The rescue of Amy

[GuruX]

Amy is right now a 15 year old lady, born in 2001. She's walked 11 000 kms / 6 800 miles.

A friend and I bought her a couple of weeks ago. She is a rescue project. Not that she's ugly looking or anything like that, it's just that she's a bit dry.
Previous owner had had her for quite a long time. A lot of service done. The usual stuff like suspension and bearings, but also some stuff that I think the garage changed just to make money. Like throttle housing and EGR. Also the ABS control unit.

She is pretty basic specced for a nordic car. That would translate to AC and winter pack, in international term. Summer and winter tyres.

The sad part about her is the dryness, as mentioned before. The previous owner (probably not a great mechanic) had decided to change the oil level sensor, since that seemed to be an issue. The new sensor wasn't fitted correctly or tightened enough. Hence the oil had drained and the car had been run without oil Don't know for how long. So it's either an engine rebuild or an engine swap.

I guess the first thing would be to run an endoscope down the spark plug holes to check the cylinders. If they (probably not) are ok, check the check the sensor, fill oil and do a compression test. We could also drop the oil pan and oil filter to check for any metal flakes in the oil.

What I probably think we need to do, is an engine swap. So, now we need some advice on what engine to put in it. The AUA is there now. The easiest thing would probably be to find another low mileage AUA. They seem to be present on Polo, Lupo, Caddy, Fabia, Ibiza, Arosa and Inca. The AUA does seem to be a bit different, at least in the Lupos, with another bolt pattern for the gearbox and another placement of the starter motor. Finding another low milage AUA is a very hard task.

We could also decide to go for the BBY or even AUB engine. I guess that needs a new ECU aswell. Any other obstacles with BBY or AUB?

Here's a picture. She is loaded onto our dolly here.



Will keep this thread updated on how we continue this journey.

 

[bretti_kivi]

BBY / AUA swap has been done by A2-D2. AVY is also possible according to him.

- Bret

 

[GuruX]

Had a little hands on with Amy today.
Unfortunately, she had been run with not a lot of oil. Somewhere around 0,5L. Not a good thing. We drained the oil and found an oil plug with mayonnaise. I put the oil in a glass jar and saw what you not want to see. Water. So, we decided to try and give her a very, very short crank. Our low expectations were fulfilled. Engine is completely seized. So, the hunt for a new AUA engine with around 11k kilometers is on. There aren't a lot of A2s being scrapped here, so I guess we'll look for a Fabia engine. There are a lot of cars with the AUA engine, especially Polos. But there are at least two versions of the AUA. The A2 one and one with the starter motor on the other side of the engine and with another gearbox pattern.

This is a list of cars with AUA in Sweden. It's probably not accurate as I haven't confirmed any of the listings.
Fabia 00-02
Caddy 01-03
Polo 01-03
Ibiza 03
Arosa 02
Lupo 02 00
Inca

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.870588)][/COLOR]I read somewhere on the A2 that at least the Fabia 01-02 is the same version AUA. ETKA can probably confirm this.

Will also look into a BBY conversion, if it's a better option.

 

[GuruX]

The hunt for a new engine is on!
An opportunity came up and we bought a 2002 Caddy. It had been in an argument with a moose, but the engine is ok. It has an AUA, but we don't know which version. I guess next step will be to find out what gearbox it has and find out if the bolt patterns match. If they don't, we'll probably be able to sell it on for the same cash or break it.

 

[GuruX]

The hunt is still on! I went to a scrapyard today and found a Seat Inca with an AUA. It seems though as the DXB gearbox it's fitted with makes the block incompatible with the A2 gearbox. As I understand, only a 02* gearbox will fit the A2 AUA.

To explain this a little. The AUA engine code doesn't mean that all AUAs are the same. As mentioned before, there are quite a lot of VAG cars with the AUA engine. Only gearboxes that has a part no that starts with 02 will fit the A2 AUA. The DXB gearbox part no starts with 085.

Here's a picture to explain what I found in the Inca.


The DXB box is represented by picture 2, while picture 4 is a 02K gearbox. Note also that the mounting hole for the starter is obvious on picture 4, while you can't find one on picture 2.

So the hunt is still on. Let's hope we find something useful with a good price soon.

On the uphand, I found a (probably) decent diesel engine for my friends VW LT31 camper. Will return another day with a battery to make sure it isn't seized.