Working in the heat!

[sukchew at cox.net (Chuck Blue)]

Wow!!!
  Everyone has been busy accept me.I've been having fun Driving 
Rose,Tinkering with the squirt, finding disc brake parts,installing the 
new/used " Peter" instrument cluster.I converted the dash and external 
lights to LEDs.I'm not doing anything but Maintenance work until the weather 
cools down in the Fall.
    My Son who I haven't seen for about 15 years showed up and wanted to 
work on the 70 Cal look bug.It was ready for the Rust Bullet so we put that 
on and started getting ready for primer.We replaced what bondo was on the 
car and I am doing the finishing touches prior to the primer.
 He's gone back to Hawaii so I'm back in the cruise mode.
ole blue
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Bubb" <jdbubb@verizon.net>
To: "Scirocco List" <scirocco-l@scirocco.org>
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 7:54 AM
Subject: Working in the heat!


Spent Saturday replacing the tie rod ends and aligning my Audi A4. The 
original tie rod ends, amazingly, have a rubber sleeve in the middle that 
lets them stretch and contract a small amount, I guess to absorb road 
shocks, but now with the new solid parts, the car seems a lot less wandery. 
That was definitely a worthwhile project.

Sunday my nephew came over and for some reason all else stops when he shows 
up. Might have something to do with him owning the only turbo Scirocco in 
the family! :^(
When last dynoed the car had made 208lb-ft @ 3900 where the boost was 
spiking to 13 psi and 177 whp @ 5400 with boost at 10psi. Basically the 
torque just drops off in a straight line and we've been wondering where the 
restriction is that's causing the loss of top end. Mike's been slowly 
improving his Megasquirt maps based on datalogs and by leaning out the top 
end to match the lower VE up there to get a consistent AFR and playing with 
the advance he's been picking up a couple HP here and there (or so our butt 
dynos suspect!)

Anyway his car sounded really bad with an exhaust leak that coincidentally 
seemed to have improved the top end performance of his car? A quick 
inspection revealed the downpipe was cracked. Turns out it was nearly broken 
off at the turbo flange and also had a series of little separate cracks in 
the same area! Well, I don't feel too bad since this was the first downpipe 
I'd ever made, probably the one I learned to weld stainless steel on, it is 
totally unbraced and had lasted over 4 years! A little clean up and some 
bead blasting to remove any carbon in the area so it didn't contaminate the 
weld and I welded it all up as good as new although it did look a little 
like a Frankenstein downpipe with all the little weld beads running this way 
and that.
While I was welding that up Mike was playing around with throttle bodies and 
found out that the bigger A2 TB would mate up sufficiently well to the IC 
pipe that was shaped to match the small TB. So, we changed that out while we 
were at it. Recall that he's using MAP based accel enrichment so we're just 
using regular TB's without TPS, so that was an easy swap. Mike took the car 
for a test drive and his butt dyno indicated the top had picked up yet more 
power despite us welding up the power inducing exhaust leak. ;^)

The last change was an effort to kill two birds with one stone. I had welded 
a tail pipe and hanger to a 2.5" Borla muffler I had laying  around for my 
16V to replace the Flowmaster that sounded like ass. Well, turns out the 
Borla didn't sound too good either and was too loud for my tastes. I figured 
we'd swap the Dynomax on my nephew's car for the cobbled up Borla on my 16V. 
Pulling the Borla off the 16V wasn't too bad since I'd been careful to not 
tighten the clamp too much. Pulling the Dynomax off my nephew's car was even 
easier since it was an old old muffler and I just torched it off! ;^)
Well, that's when I discovered that those bastards at VW changed the 
location of the exhaust exit from the body and the placement of the rear 
most hanger between the 8V and the 16V! Balls! So another hour later I'd 
managed to reshape the tailpipe and move the hanger. The 16V will have to 
wait for its muffler!

So, his car is a touch louder with a nice rich tone to it and it seems we 
managed to pick up yet a little more power. Might have even made enough of a 
difference that a little retuning of the Megasquirt is in order! Another 
pretty successful project and Mike did all the wrenching! ;^) Did I mention 
this car is just a kick in the ass to drive??

I also managed to drain the tank and replace the crimped tank to pump hose 
on the 81 I've been working on. That 2 year old gas smelled so bad it almost 
made me puke!

So, what have you all been up to?
Dan


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