this weekend made some backward progress:

yanked the tranny back out, cleaned it up and painted it.
yanked the motor back out :facepalm:
took off all the crap in the way of the oil pump and installed a set of billet oil pump gears. 8500 rpm better be worth it! Planning to have the motor back in the car by next weekend.

I was in the zone, so I forgot to take pics. Here are a couple:

I scored a low mileage TII tranny, so since I was pulling it anyways, I decided to go ahead and swap it in and use my current one for a spare. I swapped bellhousings between transmissions because I had to modify it so much to fit with the adapter plate
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cleaned, and painted:
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and the reason why I ripped everything out of the car- new billet oil pump gears to go in (stock ones are on the white pad):
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got the motor back together and in the car, I'll post up the pictures later.

Got tired of gathering friends and dead-lifting the motor in and out, so I picked up a new 2 ton engine hoist. Great decision.

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Loaded the motor up on it and started putting it all back together:
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I finally broke down and stripped and painted the water and crank pulleys too. I used that hand hammered paint
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tidied up the injector wiring and fuel lines
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motor back together and ready to go in!
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and back in the car:
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I had some questions too...

what does this hardline go to (I think this was for the charcoal canister), and what does the hose connected to the subframe go to? Can they be looped together??
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Yes they can be looped, It's what most people do when deleting the charcoal canister. The sub-frame hose just dumps to atmosphere behind the sub-frame, uh, frame.

Nice that's kind of what I thought it was...a vent, but wanted to be sure.

This is great! awesome work but why not do a nice v-mount while you got everything out of the way?

I'm tired of fab work! I just want to drive it at this point.

This weekends work...

transmission is back in the car, hopefully for the last time now! I also topped off the fluid in the shifter turret and installed my shortshifter:

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cleaned up the wires, put in the rubber boot and bolted down the center console:

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bolted in the new driveshaft:

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Then I plugged the wiring harness back into all the engine crap, finished up a few loose ends with the harness, and installed the front fenders, front bumper, and also the rear bumper.

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It's finally starting to look like a car! I know I'm getting close because my hardware stash is getting less and less.

couple more wiring questions:

what do these 3 connectors go to? I'm hoping they are AC or emissions crap that way I don't have to worry about them. They come out of the harness that the CAS is in.

Attachment 202980

Kudos to all the work you're getting done, I would never be able to work around that filth. What's the plan for the interior and exterior. Paint? Color? Carpet? Seats?

What filth?

interior is painted black (not planning on using a carpet), exterior will be painted audi tt dolomite grey, seats are in the car already.

I'm pretty sure that the middle connector is for your single wire o2. Mine was yellow on the inside if that helps any.

Pretty sure one is for your NB o2, as someone already stated, another looks to be for your temp sensor (the spade connector one on the back of the head)

ah o2 sensor, right that's one of them, and the temp sensor I prob forgot to connect too, I'll check that out. Thanks!

I think the third one connects to the master cylinder resivoir, to a sensor that tells you when you're low on fluid. Actually it just turns on the ebrake light, but you get the point.

no I have that one connected, and these are all on the passenger side of the car.

Whew, that looks like a lot of work to put the tranny in.

Good luck on progress.

dope.

it's really not that bad. I may just be getting used to it...heh

just wondering how long have you been working on this build and what is your eta on finished?