Apikol Transmission Mounts Installed

February 8, 2015 Jeffrey Jones

These Apikol transmission mounts have been sitting in a bag for a couple of years now, I finally decided to replace my worn 034 Motorsport density line mounts with the Apikols.

What is immediately noticeable is how much thicker the Apikols are than the street density line. I never had any complaints about the 034 mounts, but in keeping with aftermarket part advertising philosophy, if it’s bigger it must be better.

I was in the process of installing my motor when I made this swap, which seemed like a logical thing to do, it is, but I had an unanticipated delay with these mounts. You see, since they’re thicker they require a longer bolt, a good amount longer as a matter of fact. So much longer that my S4 said, uh-uh, that’s not going in without a fight. Getting the passenger side bolt through was a major pita. As a reminder, the bracket for the transmission mounts sits directly below the downpipes, those 3″ downpipes that all aftermarket equipped cars must upgrade to. On top of that there is the heat shield between the down pipe and where the bolts sits, making it even harder to put the bolt through as you are putting the motor in the car.

Why did I choose to install these while putting the motor in? So that with them not yet in place the transmission brackets would easily clear the sub-frame and make putting the transmission and motor in easier.

After a while, much too long, some profanity, thoughts of saying screw it I’ll put the old mounts back on, and an idea to reverse the bolt – which soon became apparent was not going to make things much easier, hallelujah! It finally fell into place.

The driver side was also a bit of a challenge, but not nearly so much as the passenger side. In all it took longer to put those two bolts in place than it did to get the motor and transmission back into the car.

It better ride like it’s on pillows after all that effort.

Upgrade Work

Punting on SRM’s Modified Intake Manifold

February 8, 2015 Jeffrey Jones

I had been excited to try out a Silly Rabbit Motorsports modified S4 intake manifold. Mine had work done to enlarge the plenum as well as add an adapter so that I could mount an RS4 throttle body to the manifold.

As can be seen from the picture above, the use of the RS4 throttle body necessitates removing the stock S4 fuel rail and using either an RS4 fuel rail or an aftermarket flavor. I went with the Integrated Engineering fuel rails.

Upon test fitting the modified intake manifold I discovered a couple of fitment problems.

The first was that the after run coolant pump was in the way, when placing the intake manifold in place it rested on the pump and did not seal with the cylinder heads.

A short while later I had swapped in the 034 Motorsport silicone after run delete hose. Now the intake manifold sat properly on the cylinder heads.

Unfortunately the Integrated Engineering fuel pressure regulator housing did not have much clearance from the lift point at the back of the motor.

I pressed on, adding the RS4 throttle body, RS4 metal throttle body boot, and RS4 pancake (up) pipes. I then found that the up pipes had some interference with the plastic pieces protruding from the cam gear covers.

I decided at this point that I’d had enough with trying to get this intake manifold to work with the RS4 parts that I have. My assumption is that if I were using a silicone throttle body boot and standard aftermarket up pipes I may not have had the problems I was encountering.

In the future I might give this intake manifold another shot, but I’ll have to do so with some customized up pipes if I do.

Brake

Stoptech Rotor Swap

February 7, 2015 Jeffrey Jones

The rotor hats on my Stoptech rotors started getting cracks on them.

This is a well documented problem with some of the Stoptech aero rotor hats so I had been keeping my eye out for the problem to arise on my rotors. Interestingly it was only the passenger side rotor that had these cracks, the driver side was still in good shape.

With a crack as extensive as the one shown here I decided to replace the aero rotor hats.

About the time I went looking for a place that would sell just the hats I found someone parting out an S4 who had the entire Stoptech 332 BBK for sale with rotors that had been replaced within the past year. For just a little more than the rotor hats retail for I picked up the entire kit, including stainless steel brake lines, partly worn pads and a brand new set of pads.

Once I had everything on hand I set about swapping the rotors. Putting the rotors side by side it looks as though the rotor hat design has been revised since I purchased my Stoptech BBK setup.

This was the first time I had taken the rotors off since having the Stoptech BBK installed in 2004 and I was not sure about how hard it would be. After looking through the brake kit install guide it was evident the swap should be fairly easy, which it was. For reference these are the two bolts that need to be removed to pull the caliper back so that the rotor can be swapped.

The old rotors and newer ones were very similar in thickness so I did not need to monkey with the brake pads at all. To swap both sides took about 30 minutes, though my wheels were already off and the front end raised for other work I have going on.

Audi B5 S4 Information and Testing