A Nice Little C6 S6 Project For The Pops

A6 All/ S6 All
#1

Greetings,
I purchased this C6 S6 from upstate New York for a price too great to pass up. It’s been sitting for a few years as it had an top end rattle and was promptly taken off the road. The previous owner has scavenged the HPFP’s, front axles, coil packs and a few other odds and ends for his other S6’s.

A later compression check came back at 180-195psi across the board and the intake flaps were diagnosed as broken. Enough to tell me that there’s no valvetrain damage and the noise was just the flaps rattling around. There is an error code for at least one wideband o2 so I’m preparing to drop the engine to replace them; I’m unsure if I want to make longtube headers for it at the moment, but I will be moving the cats further downstream as well as the front o2 sensors for easy access when the need arises again.

I’ll be giving the car to my dad afterwards, but figured I’d start a thread for the fun of it. It should be delivered sometime next week…

20210209_161112 by Joel Francisco
20210209_161127 by Joel Francisco

1 Like
#2

Congrats. Good luck.

1 Like
#3

Good luck with the build. When you build the headers, make me a set too (yes, im asking again :joy: ) I love that those rims make the car even MORE of a sleeper.

#4

yuck those valve covers.

When you drop the motor pull the valve covers and check to make sure there is no rocker arm damage

It would be suggested to pull the cats while you drop the motor to change the 02s

Also look into injectors as it’s not if but when they go bad

JHM intake spacers will help with dropping a huge amount of heat out of the intake. This helps with carbon reduction. Keeping the intake manifold itself happy and many of the other rubber parts.

#5

I wouldn’t waste the money on headers. The amount of power you can make just pulling the cats and the JHM ECU and TCU is pretty cost effective.

#6

Haha, I probably won’t be making another set… Just modifying the current ones. With that set I just got in my last set of header flanges (so it’s not out of the realm of possibilities)! I’ll be sure to do a thorough inspection of the head while I do the maintenance to it regardless. In all honestly, it’s crazy how cheap standard items are for this car (Not including those damn injectors).

I did have a quick question as I had some chocco milk in my other 5.2 as I was bleeding the coolant… Do these pipes need to be pressed out or how does it work?.. I’m so close with my other car last thing I need is to break them…

20210210_162222 by Joel Francisco

#7

I pressed mine out using the closest fitting socket I had.

#8

Yeah I would say overall. We saw a few people trying to make their own headers and unless you do the proper length runners with a megaphone collector placed at the right place with the correct staggered pipes in the collector they all have made less or no better power than just gutted or modified OEM pipes. CV makes headers but he even mentioned it took several designs in testing to get them to actually make more power than just gutted OEMs. You also have to worry about the fact that you have 02 bungs scattered between different cylinders and headers would interrupt that.

With your conversion car Headers would make sense on the conversion car as you just wouldn’t have room to put the motor in otherwise.

ANYWAYS…

Check the oil cooler O rings and oil cooler itself as well. That can be a prime area for milk.

There is two sets of O rings and on most of the cars Ive woked on its the inner O rings you see that leak. Everytime I check in other set they look ok.

But to change them I boil a bit pot of water and drop the case and tube in. Wait 3 to 5 min and pull it back out and twist out the tube. I have never had to press out the tube and I know there is the O ring that makes the seal. But I never wanted to press out the tube and remove material that might help with the seal. I know this is silly but with how hard it is to get to. I didn’t want to mess with it.

Engine drop question
#9

Honestly that’s a fantastic write-up. Thank you, it was a pain to yank these things out in the car… I had to drop the driverside header because of 1 bolt that was in the way. I ordered 8 o-rings in total, enough to do both cars.

I didn’t touch the oil cooler in the install, but seeing as I just went through 3 filters and 35q of oil to flush the system… id rather spend the time replacing them instead of the $240 to flush the engine out… as well as dropping the pan and revealing it 3 times… lol

I’ve been tossing the idea around cutting the stock exhaust manifolds and making a short runner system with a 3" merge. Then running a 3" downpipe with 1 wideband o2 sensor per bank and emulating the 4-5 o2 off of the 1-2-3… it wouldn’t be too difficult and hearing Martin’s B5 S4 with that setup makes me wonder… (it sounds pretty good)

#10

So… A month and a half later and the car finally arrived! Excited to start digging into it and I’ve already found a slew of issues with it. Problems that would cost thousands at a repair shop, but a few hundred in my driveway… So I’ll be digging into that soon. Some pictures of it’s first day home and a proper wash in God knows how long!
20210319_124836 by Joel Francisco
20210319_155516 by Joel Francisco
20210319_154351 by Joel Francisco
20210319_154222 by Joel Francisco
20210319_154408 by Joel Francisco
20210319_153634 by Joel Francisco
20210319_154328 by Joel Francisco