Thanks everyone. This is a great community here. I really enjoy sharing the project and here is the next installment of what seems to be the never ending story.
With the starter dead, I decided to take out the starter and give a shot at fixing it. After all, it was already dead and who knows If I will find other parts I need to replace during the test drive.
To get the starter out, you need to remove the motor mounts and several other supporting bracketry. So, its a good idea to find something to help take the load off the other mount. I propped up the motor and started to remove the mounts.
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I moved the front sway bar out of the way
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Pulled down one of the mounts
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Gained the room needed
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Removed the mount and got the starter out. The starter looks like it’s showing its age. Lots of corrosion ware and build up.
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Did a little surgery on the starter to see if it could be brought back to life.
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After the surgery, the starter got hooked up to a nice power source and tested to see if it worked.
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With a cleaned up and worked up starter I put the starter back in to see if it was up to the actual task of starting the car.
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With the newly repaired starter in place, I climbed back into the driver seat and took a deep breath before giving the starter a chance to bring the motor back to life. The car took a second to settle in, but soon after it came to life the motor smoothed out and idled fine.
I checked the fluids and pulled out the vag com. I had a few codes for SAI and other things removed during the build, but it wasn’t anything that the JHM tune wouldn’t sort out when installed. It was time for the first test drive since the rebuild and the excitement was high. I pulled the car out and took it for a spin. If you don’t own a 4.2 S4 you don’t know what you’re missing the cars are nice smooth and have an enjoyable amount of TQ to make driving fun. It was much better than driving the wife’s A4, not that the wife’s A4 isn’t nice, it’s just not an S4.
As expected during the drive something had to go wrong. For whatever reason a gravel truck had to cut in front of me on the expressway and something flakey started happening to the instrument cluster.
Well the result of the gravel train pulling in front of me was expected. A window prize.
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With all the excitement of a new chip in the windshield, I decided to try and ignore that, choosing to look closer into why my instrument cluster was acting up. After pulling off the fuse panel cover and looking behind the dash, I noticed a huge clump of wire.
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I started to pull it out but decided to stop as wire looked like it just got longer and more complicated, it almost looked like it was going right to the instrument cluster. Seeing this I thought, the window prize was enough for me for one day. It was getting late and I thought I’d just go inside and enjoy the great test drive I had and knowing that the project was almost done. Or was it?
It’s never over lol good to see its on the road!
Yes, it never seems to be over. Always fun and interesting. Sadly the only road the car saw for the next few weeks was the front of the house on the street.
The update below will explain more.
Last we left off, I had decided to call it a day after taking the car around the block for a semi-successful test drive.
The car drove fine but a gravel truck decided to leave some rocks behind, one of them found my windshield. I also had a little issue with my dash acting up.
I noticed some strange wire hanging out the back of the instrument cluster.
After a nice days rest, I was ready to tackle the mystery wire. I started to gently pull on the wire only to have more and more wires come out. At that time, I keyed up the car to put a volt meter on the wires to see if they were active.
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Something was definitely active with the wires. Testing showed they were active one of the wires kept grounding out to the frame of the dash. At one point the instrument cluster went a little haywire.
I turned off the power and unplugged the battery to investigate this wire issue that was tied up and tied to the instrument cluster.
I figured while I had the lower knee panel off I would replace the light switch that had seen better days.
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My hands are a little too big for this kind of work and I’m not fond of electronic work so I enlisted some help from a friend as we pulled out the rest of the dash and replaced the light switch.
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New light switch installed, mystery wire removed ready for the car to go back together.
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After we put the dash back together tested the light switch and did the once over of everything under the hood. It was time to take the car out for the first official hoon session and really get a chance to stretch the legs of the car and grab some logs before putting the JHM tune on it.
With the excitement of the second drive, I went to start the car and… This happened.
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For those of you who don’t know what this means. It is a code for the immobilizer blocking the car from starting. Seems that the interesting electronic issues and grounding of random wires attached to the back of the instrument cluster destroyed something and now the immobilizer wasn’t able to read and the car wasn’t able to start.
And the saga continues…
Oh no! Removal of mystery wire causes no start… hmm.
Thanks again for the updates always fun to read
That wire went forever. It was a tangled mess. The one wire lead into several other wires. Almost like someone had a radar or something that was patched into the instrument cluster but it was installed really bad. I remember gently exposing more and more wire all of a sudden there was a ZZZEEEET a few times and I kinda new something was wrong.
CV has much bigger hands then me I dont see how he would have gotten the wire out. The plus side is the new light switch. Im sure CV would rather have a running car but he has running lights now.
Much better now thanks to your help.
After several months of hard work several thousands of dollars of new parts where did I stand now? I had a rigged together starter, a chip in my windshield, a blown instrument cluster that wouldn’t let the car start blocking the immobilizer and a few things to finish on the interior of the car.
So, I took out the ECU, instrument cluster, and both keys sent them off to JHM to have them paired back together. While the car was down I figured I’d take a shot at fixing the windshield. After all, it can’t get more cracked right?
I started out by going and grabbing this kit. It’s about 30$
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I have never done this before so I didn’t have a reference as to what would be a good kit. All the kits I looked at looked about the same.
Here is the crack I started with. I’ll do a quick once over of what I did just to show the general idea. If someone really wanted a in-depth how to I would be happy to do that.
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The total job wasn’t really hard at all. I prepped the area by removing any little glass bits or any other debris that had gotten into the cracked area.
From there you apply a ring around the cracked area with the one-sided sticky tape. After that, you take the plunger unit put in the resin and suck out the air looking to see the removal of any air bubbles.
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After you have everything set you lock the plunger and let it sit for a few hours. It looks like this.
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After you remove all the air bubbles you put down this activator tab over the area. The catch is, it needs to be in sunlight to work and as you can see by the picture I was about out of sunlight for the day. I just decided to leave it overnight and until noon the next day
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As luck would have it the next day was cloudy the next day. So, I decided to just keep the activator patch on while I installed the new cup holder. The original one was in bad shape but this is typical on the B6.
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Easy quick fix turned out great
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I figured I would check on the windshield and see how the patch worked out. Apparently the need for direct sunlight wasn’t that great as it seemed to turn out fine
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With confirmation that JHM had been able to repair my instrument cluster, I did my final checks over the car so I wouldn’t have to do that agin when the ECU and instrument cluster came back. All the fluids looked good, plenty of air in the tires, the windshield was clear again now all I had to do was wait for the cluster and ECU to return.
You, sir, are a wonderful inspiration to us all!! Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge about these great cars.
Nice update. I think this is the first time I have seen someone talk about windshield repair in a thread. LOL Nice add to the thread. the repair looks like it never happened. I had always wondered how good windshield repairs turned out.
Awesome update big man! Keep em coming!
Pure inspiration. It’s because of people like this that I work on my own vehicles. Keep it up
Thanks guys, I really appreciate all the follow up posts and comments. Please feel free to keep em’ coming.
After months and months of work, set back after set back. The ECU dash etc came back from JHM and the excitement was ready to start. They sorted out all the issues and even loaded a JHM tune on the ECU. Always happy about that.
The power is worth every dime if I do say so myself but what, adds even more, smiles is without the SAI and pre-cats I don’t have to worry about the CEL.
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With the excitement of the car now up and running. I just had to take it out for a spin. As I mentioned in the beginning, if you’ve never owned a V8 Audi you kinda don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve owned the B5 S4 and while it can have its exciting rush in the small part of the RPM the power curve sucks. I like the full RPM any RPM pull of power of the V8 Audi.
The power curve of the 4.2 is great but the sound can be one big added factor to the puzzle. When I was doing the piggies on the car I knew it would help wake up the tame sound of the 4.2 S4 with stock down pipes. On my first real big test drive, I was in love with the huge added power of the JHM tune but felt that the piggie pipes were just not giving the motor the deep breath it wanted. Ideally, the next step would have been the JHM headers as we all know how good they sound and the big jump in performance they add. However after just putting the motor back in and doing all the work I figured the headers would have to wait, and for now, I’d just go full 2.5 full catless.
I know lots and lots of people always ask, what’s the difference in sound from piggies to full catless and what’s the performance difference.
Well here is the sound part. Let me know what you guys think.
I believe there’s quite a difference between piggies and full catless/non-res 2.5" fullback. The thing is just raw like a wild beast. Great thread!
Raw is the right term. Hearing it back to back like that really puts it into perspective. I noticed a nice bump going from piggies to full catless
Removal of the cats all around made for a better car. The feel to the exhaust note was soo much better.
When I convinced JHM to take on the 4.2 S4 so many years ago it has changed the landscape for so much better and every part and every dime that goes into 4.2 parts bought from JHM goes directly back into that platform.
There was and might always be other people and companies tried to create fake excitement over failed products or some new scam but the 4.2 S4 is much like the 3.0T S4 in the fact it’s filled with excited but sceptical members not willing to throw their money at just faux excitement.
Back in 2007 when this movement first started the thoughts were tunes don’t work and exhaust systems were for nothing more than sound. Now JHM has turned this platform into a viable hotrod with 1/4 mile times that rival every other platform with 130mph trap speeds and 11.1 or better track times. Everything from nitrous and supercharger kits to headers to the smallest of timing parts for the motor. JHM has taken the maintenance of the timing kits cost and brought it down to 1/2 that of what the dealer used to charge. JHM has a replacement part for just about every nut and bolt on the car.
The exciting thing for the 4.2 S4 is that JHM isn’t done yet with the platform. There is still more to come and each time you see a fellow forum member get spark plugs, oil change kits or a tune from JHM for their car they are also helping invest in your car as that money goes right back into the 4.2 programme. For me with the S4 up and running I felt like I had completed the journey to help show what so many new or older owners of the car would run into and the support JHM has and is giving to the platform.
My goal is to always be part of the environment that wants and needs real support and honesty, with real power solutions and real interest not just a financial gain type of interest. Performance over profit and horsepower over hype type of interest. With JHM still growing the B6/7 S4 market and the platform well taken care of, I started thinking what would be a good next car with lots of potential like the B6/7 S4, but a platform that has been neglected and forgotten due to how complicated it is to make power and understand the car.
It turns out it was a car I’ve wanted from the day it came out. My wife just helped speed the process along by getting me this for my birthday.
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Congrats on a new ride. You’ve got a great taste sir! D3 S8 is where it’s at, badass. Always been on top of my list of cars to have. So hopefully by the time I get into one it’ll have equally awesome aftermarket support as my B6 S4 has. Looking forward to a build thread hehe