Another project I don't need

Been super lazy and not been updating this thread.

Got a great deal on some avo coilovers and eibach anti roll bars but the coilovers were in a little worse shape than I expected but really really can't complain for the price I got them for.



So I sent the dampers off to avo to have them rebuilt as it really isn't very much to have done. And I checked the spring rates of the springs that came on the avos, a spare set that i have off an old set of GAZ coilovers and the ones off of the JOM coilovers that were on the car just as a reference.



Off of the Avos (fitted to car now), 315 Front 260 Rears



Off of the GAZ, Front 530 Rear 410



And the ones off the JOM were 330 front and rear

Got the dampers back and built them back up with new stickers of course






And fitted the new anti roll bars while it was up in the air. 22mm Front and 25mm Rear (plus the standard ARB still in place)






Keep meaning to book a track day but other more important things get in the way. Was planning this month but off to New York early next month so getting time off work is a pain too. And the weather is **** (excuses).

 

Track day booked for the 15th so doing a bit of prep. There was a slight oil leak coming from the drivers side rear of the engine and I thought it was the head gasket not sealing properly as it was coming from that level and only while running. But I saw that the camshaft oil seal had fully backed out and was just spinning with the cam. I pushed it back in but now it is turning slightly. So need to change that.




Also have a pinhole in one of the coolant hoses, so I'm glad I saw that, As that would of popped on track I'm sure.



In an attempt to aid cooling (and to make it look cool) I decided to cut some hole in the front bumper. Also cut some fins out of the top and lower grills from where the origonal car had a smaller radiator.



Cut up some origonal radiator ducting to fit around the intercooler piping and fit those too. Need to make a panel at the top and bottom and add some aluminium tape to fully enclose it.



Also want to make a radiator fan shroud and possibly get a higher flow fan as these 8 inch ones directly on the radiator don't cut it while just sitting. That might have to wait until after the track day though. In order to fit a shroud I need to move the bottom radiator hose to another route though as it would be too tight. Wanted to make a hard line anyway to save it rubbing on something and popping.

 

Sooooooooo I figured out what went wrong with the first engine. It was because I was an idiot. Had the inlet manifold sand blasted along with other bits when I was cleaning it up. And I overlooked the fact that there would oil residue in the manifold. Loads of blasting media was stuck inside it. So there we go. Thought of it the other night and decided to take the manifold off to have look and sure enough there was loads still in there.

The thing is now I have run this new engine and driven it around my compound a couple of times with this dirty manifold fitted. So hopefully not too much more media has gone through this new engine where it will mess up again. The stuff that was in the manifold was pretty stuck in the oil and there wasn't anything in the ports so I'm fairly confident. Gonna put some oil down the spark plug holes when I refit the now clean manifold for its first run.

If I hadn't of thought about it it would of happened again for sure. I'm a damn idiot.








Then gave it alignment after I had fit the new coilovers ages ago and decided to give it a wash

 

And the day before I fitted a new coolant hose to replace the leaking one and a new cam oil seal. Was spinning because it was slightly too small







While the timing stuff was off I resealed the front crank oil seal housing as I think I used the wrong type of RTV on it.




Also the day before I aluminium taped up the big holes at the top and bottom of the radiator so all the air coming through the front has to go though the radiator. Temporary thing because I make some proper panels out of aluminium while making the fan shroud too.



Looking pretty mean now. Also yesterday before I took the manifold off.

 

Thanks, doing Llandow in Wales

 

lovely stuff! great thought on the media blasting, I think alot of people would have overseen that one.

 

So did I for ages, don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. very little of the grit that I found in the sump from the first engine wasn't magnetic but I didn't think anything of it. But it makes sense now. Just hope this engine is fine now though. At least I know what happened and hopefully have learnt my lesson. I remember cleaning out the oil filter housing that I had done at the same time at least lol

 

Right then. First actual track day report. Bloody loved it, great day, no problems, car handled great, engine survived this one, car ran greats and wasn't even getting that hot. Tow car had one issue where I lost my brake lights but that was an easy fix. Didn't stop me from going so all good. It was at Llandow in Wales, great little track, and being a weekday there was only about 14 cars there, so loads of track time. Most of them were bike engined Caterham things so they were all zooming past me lol. Definalty going again.

Here is some proof that I actually took it out!





Here is a couple of videos, cut down because even I got bored watching them. In the second video you can see that the tracking has started to move a bit as the steering wheel was centred at the start of the day, still need to post event check the car over. So will try and find the cause of that.







In the 3rd video above you can hear the exhaust blowing. Turns out I lost 3 of the 4 downpipe nuts. Going to get some safety wire and tie them on.



The only thing that kept me coming in from the track and loosing track time was the oil temp gauge. The coolant temps were perfect so my ducting at the front worked very well. I also knew that my gauge wasn't that accurate and over reading but its still worrying seeing the gauge up that high.
So I decided to take the gauge out and the sender I was using and check it against a thermocouple in a pot of heated cooking oil.




Turns out the sensor I had was the correct part number for the gauge but was reading 20 degrees too hot across the entire gauge.





It was a 049919563A topran branded one off of eBay, but I managed to find a genuine VDO sender in my stash to check and it read absolutely perfect.



So now that's sorted with the genuine sender.
I was normally coming off the track when it was showing about 135 on the gauge so would have been 115 in reality which isn't that bad. 145 showing is about as hot as a saw that gauge at one point at the end of the day when I knew the track was closing soon, so would have been nearly 130 which is I think getting a bit hot. Even though the oil pressure never dropped due to the heat, I decided to get an oil cooler. Cooler temps = more track time.

Need to check the condition of the engine to see if any of the sandblasting media damaged anything before I figured it out. So compression test and drain the oil and drop the sump to see if there is anything in there.

 

Went to see the car up this evening and did the compression test and I'm pretty sure its all good. Still gonna remove the sump to check inside but very relieved with that. Didn't have any problem to say there would be a problem with compression, but wanted to check.

 

Did some more checking over the car after the track day to see why the tracking moved. Turns out the passenger side bottom 3 bolts on the bottom ball joint weren’t tight enough and had moved. Must have only nipped them up when I was trying to get more camber before the track day. But I nut and bolt checked the rest of the car now. Paint penned the suspension ones for added track day car ness.

Checked the brake pads too because I thought I had used a lot of material. But still pretty much the same as the new thickness. Will have to push it harder next time.

Also fitted the catch can. Quite good for a cheap eBay one. It already had a little baffling in it and I was planning on adding some thick steel wool to catch more vapour, but I was looking at the more expensive ones and they all seem to now use those pneumatic air bleed off mufflers as filters. So I tapped the hole inside the catch can and added one of those fittings.




Will see how well it works but at least it looks cool







Another benefit of the catch can is I could get rid of the original system that switches between sucking into the inlet manifold under vacuum and into the turbo inlet pipe under boost. So it relies on a little valve that apparently fails a lot. Even though my one seemed to work fine. But now I have it just sucking into the turbo inlet pipe.

 

Long needed update. tldr - Basically redid the entire cooling system and gonna try and take it out again next month

I went to drain the oil and remove the sump to check for any grit that got through the engine before I cleaned out the inlet manifold. No sign of anything in the oil or in the sump once I actually got it off. But opened up the oil filter and there was quite a lot. I think it all came from the standard oil cooler that was on the car as I checked the oil pump after this and it was all good. Not like the last one that the material actually went through that was all scored up.





Unluckily while removing the sump I dropped the socket in the bellhousing and could not get it out which resulted in this







Fortunately I was planning at some point to take it out to check out a clutch noise and to reseal the rear main seal so wasn't too much of shitter. Clutch noise was the thrust bearing coming detached from the fork. Little plastic clip had broken. Sorted with a better designed one.

Refit all that and added a magnetic oil drain plug for the extraness.



Because of the now gritty standard oil cooler and my want for lower temps anyway it needed to be removed and I decided to go with an eBay special thermostated oil cooler to replace it. So its removed and the coolant hoses going to it after blanked off.





Turned out some parts of it aren't the best quality on the eBay special, so if you buy one it's definitely worth fully checking it before installing. The most concerning part of it was the bolt/adaptor to attach the sandwich plate to the oil filter housing had a big bit of metal hanging off just ready to be sucked straight through the engine. Literally the only part of the kit that is after the oil filter.



Nothing a file couldn't sort out though. And obviously got some money back for this.

Had to cut down the standard threaded tube for this to be fitted as it did have the standard oil cooler on it too.







Made some brackets for the cooler itself and shortened the AN hoses that the kit came with.







Also peak the branded oil filter.
It was a tight fit where it is so the bumper iron had to clearanced a tiny bit. The plastic cover had 1 or 2mm shaved off of it and it fits lovely.



Cranked the engine over to fill it up and the fired it up and it was all good, good oil pressure and no leaks

Now with the oil cooler lines in the way of my lower radiator hose routing I had to figure out a new way. I did want to redo it anyway as the hose before was just the mk4 golf one shoved in between the radiator and engine mount which would have rubbed through no doubt at the worst time possible. The thermostat housing wasn't going to work now as it stuck out way too far. So I got a thermostat housing off of earlier cars/mk2 style water pumps and it bolted straight up and points in the direction I wanted. Had to cut up the alternator bracket a little though.

















Had to make a tool to make a bead on the aluminium pipes. Turned out quite well. Made from an old pair of waterpump pliers.





The best upgrade I've done is getting rid of the 2 eBay 8 inch radiator fans that I had on there and got an oem VR6 Corrado setup. They move so much air! With the 8 inch fans on there it would overheat at idle. The temperature would just creep up and up. Turns out I did have them wired up at pushers instead of pullers by mistake but shouldn't have made that much of a difference while not moving. Reason that I didn't put bigger fans on it in the first place is I didn't think they would fit in the engine bay, but test fit one and I would have been able to fit 12 inch ones.
I was going to put 2 of those fans on with a fan shroud but I'm glad I checked ebay for a Corrado setup as there was a cheap one. Normally very expensive. Saved me making a fan shroud.



The Corrado fans came with a genuine VW radiator too which I decided to use instead of the aftermarket one I had in there, but I used the aftermarket one to mock up the lower radiator hose and all the ducting I made for the car. You would assume they are the same as they are for the same car but the lower hose outlet was 38mm instead of 32mm on the aftermarket, and they genuine radiator didn't have any mounting points for the ducting on the drivers side. Found both of these out after making both using the other radiator.

So I had to remake the ducting for the drivers side custom. Came out pretty cool.











More reason to have a catch can. Had the intercooler stood up on the end while doing the front end stuff and from one track day there was a fair amount that dripped out.



Saw a home made boost leak tester on the internet and decided to make one and test it out on this and I'm glad I did. Found 4 leaks, couple were just clamps not at the right angle, one was an O ring in my diverter valve and the other one was my n75 valve was leaking slightly.



Sealed both ends of the boost piping and clamped the hoses going to the diverter valve and n75 valve and it held 20psi no problem which is good for the future. Stock boost pressure is about 8psi I think.





Just made from some PVC fittings from Wicks and a tyre valve

I tested the n75 valve on its own and was only leaking very very slightly up to about 17 psi when it would force the valve open



There we go fully up to date. Just need to sort out the downpipe nuts that came loose to stop that happening again and maybe make some brake cooling ducts.

 

Double post

 

Another track day down with no issues. Took it to castle combe. Great track but expensive tbh, compared to others.



Do have some videos but havent had time to go through them. Plus they are boring really. Might try and post one at most.

Stickers make you go faster right? No I'm not taking it racing, just a poser.







Plus I have bought a nice cheap engine that had a snapped cam belt for the wiring loom and ECU. It's a later engine with the ME7.5 ecu so factory wideband, map sensor, DBW throttle etc. Should be easier to get a place to tune it when turbo stuff happens eventually. Might not do the conversion straight away as it's a fairly big job and no real plans to stick a bigger turbo on it very soon.
On the m3.8 ECU atm and the internet tells me there is hardly anyone that can custom tune this one. Did think about an aftermarket ECU but this setup was too cheap to pass up incase I go with this route.

Came with everything for the conversion - ecu, wiring, map, maf, throttle body, pedal, both lambdas, and all the other engine sensors.





Also came with a k03s turbo with no play (worth swapping over to??) and a quattro gearbox setup (save for next winter??)

 

Nice update Luke!
The Change over to wideband is a good long term idea. I take it you will need to make up a complete new loom?
Can you keep the AGU engine and run wide band on it?

 

Not sure about using a wideband on the AGU ECU, doubt it would be able to utilise the wideband signal. Maybe it could but nobody seems to mess with them. So going with the more modern and capable ECU. Plus this is able to have a mafless tune with the map sensor. Or if you mean actually using this ECU on the AGU then yeah. Basically the same engine at the end of the day isn't it.
Yeah gonna make up an entire new loom, will be way easier. Plus then can sell the old loom to someone.

Also the ARY engine that I bought has a VVT solenoid on it. Which I will be bolting into the AGU. Didn't think the ARY had VVT according to the wiki on here but it does.

 

Yes this is what i meant, i just was not sure if there would be a conflict from an ARY ECU running on an AGU engine...but thats good that you can do that.

nice, good that you can incorporate some more parts from that engine on to the AGU.

are you thinking of going hybrid turbo with the K03/s so that you don't have to change downpipe and charge pipe setup? thats what i was thinking of doing but like you have mentioned, nobody seems to want to tune the AGU on standard management...or they want loads of money

 

The K03s uses the same turbine housing as the K03 so wouldn't need to change the downpipe if I fitted it. Uses all the same coolant and oil pipes too. Think you are thinking of the K04 to change all the stuff.

Not sure if the inlet cam is different too as it's a different part number. Same as a BAM engine. Will have to compare them as I can't find much about them.

 

Yeah so I say about going hybrid rather than changing to k04 later for that reason. Perhaps I'm not making myself clear so apologies for that

 

Ah right. Nah I'm just gonna go for an ebay t28 turbo when I put a bigger one on