully but I think I'm leaving the amber in my lights. I kinda like it haha. Any advice guys?

what did you replace the crank case breather hose with btw?

[reb55]

Thanks, this is what I used for crankcase breather hose. Middle hose to the back is still original. All others are either stainless steel original or hose from Lowes haha.

For a while I had a heater hose running for my pcv. I ended up going with a barb that was slightly smaller than the opening on the valve cover and jb welding it in. Then I smoothed it out and painted it and it holds up pretty well. The other side is ghetto rigged ill put up a pic of that when I get home. I originally wanted to use AN fittings and have them welded on but for an N/A car that just wasn't practical. I suppose if you find a slightly bigger barb you could tap the valve cover and thread it in. There's a decent amount of aluminum to work with there

[darrel724]

thats a clean looking b5 i got a 01 1.8t and live a hour and half above the burgh do you have any pictures with your rims on your car?

[drumonay]

bay looks gorgeous so clean

[reb55]

thats a clean looking b5 i got a 01 1.8t and live a hour and half above the burgh do you have any pictures with your rims on your car?

Where at do you live like off 79 somewhere?
I have some cell pics of my car taken last year while in the park by the observatory. (Forget the name of it ) ill upload them later tonite to show you. Wish I could afford tires right now

[darrel724]

Where at do you live like off 79 somewhere?
I have some cell pics of my car taken last year while in the park by the observatory. (Forget the name of it ) ill upload them later tonite to show you. Wish I could afford tires right now

I live by clarion. It's off of 80

[reb55]

No new exciting news other than I fried my ecu

I'm getting a new ecu after work. Its off another manual 2.8 passat. Same codes so I hope I can just drop her in.
Due to a small engine fire, I also got another harness. Ill be using the other harness to reroute all my wiring when I do the wire tuck. Hopefully I don't suck as bad at that rewiring as I did when I tried fixing a ground on my icm the other day

Got my summer wheels on even. Tho tires are bald due to a balance problem with my other set of wheels.

Gonna clay bar my car Friday so hopefully tons of new pics!

[reb55]

Figured out what I did wrong after staring at a schematic for a while. The little black box on the 2.8 that connects to the front right of the ignition control module is NOT a ground strap. It's a suppressor (capacitor that reduces noise in the circuit). So I grounded that out and bridged the fuse then saw a bunch of bright colors. Now that my research is done I'm going to find where my power cable actually is shorting out and get back to the fun stuff of cleaning up the engine bay!

[Mihai_A4-B5_]

heheheh who didnt say learning is fun

[reb55]

heheheh who didnt say learning is fun

My one friend today asked me what part on my car have i not yet touched and I couldn't really think of an answer. Working on this car is like studying, but I like knowing everything there is to know about it.

Tomorrow's an exciting day, gonna clay bar the car and wax it and take some shots with my wheels before I repaint them

[Mihai_A4-B5_]

i find myself thinking that if i get another 2.8 i'll know how to fix half of the things on it but then again i get stuck on the b5...it's just too damn beautiful

[reb55]

Yeah Audi definitely got it right with the b5.

I ended up fixing the electrical issues. Got a harness, computer, ignition switch, and load reduction relay all for under $165. Car is running great! I even got rid of the CEL and my 02 spacers are working with my gutted cats so I have a working kinda cool sounding car! My computer however wasn't broken so now I have a spare. Anyone looking for a 2.8 AHA computer??? I'll probably just hang onto it in case mine does break.

I'm gonna upload some pics now I think.

[Mihai_A4-B5_]

yes you are due for some pics of the new wheels cmon

[reb55]

yes you are due for some pics of the new wheels cmon

Unfortunately I just took the wheels back off tonight and went back to the stocks. Gonna get some new tires to put on the black wheels. There'es literally no tread left on the back ones. Makes an interesting time in the rain.

Here's a pic I took while I was having electronic difficulties.



Everythings a mess and dirty but it gives you an idea of what the wheels are. No where near as nice as yours Probably gonna sell them and get something silver that has a better suited offset.