All About the Audi: 2003 Audi RS6 Turbo Replacement
This week’s project has been a big one. After 3 fairly straight forward Timing Belt jobs I received a phone call from what I though was to be the 4th in a matter of two weeks – the conversation started off simple enough, the customer asking general maintenance questions. Then I heard the phrase no Twin Turbo Audi owner ever wants to have to say, “I think I have a bad turbo…” This job is bad enough on the 2.7 liter TT motors but is made even more difficult by the lack of a single free square inch left by the time Audi shoved a V8 where it was never intended to live, and then proceeded to strap on a pair of turbos, wastegates, larger headers/down pipes, oil and cooling lines…. You get the idea.
After confirming the passenger side Turbo had packed up and quit playing we then found out the driver’s side turbo had also gone out. Nearly two quarts of oil poured out of the intercooler boost hose when we took it off. At this point there’s no sense in trying to check crush-seals, banjo fittings, etc… in the car so out came the motor to get a good look at what was going on.
The procedure was straight-forward enough but very time-consuming, being very careful to not snag any of a number of hoses/wires/one-off support pieces that aren’t normally in the bay on a naturally aspirated V8/V6 or Twin Turbo V6 that usually lives up there. Audi’s engineering was actually quite impressive once the motor was out of the car and I was able to take a good look at a lot of the pieces they had to produce to make this particular engine fit.
The new K24 Turbos/Wastegates/hardware showed up within a week direct from Audi (thanks Jack) and were ready to go back on the car. Of course we also replaced a number of oil lines, studs, gaskets and other supporting hardware, all required by Audi in order to maintain it’s warranty. Then it was a matter of squeezing the big mill back into place, replacing all of it’s vital fluids and putting it through it’s paces to make sure everything was like new. Another Rennen success story… all at $58 dollars an hour.
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