Your first visit to the race track will be a mixed bag of emotions, ultimately in most cases ending on a positive note. Preparedness and condition of your vehicle assumed, it’s usually a day you’ll never forget. If an exciting day turns into an addiction, lots of considerations become apparent and implemented by most sensible hobbyists, and the source can be logical reasoning or simply being taught to look for them. This also mostly applies to the hobbyist canyon carver, drag racer, drifter, and anyone else using their car aggressively, all the time.
Four years of preparation and understanding the risks of such use still cannot prepare you for the unthinkable. It was a nice and warm day, the crowd thinned & a new Racetech RT4119 installed, of course I tried to go for a personal best lap. In a split second, going up turn 3 at Willow Springs I heard a chime, knock, and whoosh. Holiday lights everywhere on the dash, it was like the control room of Chernobyl, every known and unknown message in Audi’s playbook was displayed on the small virtual cockpit. Nothing dramatic, nothing loud or scary, just a poof. Other than the car shutting off and displaying messages, the only indication of a serious issue was the white cloud of smoke in the rear view mirror. The heart of this Audi had made its last beat.
You’re invincible until you’re not, and this was the first real wake-up call in four years of thrashing the car. An Audi EA888 Gen 3 engine, while a technological marvel is still not designed for this type of use, at least in the A4 application. It made it through nearly 50,000 miles of hell before giving. The accelerated wear and tear on the internals, combined with hot and thin oil, cost it a rod bearing first, and critical damage immediately after the bearing fused with its bearing journal. Once the frustration had settled, and the hangover was gone from the night before, I started making calls and doing research to find a suitable replacement.
***SIDE NOTE: Never wear white shoes while taking apart a blown engine.
Audi, who employ me, quoted nearly five digits for just the block, labor not included. This is after every possible employee perk being applied. I was smart enough to have a designated track fund set aside in case of an emergency, but paying so much on a car that had depreciated significantly didn’t make sense. A little research, a few phone calls, and a 100 mile road trip yielded a low mileage engine matching the car at a junkyard. It pays to have access and see where it came from originally, turns out a service loaner was written off over a rear-end collision and dismantled. Perfect. For a significant sum less than the initial quote, and with the help of my friends at Pit Stop Motor Tuning, I had a new engine compression tested, installed, and being used at Streets of Willow within weeks of the catastrophe.
This doesn’t go to recommend a junkyard dismantled motor (or most critical parts) be used for replacing an engine on a budget, to the person wanting to get the most out of their car with normal use it makes more sense to get new & factory installed. In the hobbyist’s case, too many variables exist with extreme use, and you have to assume it can happen any time for any reason whether the block is new or a take-off. The inexpensive and used route is the safest bet. I used www.car-part.com to source the block and Pit Stop Motor Tuning to have it replaced.
Comments