Oil Cooler Duct/Air Guide

[Mɐʇʇ]

How much of your plastic is broken? Every time I even looked at the oil cooler plastic, another piece falls off - it's made of such crap plastic.
I decided I didn't want to put a POS like that back on, nor did I want to give audi 180 quid for another bit to fall apart.
So I made a new one out of 1.5mm NS4 aluminium.

Total cost - £27.66 for a sheet of 1.5mm thick 900x300 NS4 ali from https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/
Plus a few 3.2mm rivets and 4x 5mm bolts, nuts & washers.

Mostly went OK, although I am a bit miffed that the lower panel isn't exactly true - has a very slight curve in where it's pulled by the brace.

Sizing up the old POS:

Making a kit of the parts:

Trial fit with skin pins

Looks alright

Final fit

[Shoppinit]

Very tidy.

For your next challenge: undertray.

[Mɐʇʇ]

Doable, I'm sure. But on a cost benefit basis, an undertray is 250 quid which looks like decent value compared to 180 for the small thing above.

[IchBautAuto]

SRS recently had a batch of under trays made up for the B5 RS4 in GRP. They look quite swish so perhaps someone local could look at the same thing. Freight would kill it for me, if I needed one.

[Mɐʇʇ]

My other hobby is boats (building powerboats) - so I could do a GRP one no problem.
Cost/benefit though - while it's available from Audi for 250GBP, the cost & effort of making the mould for a low volume run just doesn't stack up.

[Shoppinit]

I thought they were NLA, then they became A again, but with terrible build quality. And possibly now NLA again anyway.

[Mɐʇʇ]

I saw the part number was dropped and is now superceded.

Apparently they've decided brake pads might not be NLA either - and that there was stock in Germany all along, despite being listed as NLA. Pretty frustrating, but they're only interested in new stuff, of course. A customer ordering by part number - well - I'm a bit of a dinosaur I guess.

[airtite]

This will be my next project, just enquired today how much an air duct was from my local dealer. Its crazy expensive.

[Mɐʇʇ]

It fits well. Some other pics of it here : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=113332&p=928673#p928673

[airtite]

hey Matt, you dont still have the dimensions of the pieces you cut? My OEM one is pretty much completely destroyed so not much I can use.

[Mɐʇʇ]

I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't think about it until too late (bumper is now back on).

[airtite]

no problem.

[Mɐʇʇ]

You can see how many bits my old plastic one was in - so I kinda just had to guess a bit on the new ali one.

[Shoppinit]

Suppose the downside to this is that if you have a small shunt you might push the fins into the cooler. Avoid running into things is the solution I guess.

[Mɐʇʇ]

I take your point, but I'd also argue such a marginal difference though. If you have a chance to design the crash so that a "plastic" crash doesn't damage the cooler, you'd be as well off to design not crashing. I've always felt the best way to avoid damaging things in a crash is to try and avoid crashing as much as possible. I've not always been successful at that, admittedly, though.

I did actually consider making a carbon fibre one - I have a bit of spare carbon sheet and aluminium angle kicking around I could have used - but I think by and large aluminium suits the car better (mine is an aluminium interior trim one, not carbon). Plus you can "tweak" aluminium to fit a bit.