David called and said his 16v was making some “extra” noise, which he believed to be a rod bearing that took an unscheduled leave of absence..  David is from the great white north and had the car shipped down to us to look it over and try to come up with a game plan for his best options moving forward.  We weighed rebuilding the 16v, adding modern fuel management, even forced induction.  After several conversations about options he actually decided that a VR6 would be a nice mid ground to having a NA car, with modern injection control, and a fun to drive powerband.

So I got to work:

Ok, so I had to take advantage of the fact there were 3 red roccos here at the same time..

Now I really got to work…

With the old 16v out, the bay had a few issues from previous owners, while I do not sell myself as a paint and body shop, I will make repairs and spray an engine bay for a customer.

Back side of the repairs seam sealed and ready for service.
With the holes fixed, the bay was ready to paint.

A new coat of paint goes a long way in an old engine bay.

Onto getting the new driveline ready, I had an 04 touareg motor with under 80k on it.  With a touareg motor into a tranverse chassis there are a few pieces you need to swap from either a 2.8 BDF or mk4 r32 motor.  Oil filter housing, oil pump and pan,  exhaust manifolds, accessory bracket (if you want to keep AC, otherwise you can use the treg bracket and accessories) lower timing cover needs to be ground down to clear the trans.

As a rule I always replace service or wear items on a motor before I install it,  so this motor got chains, guides, rear main seal, plugs, coil packs, waterpump, water transfer pipe, thermostat housing, thermostat, valve cover and manifold gaskets.

With all of that done, I was ready to fit the motor.

As you can see the radiator is in before I fit the motor, I cover this in our install videos but this gets overlooked more often than I’d like to hear about.   I am using one of the S&P Mk1 Vr6 radiators with a single fan and a 70c fan switch.

David insisted that we find an Audi intake manifold to dress the motor up a bit over the boring Touareg manifold,  good call on his part, looks great on top of the VR lump.

I knocked out a hidden MAF intake, a remote fill bottle for the coolant system which finished off the plumbing to the radiator and heater core.  These along with the valve cover and upper strut brace got a wrinkle black powder coated finish from TopNotchCustoms located here in town.

Onto wiring,  as with many of these cars the wiring had been touched by alot of people, and they all left their mark..

I removed a lot of the old management wiring, some was even left from the 81 motor that was long gone,  there were abandon relays, multiple wire taps for radios or accessories at some point.  All of it needed to go and start with just what was needed for the current setup in the car.

With the interior wiring in a better place, I moved onto the battery which was moved to the back, using an S&P Battery Box I mounted the Optima Red Top into place with a main breaker mounted on the box itself, this prevents having a 2ga torch running the length of the car if you have a short between the battery and the fusebox/starter/alternator junction point.