About three hours after the sun had set, I hitched a ride back to the lot where I left the steaming Audi. I popped the hood to examine how low the radiator fluid was. Indeed it was low, but there was no puddle underneath the car. If there was a puddle it could not have dried up that quickly as it wasn’t a hot day. Confused but too tired to care, I filled it up with distilled water, capped it off, and drove home carefully without trying to question what mechanical failure it might be this time.

Now at this point I had spent a little over $790 on top of the $800 value of the car. What killed me was the wheel bearing repair job but I really couldn’t avoid that. Any more shop related repair was going seriously to eat into my profits. By then, I desperately just wanted to get the car running flawlessly. I even called up local mechanics for a quote before looking up the problem. Desperate. One mechanic gave me a quote of $350 to ‘fix it’ although he described it as a “Mickey Mouse” fix, perplexed I asked him how much it would cost to fix it correctly, he told me he would need to remove the dash and quoted me at about $900. What the fuck, and what the shit is a Mickey Mouse fix.

From there I decided to use the power of Google to figure out what exactly was going on. Although the car was overheating, I can rule out that it had nothing to do with the engine bay itself since the steam was coming from the interior. After scouring through the interwebs and forums, I eventually found out that any white smoke coming from the dash vents point to a faulty heater core. Indeed there were two ways to fix. The proper way is to drop the steering column, remove the dashboard, center console, and radio to fully expose the heater core, which you can then replace. The Mickey Mouse method is to completely bypass the heater core and connect the two hoses together. Granted, this method means I will no longer have a working heater, but I live in Southern California. There is never a need for a heater.

Within thirty minutes of looking up how-to remove the dashboard videos, I decided to just go with the half assed bypass method and made my way to Home Depot. I found the elbow pipe that I needed in the sink department for less than $5. With the pipe installed and the heater core successfully bypassed, I let the car idle for about 15 minutes. No smoke was coming out of the dashboard. There was no more coolant smell anywhere. Is everything finally fixed? Although I wasn’t sure, I felt adventurous, so I took the car around for about an hour worth of errands. During the time I drove, it didn’t overheat, it didn’t sputter to a stop, the check engine light never came back on, and most importantly no smoke was arising from anywhere and it didn’t blow up. Instead it was running smoothly. I even hit redline twice, on second and third gear. Both times the turbo spooled up releasing enough power to push me back into my beige leather seat. The car felt great, I felt great. Not to mention I saved $345 from that bypass job. Suck it mechanic shop. Talk about finally coming out on top.

Since the heater core bypass was technically a temporary fix, I went ahead and bought a new one as it only cost about $25. I figured if even if I don’t find time to install it myself, it would be nice to have the new owner know what exactly needs to be replaced, because nothing beats a honest and transparent seller on Craigslist. Besides, I believe in karma.

Now I actually skipped writing about the very first fix I did, that was the rear driver side passenger window. When I bought it, that window had permanently fallen and no amount of tape or fluffing would keep it up. With removal of the door panel the problem was apparent, the cable that runs through the motor was as broken as an unraveled cassette tape. The previous owner attempted a sad half-assed fix of sticking a block of wood to hold it up which had fallen down the door panel. I threw away the wood block but you can see the wood shavings still on the door panel below. I half-assed fixed it with a few zipties but it properly did the job. I additionally unplugged the harness to prevent any more damage to the unit. Now if this car gets sold for an amount that satisfies me, and if the new owner decides they really want the window fixed, I will gladly replace it for them for free considering they provide a working motor. Fair enough right?

Well that’s it! Hood strut, valve cover gasket, spark plugs, coil packs, mass airflow sensor, rear coolant flange, coolant temperature sensor, center wheel cap, and wheel bearing all replaced and fixed. As of now there are only three very minor issues with the car: the temporary rear window fix, the heater core bypass, and a small crack on the windshield that was there since initial purchase. I’m not going to count the minor cosmetic damage since this is a ten year old car that was daily driven to just about 130k miles. None of these issues affect the performance, legality, or drivability of the car.

Since the release of Part III, I have actually been daily driving this car for the past four weeks with no issues. The check engine light hasn’t been on since the coil pack swap, it hasn’t overheated or stalled, and three weeks ago it California Smog legally with flying colors. Despite that all of these fixes, the cost of purchase and maintenance totaled just a little over $1600. I highly believe that there is potential for profit or even a trade up. This car has came a long way since its state of despair. Destined to have its parts stripped and shipped to the junkyard, it is now a fine running and reliable automobile that is serving my temporary needs as well as teaching how how to flip a car.

This week I will be prepping to post it up for sale. Will It Flip!? Check back here soon for the final installment of this saga where we learn how to flip a car.

The post Will It Flip!? 2001 Audi A4 Quattro – Part IV appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Get free stuff first!

I mean, does this need to be explained? When you’re trying to get your refund check to stretch as much as possible, free items and services are the obvious choice. Autozone offers:

• Loan-a-tool with 100s of tools
• Parts testing
• Battery system testing and charging
• ECM testing
• Battery testing
• Check engine light testing
• Engine light fix finder (in some states)

All of these help make any repair easier and less expensive. Almost all full service garages charge for these services (if they even offer them), so even if your is outside your DIY comfort level you can shave hundreds of dollars off your shop bill just by positively identifying the culprit first and then buying the replacement yourself. Which brings me to my next point –

Buy your own parts

Professional mechanics and dealership shops often buy replacement parts at a discount, then charge you a premium for them on your bill. This way they make extra on the parts as well as just the repair time. Save yourself this extortion by buying exactly what you need yourself and bringing it in to the shop. Yes, they will most likely charge you a flat fee or % to install “outside” parts, but you’ll still come out ahead by bringing them in yourself. And who knows, having all the parts in your hands might just inspire you to tackle that repair yourself…

Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty

If you don’t know the difference between a differential and a torque wrench, you might be shocked to learn just how easy maintenance like an oil change is! Trust me, if an acned teenager at a quick lube place can do it, you can too my friend. Between YouTube, forums, manuals, and handy-friends, there are few common jobs you can’t complete for the cost of parts (and maybe a six pack) alone. Beyond oil changes, new brakes and “tune ups” are some of the most common tax refund projects. You’d likely be shocked to learn just how easy it is to replace brake pads, and rotors are pretty basic too! As far as a “tune up,” let me let you in on a little secret: that phrase doesn’t really have a definition… It generally just means lumping all the basic service items together – air filter, oil, spark plugs, brake fluid, transmission fluid, steering fluid, and maybe maybe valve adjustment. And other than adjusting valves, all of those items are incredibly easy and inexpensive to do yourself.

If you’re still afraid to take advantage of free services, buy your own parts, or get your hands dirty, Autozone has been kind enough to give us a $100 gift card to give away to one of our readers to get them started. Keep your eyes peeled on all our social channels (FB, Insta, Twitter) for that giveaway!

This post is brought to you by AutoZone; the opinions are all mine.

The post The Best Ways to Spend Your Tax Refund on Your Car appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

In memory of driving a smoking car home, I can recall that the white smoke seeping out the hood was from the back of the bonnet closest to the firewall the day I drove it home. If you look back at the last photo from Part I, there was a coolant leak that streamed from somewhere behind the front wheels. After a few days of digging around the interwebs trying to figure out why I have a coolant leak, it seemed that this is a common occurrence in all Audi’s. I spent an evening taking off the engine covers and inspecting the leak and all the symptoms point to the rear coolant flange. Interestingly enough, this flange is isn’t visible at glance and is located in the back of the engine block. You see that red arrow? Well it’s under that rubber hose and a bunch of other shit right before the first firewall just for your inconvenience. Yes, I said that right, first firewall. This car has two firewalls because German engineering or something.

Feeling confident I went ahead and purchased the necessary parts along with some of the items the previous owner’s mechanic recommended. Being that I didn’t want to spend too much money on repairs, I made sure to calculate my spending and keep it under $300 if possible. So off to the parts store I went. I purchased the rear coolant flange, mass airflow sensor, coolant, and spark plugs, at just shy of $220. As I was walking away from the store I remembered that the hood strut had a tendency to fail. My cheap ass was contemplating if I really wanted to spend another $30 on a hood strut, but I recalled working on a car in the past with a pole jammed into the fender supporting the hood was not a good idea. I shelled out the extra cash to prevent decapitation and a potentially expensive medical bill. This was probably the smartest idea I’ve had in the past few weeks.

Following with more smart ideas, when working on a car usually you want to get easy stuff out of the way first. So with the hood strut replaced I went to town on the engine starting with the mass airflow sensor (MAF) which is located somewhere in the intake box away from the major work I needed to do. Within a few minutes into working, it dawned on me why it cost so much to service these cars. Changing the MAF sensor on a Japanese car usually takes about 10 minutes with just a few screws to remove. This car took about 30 minutes. It he time to get to the part that needs replacing far exceeds the time to actually replace the part, it’s mechanical surgery at best.

With the mass airflow sensor replaced, I noticed that the area surrounding the valve cover was abnormally dirty and quite possibly looked like it needed a new gasket. My grease monkey senses told me to replace that as well, and good thing I did. Once removed, the old gasket looked like it was probably never changed and was crustier than a teenage boy’s sock. When replacing a valve cover gasket you’ll want to make sure that the back of the cover and the parts where the gasket lay is properly cleaned and degreased before you reinstall. This will prevent any possible leakage upon replacing. Also if you plan on tackling this job yourself, I’d like to point out that once replaced and you start the car, it is normal for smoke to rise from cover due to the excess oil drips in the surrounding area.

Now we come to the dreaded job to find this coolant leak. After removing about a thousand hoses and bolts to get to the back of the engine block including the coolant reservoir tank, I was greeted with a wet and faulty coolant flange. With the flange removed, I saw clearly that the bottom part of the plastic bracket that is responsible for holding the exit hose rightly tightly in place had a big crack in it. I’m pretty sure that has to be the problem. But before installing the new one a new problem arose. The new coolant flange had two holes whereas the stock one that only had one.

This is because all of the new aftermarket flanges that you buy from Autozone or Oreilly’s were created with the intent to also work for newer model Audi’s and VW’s. My patience was tested as I read online and found out that I would need to buy a dummy plug. I decided to just go straight to the VW dealer since it seemed like such a specific part and I didn’t want order online and wait a couple days. Little did I know that stupid fucking dummy plug cost me a whopping $27. It ain’t called a stealership for no reason. By this time I just wanted to get back to wrenching before the sun goes down and I didn’t feel like MacGyverering a makeshift plug because doing a job twice on anything, especially a car, sucks. If you can afford to do it right the first time around, do it.

Feeling good about this coolant flange swap, I plugged up the flange and started screwing the first two bolts connecting the rear coolant flange to the engine block. Except that after about 3 minutes of wrenching the top bolt kept on spinning. Something wasn’t right. I removed the bolt and saw tiny shreds of metal on it. The fucking screw stripped the hole in the engine block at the worst possible location. How did I manage to do this? I was wrenching hard to reach places with my gloves and must have miscalculated the angle of the bolt. Lesson learned, don’t ever wrench tiny bolts with gloves on again. The sun was setting and I was beyond pissed. As I aggressively unscrewed everything to pack up, the other bolt that was supposed to hold the flange dropped somewhere down the engine bay and never met the floor. Feeling defeated with a lost bolt and stripped engine block, I just left it at that and called it a day. So much for this car being ready to go in less than a week.

The post Will It Flip!? – 2001 Audi A4 Quattro – Part II appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Well since I foresaw a future where my daily driver will be out of my possession for a few weeks I had to ask myself, what is the most sensible thing to do? Borrow a car from a friend? Share a car with a family member? No. The answer is to buy a piece of shit off Craigslist for as cheap as you can of course! Which leads to the first installment of Will It Flip!?

But wait, I need to be smart about this. There are a few criteria’s I need to follow. My maximum budget for a temporary daily driver would be $1000, it has to be able to drive, and I can’t loose money on the resale. Which means no blown head gaskets! Here at the Factory, Adam likes to tell me that I have a bad habit of looking up cheap cars on craigslist on my free time. I thought it would be the perfect time to provoke this habit and see if I can make use of it. After about 10 minutes of coming up with this idea and 40 minutes of browsing craigslist. I found a mechanic’s special 2001 Audi A4 Quattro 1.8 liter Turbo for $800 about five miles from me.

Though this whole idea may sound bad, I was convinced that this might be a decent purchase being that this car usually sells for about $2500 in decent running condition. The ad mentions that it only has been through 2 owners and even provided the VIN number. I had a friend do a VIN check and the provided information provided stands correct. I felt a growing sense of trust here. The life of the car has predominately been in Texas and just made its way to Los Angeles last August. No rust. The seller even mentions that it needs ‘minor work’; the front lip fell off and was in the cabin, the rear windows wouldn’t roll up, it needs a new mass airflow sensor, and has some cosmetic wear and tear. Easy fixes. All things I can live with.

After feeling the engine on a quick test drive and a really hard-ball-no-haggle-price of $800 later, I became a proud new owner of an all wheel drive, four-cylinder turbo, sedan in boring beige. The car ran decent for the price. I felt content as I drove home. That was until literally a stop sign away from my driveway, the temperature needle was reading higher than Donald Trump’s nose and the car started smoking out of the hood. That damn bastard didn’t mention about an overheating problem.

I made it just in time to get to my garage. Whatever, it’s okay. I think I’ve done enough work on my car and friends’ cars to trust that I can get to the bottom of these problems. The next morning as I reinstalled the front lip, I noticed the Audi gave me a small gift. It peed a little green. A coolant leak it is!

I’ll be taking you along the process of repairing the car, polishing it up and ultimately finding out if I can break even, trade up, or even sell it for more. Follow me on this multi part journey of…Will It Flip!?

The post Will It Flip!? 2001 Audi A4 Quattro – Part I appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.