S4 Phaeton rebuild

[Dave Adams]

My good friend Graham (and also a poster here) wanted some help sorting out the 4 link conversion for his S4 Phaeton.

so i went round yesterday to lend a hand.....yeah i know that was a Monday. it turns out we both booked this week off as a weeks holiday, handy for him as it turned out .....and myself later in the week as i want to change a gearbox in the Legerra.

Graham came up with a rather nifty plan to allow the top arms to point out wards to locate onto the chassis rail, so he drilled the hole for the trailing arm before welding the bracket to the axle.

and then weld it on the axle, once we have measured the axle for the correct location. best to do this from the front lower TCA mounts, once done we checked again and there is less than 1mm difference (a tiny error and it wont notice, cars can be 10-15mm out and it not make a huge difference)

we used some wheel chocks to keep the axle in place and propped the nose of the diff so it pointed "up" very slightly.

[Dave Adams]

fitting a panhard rod shouldn't be a big issue, but fitting the arms to the diff as on the cortina could well be as andy says.....the angle on the rear arms is not great and it shouldn't be an issue. modifying the rear chassis members is an option but not on i see you going down. fitting a "strut brace" as you plan to do for the rear suspension towers i think is a good idea. the S1's have similarly angled top arms and seem to manage fine.

[39wffahpkuy0j]

just a little update on the rear suspension.

i have added some bracing to the coil over top mounts top mounts.

.

and i have finished the bottom mounts.

i drilled out a hole and welded a nut onto the axle link bracket.

[39wffahpkuy0j]

then i made some bottom mount brackets and tacked them on.

[39wffahpkuy0j]

and some small fiddly braces.

one thing i did learn when making up the bottom mounts is.......

i used the bottom mounting bolt to hold the nut in place while i welded it in to place.

oops 

when i had finished i found that the bolt had sized into the nut and i couldn't get it back out.

i had to cut the nut off and start again and re do it.

then just in case it rains i painted the top mounts.

 

[39wffahpkuy0j]

i have made the occasional error and had to move the coil over top mounts 3 times.

and measuring up this morning i have found that the top mounts could have done to have been 1 cm further back as they are going to hit the back wall of the cockpit.

i won't be moving the top mounts again........

i'm going away for the weekend so i will leave this with you.

can you A-frame the rear axle.

what i mean is, leave the bottom link arms parallel to the chassis but angle the top link arms from the chassis to nearer the diff. this is the kind of setup that my cortina has.

i'm thinking that i would be able to move the chassis mounts further out giving me more seat room and hopefully do away with the panhard rod.

what are the pro's and con's

any input gratefully considered

 cheers

graham..