Driveshaft install

I’ve gotten pretty far behind on making product reviews.  Added to the slate are these Stern motor mounts which are replacing a set of RS4 motor mounts.

Audi B5 S4 Stern Motor Mounts

Another new addition is a Driveshaft Shop single piece drive-shaft.  The driveshaft support had been damaged on the manual transmission driveshaft and in weighing my options, one being to purchase an aftermarket support to try and install, go with a completely re-manufactured driveshaft, or purchase the single piece unit, I decided the added cost would be worth the easier install and slightly lighter weight.  I will be interested to see if I notice a difference.

Driveshaft Shop single piece drive-shaft

I also began to re-install the motor and transmission.  I decided to begin trying to install the axles while the motor was still a good ways out from the mounts so that I could have an easier time of it.  That didn’t work as well as I had planned and after a good 3 to 4 hours of work I finally had inched, literally, the motor into position where I could bolt the axles to the transmission.  At times I was lowering the motor a half an inch at a time to ensure nothing was being bound up or crushed.  I’m seriously considering just installing the axles after the motor is in place the next time I do this.

As an additional note, I connected the stainless steel slave cylinder line while the motor was pretty far out.  It was a fair bit more difficult to get the AN fittings to thread properly versus the stock configuration which just snaps into place.  I ended up removing the driver’s side primary O2 sensor so that I could get my hand into a position where I could get the threads to mesh properly.   With the O2 sensor out of the way things went smoother.

I also ended up removing the bottom portion of the transmission mounts so that I could manipulate the axles.  Yet another reason to think about installing the axles at the end the next time,

Audi B5 S4 engine installation

Low pressure check

Today I installed the charge pipes and the inlet piping.  I then put the intercoolers in place so that I could perform a pressure test.  There’s a few spots that would normally be plugged, like the brake booster line, that I had to improvise a cover for and that restricted me to testing at very low pressure.

Audi B5 S4 motor being pressure tested

Motor mount test fit

I’ve slowly been making progress, mainly working on replacing the spider hose with some silicone hose and repairing a damaged downpipe.  The first length of hose that I purchased was a little bit large, so there was a delay in getting a better fitting hose, then I decided I wanted to use the Oetiker clamps and that required purchasing a few more.  When it came to the downpipe I brought it to a local exhaust specialist but they didn’t think there was anything they could do with it.  Luckily the shop that I have my car serviced at, HB Motorwerks, also does some fabrication and they didn’t think there’d be any problem repairing the downpipe.  They did say it would be best to be able to put the pipe on the engine to verify the fitment, so I hauled the engine and transmission to their shop so that they could do the repair.  A day later the downpipe was repaired and I was retrieving it.

I’m now in the home stretch, putting parts back onto the car, and when I got to the motor mounts I realized that once the TiAL inlets go into place there won’t be any way to adjust the motor mounts.  Since I’m swapping out the stock motor mounts for a pair of Stern motor mounts I knew that I’d want to verify the orientation of the mounts was correct prior to tightening them down.  I decided I’d put the motor into the car so that I could make sure the mounts were properly oriented, and this would also be an opportunity to check that in removing the front sub-frame I hadn’t left something out of position.

The motor went into place and the mounts were adjusted and tightened down.  Next up I’ll take it back out and put the piping on for the final install.

Audi B5 S4 2.7T engine test fit