S2 – sygard.no

May 18, 2019

[S2] Finally registered

After working on the car over the winter, I finally got it registered with the Norwegian DMV! Since I had fitted a lowering kit, I had to show it at the DMV to get special approval. Feels great to finally have it road-approved!

I did show the car at the Norwegian VW-Audi club and Norsk Sportsvogn klubb “spring meetup” last weekend and it was popular amongst the people attending the events. I’ll post a couple of photos, the first from VW-Audi club and the second from Norsk Sportsvogn klubb. I have two sets of summer tires, the white OZ racing wheels are fitted with road approved slicks while the BBS LM lookalikes are fitted with some old plain summer tires. I will probably get some new summer tires on the BBS LM ones, might try 235/40-18 to see if they will fit.

February 18, 2019

[S2] First test drive

It’s been a long time coming, but last week, I finally went to the DMV to buy temporary license plates for the weekend. I was really excited to try the car as I’ve never driven an S2. I did drive a 2.8 V6 Audi 80 a couple of years ago so I expected it to be somewhat similar to that one, just slightly more powerful. Boy was I surprised! It’s nothing that can compare to the sound of the Audi I5 2.2l turbo engine when it comes on boost 🙂 Almost everything worked flawlessly throughout the two days of driving, although there were some issues. The driver side door latch kept slipping out of its second stage notch and the horn didn’t work but these were easily fixed. The main issue were the brakes. Since I bought the car, the red brake warning light has been flashing every time I turned on the ignition. I thought this was because there were no pressure in the system and that it would fix itself once I got it driving a bit, but it unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. The warning light did go away once I got some revs on the engine, but it came back under hard braking or braking while the engine was idling. I deduced that it had to be the brake pressure accumulator, aka the Bomb, as the symptoms of a broken accumulator were exactly the same as I had. I also had an issue with the left rear brake getting stuck while driving so I decided to replace it. I’m not a hundre percent sure what got stuck so I’m gonna replace the disc, the pads, brake lines and fluids as well as refreshing the seals in the caliper using a rep-kit.

I’ve ordered new parts, so now it’s just to play the waiting game.

I’ll add some pictures of the car with the summer tires. I’m still not sure if I like em though, might swap them for some other ones during the summer.

January 16, 2019January 16, 2019

[S2] Engine service

After completing the interior, it was time to go take a look at the engine. I had no information about when the cam-belt was last changed and I suspected the head gasket to be bad, so I decided to take the top off and change whatever I could find that looked old, broken or should be changed considering the car is almost 30 years old. I’ll type a list of parts I changed and post some pictures. The job was easy enough, but I took my time and fixed whatever I saw necessary.

Changed parts:

Head gasket and head cover seal
Cam-belt
Water pump
Front crank seal
Engine mounts
Steering damper
Oil cooler
Oil filter
Engine oil, power steering oil, coolant and brake fluid
Clutch master and slave sylinder
Replaced bad cooling and vacuum hoses
Spark plugs
Exhaust and inlet manifold gaskets

I also fitted the original air filter box, but I’m missing the heat shield towards the turbo and exhaust. Guess I’ll have to make something.

Good thing I decided to take the turbo water and oil lines of. The last guy working on the car had used liquid gaskets, and applied too much.. The hole was almost completely clogged up and would certainly be the end of the turbo.

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December 22, 2018

[S2] Replacing clutch master and slave sylinder

The clutch pedal on the S2 felt a little weird and it would not release the entire way before you helped it by dragging it with your foot. I decided to replace the master and slave sylinder instead as the parts aren’t that expensive. As I currently have the top of the engine, access was easy and the job was a quick one. Spent some time bleeding the new system, but the result was a much better clutch feel and the pedal now extends the whole way without needing help.

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December 22, 2018

[S2] Fixing front fog lights

I had to fix one of the front fog lights as the glass was broken. Both lights had become very gray and old-looking so I decided to replace the glass in both of them. I discovered that the fog lights were from an old Porsche 993 and not the original Audi S2. The front fender is an aftermarket fender which does not use the original lights.After a bit of searching, I got hold of a set of replacement glasses on eBay.

The glass replacement was a straight forward job. A little fiddling getting the old glasses out, but it turned out ok.

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December 22, 2018December 22, 2018

[S2] Suspension upgrade complete

I completed fitted all the suspension upgrades and put the car back down on its wheels. It looks good, but I will need to do a little tweaking to the ride height and do a four-wheel alignment before it is road ready.

I found that the rear toe adjustment bars were too long so I had to fit the original ones, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

I had to create new break hard-lines between the two flexible ones on the front dampeners as the nuts were completely fused with the original lines and broke when I tried to get them off.

In addition to this, I had to cut a hole in the chassis to be able to get one of the bolts holding the rear subframe out. It was completely rusted to the threaded plate/nut in the chassis. I found a piece of steel plate which I welded back in the hole and added some rust protection.

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November 18, 2018April 5, 2019

Audi S2 progress update 2018-11

It’s been a while since my last update so I thought I’d write a short post about what I’ve been doing lately. Little was done during the summer as I was doing summery things in addition to it being way to hot to be working in the garage…

A couple of weeks ago, I got the urge to start the project as it was just sitting in the garage collecting dust.

The car was stripped of all interior parts so this was my first mission. I also decided to upgrade the heater core to one of newer date with the upgraded controls.

Climate system upgrade

The car, being a 91-model had the first generation electrically operated climate system. I got a salvaged second generation climate system when I bought the car so I decided to install it. This project required me to rewire the entire system as even though the connector was the same, hardly any one wire was wired to the same feature on the car. I spent hours and hours trawling through schematics to identify which wire should be connected where. I ended up connecting almost all pins on the new system, but there were some pins which I did not connect. I think some of these were the rev-counter and full throttle wire which should be connected to the ECU. It was a little scary to connect the battery after rewiring and fitting the new heater core, but everything seemed to be working fine. The only thing that needs to be fixed is the display on the heater-controls as some of the segments does not work. This is not important for the main functionality of the climate system so I’ll try to fix it at a later time.

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Refitting the interior

Roof lining

I did get all the parts for the interior spread amongst several boxes and containers so the next job was to install it. The first thing I did was to rip off the old roof liner as it was dirty and had almost fallen off by itself. The original color was light gray-yellow-ish, so naturally, I decided to go for black. The first attempt failed miserably as the fabric managed to glue itself to itself… With that lesson learned, I recruited help from my wife and tried again, with a much better result! I did get some wrinkles, but I decided not to do it a third time. Finally I used a couple of jack-straps to glue the roof liner assembly to the roof of the car.

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Dashboard and plastic trim

After installing the upgraded climate system I put the dashboard back in, the roof carpet, the plastic trim, the seats and the rest of the bits and pieces needed. No real difficulties here except fitting the small compartment below the steering wheel… Too many wires… I got it in there, but it is not fitted exactly as it was from the factory.

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Boost gauge

As this is a turbo car, it needs a boost gauge. I don’t understand why Audi didn’t fit a boost gauge from the factory, especially on the S-models… I’ve seen many others fit the boost gauge in the middle of the three air vents in the center of the dashboard so I decided to do the same. I have many air vent fronts from the previous owner, so I wasn’t afraid to destroy one to build the boost gauge frame. I wires the lightning for the boost gauge to the light controls such that it has light when the main light switch is on (same as the rest of the gauges in the dash). To get the manifold air pressure to the gauge I fitted a y-piece on the hose to the ECU.

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Front bumper

I test-fitted the front fender just to see what I had to work with. The fender is not an S2 original, but some sort of aftermarket RS2-copy of some kind. One of the fog lights were broken so I had to find a new one in order to pass the requirements for registering the car. The fog lights were the same as an old Porsche 993 and I was lucky to find a pair on eBay which is noe en-route in the mail.

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Suspension and sub-frame upgrades

I decided to upgrade the suspension as I saw some rotten bushes and rusty parts on the rear subframe. I disassembled the entire rear subframe of the car and started ordering parts. Currently, this is what will be replaced/fixed/upgraded