TTRS bumper removal and grill install

The bumper removal process on the mk2 is pretty much the same as it is on the mk1. It's all pretty straightforward and you don't really need any special tools. Refitting it is actually easier than on the mk1, much easier to get all of the panel gaps flush and even all the way around.

Getting the grill out is the hard part. There are two uber-tabs that fought us quite a bit but we eventually managed to pry them out without having to resort to violence. The new grill just pops back in place without any issues.

Start by getting the front of the car in the air and on stands. It doesn't need to be very high but you will need the front wheels off so ramps won't cut it.

To remove the bumper you'll need to remove 4 screws along the top of the grill, 7 screws at the bottom of the bumper and then 4 nuts, 2 on each side, inside the fender liner.

Once the wheels are off remove the screws that hold the fender liner in place. You'll also need to remove the aero-flaps at the front of the wheel.

There are several screws holding the aero-flap in place, one is underneath.


And four shorter screws holding the fender liner, one is just out of view in this pic right at the fender edge.


And finally there's one plastic rivet that needs to come out. If you had a mk1 these are just like the widgets that hold the front engine bay covers on. Just push the center lightly until it clicks in and then you'll be able to pry it out.


Now you can pry the fender liner back a bit to expose the four nuts that need to be removed. Be careful when folding the liner back as there is a plastic frame on the inside which you can see here.


After all of that you'll see the nuts on the long studs which hold the bumper to the fender. The two on the driver side are easy to get to.



On the passenger side you need to work around the coolant line going to the aux radiator.


When reassembling these two studs will go back through the mounting points in the fenders. Be careful not to scratch the paint or the headlights when lining them up.





From under the car remove the 5 torx screws at the front of the belly tray. You don't need to take the tray out, just these screws. There are also two additional torx in the splitter that need to be removed. You can see one in the pic and the other is of course on the other side.


Now back up top there are four remaining torx screws to be removed. Two of them are visible on top of the grill by the hood latch and two are under the black plastic trim pieces between the grill and headlights.


The two plastic trim pieces are held in place with three tabs. The top one is easy to remove and while shown here with a screwdriver you can easily pop them out with just your fingernail.


Things get a little more interesting here as the next two tabs can fight a bit. The manual says to pry from between the headlight lens and the trim piece by lifting it out with your hand, careful not to damage the headlight! We were able to pop the top one out pretty easily this way and then used a screwdriver to release the lower tab by pushing down on it. Here's a pic of where the tabs are and how they're oriented and how to apply pressure with the screwdriver to release the bottom one.





Once those screws are out the bumper is ready to be removed. It helps to have two people to pull straight out on each side to get the studs to clear the holes in the fenders. Be careful you don't go too far with it because the headlight washer hose is still attached. We didn't mess with that at all because we were able to swing the bumper far enough away from the car to get the grill out.


Getting the grill out is easy except for the two main tabs on either side. First remove all of the torx screws from the back side. Then start releasing the smaller tabs along the bottom and lower sides. Finally you should be able to release the larger tabs towards the middle on the side. That will leave you with just the two large horizontal tabs that are under the locating pins. These will require quite a bit force pushing up from the bottom (on the back side of the grill) to get them up over the bumper while simultaneous pushing up on the retaining tabs that try to hold the clips down. Here's a pic of one of the slots. We taped off the bumper and used some plastic interior trim tools to help pry the tab up over the bumper lip. It's doable, you just need to use some persuasion :)



And that should be it, the grill should release at that point. To install the new grill just get it lined up on the locating pics and secure the rest of the tabs and replace the torx screws.

When installing the bumper just line everything up on the two studs going to each fender and the rest should slide in place. We tightened those first, and then the lower 7 screws and then finally the top four and the panel gaps all looked pretty good. Finally replace the fender liner and aero-flaps with the remaining fasteners. The plastic rivet should pop into place and then push the center back in flush to secure it. The plastic headlight trim pieces are pretty self explanatory and the tabs should all secure with light pressure.

Torque the wheels and get the car back on the ground and you should be all done!

Milltek secondary cat delete pipes

Pretty straightforward install, lifts the same as a mk1 and the control arm mount points seem very stable for jack stands. It's so clean under the car and there are some interesting details, including an Audi Netherlands stamp on the body (?)

Anyway a few pics:

Milltek pipes are a bit shorter than stock, I assume to allow for thermal expansion.




Just a simple sleeve joint at the back half.




And 6 bolts up front, all of the fasteners are 13mm, you can pretty much do the entire install with one wrench.




And here are the Milltek pipes fitted.

Delivery Day!

Finally got the call I've been waiting for last night and I was able to check out my RS in person. It's so much better than I could have imagined and I'm so glad I was able to get Aviator Grey again. The sales team at Audi Wilsonville has been great through the entire process and I'm very thankful that they went the extra mile to get the order approved by Audi corporate. I wasn't able to take delivery last night since it arrived too late so now I'm waiting for one final call that it's ready to pick up. Here are a few pics until I've got it back home tonight. I've got tomorrow off to drive (and mod) and will be posting lots of pics.

TT mk2

It seems a blog post is in order now that the arrival of my long awaited TTRS is imminent. The wait actually goes back over 5yrs when rumors first cropped up about a potential mk2 TT with a 5-cylinder engine on Audiworld. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the mk2 design at the time but the thought of getting a new Audi with a class 5-cylinder engine was enough to get me interested. At the time I declared that this drivetrain combination would be the equivalent of beer goggles for the mk2 :)

Of course back in 2006 the mk2 was just a few years old and this was just a rumored powertrain combination. It wasn't until February of 2009 that the TTRS was officially announced, and then not even for the US market. Through 2010 there started to be more rumors of the TTRS being available in the US, including a Euro-spec car being demoed to US press. I got a deposit in at Carrera Motors on July 19 expecting that an announcement would come shortly, I figured the allocations would be limited and wanted to make sure I could actually get an RS once they were finally available.

In early August, Audi launched their Facebook petition to bring the TTRS to the US and after getting over 11,000 petitions (myself included :). In mid-September they finally announced that the TTRS would be coming to the US in limited numbers by Q3, 2011.

On March 19 I was able to switch my deposit to Audi Wilsonville, a new dealership that had opened up in late 2010. My hope that since they were a new and growing dealership was that they would receive early allocations for the TTRS. Of course being local instead of having to drive to Bend was a bonus too :) On April 23 I officially placed my order for my TTRS, although it took several weeks for the order to be accepted due to my choice of color. Many thanks to Scott Mitchell and Scott Larson for getting the order pushed through and accepted. From then it was just a waiting game until I received an allocation, build and finally delivery.

Eventually I received a production week of October 24, delayed quite a bit because of the exclusive paint order. The factory inspection was completed November 21 and the car was sent off to Emden to be loaded for shipment to the US.

Unfortunately it arrived at Emden a bit too late to catch the ship (Mediterranean Highway) that departed on December 2 so it was instead loaded onto the Cougar Ace, possibly seen here. I did manage to catch a pic of it leaving Emden though.

After about a week in transit the Cougar Ace just docked back in Davisville to offload cars for the east coast. I expect it will be there for about 2 days and then off to Houston to unload west coast cars, hopefully including mine :) It should just be a few more weeks before I've got some delivery pics to share.

Too many miles, not enough sleep...

We've had a few late nights and early starts and a day of no connectivity but we're back online now. We made it to Red Lodge today after a fantastic drive over the Chief Joseph Highway and Beartooth Pass. The Chief Joseph Highway was as good as ever and we stopped to take a bunch of pics along the way. Still my favorite driving road anywhere. This was the first time I've been able to go all the way across the Beartooth Pass, every other time I've been out here the pass has been closed due to snow. It's a much tighter and twistier road than the Chief Joseph but the views are amazing. Lots of high alpine lakes and views that go on forever. We also found the Beartooth Falls again but this time discovered a trail head that went to the top of the falls. The hike wasn't very long but the payoff was huge, a spectacular view with the water dropping over 100ft down, yes, there were dangling foot shots.
We're off to dinner in a bit, hope to have some pictures up later.

Hillclimbs, sunsets and moonrises

This morning we left Meridian at 7:30 and headed for Driggs, ID. The Northwest Hillclimb Association was running their event in the Tetons this weekend and we were off to spectate on our way to Jackson Hole. We got into Driggs around 1:30 and after a quick stop at the hotel headed in search of the hillclimb route. The main cross street in town heads up to the Alta ski resort which is where the event was taking place. After running up some pretty good twisties we finally found the starting line with a bunch of local traffic waiting to go up. We got in line and just a few minutes later we were up at the resort. We caught the next shuttle down to turn 7 and found a spot on the hill overlooking the corner for pics. We got to see a bunch of run groups come up although we missed some of the more interesting hardware that had run earlier in the day (GT3 and RS4). On our way back from the races we stopped at an overlook and got our first real pics of the Tetons. Tomorrow we'll swap to the other side
Driggs is not exactly a large town so finding a place to eat on a Sunday night can be tricky. Google knows all though and we found the Warbirds Cafe at the local airport and it seemed to have some interesting cuisine for what we thought would be a typical airport cafe. The Cafe turned out to be one of the best restaurants we've dined at in awhile... fried artichokes for an appetizer and Danielle had a buffalo burger and I had pan seared pork tenderloin. Everything, including the fresh made lemonade, was fantastic.
We made it back to the hotel and enjoyed a great sunset from our room and just as we thought we were done taking pictures we saw the moon rising over the Tetons so we had to get some pics of that too :)
Tomorrow we head over Jackson Pass for a full day in the Tetons. Russ should catch up with us sometime tomorrow afternoon too. We're hoping for clear skies and some star trail and moon shots tomorrow night.

Finally another road trip and a new post

We set out today on a week long adventure to test the new coilovers on the grey car. Today we made it as far as Meridian, ID, our normal first stop when heading to the playground around Yellowstone. We were supposed to meet up with Russ but his car wasn't cooperating so hopefully he'll join us in Jackson Hole. We made our way over to the Ram for dinner tonight, fantastic food as usual. Tomorrow we set off for Driggs to watch one of the Northwest Hillclimb Association's events. After that we head to the other side of the Tetons for a night in Moose and then up to Yellowstone, Cody and Red Lodge. We hope to have more pictures and posts along the way :)