An Interesting Development

[Jim Haseltine]

Brand new and unused 'the' oil seal is a circular section highly flexible O ring. The one I dug out of my car was flat in section, rock hard and brittle to the point that it broke into many pieces when I removed it. I doubt that any product could have recovered mine - not saying that a conditioner wouldn't help if used from new though.
New seal:

Old seal:

[cammmy]

Nice, thanks. Those are the ones. I'll give mine a wire brush and a waxoyl.

Update on the parts from Audi:

Gasket - 09E321371A - £50.68
Filter - 09E325429 - £62.16
Mechatronic seal - 09E325443A - £19.36

I managed to find this:

https://m.autodoc.co.uk/vaico/12246431

I'll go with that and order an OE mechatronic seal

It does seem that these parts are listed for a 6HP26-A-61, so hopefully they share parts, rather than Audi having given me the wrong part numbers...

[cammmy]

Wow, yeah, I don't think any product was going to help you there, Jim. I've ordered some Forte just to try, as it's not hugely expensive.

I've ordered the trans kit and a mechatronic seal from Audi. Hopefully I'll have it all for the weekend. I take it I have to drop the mechatronic unit to replace the seal?

Edit: just had a call back, back ordered 7-10 working days. Guess it won't be on the road this weekend then...

[welwynnick]

Here's a bunch of Corroded coolant pipe pics so you've got an idea how bad it gets, the worst is under the bracket which is the usual failure point when the pipe fails. I've also included some Oil Pump pics too - https://imgur.com/a/atMZnwF

Thanks Ian. I take it the oil pump has to be removed to change the seal?
Does the LHS turbo have to be removed in order to remove the oil pump?

Cheers, Nick

[don0301]

Hi

The forte seal conditioner, you will need 2, 1 per 5l of oil. It takes up to 500 miles to "work".

I rang and chatted with the science geeks at forte, it's pukka.

When I bought my car, it "used" well over a litre in the first 2 weeks of ownership, after a lost battle with Audi Colchester regarding repairing it I researched and tried this stuff.

They say you only need to use it once, but i renew with each annual oil change now. My car "uses" up to 250ml max a year now, literally one or none small top up per year.

I've had mine 6.5 years or so now, and sooner or later if I keep it will no doubt need an engine out to service/repair the engine but I found this a great stop gap.

From forte, it is inert in the oil, it only "reacts" with seals, reconditioning them.

They are trade only, but easily available on fleabay.

[cammmy]

Yup, I ordered two from eBay it says it's good for the drive train too. Maybe I should order another for trans?

[cammmy]

One of the reasons I don't want to have the engine dropped (albeit a silly one) is that I said If I was having that done, I would look at turbo options since I was paying for all that labour anyway. How far can you go before you need a trans upgrade?

I don't really want to turn this into a project car as I want to rebuild the Lotus and upgrade the trans in that. My new turbo is 400bhp+ capable but I don't want to push that far on the stock trans and a 120k mile engine. I've also just bought a whole raft of parts for the Mini to turn that into a track capable daily.

[welwynnick]

One of the reasons I don't want to have the engine dropped (albeit a silly one) is that I said If I was having that done, I would look at turbo options since I was paying for all that labour anyway. How far can you go before you need a trans upgrade?

I'm starting to get the impression that it's the driving rather than the modifications that matters.

When transmissions fail, it's often the input shaft shearing under kickdown, and a transmission upgrade is no guarantee against it.

The stock gearbox seems to be OK up to 1000Nm, though IIRC don0301 is running 1100Nm with no problems, so a turbo upgrade would put 1khp within reach.

Not encouraging anyone to be greedy, of course...….

Nick

[don0301]

Yup, I ordered two from eBay it says it's good for the drive train too. Maybe I should order another for trans?

They do numerous different ones for different things. Check which is the correct one.

Forte have a really good rep in the trade, I had numerous naysayers here when I originally suggested it to people.

[don0301]

One of the reasons I don't want to have the engine dropped (albeit a silly one) is that I said If I was having that done, I would look at turbo options since I was paying for all that labour anyway. How far can you go before you need a trans upgrade?

I don't really want to turn this into a project car as I want to rebuild the Lotus and upgrade the trans in that. My new turbo is 400bhp+ capable but I don't want to push that far on the stock trans and a 120k mile engine. I've also just bought a whole raft of parts for the Mini to turn that into a track capable daily.

As far as I know the standard turbos can go up to about 800ps, before needing to go hybrids. Doug at MRC was expecting mine to be about that, but I "only" got 770ps, although a very strong 11xxNm.

I considered WMI but never bothered, seems too much hassle.

Ive been in a 900+ps one, and tbh I think a stage 2 is the sweet spot.

Had mine about 6.5 years now, touch wood had no problems.

Apart from the odd pipe/worn suspension part (just age maintenance) I've had no problems with mine, bought it with a useless 3 year warranty originally, and since just been prepared with a slush fund.

[don0301]

MRC recommend a gearbox service every 20000 miles for stage 2 cars i think.

[Jim Haseltine]

I take it the oil pump has to be removed to change the seal?
Does the LHS turbo have to be removed in order to remove the oil pump?

Yes and no. It's bloody awkward with the engine in the car but doable - I had the turbos off for other work and even then I made something of a meal of putting the oil pump back in place and had to strip the water pump out to fix what I'd done wrong. I suspect the instruction to remove the LH turbo is because the hydraulic hard line has to be moved (ideally removed completely) in order to get the pump assembly off. There's a very shallow 12 point socket head bolt which holds a support bracket that the turbo oil drain lines obscure - even having seated a driver with a hammer tap I rounded it out.
The pump is heavy and even with the oil drained to the point that you think the car is bone dry there's still well over a litre in it.

[cammmy]

They do numerous different ones for different things. Check which is the correct one.

Forte have a really good rep in the trade, I had numerous naysayers here when I originally suggested it to people.

I ordered the seal conditioner for engine/drivetrain oil

[cammmy]

Okay, so it sounds like there's not much further room with torque but if I can hold onto that torque for longer in the rev range, a decent amount more power is possible. Something to ponder.

With regards to the 20k mile service. That's the reason I'm servicing the trans and slightly worried about the box. I don't know if this car has ever seen a trans service. There's nothing in the log book, MRC didn't say they did one and there's nothing in the service records from the previous owner who had it for 50k miles not knowing it was stage 2).

Looking at the fluid that came out, it was like a used gear oil. Darker but still transparent.

[IanH755]

Okay, so it sounds like there's not much further room with torque but if I can hold onto that torque for longer in the rev range, a decent amount more power is possible. Something to ponder.

The reason for the torque and HP dying off over 5500rpm is that the OEM turbos aren't big enough to keep supplying the increased boost level demanded from a Stage 2 (or more) map at the top end of the revs. So basically the engines sucking in so much air at high revs that the OEM turbos just can't keep up with the demand requested by the stage 2 map so the boost pressure drops to stock levels, leading to the drop we see.

So if you want to hold on to that torque for longer you need bigger aftermarket ones, which means engine out and then leads on to a whole host of other things