# Puttin' in some of my goodies...



## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

What's up guys & gals, I've had this thread rolling around in my head for a little while because I have done a bunch of stuff to my Mk3 vrt, and took a bunch of different pics along the way. It's a general maintenance thread and I'm all over the car, but I have some good turbo-minded stuff that I put in and that you can see. I'd rather post here vs. the mk3 forum, but if the mods need to move it, that's up to them.

The car has been back on the road for a bit since doing all of this, but as always, there are some things that I have done in that period of time that I don't have pics of yet, and some stuff that I have not even done yet, so it still is not 100% where I want it to be. However, Lugtronics is in the mail which I think will really let me optimize what I have.


I will add additional posts over the next few periods of time, too many pics and words for one shot probably. I will try to post in the order that I did things not only for your enjoyment, but for my own reference as well. All of the work will be revealed as you read along.

The pics start out looking horrible because of lighting issues and camera setting issues, but I have it worked out pretty early on and they get better...

I got started and grabbed the appropriate tools and started unhooking. Everything.
Motor/trans is ready to be pulled in this shot.









Got the crane situated...










Had the engine/trans about 3 inches off of the mounts....









and heard a SPRAAAAANG!!!!Uh-oh....think fast, don't panic...I identified the problem and carefully lowered it back down onto the mounts before the leveler let go completely. The shoulder below the hook should be under the rail, and note the flex in the threaded rod since it's jammed in there and holding tension. No fingers anywhere near that, please.









Quick trip to Harbor Freight solved the problem. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that in this picture the carrier bearing is not set properly against the i-beam, but I set it before I used it.









Ok, now we are starting to pick up some steam....










Out clean, no fuss, no muss.










Pulled off the trans,









...and got the mounts out. (VF front and trans, and an old Turn Two rear insert.)









Engine bay at that point.









Another view, start waving goodbye to the ABS system!










First we will replace some front cross-member bushings though.









Out,










...and back in.










Ok, now it's time to rip that abs junk out of there!









Looking much better already. Always wondered what was behind there!









Something for the weight freaks, that's, give or take a couple of sensors, the whole ABS system including harnesses and control box, on the scale.









At this point it got really cold out, and since I had some stuff to do on the front clip, I took it inside and got to work. First, I got four sets of stubby stainless bolts, washers, and nuts and secured my rebar to the lower bumper support/bumper, since the original hardware was missing.










Grabbed a bunch of stuff that I needed...











I wanted to localize the ground connection for my head and fog light relay setup, and found a grounding block that I mounted inside of my fender. Here is a mock-up.











Here is the power/fuse block and relay setup. Note the extra-large adhesive shrink tubing over the relays.










Relay power/fuse block closer up. I never have been happy with the mounting hardware for the fuse block, and the box material is easy to snap, as you can see where I snapped a mounting tab. It is stealth though, and if I need to get to a fuse, I just detach the shroud and flip it over.










Wiring to the passenger-side lighting.










What it is powering. I have been running Sylvania Silverstar Ultras, with all four oem housings containing high-beam bulbs. I also upgraded the 50w H2s in the Cibies to 100w along the way.



















50W vs. 100W side by side.











I replaced my worn-out drivers side wool cover with the one from the pass. seat, so now I'm rocking only one cover. I opted to not remove the one plastic panel that is along the drivers-side of the base of the seat, but I could, and tuck the wool cover behind there for the cleanest look and least chance of the cover moving around. As it is, the wool cover stays put for the most part, and it's not smashing the bolsters down.










It got a little warmer and I needed to make room for a lower glovebox,










...so I grabbed some hammers and chop saws and stuff,










(I got the cutting disc that fits this tool correctly so that I could still run the guard.)











...ended up with this. I trimmed along the bottom and added the three locator holes.










Here I am un-smacking the PO's chop-job install of either a CAI or IC... 










I figured I may as well paint there and a few other places. Ghetto spray booth! I ultimately moved that lower tape demarcation line down to the bottom of the "frame leg" before painting.




























I'll be back later to post some more...


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

Here is the inner fender after painting, and the harness after re-wrapping most of it. I intended but forgot to grind off that bent threaded stud on the "frame horn", or whatever you call it, before I painted. Oh well.



















I have a bosch universal narrowband that I carried my own signal wires from, back up to the ecu, but still used the heater wires coming out of the oem harness. I also tied in my own inductive ground wire back up to the chassis which is why it looks odd.










By this time, I had decided to replace the rear passenger mount inserts with BFI yellows, and was going to rebuild my VFs and use them again. However, I had been having some trouble with VF obtaining replacement inserts for my trans and front mounts. In the end, Nik hooked me up with what I needed, and a couple of perks, but it took long enough that I had already decided to go with a second BFI mount up front and a g60 solid trans mount before the outcome with VF had been determined. 











Back to the ABS system, parts gathered. 2.0L power non-ABS booster and M.C. stripped and painted, new seals all around, including the booster grommet for the vacuum hard line, but it is not in the shot. 

I use Castrol GT-LMA fluid, which is REBRANDED/RENAMED and NOW KNOWN AS "CASTROL BRAKE FLUID DOT4" in the BLACK BOTTLE, if anyone had been wondering why they are having trouble finding the white bottles that say GT-LMA on them.
Here's a link to what to look for in the stores now. 
http://www.castrol.com/castrol/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9012213&contentId=7024043










Parts installed! Not exactly an easy job, but I took my time and thought it out before I cut anything. The lines are set so they are not in the way and still blend in. All original fasteners can still be hit with tools, nothing is in the way. The only bend that I probably would have done differently is the one in front of the booster hose connection. I thought that the plastic tube that comes off of the booster bent the opposite of how it actually does, so that brake line ended up right in front of the attachment spot. It looks a little awkward and makes it harder to pop the plastic hose out. But, to have bent the brake line down would have made it harder to thread the line nut out, so it's probably fine how I did it. Now we are so happy we do the dance of joy! 



















We'll muck around under here a bit.....ow.....










What is this wire? =)










Now I drained the oil,










...and unhooked the oil return line because I wanted to eventually drop the pan.










Re-attaching the front mount bracket to the long block, sans trans.










That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I am putting the engine back into the chassis
without the transmission. This will make more sense later on.










Back in on two mounts, and some insurance jack stands. Hawk-eyed observers will note that I have re-dressed most of the drivers side wiring harnesses by now as well.










The intake manifold was removed so that I can get to where I need to.


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## Ziptied (Dec 1, 2009)

watching this:thumbup:


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

We'll set her to cyl #1 TDC and start making some marks just for reference. I also checked the intermediate shaft sprocket index and it was good.




























Close enough to what I was looking for, time to loosen the cam sprocket bolts and remove the oem cams.










We'll wrap these up and save 'em for later, in case I need them, or you need them.









We'll do a leak-down test (not shown) with the cams out, seems the easiest time to do it.









Looks like this head may have had a number 1 exhaust valve replaced or it got too hot at some point in the past, which would be shocking. (sarcasm) I'm not really sure about that, only basing this on the color of the metal of the part that is above the spring. I noticed that it is a different color from all the rest. I found no issues during my leakdown test.










We'll go ahead and bleed out some new lifters.










Makin' sure that the boom sticks are locked and loaded! 










Yeah, we'll lay those puppies down in there and then make sure that the timing is good at install and after four revolutions. (note: before I laid the cams down, I put the new lifters in place and
let them settle for a night.)









Don't let the Delta box fool you, these are actual Schrick 260/264 's that came in the car originally, but I had removed a long time ago. These are meant for a supercharged engine. Not perfect for turbo because of more overlap than you would want, but I can tell you that the car keeps haulin' the mail way past 5000 rpm, where the stockies would start to run out of breath already. One of the lobes was slightly chewed up right on the "pointy end" and the others had very minimal flash rust on some of the surfaces, so after some exhaustive research, I sent them out to Kenny at Delta Camshafts in Oregon. This guy really seemed to know what to do and knew what "vr6" and "schrick" meant, and was probably going to give me the best chance of having functional camshafts with as close to the original profile as possible. He grooved and fill-welded the bad lobe, ground it back to spec, and polished all lobes and bearing surfaces. Then hard- coated everything but the bearing surfaces. This was all done for a very affordable price. I forget what they were coated with, but they are spinning around in my engine, not making any scary noises.



















(Prior to laying down the cams I put oil on the bearing surfaces, & assembly lube and oil on the lifter tops and cam lobes.)










We'll cover the cams up, and now we are going to lock the crank, 










...so that I can replace the flywheel with a spare oem unit that I had resurfaced, and the ring gear was also cut to match. I meant to install my other freshly resurfaced one without guide pins, but this is the one that I grabbed.










I figured that a Clutchnet red PP and organic disc would suit my criteria.
**I wanted to note that I had to very slightly ream out the holes in the PP so it would drop over the guide pins.**










I also had a little pile of parts for the transmission.










Installing the girdle. 










I wanted to make sure that I did not over-tighten these, as silly as writing "1/4 turn" on a piece of tape on my socket may seem.










You can see the girdle flexing a little, not 100% ideal without machining the case but stronger than before I hope.










I added a Flipside Customs bearing fork to the trans, There is very little room between it and the girdle! At the risk of weakening what is supposed to be stronger, I took some material off of both items with a hand file so that they would not bind. I was not sure if the throw-out bearing would help locate the fork away from the girdle, and didn't want to have to pull it all apart if it did not. You can see the motor is back out and ready to accept the trans.










Bringing the two back together. I now see in the pic that I have two trans locator dowel pins in the same spot. I remember getting hung up by that and having trouble knocking one out. I got it out by hitting the one that's in the block from the back, using a hardened punch & hammer.










Viola! 










(See that glow of bright light that seems to be coming out of the trans? That's from the wave-trac that I had put in, and the rebuild that was done, while I was doing all that other work. =) =) )

There's still more work to be done before we swing it all back into the bay, so tune in later!


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## monkeydoc (Mar 2, 2004)

Looking great Mike!

Are you heading to waterfest this weekend? It'd be great to catch up and talk VRTs over a cold :beer:.
I've popped in some new goodies as well, and that flywheel I bought from ya is working perfectly!
Hit me up if you find yourself near Englishtown :thumb up:

-Paul


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

monkeydoc said:


> Looking great Mike!
> 
> Are you heading to waterfest this weekend? It'd be great to catch up and talk VRTs over a cold :beer:.
> I've popped in some new goodies as well, and that flywheel I bought from ya is working perfectly!
> ...



What's up Paul? How's it going man? What did you get for your car? I was thinking about it but unfortunately no WF for me this weekend, but I hope that you have a good time and the weather holds out. I'm happy with the FW too, the guy cut them well. I will let you know when we go to the strip, everyone has done stuff to go a little faster than the last time! We were going to go on Friday but it looks like rain, and when Lugtronics gets delivered I'll be headed straight back into the lab. The cams are running pretty rich anytime in closed loop right now so the sooner I get it dialed in the better. 

I'm going to post some more pics now.


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

Here is where we left off. I forgot to mention earlier that I removed and replaced the oil pan before pulling the engine out to re-attach the trans. I wanted to look at the bearing caps and check side-to-side play, and see if there was anything in the pan. Everything seemed fine. You can also see where I was drawing on my compressor housing with a sharpie, trying to decide where to re-locate my wastegate signal barb. 











Took off the housing,










...and made the final call, marking it with a punch.










Drilled out the hole for the tap.










This was the second barb that came with the Tial wastegate.










Here is a solution for anyone at odds with leaky Kinetic wastegate flex tubes because of the crappy clamps that are tack welded to the pipe, which is too big to start with anyway. Twisting the pipe down worked a little, but I ripped those clamps off of there and found some
"DX Engineering" stainless steel and aluminum antenna mast clamps. I have one at each end, and just had to cut a little notch in the flex tubing so it would overlap and take up evenly all the way around.










Made in the U.S.A.










Re-attached the oil return line. Those are Earls swivel seals with goodrich line, none of that leaky Summit BS down there.










I installed a new clutch slave because I blew out the one that was there, hitting the clutch pedal after it had been removed from the trans but before I had disconnected the hydro line. Oops.











Now I decided to get it all back into the car. Got the approach angle right,










...and snuck the trans under the drivers side "frame leg", or whatever it is called,










...adjusted the leveler and started getting it lined up for the mounts,










...and fully down.










I had a brand new front mount bracket that I found, so installed it. 

I also had some extra stainless steel washers from my VF mounts, and placed one on top of the front and rear mounts threaded metal "mushroom cap", to help distribute the forces a little better in hopes of preventing that from breaking so easily. 

(I also used the trans-mount-specific top washer from my vf pile, and it fit right onto the top of the g60 mount. I think that there is also an oem part that could be used there. ) 

Sorry, this pic is blurry but I want you guys to see where I put the washer.










Okay, there are still many more exciting things to be revealed, and I will be back to post more later on!


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## monkeydoc (Mar 2, 2004)

Here's how the Corrado looks under the hood these days. Back in late April /early May I finished my install of a ClutchNet fibre carbon clutch disc + red 2x PP (same one you have), flywheel, strengthened fork, timing chains, and all the related gear. Last month I added the stage 3 boost cooler setup by Snow, with a throttle body plate from USRT.
Then I dialed the boost up to 11psi.

I still have a lot of tweaking to do, (tune/standalone is definitely in the future) but she is pretty ridiculous right now. 










Meanwhile, I finally picked up some long-awaited additional exterior goodies, so things should look pretty fresh and clean for WF this weekend. Sorry to hear you won't be making it out, but def keep me in the loop about future track days! I'd love to see how all this wrenching translates into real ET numbers.


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

Lookin' good, Paul! I will be in touch soon.


We left off with the engine/trans being placed back where it belongs. Just prior to this, I replaced the water pump with a new metal impeller one, but did not take a pic. I also replaced the starter with my used spare because the one that had been in service was getting a little noisy. There are still a bunch of little things to address. 










Time to spray out the insides of the alternator with electrical cleaner. This really helped quiet down the bushings. I also polished the commutator (what the brushes ride on) with some 2000 grit and replaced the voltage regulator which comes with new brushes.










I was tired of the oem fuel clamps. Napa had some high pressure fuel system clamps for me.










I installed some brass shifter cable plate bushings from tyrolsport through usrt.
(At that point, I had a full 02j shift setup ready to go in, but kept the old one in, thinking it would be easier to set up initially because I had never used the 02j stuff before. I was wrong and should have just went with the 02j setup right before I put the engine & trans back.)










Something needed to be done about the leaky fitting on top of the oil filter housing, so I did some things. I suspected that the housing was galled out from improper threads being supplied in the kinetic kit for the filter housing, so I replaced the housing with a known-good spare, and also replaced the figure-8 gasket. Then I installed a complete 42draft relocator kit, as well as a second 42draft filter housing adaptor. Where necessary, these have the properly designated "k" or "course" thread _width_. This thread width is found on the filter housing ports and their respective sensors. Thread pitch is still 1.5. Tell me it does not matter. =) 

Onto one of the new housing adaptors I placed the male/male connector for the oil feed that came with the Kinetic kit, and onto the other I put a male/male connector that came with the 42dd kit. 

I left the temp sensor where it was, ran my oil feed straight off of the first housing adaptor with the appropriate fitting,










...and put the two pressure sensors on the relocator that goes down to the second housing adaptor with it's appropriate fitting. 










I found a pic of some of the parts that I used for the oil housing fittings. Ignore the one with the blue caps on it, that would not work for my application.










I decided to paint the front crossmember now. So why did I not do this when I did the bushings? I wanted to do the bushings early in case I had problems getting those old press-fit washers and sleeves back together, and I did not want to work over tacky paint for the rest of the time. 










Situating the drivers-side harness.










Some of our more more salty veterans may notice that I have the crank and knock sensor plugs reversed. =)










Starting to mock up hose lengths, here you can see the new wastegate barb on the housing.










This is where I relocated the MBC. 

The line next to it is coming from my evap purge valve w/ check valve in line, and goes to a tapped barb that I placed on the intake mani in front of the throttle plate.










I like to use fiberglass oven gasket material to cover plastic and rubber tubes. This stuff is smooth and does not come apart or get into your skin. It's an oven gasket, remember?
I'm running short on the stuff so not everything it covered that could be, but I covered anything critically important that is close to any major heat. 

I have also had problems with radiant heat coming off of the braided stainless oil line and melting stuff, which is why I try to cover it as best as possible. Too bad the oven gasket will not fit over the fittings or I would use it there too. 

I am still in the process of shoring up that blue silicone "triple tree" hose, but found some awesome large diameter adhesive shrink tubing that I have started to use in order to prevent clamp rash, and a full set of vibrant t-bolt clamps for that tube. Only problem is, the shrink tubing added a lot more diameter than I had accounted for, and I could only get one t-bolt to hook up as of yet. It's not leaking boost anywhere, so I keep putting off ordering the next size up t-bolt clamps. Nor have I been able to take any clean shots of that because it still looks haggard.










Making sure that the fuel lines are not going to get abraded by anything. I would like to upgrade these or at least replace them with lines that I can lay in there more cleanly. You can see where I used some loctite PL-extreme adhesive to glue a piece of split tubing to the frame horn. I check those lines all of the time to make sure they aren't getting touched by anything. 
Don't make fun of my pink foam air cleaner support, but I really have no excuse for that one. 
I made that when I had a 90-degree aluminum tube cut so that I could move the maf housing around and filter around to see if it helped drivability problems, and it works pretty well to take strain off of the 4"-to-3" reducer coupling so I kept it in. 










Here you can see the fuel lines again, and where I had to repair the PO hack job CAI intake install. I wanted to mention my dad who showed up with his welder and stitched it up before I ground it back.










Getting everything situated on the passenger side of the bay. More adhesive shrink tubing over the maf plug, great for water-proofing and insulating the wires, and adding durability.










I found some good spark plug wire clips that were cheap and plentiful, so I was able to replace my twelve different styles that I was using before and make them look more uniform.










I got the front clip back in place, and hung my grounding block. It ended up vertical rather than horizontal, and is secured with one self-tapping screw at the top. 










Here is where the vac/boost sensor lives, it is held in place with one of the a/c line clamps.










Things are starting to take shape. By this time, almost every clamp that was smaller than four inches has been replaced with DuPage stainless *shielded* clamps of various sizes. 










First key turn is not far away. That's when I go back and fix the knock and crank sensor plug, haha.










I hope everyone is enjoying themselves as they follow along, and I have more pics and progress still to post, I'm not done yet!


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## masterqaz (Oct 5, 2007)

Trap loads, Heck yeeahh


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## wabbitGTl (Jan 2, 2007)

looks like you replaced at least one of the heater hoses with a braided line. care to share any tips or results? i am very much enjoying your sensible approach to making things better :beer:


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## 02vwgolf (Oct 6, 2009)

Can definitely appreciate the attention to detail, nice work:thumbup:

Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk 2


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

Much appreciated people. More progress in a moment.

Paul's Corrado has the braided heater hose, but I was wondering about that also, maybe he will tell us more about it.



monkeydoc said:


> Here's how the Corrado looks under the hood these days.






monkeydoc said:


>


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

At this point I had to clean this up and check some wiring after my ABS delete, and reattach the brake pedal to the booster.










I took a few pics today because I didn't get any before.
I have it looking a bit better, and nothing's going to short out or anything like that. The zeitronix stuff on the left still needs to be cleaned up a little. I moved that fused power wire that you can see jammed into the front of one of the relay sockets in the upside-down picture to a main leg on the back of the fuse box. It's something for my water/meth pump, I forget right now exactly what, but it carries some amperage. 

Tip: If you want to use velcro in your car, put a thin coat of epoxy over the adhesive of both pieces and glue them in place separately and allow to dry before hooking together the two, or it will not stay glued in hot weather. 



















I was almost ready to re-install the drivers seat, and I wanted to tackle some issues with the center console area.

I replaced my tired leather hand-brake with a clean plastic handle and boot.

The N/A center console is too tall to allow my seat to lower down enough due to the built-in armrest in my seat, so a low-pro rear center console is perfect. I cut a hole in it for the hatch switch. No more cupholder that fits a wendys medium... =/

(Now I still need to make a cupholder that bolts onto the exhaust tunnel. I have a simple one-piece design in my head, but no machines. =/ )










I'll take some interior shots soon, I don't have any good ones now.

Car back on all fours again!










Electrical power!










I did a final inspection of everything and added my container of lucas engine break-in additive (liquid zinc basically) and then filled with Shell Rotella T6 5w 40 synthetic oil to help out with breaking in the cams.
My buddy fire32njetta stopped by for the first firing and laughed at me when it didn't take, but we checked fuel and spark and then I decided to check the crank/knock sensor plugs and it fired up. Woop woOOP!

I ran the camshafts in for a while and then set the shift cables so we could take it out. I had to keep adjusting the shifter cables and had a couple of grinds, and I knew what I was going to be doing after we got back.

Everything went well during the test drive, but I could tell that the shift group had to go. Also the cams were running what turned out to be fairly rich in closed loop. I am already making up songs in my head about getting rid of narrowbands and maf sensors, and being able to change things in the ecu. =)

Here is the only pic that I took during the install of the trans shift group. I wanted to illustrate that I had to add the nut and bolt there on the polo box to secure the front. I think I had to drill a hole in the pole box for it.










I later added these metal insert bushings to the cable-ends. Cheap and effective. 




























When I got the car back in the garage and checked it over, I saw that the oil cooler gasket was leaking. I twisted the cooler about a millimeter when I was doing the oil filter housing install, and I figured it might leak, it might not. 
I had a spare just in case.
Bad gasket!










Torque wrench fits.











I also noticed some slack on the bottom disc of the front bfi mount. I don't want any clunking when I take off or shift, so had to add another washer with the standard sized hole, and also drill another one....









...to fit over and past the bottom of the mushroom stem. Using plenty of oil, I still killed two $50.00 cobalt step bits on one washer. Must be top-notch stainless, plus maybe a faster drill would have helped. When I went back to Home Depot to exchange the second toasted bit, the girl at Home Depot started saying "He's swappin' em!" "He's swappin' em!" ... I said "No I'm not!"

Washer sandwich, no slack finally. I took most of these in this post today and was holding my light in one hand and the camera in the other for a few of them, but better than none.









Here is my lone T-bolt clamp. One note of interest, I filed down the compressor housing underneath of that clamp to allow the tube and clamp to fit.










I carefully filed the housing right below the clamp. The stuff dripping is some adhesive from the shrink tubing used to support the triple-tree tube. 










Turbo just clears.










Went to the track after breaking in the clutch, and really broke in the clutch =) I'm still learning how to drive at the track. I was slow off of the line for most of the day because I didn't know enough about the sportsmans tree until someone explained it to me again. Also the new clutch take-up is a bit different than before , so in the vid, I rode it for an instant while getting through first gear. I also ended up with my fastest run that I have gotten out of it. 

Yes, true believers, vid fun for everyone, I will deliver what I know that you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tE_Vqc7ByY

(Now can someone tell me how to make it show up in the thread like a tv screen?)

Went to the track again another night, and the car was running weird, and I broke the cable holder on my throttle body during a pass. Ziptied it to get home, where I also broke my spare during the install of it. Luckily I had two spares. There's another spot that I have a one-piece metal solution for in my head.










My boost leak tester came in, and I found that I had to tighten the t-bolt clamp some more, add a second clamp to the dv, replace a slightly torn meth signal line, and also two o-ring seals in the meth fluid tube quick-connects. I re-purposed some seals out of a refrigerator quick-connect water line fitting.

I also knew that it was time to wrap the downpipe and get a blanket for the hot side.
I found a good product on Ebay from " thermalsolutions ". I really should have done this when I had the engine out. I soaked it, had gloves and long sleeves and the inside of my forearms still got laced with fiberglass. Duct tape pulled it out well though.










I installed these from racetronix, so that I can send off my bosch ones for cleaning.










Here you can see two brass barbs that I added to the intake mani for signal hoses.










Here are how some of the hoses are being run.










Here's the barb that I added for the evap purge valve. It juuust gets in the way of the spark plug tool, so if you do what I did, see if you can move it back some.










I'm trying to come up with a small piece of material under the plug wires to insulate them electrically from the manifold. I keep cutting more and more off, so it's still " in development ", and I may develop it right into the trash can.










That's all for tonight, hope everyone has fun this weekend at Waterfest, keep it safe and have some fun!

I'll be back with some interior pics in the near future.


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

Here's a quick little update before I get to those interior pics. 

Suddenly I had new things to do with the project, and in order to prepare, I took some stuff out of the car, 



















...then re-opened one of my plugged vac ports, 










...then re-assembled my "cold-air intake", minus that pesky maf sensor. It's just aluminum 4" mandrel bent tubing, and I originally had this cut when I was experimenting with moving the maf housing around. I measured it so I could keep the maf housing in the stock location and just move the filter, or flip it around and fit the filter and maf in front of the bend, and run it like that. 











=) =) =) 










Got it hemmed in enough to grab some logs and send them off... =) =) =) ...


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## wabbitGTl (Jan 2, 2007)

welcome to the club amigo  :thumbup: i never went the chip route, but my car runs as well on kevin's base tune as it did on the stock ecu. btw, what's up with those plugs?


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

masterqaz said:


> Trap loads, Heck yeeahh


 
:beer: My buddies and I go up to a pretty cool club in PA once or twice a year or so and I usually hit around 65% of my targets, but I can never remember which barrel is choked for what, I leave the safety on a lot, and we usually take the day to get on the same page as to when to send the second target. 




wabbitGTl said:


> welcome to the club amigo  :thumbup: i never went the chip route, but my car runs as well on kevin's base tune as it did on the stock ecu. btw, what's up with those plugs?


 Thanks man, it's a good place to be. 
After the 260/264 cam upgrade, the car ran very rich in closed loop and I think that the programming moved even further away from where it needs to be for the setup. In addition, the car since the turbo has always had an issue with running leaner than it should approaching higher loads. So add in the meth to band aid that, and the plugs get assed out pretty quickly. And it will foul out a couple a couple of the plugs rich, lean out the rest, not always the same ones, so seems like less like a mechanical and more like a tune-based or electrical problem. Worst case is that the engine is messed up somehow or there is weird wiring in the car that no one knows about. 

I was watching those ADC channels in the VEMS but I don't know what the sources are. One was not as smooth/stable as the others, and half of them were a volt less than the other three.


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## pubahs (Apr 2, 2002)

*FV-QR*

Fun reading through this... since you do like to take the utilitarian route... and are running the stock manifold, Id suggest picking up a roll of this product and cover the entire underside of your manifold. I did this when I was NA.. and it worked quite well to reduce heatsoak 

http://www.jegs.com/i/Thermo+Tec/893/13575/10002/-1


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## bonesaw (Aug 8, 2004)

The ADC channels are your analog inputs.


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## 'dubber (Jun 15, 2004)

bonesaw said:


> The ADC channels are your analog inputs.


 

I only happened to look at that adc output screen and saw some differences, I don't really know what to equate the analog inputs to, so I don't know what is producing the voltages, if they are normal, etc,.... 

I looked at a v.3 vems harness diagram online and it doesn't line up with how mine is pinned, so I couldn't really back-trace to where the sources are on my original harness. For example I have voltage signals on adc 0,1,2, and 5,6,7 in my logs but there are no wires where the adc pins are listed on the vems pinout for the plug. 




pubahs said:


> Fun reading through this... since you do like to take the utilitarian route... and are running the stock manifold, Id suggest picking up a roll of this product and cover the entire underside of your manifold. I did this when I was NA.. and it worked quite well to reduce heatsoak
> 
> http://www.jegs.com/i/Thermo+Tec/893/13575/10002/-1


 That's interesting, I wonder if just covering the metal valve cover would work just as well, since a lot of heat comes off of there to begin with. Maybe thermal paint on those surfaces would work, and also preserve the airflow between them. I plan to install a 1.8 iat sensor at some point as well, which resists heatsoak. I want to be able turn down the water/meth a lot, but still spray just enough to help with intake temps, but not foul the plugs.


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## bonesaw (Aug 8, 2004)

I should have been more thorough. Don't worry about the analogs because you don't use them. The voltages vary because some of them have pull up resistors. Hope that clears things up a bit.


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