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.