It's Happening - Project quattro Racer

"KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs" (kusabisensei)
03/14/2016 at 11:20 • Filed to: Because Racecar

So Saturday was a very nice day. I fixed the brake carrier to spindle mount bolts on my Z4 (because why bother with Loctite 242?) because one was stretched. Then we turned our attention to the Audi.

The Audi, as you may be aware, had a very minor case of serious water leakage. We did find the ingress point, thanks to looking up under the dash at plastic parts covered in white powder.

The heater core.

Since that’s behind the dash, I’m going to bypass the heater core completely with some heater hose. Then I turned my attention to the afflicted interior. After about 3 hours, we have a pile of parts to be sorted. (Don’t worry, all the bolts are together in one container, and will be sorted by type into a small tackle box)

So what’s removed?

Driver and front passenger power seats

Rear seats

Trunk carpeting

Spare tire

Radio head unit that works

6 disc CD Changer that works (!)

Plastic trim from around the floor

Dead pedal cover

All the waterlogged carpet and foam

Oh, and the gauge cluster only works part of the time.

My basic plan is to take the seats, fabricate some metal frames with RamblinRover, find a 120VAC to 12VDC converter (because the power seat motors work just fine), and make furniture out of them!

But now due to our work, the quattro racer now looks like this inside. Track friends did come over to help with this. I made them prime rib for dinner.

(See? If you do come over to help me with car projects, I make really good food to thank you.)

So now with part of the weight reduction done, now I can start looking to get seat brackets for race seats and figure out how to start the roll bar/cage design and installation.

DISCUSSION (9)

functionoverfashion > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
03/14/2016 at 11:31

You probably have a power adapter somewhere that outputs 12V already. I was looking for this exact thing the other day, and found several old AC adapters for things like external CD drives, game systems, small appliances... some were 9V, some 12V... just my 2 cents. Looks like a fun project!

OPPOsaurus WRX > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
03/14/2016 at 11:35

at first I thought you were joking about the racing thing and would be putting that back together. That would horrify me.

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > functionoverfashion
03/14/2016 at 11:39

It needs to be able to output enough current to drive the seat motors. 5A output should be enough, but the small bricks tend to only output up to 1A at most.

I could cannibalize an Xbox power supply. Those have a fairly impressive output. Need to check the amperage specs on those.

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > OPPOsaurus WRX
03/14/2016 at 11:44

The carpet was so waterlogged that it ripped on removal.

I mean, I could put most of it back together if I had new carpet, but why add weight when the idea is to get a solid track car, and then maybe go racing.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
03/14/2016 at 13:18

PC power supplies. Should be able to get upward of a hundred watts even with some shitty ones. Also, what is Tommy doing, removing a duct?

RallyWrench > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
03/14/2016 at 13:22

I must have missed when you decided to go track car with the S4, what brought that decision about?

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > RallyWrench
03/14/2016 at 13:49

There was a thought of selling it, but that was before the heater core decided to drown the carpet and gauge electronics.

Since I’d have to strip it to replace the carpet, then why not make it a track car?

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/14/2016 at 14:05

Those are the rear floor ducts for the heater. Since the HVAC system is being disabled and eventually removed (due to heater core insanity), we decided to save a few ounces of weight.

RallyWrench > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
03/14/2016 at 14:20

Makes sense to me!