StanceWorks: Building a mental Audi Quattro 5-Cylinder: but why use dimpled ports?

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Foreign I’ll be the first to admit I’ve probably got too many projects going on and if you add to that all of the cars that belong to friends of mine the shop is getting pretty full given that I’ve been out of town for the last two weeks and it’s been six whole

Months since we last touched the Audi Quattro it should come as no surprise that it’s buried all the way at the back so if we want to work on it we’re gonna have to pull everything out of the shop and wake it from its slumber and let’s

Get out of the way no I don’t own the black Ferrari and the 1600 belongs to my girlfriend the white E30 belonged to my late friend Corey and we recently put it back together so check that episode out if you missed it so we’re three for three

For cars that I don’t own however I guess I should fess up and say I did buy this white E28 a number of months ago and I promise we’ll touch upon it in a later episode but with all of these cars out of the way we can finally pull the Audi out

From under khalil’s E36 and knock the dust off With this thing out of sight and out of mind it was easy to forget how cool it really is and it’s easy to forget exactly where we left off so here’s the crash course reminder we bought a 2.2 liter aan engine out of an Uber S4 we’re swapping it in because the

Original motor came with a blown head gasket and I like excuses for more power the downside though is that I was told I was buying a good engine but what arrived looked like it came from the bottom of the ocean and with power goals of around 500 all-wheel horsepower I figured we should

Take the opportunity and tear this thing down for a rebuild so with the help of my friends next door at liked bow who specialize in restoring classic European cars we got down to business we tore both the bottom end and the top end down for service and that’s where

Things began to spiral a little bit out of control but honestly is anybody even surprised at this point instead of taking the head to a local shop for service I crated it up and sent it to Germany and two months later that same crate arrived back home

Given that most of my viewers are here in the United States you’re probably not familiar with NG Motorsports but to put it simply they specialize in CNC cylinder head work and one of their Specialties is Audis I told the team at NG Motorsports I was only looking to make around 500 horsepower at the wheels but they responded that that really didn’t need much work and if we were going to do this we should take it all the way and what returned to the United States was

An absolute work of art so let’s start with the obvious the chambers themselves have received CNC Machining which has a number of benefits for one it removes any variance between the cylinders when it comes to compression ratio and it also removes hot spots within the cylinder head thanks to an improved surface

Furthermore the valves have been unshrouded and we’ve upgraded our valve seats to Copper beryllium and have given the valves a three angle valve job we’ve got tapered valve guides for improved flow and most notably there’s been some amazing CNC work within the intake and exhaust ports themselves the flow characteristics have been

Improved dramatically and with a cylinder head more flow means more power it’s as simple as that but if you clicked on this video you’re probably wondering what gives with the dimples inside of the intake ports or if you’re familiar with them maybe you want to know for certain do they actually work

Or maybe you’re just here to call me out and say this is all smoke and mirrors whatever the case may be I’m gonna do my best to explain the concepts behind this and we’re going to take a closer look to admire it because whether or not it

Works we can at least agree the work performed here by NG Motorsports is absolutely gorgeous so let’s dive in there are multiple ways to achieve this dimpled effect it can be done by hand but in our case NG Motorsports uses a 5-axis CNC machine to do it which yields much more uniform

Dimples and more importantly dimples that are the correct depth just like a golf ball the dimples on the surface of a golf ball play a critical role they create turbulence in the air on its surface and through reasons I can’t fully explain that allows the air around the ball to

Travel smoother and faster across its surface and that in turn allows the ball to fly faster and further through the air NG Motorsports applies the same idea to the intake Port of our head turbulent air against the surface of the head allows the air in the volume of the

Port to travel faster into the cylinder and thus can create more power on the other hand there are some important differences at play too golf balls spin as they go through the air and cylinder heads flow considerably more air than a golf ball sees as it

Flies so quite fairly there’s a lot of discussion out there about whether or not this stuff works because it’s been around since the 60s but if you look around you can find flow bench data that shows increased airflow through a cylinder head with correct dimpling applied it’s not a massive difference but it

Does add up given that NG Motorsports has a flow bench of their own and stands by their work I’m excited to do the same and get this engine running to see what it can actually do but on that note let’s walk back next door to see the guys that liked bow

Because they have an engine block with my name on it believe it or not this is the same engine block that we disassembled in the last episode and after some heavy treatment it’s looking a lot better than it did before we’ve yet to paint it but

At least the basic Machining is done we had our Factory crankshaft checked and trued and although the cylinder walls looked pretty good if there was some room for improvement so we went with a 20 over bore and if you’re thinking to yourself Mike this is getting out of

Hand well why not go all the way and add some je Pistons to the mix so we can improve our compression ratio and go up with the Boost thankfully and surprisingly je Pistons has parts for this motor on the Shelf so this wasn’t even a custom order now I

Know that the factory aan Pistons are frankly fantastic and there’s not a need to replace them but given that race winning Brands was willing to send this stuff over I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to turn this engine into something well more than I had originally planned

So why not add forged Wiseco boost line rods to the mix while we’re at it right I’ve been told that the factory rods are the first thing to go once you reach the give or take 600 horsepower level but with these rods the Pistons the cylinder

Head and all of the other work we’re doing we’re going to be in a position to make maybe even more power than the Ferrari makes these old five cylinders are easily capable of making a thousand horsepower with the right parts and this is how you get there

Some people might call this scope creep but if you’re gonna ask me I’m gonna label this as building the most reliable 500 wheel horsepower motor possible and hey if you’re gonna lean into it you might as well lean into it so let’s throw another box of parts at this thing

To take it all the way the crew at ECS Tuning sent over a care package for the Audi once they found out what I was building and thankfully there are parts catalog includes a lot of high performance stuff that’ll help this engine come together successfully now as the build plans have changed a

Little bit we won’t necessarily use everything here but we’ve got a lot of great stuff to work with for starters we’ve got new upgraded modern Audi coil packs and an ARP head stud kit meant specifically for building power we’ve got things like new hydraulic lifters a

New water pump all new gaskets new seals pretty much everything to put this motor back in one piece and some o34 Motorsport goodies like motor mounts to scratch the surface now don’t worry no we’re not done with the new parts yet in fact we’re just getting started because I’ve also been

Sitting on this box from h r for about two months and there’s no surprises here inside this box we’ve got a brand new set of h r coilovers for the Quattro and thankfully this time around these are just gonna bolt on some of you may remember from the last episode that I

Highlighted the fundamental differences between the aura Quattro uprights and the coupe quattro uprights that we have swapped to namely the fact that the original upright for this car is a single solid piece of Steel which makes it really hard to upgrade to a complete coilover so between that and parts

Availability we made the decision to swap over to coupe quattro subframes and that allows us to use S2 coilovers that will simply bolt to the knuckle and gives us an off-the-shelf solution the coilovers also have beefy steel integrated steering arms which should work really well but we might have to

Modify our tie rods to get them down to the correct length needless to say I’m really eager to put these coilovers on the car but we’ve got more work to do before that if we rewind to our last episode where we disassembled the coupe quattro subframes the idea was to get them ready

For Powder Coating and that’s where the boys from Motorsport Powder Coating in Redlands California have come in as Audi Fanatics they urged me to keep them in mind when the time came for Powder Coating and with subframes I knew exactly who to call it might be boring but I opted for a

Factory satin black I want this car to appear restored underneath and I have to say the guys at Motorsport powder coating absolutely nailed it these things look like they have just arrived new from Audi but we all know that’s impossible because nothing is available for these freaking cars but I digress

They work their same Magic on the factory control arms both the forged fronts and the stamped rears I’ve had a lot of parts powder coated over the years and so it’s nice to see an attention to detail such as making sure none of the threads have overspray and

That all of the bearing Mount surfaces are clean on the inside sure anything can be dealt with but it’s nice to not have to what we do have to deal with though are the knuckles unfortunately I haven’t gotten them powder coated yet and that’s because in our suspension disassembly episode I was

Unable to get the bearings out of them my Arbor press flexed the one inch thick piece of Steel this thing was sitting upon so I was under the impression this wasn’t going to be doable without an oxy acetylene torch and a lot of heat but as

I always do when I need help I turn to Brett Walker over at Nimo machine and lent on him for a helping hand between his Arbor press and his additional might he was able to pop all four bearings out without much of an issue so it turns out I should have just

Done this months ago now once we get those Knuckles back from Powder Coating we can put all of the suspension back together and then put it back on the car put the car back on the ground and measure for wheels and that’s an important step because we’re going to

Go with a custom set of 16s once again thanks to our friends at rotiform the 16s is because I think everybody gets the sizing on these cars wrong everybody goes with 17s or 18s and they fill the arch nicely but the side of the car is a really short side profile they

Need 16s I’m going to stand firmly on it I will not put anything bigger on it even if I got to change brakes around or what have you I’m gonna die on that Hill but given that we’re gonna go to coupe quattro suspension I know that there’s a

Change in track width I don’t know how much we need to measure for offsets so that we can get the three piece Wheels fitted to the car correctly I want to fit a nice probably 225 Tire on this thing I don’t know if a 245 will fit

Square but we got to find out so we’ve got to put it on the ground and measure it the only downside is that in order to put all the suspension back on the car we got to put the subframe back in means we’ve got to pull it all back apart to

Put the engine back in once we get there but I don’t want to delay and hold everything up so I think that’s going to be our next checklist item so let’s wait for those parts to come back from Powder Coating maybe we’ll have them in the

Next week or two but I’ve got one other trick up my sleeve I bought a new tool specifically for this project and it’s going to be an adventure check it out you guys know at this point that I love tools I wouldn’t call this a tool in the

Traditional sense but this is definitely a tool for the fabrication Arsenal what we have here is a relatively affordable einstar 3D scanner and you’ve probably seen this thing Elsewhere on YouTube for starters our friend Matt Brown over at super fast Matt has been using it for

His Viper build and he swore in one of his previous episodes that this is a must-have tool and I’m inclined to agree I actually bought this thing almost six months ago but I haven’t used it very much yet because I’ve been saving the learning process to share with you guys

On video but I have done a few trial scans like this original Honda engine mount and I’m excited to see how useful this is going to be but the question is how are we going to use it on the Audi well take a look at the front end if we

Compare this thing to the sport Quattro you’ll notice that the sport Quattro has a much cooler more aggressive single Square headlight setup as an early car mine has what are known as quads and amongst the options for these cars they’re my least favorite unfortunately getting a sport Quattro front end isn’t

Really doable so I’ve decided to get a 3D scanner scan the front of my car and build our own why not use the 3D scanner 3D printing and the mold making process to build a sport Quattro front end that fits on an original Audi Quattro I think it’ll be an update that will

Really be a perfect Finishing Touch for the exterior of this car and what better way than to learn a bunch of new skills all at once now some of you guys will say hey Mike there’s already a company that makes a sport Quattro grill a sport Quattro

Front end conversion for your car you could just buy it instead of making it yourself into that I would say yes I know and unfortunately I bought that front end two whole years ago as well as I bought an entire carbon sport Quattro body for this car if you remember back to my

First episode when I said yeah we’re going to cut this up well that was the original plan I’m just saying I’m not gonna cut the car in half but we are going to cut it up this is not going to be your ordinary Quattro I promise you that

Obviously that didn’t happen I don’t have my body work yet I’ve been waiting for two years after paying in full for it and at this point I am pretty sure I got scammed and that’s a story for a different day I gotta decide how much laundry to air there I’m not trying to

Burn any Bridges I’m not trying to start a war I just don’t want anybody else to get scammed by the same company but also not trying to start drama with a company or a Channel or anything like that and I’m just trying to build my cars in

Peace and have fun and that’s what I’m more focused on but in all it sucks you try to support other companies in the community and you get burned with that said after diving into the car taking it apart and realizing how nice this thing

Is I don’t really want to cut it up and put a wide body on it anymore anyway I’m really happy with the shape of this car so maybe a silver lining there aside from you know getting screwed out of thousands and thousands of dollars I can’t really afford to throw away but

Anyways that’s a topic for a different day a different episode maybe we’ll dive into it later for now we should talk about what else is in the pipeline aside from the suspension right now I need to focus on getting a lot of other parts in order we need to

Get our Standalone from haltech in and we need a bunch of fabrication supplies from driving performance we’ve got to build a turbo manifold we’ve got to come up with an intake plenum solution we’ve got to do a bunch of fluid Plumbing like our fuel we need to build an intercooler

We’ve got to get our CSF radiator installed we’ve got a ton of work to do on this swap as well as sending out the transmission to get built and upgraded I need to find a rear diff if anybody’s holding one I think it’s a 411 rear ratio and ideally something with a

Limited slip if that’s even an option I don’t know yet I’m still learning my way through this car but the idea is to get as many irons in the fire as we can so this build goes smoothly I want to get it done in short order I don’t want it

To drag on you know through the end of the year that’s not the plan here I want to get this knocked out I’m excited about it and it is simple in comparison to the Ferrari we’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before we’re just

Trying to do it well so with that said I got some planning to do I’m excited we’re back on this thing I hope you guys enjoyed it apologies for the show and tell episode but hopefully it was fun I’m gonna get to work I’ll catch you

Guys next week thanks as always for the support