Nope, not today
It was nearing 3 pm and I was not likely to have it ready to drive by 4:30. Rather than get in a rush and start breaking expensive things, I decided to just keep going and get as far as daylight would take me. Driving, or pushing the car into my garage at the end of the day would be good enough.
I finally found my baggie of exhaust hardware underneath my fuse diagrams on the passenger side and got to work reassembling. It all went together well except for the “C- pipe” on the right side. That took some prying and convincing, but eventually went on.
I ran the car again. This time, with the full exhaust on. It was a smokey mess, pushing the water – oil mix out the tail pipe. It ran smooth, but again the low oil pressure light came on after about 10 minutes. I was glad that it ran that long, but still troubled by this. I tried a couple re-starts and the warning light came back on quickly. I thought of my contingency plans: Pull the engine and start a tear-down. Make this into another Audi V8 swap. Strip all the good parts and sell the ones I don't have use for.... Not so fast. Keep faith. It's probably just a minor issue caused by water still in the system. I did another oil change This car takes about 9 quarts of oil per change and I ran out of buckets to put it in. The guys at Autozone were not too happy when they saw me dumping all that intermix into their waste oil tank, but glad to sell another 10 quarts.
I was resigned to putting it back together and rolling it to my garage. Before dark, I had the lawn cleaned up and the car back together with wheels, bumper, and a seat from an Audi A4. I decided to start it and check for the warning light. There was a brief flicker, then it went out and stayed out. I put it in gear and drove a couple circles on my lawn, then parked it in the garage. Another victory. Another small step towards completion.
Video:
https://youtu.be/McrcEr8_2jU