This is an early photo of the bathroom being torn apart ... so far, I've got the tub out, the cabinets and sinks out and most of the drywall removed.  Unfortunately, we found considerable termite damage in the wall behind the sinks -- a load-bearing wall, of course -- and I've got a lot of repair work left to do before we can start to put the new bathroom back together.

We decided to skip reinstalling a tub -- in the 18 months we've lived here, the old one had never been used -- and build a custom shower instead.  This means we'll need to relocate the drain to the center of the tub area (I think I'll farm this job out to a plumber) and switch the water pipes around to the opposite wall.  We're going to tile the floor, shower walls and countertop with tumbled marble -- my mother's an interior designer and found us a cheap source for it -- and since the installation costs more than the tile itself, I'm going to try doing this myself.  I'm told it's not that difficult but I have my doubts...

Needless to say, it will be a while yet before I'm back working on the Ur-Q project.  On the positive side, it appears we can afford to do all the things we want to do yet still stay -- just -- within our budget so I won't have to sell any more car parts to finance it.

Speaking of which, the new-in-the-crate Type 016 tranny I bought for the project has finally arrived and everything checks out.  I was going to have a Quaife installed as well as swap the final drive from 4.11 to 3.89 before installing it in the car but I'm now thinking of leaving it as a 4.11 but installing the shorter first (3.50) and 2nd (1.89) gears that Audi used in the V8's tranny.  Of course, this will involve buying a lot of parts from a dealer -- used 5-speed V8 trannys are fairly rare here in the U.S. and the one that I did find recently sold for $3,000, which is obviously more than I was willing to pay for it -- and I don't know yet if this will be prohibitively expensive or not.  The V8 tranny is also equipped with an oil cooler and internal oil pump but installing an external pump and adapting a generic oil cooler will be much more cost-effective than trying to duplicate the factory setup.   Given the amount of torque I ultimately hope to multiply through it, I'm sure that a tranny cooler will prove to be a necessity.

I've also ruled out the idea of converting the '83 Ur-Q into a "Sport Q" replica since it's unlikely that I'd ever finish a project so involved as that would be, given the other demands upon my time (and money!). A friend of mine, however, had what I think was a pretty good suggestion: Install the V8 into the '83 bodyshell even though I'm ultimately planning to install it in my '85 since this will give me a chance to work out all the bugs first.

Given that I'm going to be selling the shell anyway and that I rarely finish a project without at least a few ideas about how to do it better the second time, I must admit his suggestion makes sense.  For now, though, it's academic since it'll be the end of May (if not the middle of June!) before I finish with the bathroom so I'll have plenty of time to think things over in any event.

And while I'm on the subject of thinking, I now realize that I overlooked a key point when I was chasing down 16v VW manifolds and camshafts, etc.: Specifically, the fact that while the 4-cylinder VW engine uses a flat crank, the V8 in fact uses a 90-degree crank.  This means that although the cams will fit the head, they won't be in-sync with the pistons ... likewise, the exhaust manifold tuning would be all wrong, too.  It wasn't until I picked up the spare crank from the machine shop that this dawned on me.  I guess I was too focused on the race engines Audi built for the DTM series (which did, in fact, use a flat crank and were ultmately disqualifed on a protest) instead of the production engines that I actually have in my garage ... oops!

Lastly, as the above photo verifies, the 3.6L automatic block does indeed bolt up to a Type 016 transmission ... only one of the bolt holes doesn't line up and since that's true of the 5-speed block as well, I don't think it's a problem.   The upper sump also bolts up to the tranny -- well, it does if you have access to a machine shop -- but I'd recommend spending the approx. $325 to buy the 5-speed version from a dealer instead.  I have also confirmed that the auto crank has been drilled at the factory for a pilot bearing -- this just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? -- but I have to check a few more minor details before I'll swear that the auto and manual blocks are interchangeable.  If it turns out they are, given the ready availability of used engines from auto-equipped V8s, this opens up the doors to all kinds of interesting engine swaps among various Audis ... how about a two-door 4000 sedan, for instance?  With only 2300 lbs to push around -- as I recall, I got mine down to 2054 lbs with four gallons of gas in the tank -- 240hp should be more than enough power, eh?