Like A Glove

I picked up all the bell housing bolts. The ones from ECS even came earlier than expected (facepalm). I went through all the bolts and measured them so I knew what was what. Nothing like Genuine parts.


Speaking of Genuine parts, I decided to treat the new motor with some nice genuine Porsche oil and coolant caps. Totally worth it. It's the little things.

New coolant reservoir to replace the old grey one.



Got the flywheel all torqued down after double checking that it can only go on one way. Some of the eight holes have a slightly different spacing, so they only line up perfectly in one orientation. This is for the engine speed/crank position sensor that makes it run. Note the wrench trick for torquing the suckers down.

One last good look at that RS4 clutch. Can't wait to see how it feels.

All buttoned and aligned. Love it when the kit comes with the alignment tool. So much easier.

After some cleaning, the old 01A 5 speed looked alright. Greased the pivot ball and shaft, and installed the new throwout bearing.

 After I got the bolts I was able to mate the trans to the engine. Took a bit of finangling, but overall wasn't too bad. And in she went. It was very slow and steady for quite a while putting all of it in. The clearance on either frame rail is maybe just enough to slide your hand in. I was unsure about the "position" of motor mounts (which holes in the mount brackets), but after some trial and error, decided how it had to be, and it actually fit just barely. It probably would have been a little easier to secure the mounts to the engine first, and then drop it all in the car. The bottom nuts are easier to get to, too.

 Next order of business: fit intercoolers, piping, intake, etc.

Nardo Grey Avant's last day as a 1.8T

So... the wiring jumper harness is done. This means the engines can now start dancing around. I will have to connect a couple of wires to certain places, but I'm sure it'll be fine. These are the body harness connectors that live in the same box as the ECU.
The (gauge) cluster in the car gets various bits of information from the sensors on the car through some of these connectors, such as RPMs, coolant temperature, oil pressure - some important stuff. Essentially this harness will allow my car to function normally and get all of the information it needs to run correctly even though the ECU is from a B5 and not everything is where it would expect it to be.

I didn't wake up today with the plan to tear the 1.8T out, but that's kind of the direction things went. Felt good though. So much tangible progress.

 Front clip removed, started removing things: airbox, intercooler and piping, all fluids drained - oil, coolant, power steering.

It's final moments...

Disconnected ECU and rest of main wiring, and put it in a grocery bag so they weren't dangling all over. Also went about removing CV axles, undoing the trans mount, driveshaft, A/C compressor.


Disconnected exhaust, fuel lines, slave cylinder, motor mounts, removed catalytic converter, and hooked up the engine hoist. And out she comes.

It really looks like a gaping hole when there's nothing in there. The ease of access to those areas is unbelievable though!

After carefully removing the bell-housing bolts, and saddling the tranny, it came loose with some gentle rocking. The pressure plate and flywheel now exposed, I set to work to remove them in order to mount the engine on the stand. The pilot bearing (pressed into the crankshaft in this particular application - it will be pressed into the flywheel with the 2.7T) was not in good shape. In fact, it dawned on me that it must be the cause for a rather shrill noise every so often when letting the clutch out in 1st gear. The little roller pins inside the bearing were completely separated, and had been floating around the space between the input shaft and crankshaft. Glad to be rid of that problem. Moral of the story is always replace the pilot bearing. This clutch job was only 10k miles old, half of which was pure freeway cruising.

Of course I couldn't resist some cleaning of the sub-frame, hehe.

I am currently waiting on new bell-housing bolts (the automatic ones are not the same as the ones for a manual application). I ordered them from ECS Tuning since I was ordering a coolant reservoir anyway and they were about the same as the dealer pricing. Well, shipping is looking like it will take about a week and a half, which is utterly ridiculous.

Today I went down to the local VW dealer and had them run the P/N's for the bolts. I'll pick them up on Monday, and return the bolts from ECS when they get here clear on Thursday. If I had ordered from the dealer on Monday (today is Wednesday), then I would have gotten them on Tuesday. Receiving them this coming Monday is due to Thanksgiving holiday.

Making O2 Sensors

Today I decided to put the front clip back on the S4 finally, and I stole the radiator. Originally I had planned to use a radiator from a B6 3.0L since it would fit in the same space as my current one, but the one on the car I pulled everything else off of had a big crack on one of the end tanks. I also plugged the trans cooler ports on the B5 S4 one.
I figured I would work on my O2 sensors. One was diagnosed as bad, and I went ahead and ordered two new Bosch "universal" sensors. Basically you splice them to your factory connectors. This saves you a chuck of $$ for each sensor. It was pretty easy honestly.



Cleaned turbo inlet pipe brackets and re-mounted them. I love it when they shine. I also spoke with the gentleman that's working on my wiring harness adapter, and it should be done shortly. Then the real fun will begin.

Parts Hoarding! Shiny!

Today my friend Chris came over to swap N75 valves (in order to help diagnose his sporadic boost) with the Avant. We also reoriented an exhaust clamp that was rubbing on the trans brace. He also helped me push the s4 in under the tent, and we started installing the turbos.
I realized I wanted to replace the exhaust manifold gaskets, so the turbos got put on hold for a minute while I removed, cleaned, and reinstalled with new gaskets and hardware. Passenger turbo is all in, just need to torque the 3 manifold to turbo bolts. Driver turbo is all in except for those same 3 bolts and one coolant banjo bolt.
Old vs. new

I later got the manifolds all buttoned up and then the turbos both on with all new crush washers and oil return line gaskets, and clamps for the wastegate lines.
Downpipes came!
A quick mock-up
Decided to cut them and hold off on extending them until I see how they fit in the car
OE LUK RS4 clutch came!
And my billet steel flywheel from TTV Racing came all the way from the UK. It’s gorgeous.
I also picked up a ton of parts at the junkyard: B6 3.0 exhaust (chopped up a bit to fit in the car), an A/C line, fuel return line, mk4 sun visor for the wife, mk3 glove box for a friend, wood trim coin tray for my car, and wiring harness from a 2.7t, as well as wiring from a B6 which I dropped off to get made into a jumper harness to make the 2.7t ecu work in the B6.

Turbos & Valve Covers

Picked up some good replacement k03 turbos since my fins are chewed up. They have almost no shaft play so I’ll just throw them on. They’ll clean up nicely.

Old valve cover gaskets had TONS of silicone (facepalm). I fixed that. I love the smell of fresh gaskets.

I got the auto-tragic trans back in the donor along with the subframe that had to be dropped. My friend also grabbed the front brakes for his B6 😎.


Some 30v action. (5 valves per cylinder glory)

Cleaned, prepped, and painted driver side VC today, and cured it in the oven! Passenger is removed and cleaned, but it was too cold tonight to paint it. Also gapped sparkplugs to .028” and installed all six. I decided I liked the blue enough to keep it after testing on something else.

Tonight I painted and baked the passenger side valve cover. Hopefully the difference in temperature and dry time don’t affect the color match/quality too much. The old turbos are also removed, and the lines on both sides have been cleaned.

Oh and I pulled the power steering line I need from the donor and put the front wheels back on the B5 and put the whole thing down (off the jackstands).

Coming out!

I was planning on just removing the motor and separating it from the trans at the same time, but space proved to be an issue. So I unhooked everything from the trans, too. Cv axles, driveshaft, trans mounts, and subframe all came off. I couldn’t get the exhaust from the cats back separated for the life of me (thanks Colorado) so I pulled the whole exhaust out with the engine and trans.

Once out, I was able to get the rear section of the exhaust off, and start working on the downpipes, since they hug the trans so well and needed to come off first. Then I shimmied the trans off, and found some long enough bolts for the stand.

Engine is on the stand and in the shed. It’s getting cam chain tensioner gaskets, cam plugs, valve cover gaskets, and spark plugs and cleaning what I can of the block and various parts that get removed.

Full Timing Service in the car

Front clip removed

Cam lock bar/timing belt exposed (old parts)

With new components, including notched water pump

Humble Beginnings

Hi, my name is Alex and I like cars. This blog will document my Audi A4 2.7T swap process. The first post is very long, but subsequent posts should be much shorter since the blog has caught up.

I suppose what really got the ball rolling was my MK4 GTI - I came across it in project status, and now having the skills for the job, decided to tackle it for my next project, and planned to replace my 1996 Honda Accord (5 speed) with it, as trusty as it was, the Accord had seen (much) better days. Fast forward about a year, and I was, shall we say, 'wanting more'. More doors, same or more power would be nice, more refinement. Enter: Audi Avant.

By this time I had decided that a hatch/wagon was the only logical choice, and I would regret buying a sedan for the rest of my life. So I started looking for an Audi wagon, in particular a 'B6' generation (2002-2005). Long story short I found a good one, fly out to Florida to pick it up, had quite the adventure getting it home, and here's how it looks now:



After a lot of "fine tuning" - replacing various parts that were worn but previously unknown or just not up to my standards, new wheels, new front bumper, lots of engine bay rewiring/cleanup, interior swapping, you name it, I turned my attention to speed/power. Sadly, the 1.8T just wasn't cutting it for daily driving. In fact it was painfully slow getting up to speed. Pretty much any economy car could beat me off the line if they tried at all. I believe this is mainly due to a couple of factors.

1) AEB (large port) cylinder head - this allows a significant amount of additional airflow through the motor, which is good when you have a large turbo, and the port size becomes a bottleneck. In my case (stock k03 turbo), the turbo has a hard time filling up all that volume in a reasonable timeframe, which translates to slowness.

2) Mystery/un-calibrated tune/ECU map - I don't have a lot of hard evidence on this one, but it seems to make sense that the tune is most likely mainly for an AMB block (since that's what the car came with) and is not accounting for the large port head. This could possibly lead to timing being pulled or other symptoms. The tune could also be fine, and the car would be much worse off without it, meaning the AEB head is the main villain.

Anyways, I began looking into power upgrades in the form of a bigger turbo, and was actually set on going that route - I had actually started buying parts. However, I later determined that an engine swap would probably cost less, have better driving characteristics (user defined), get me more street cred, and have more potential for fun later. The power-band of the BT (Big Turbo) route was a real downer, since I mainly do city driving. I wanted accessible power that would put a smile on my face from time to time.

I decided that a 2.7T swap was the logical thing to do. 

The 2.7T is basically a V6 version of the I-4 1.8T that is found in my old GTI (transverse, FWD) and B5 & B6 Audi A4's (Longitudinal, AWD). Same 5 valves per cylinder, but two turbochargers instead of one. Consequently, power potential increases, and is overall easier to make.

2.7T donor car picked up 9/8/17 - It'll do just fine.

The dusty 2.7L Twin turbocharged V6 is held captive by the B5 2000 S4 

Parts list as follows:

• Stock motor (good up to 500whp)
• Stock turbos w/ stage 2 tune (~20psi)
• 5 speed trans from the Nardo grey Avant (maybe 6 speed down the road)
• Already have upgraded 034 trans mount, diff mount, etc.
• Stern motor mounts and snub mount
• XSpower downpipes
• SAI block off plates
• eBay silicone hose kit
• TTV billet SMFW
• RS4 clutch & PP
• Many small and insignificant(by themselves) things

Car is up on jackstands for the first stage of tear down: compression test and timing service. These plugs look original! (122k miles)

Also, call me nerdy, but I definitely got a kick out of the fact that 'S4' is included right on top of the coilpack along with the part number, BERU, & GERMANY. I'm liking the style of this 2.7T.

Compression Test Results (Dry):

Cyl 1: 140Cyl 2: 143Cyl 3: 130Cyl 4: 132Cyl 5: 137Cyl 6: 130
I realize these numbers could be better, but all things considered, I pronounced them good, and moved on. Perhaps down the road it would be beneficial to have the heads gone through when it's K04 time. My main goal for now is to get this thing running with acceptable reliability.