Chris' 200 20v Avant - RENNWGN - Blowed Up

[loxxrider]

Oh nice, good to know! That'd work great as a backup plan. I'm really hoping to have it for Carlisle. Really cutting it close this time lol. Everyone is working to get their cars ready for it, I'm just trying to get the car in the first place!

[loxxrider]

OK, things are rolling again. Parts have arrived and the car should be getting it's auspuff system stitched back up as we speak

[ringbearer]

[DE80q]

Is it going to make it in time for Carlisle?

[loxxrider]

I've lost all contact with the seller... No joke.

Apikol still has the car. The vin verification hasn't been able to happen yet, but I'm hoping Apikol can get the vin done in time for the car to still make an appearance at Carlisle... It's been crazy and frustrating! I'm still trying to get it there though

On a lighter note, Kevin's dad saw the car at apikol the other day and took a picture with it. Maybe he post it up

[chaloux]

Wow. Good luck Chris, hope it works out

[Mcstiff]

I've lost all contact with the seller... No joke.

Apikol still has the car. The vin verification hasn't been able to happen yet, but I'm hoping Apikol can get the vin done in time for the car to still make an appearance at Carlisle... It's been crazy and frustrating! I'm still trying to get it there though

On a lighter note, Kevin's dad saw the car at apikol the other day and took a picture with it. Maybe he post it up

I was going to suggest that it was finals week but CU was done on the 7th. Did he graduate? I'm in Longmont again this week, I can make Boulder be on my way home Isn't Carlisle this weekend?

[loxxrider]

LOL yeah, Carlisle is this weekend.

I don't know, the last few times I talked to him he seemed a little off... maybe a bit depressed or stressed out. I think there is a family issue going on, so I'm not holding any grudges. Apikol has the keys and know I have the title, so I should be good to go! If you want to drive it to Carlisle tomorrow with no plates, that'd be awesome though!

[loxxrider]

Kevin's Vater mit dem Avant

[loxxrider]

So it turns out that my instincts were right and the seller did indeed have a very sad thing happen this weekend, family related. I will not go into detail for the sake of his privacy.

The vin verification is being overnighted, so hopefully registration can happen tomorrow. Drew wouldn't be able to leave until Friday at the earliest, so I'm afraid Carlisle just isn't going to happen with this car. SO SAD!

But such is life, and I'm thankful to have what and who I do have in my life. Never take what you have for granted!

[alxdgr8]

Could you not just get a trip permit from the destination state and slap that on? Technically you have to have one for every state you drive through, but I've driven across the county with them before and never been hassled. Guess it's a little different if it's someone else driving.

[loxxrider]

Yeah if it was me I'd drive it, but Drew has more to risk than I do not being the owner of the car among other things.

[ringbearer]

At least you have a positive attitude. Not like you are out of cars or anything

[loxxrider]

I have an epicly long post about my trip back with this car written up, but haven't been able to upload it yet. Hopefully I will later tonight.

But I need a little help in the meantime. I'm trying to figure out my audio install because the sound in this car is awful.

I'm looking to do a setup like this:

-4" midranges in the dash (already has decent Focal coaxials in it, but I may upgrade even further)
-tweeters in the dash adjacent to midranges or in the mirror bolt covers near the a-pillar
-5.25" midwoofers/small "subwoofers" in the rear doors
-Some kind of rear sub
-POSSIBLY bring the front door panels over from my sedan (they have custom enclosures where the bose enclosures used to be
-New head unit (totally undecided on this, but the one it came with is really hard to see during the day)
-A digital signal processor to try and tie the cobbled mess all together

My immediate concern is getting some midbass in the car now because it's currently nonexistent. If anyone has a picture of the rear doors with the door panel off I would greatly appreciate seeing it! I need to figure out if it's worth a damn to try and run midbasses back there (not components) or just give up and do sedan front door panels with midbasses there.

[PRY4SNO]

I'd say run the sedan door cards first then take your time to figure out the optimal set up between the two cars.

What kind of deck does it have, is it newer? Bluetooth and a front USB are always nice to have...

[chappers]

Love reading your threads Chris, nothing like living vicariously through others LOL

What do you guys do to upgrade the Bose stereo in these cars? Is it whole re-wire job? Or possible to still use the existing speakers and just upgrade the head unit?

Looking forward to updates on this one

[loxxrider]

Thanks guys. The head unit is a newer Kenwood with most of the bells and whistles. It does have bluetooth, front USB, etc., but the USB inputs don't work with Android The other problems are that the display is impossible to read during the day and the controls, menu navigation, etc. are horrid. I need something that doesn't require me to be distracted to be able to control. I haven't even started looking at alternatives though. It'll have to do for now.

I'm not too worried about the setup in the sedan. Because racecar.

Chris (chappers), these cars are really not easy to upgrade for audio. It takes a lot of work to get something that sounds acceptable (to me at least). Changing the head unit won't help and changing the door speakers wont help much either since the Bose enclosures are so small. I took the bose enclosures and chopped the up a great deal. Then I expanded their volume to probably more than double what it originally was. I can't remember if I ended up doing both or only finished one, but it helped a lot. I went from whatever size was in there before (maybe 5.25"?) to a 6.5 and the midbass was really, really sweet when I was finished. If you can do something similar, that's the real ticket on these cars. I'll try to find where the pictures are of that in my old thread for reference. It's not pretty, but I never totally finished them cosmetically.

[loxxrider]

Here's a picture of the size of the things I made... needless to say you lose your door pockets, but it sounds sweet!

[chappers]

Ah I like that, thinking outside the (Bose) box!
I can sympathize with audiophiles, I'm just personally on the fence when it comes to car audio, I like quality audio but don't like to tear the car up too much to achieve it.

I did read that the existing wiring is also not suited for head unit and speaker upgrades, it's a complete removal and replace?

Sorry to hijack your thread Chris :-)

[Aktapod]

On a lighter note, Kevin's dad saw the car at apikol the other day and took a picture with it. Maybe he'll post it up

Oops. Papa Jürgen said it look like new!

Another pic to gaze at while we patiently await the epic update:

IMG_1020.jpg (301.07 KiB) Viewed 32732 times

[85oceanic]

Man, every time I see a picture of this car, I become hardcore jelly. BAH!

[Mcstiff]

When did the trip happen? It would have been funny to see it on 80!

[loxxrider]

This is loooong. Sorry! Go to the bottom if you want to see the stuff I want to fix/mod. Even that is long though lol. If you’re in for a decent read, proceed.

Getting the car registered for Drew to drive from Denver to Baltimore for me was proving to be too much of an issue, and I had been dragging Drew and the previous owner along on this adventure with me for too long, so last week only a few days before Carlisle, I decided to fly out to Colorado and drive the car home myself. I had to seize the opportunity when I had a few scheduled days off because the rest of my days off for the year are already accounted for (all 10 of them ******roll eyes****) with weddings, a baptism, etc. I don’t even get weekends off!

So I discussed it with my girlfriend Jessica and she expressed her excitement about the potential of a random, fun trip. That night, I bought tickets for us both and made my best attempt at coordinating with the seller, Drew, and Apikol where the car was.

I had to work night shift on Wednesday night/Thursday morning and Jessica had to work Wednesday and Thursday. I got about three hours of sleep on Thursday morning, drove from the rig I was on to a shop about 1.5 hours away to pick up a piece of equipment, drive back to the rig which was in the opposite direction of home, and then drive 3 hours to the farm my family has near State College, PA. Jessica wasn’t able to get off of work until around 7:30 PM, and then would have to drive around 2.5 hours to the farm. I got to the farm at around 1:00, but then had to earn my keep by mowing about 10 acres of lawn until 6:30 PM. Then I socialized for a bit, bathed in the only bathroom in the house (no showers, only a claw foot tub), and attempted to get an hour of sleep.

Jessica arrived at the farm at around 12:30 or 1:00 AM, and by that time, we had to leave in order to get to the Pittsburgh airport on time. We needed to be there by around 4:30 AM to catch our 6:00 flight.

Here’s Jessica a few days before this testing out her new selfie stick for the trip LOL





Luckily the traffic in Pittsburgh isn’t too bad at 4:00 AM, so we made it there without a hitch and dropped her car off in long term parking. Our flight stopped in Chicago and then headed to Denver. We were both able to squeeze in a few hours of mediocre sleep thankfully and felt a lot better when we landed.

When we landed, I got in touch with Drew, who graciously offered to pick Jessica and I up at the airport, take us to Apikol where the car was, show us around Denver and the surrounding areas in CO, and then give us a place to stay that night. We were greeted by his (silver?) 200 20v Avant in the pickup area and loaded up our luggage. I thought it was so cool to be picked up in the same type of car I was about to buy, especially given its rarity. Drew tried to apologize for its state as there were lots of interior panels removed for work to be done, but Jessica is well-versed in cars being in this state. She has happily ridden along with me in cars in far worse states the entire time we’ve known each other. From my 200 20v sedan with open downpipe (and no other exhaust alternative), my 360,000 mile E34 with screaming rear differential, cut off muffler, and leather torn to shreds, or my 635csi with no carpet and holes in the floor, she’s seen it all.

Drew’s car has a billet K26 on it from Hank, but it is experiencing some issues with misfires when boosting over a certain level. It was only on 8 psi, but it felt really great on 8 psi, even at altitude! I also wondered what suspension he had on it, but he insisted it was stock. I know my 200 sedan never felt that stiffly sprung when it was stock. It did still have plenty of body roll, but it felt confident and firm over bumps. Drew attributed that to polyurethane bushings in the suspension.

After having one of the best breakfast sandwiches of my life and a ton of coffee, we eventually made it to Apikol to meet up with the previous owner of the car. Troy at Apikol is the one who worked on the car, and he was there too. It was nice to meet one of the guys behind the brand. He mentioned that he knew it must be us when he heard and saw another 200 20v Avant roll up. I want to thank Troy for the great work he did on my new Avant, the inspection they did for free, as well as offering to take the car to the dealer to get the VIN verified, overnighting documents to me, and more! I don’t trust many mechanics, but a place like Apikol has my trust any day of the week. They did thousands of dollars of work to the car all without me being there or paying in advance.

The previous owner has also been extremely accommodating in this whole ordeal. He also had the vin verified for me multiple times (Florida is ridiculous about how exactly they want it done), overnighted documents, scanned and sent me loads of maintenance records, polished the car up, fitted summer tires, and had it aligned. He also included a Ross Tech cable, about a billion oil filters, original radio and headlights, original ac compressor, winter tires, a sweet roof rack with basket, two sets of keys, and more. He is a class act and I am so glad we got to meet up. I put a lot of trust in him with confidence, and so did he with me. That’s what I love about this community!

The four of us (Jessica, Drew, the PO, and I) went to the DMV to get a temporary registration. That was all that stood between us and the 24 hour trip home. I tried so hard to make sure we had all of the proper documentation. When the moment of truth came with the clerk, I just about turned white when he said I couldn’t get a temporary registration for it without insurance through Colorado! However, I think he misunderstood what I wanted and then said I could get a 10 day (vs. 30 day) temporary tag for transporting the car with insurance from any state. THANK GOODNESS! I turned around to the rest of the crew and gave a thumbs up. They said the saw me turn red and weren’t sure if it was out of excitement or anger haha! It was probably when the guy told me he couldn’t give me the temp tag without CO insurance.

After that was over, it was time to say goodbye to the PO and for him to say goodbye to the car. Even though his ownership of the car was relatively short, he had obviously grown attached to it and was definitely sad to let it go. I ensured him that it’s going to one of the best homes possible and that I’ll take the best care of it that I’m able to. We shook hands one last time and then it was off for some mountain adventuring!


We didn’t really have much of a plan for the day, but eventually Drew, Jessica, and I got into our cars and drove to Red Rocks. I’ll let the pictures do the talking from here.





Drew fancies himself a pretty good photographer…









We went on about a mile hike, then all piled into my car to head out to wherever our hearts desired. We didn’t make it too far before running into a little brewery. We decided to stop and have a drink or two along with some appetizers. Drew even tried his first Jalapeño ever. It was stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, so that made it a little easier I think. After we were satisfied, we decided it was time to head to Drew’s place due to some time constraints we had, but not before getting a quadrupole shot of espresso and a girly coffee drink for Jessica so we could stay awake for a few more hours.
A rare sight, two 200 20v avants in the same place.




When we got back to Drew’s place, we were joined by his wife Cindy. We talked cars, ate pizza, and played a unique drinking game involving mustaches and the show “Drunk History.” I even got to see an HPR engine mount IN REAL LIFE! (and I think it’s a pretty good design).





A good time was had by all, but by around 10:00 PM Jessica was passed out and I was starting to get delusional, so it was time for sleep! The next morning we all woke up and partook in the tradition of taking an instant picture as a sort of guestbook. Then we all went to breakfast together which ended up being one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had before. It was DELICIOUS!




I can’t thank Drew and Cindy enough for their hospitality and generosity. THIS, once again, is what really makes this community great. I had never met Drew before all of this, but I can safely say that Jessica and I made some great friends out of it.

After breakfast, we parted ways and Jessica and I were on our own for one helluva road trip. Soon after leaving Denver at around 1:00 PM, we realized that anything east of Denver is just flat farmland. The kind you think of when you think of Kansas. We saw nothing but fields and wind turbines for hundreds of miles.




That’s a truck with a 200 foot section of wind turbine tower on it.



When night fell, the weather really started to roll in, and we were nearing the border of Kansas and Missouri. We kept receiving emergency alerts on our phones about flash floods. The driving was getting treacherous with the heavy rain. At one point, we were trying to pass a semi-truck, and hit hit a huge puddle. The amount of water it sent into our lane covered the hood and windshield and actually caused the car to hydroplane and be pushed over a foot or two. I held the wheel tight and applied the brakes moderately until I could see again, and that was when we decided to get a hotel for the night.

We stayed in Kansas City, Missouri for the night and then got on our way again promptly the next morning. Luckily it had cleared up by then, and we set a goal of making it to Western Ohio that evening, but we wanted to stop in St. Louis to see the arch. Again, I’ll let the pictures do the talking. I wasn’t too excited about doing this, but after finally seeing it up close, it was really cool. What a huge monument!





Notice my attempt at holding the vertical panorama steady vs hers…



And together! (with the magic of Photoshop)



She redeemed herself when she got this shot though!



My attempt…



We only stayed for about an hour and a half, and then we were on the road again. We stopped in western Ohio for the night, but not before seeing a beautiful sunset. It seemed to last forever!



We got back on the road again the next day (Monday). We both had to be back to work on Tuesday, so we needed to book it. I believe it was at this point on the trip that the only issue with the car that sort of scared me happened. I got the dreaded warning beep and was relieved to see that it was for brake pads. This was strange since the car has brand new front and rear brakes on it, and I figured the sensors would be bypassed in the front anyway since they are Porsche brakes up there. Then I noticed that the coolant temp gauge was reading zero. That was bothersome, but I eventually chalked it up to the cluster circuit board probably needing to be reflowed. About ten minutes later the coolant temperature came back and the brake pad warning was gone (all while still driving). The brake pad warning came back once or twice more in the trip. I’m hoping having the board re-soldered will solve this problem.

We finally made it to the Pittsburgh airport later that day around 4:30. Unfortunately, that meant we hit 5:00 traffic in Pittsburgh. That added about 1.5 hours onto my trip to the farm, but she went a different way to get to Baltimore.




The car made it the rest of the way back to the farm without a hiccup, and I traded it for the Cayenne to go to work back in Ohio the next day! And there you have it. That’s the story of bringing my Avant home!






There were a few things I noted while on the trip that I’d really like to improve on in this car:

1) The sound system is AWFUL. There are two 4” Focal speakers in the front which sound pretty decent actually, but there are no front door speakers like in my sedan, and the rear door speakers are old and don’t do much for the sound in the front of the car.

The head unit supplied with the car isn’t bad. It’s a Kenwood and has Bluetooth, iPod USB connection, aux inputs, etc., but the display is damned near impossible to read during the day, and the interface is pretty cumbersome. I may replace that, but I’m undecided on that.

I may just get new rear door speakers or spend a bit more and get matching rear door and dash speakers along with the door cards from my 200 20v sedan which will allow me to have front door speakers too. Then I’d add a subwoofer somewhere for sure, but where? I think this will be fun to improve on because there is so much potential to improve!

2) The suspension is supposed to be Konis and H&R (I think?) springs. The car looks great on them, but it feels a bit soft, and I bottomed the struts out several times the further east I got. The roads just get proportionally worse the further east you go it seems. Anyway, something will need to be done here.

I would like to reduce body roll, while maintaining relatively similar suspension compliance, but also increasing suspension travel. So it seems I will need to look into sway bars, possibly stock length springs, but maybe uprated in spring rate?, maybe stock length struts too? Maybe just getting fresh struts in there would help enough to eliminate most of the bottoming out though. Or I could build a custom set of coilovers and section the strut housings to allow for the same ride height it is at currently, but with more travel than it has currently. I don’t really know, but the rig sites I go to mean the car could definitely benefit from at least stock height for ground clearance reasons. Anyway, you get the point. It needs to be as tall or taller than it is now, but have more suspension travel and maintain the same compliance. Going to a bigger tire probably won’t be possible here because of the 993 TT brakes up front.

3) **More on 3 and 4 later... I found the problem and will make a new post about this and other things soon.** There was a misfire that showed up when the car was being driven in that torrential downpour. I’m fairly certain this is the fault of either the plug wires arcing to the valve cover or side of the spark plug holes when the air is moist enough, or the stock ignition coil isn’t doing so hot in the rain. The same thing happened in my sedan when I first had it, and it turned out to be the stock ignition coil which didn’t like the combination of heat and moisture it was being exposed to in the Florida summers… and being next to my “custom” open downpipe and wastegate dump lol.

To fix this, I will either get new plug wires and a new coil or I will just steal parts off of the sedan and go VEMS.

4) The car feels OK power-wise, but not great for a chiped K24. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled over the years, but it doesn’t feel quite like 280 hp with a sharp torque curve should. It was downright sluggish at altitude. Drew’s billet K26 on only 8 psi felt a lot better than this car at whatever boost level it is. It reads 1.7-1.8 on the stock boost gauge, but I’m not sure if that translates correctly when there is a chip installed? All I know is that I need to get a boost gauge and it’ll also be interesting to see how it compares when on VEMS.

*edit* Just ordered the solution to the no-boost-gauge problem today





This is a custom gauge from Speedhut. The “RENNWGN” is a tongue-in-cheek mix-up of German and English words. Rennwagen in German means race car, but I’m using it here as race wagon The only problem is that with the green words, the white text won’t be lit up in red because it would make the green words a funky color. I would really like the numbers to light up red to at least sort of match the interior lighting though, so I am going to talk to them to see what can be done about that on Monday.


Anyway, the engine definitely feels healthy and is pretty smooth, but the turbo just doesn’t seem to help make power the way it should. It felt better at lower altitude in Kansas until it started to rain and it developed a misfire at high boost/RPM, but after it dried up and I got into OH, and PA, it started getting better and better. It makes sense really. I’d say it feels 90% of what it should at this point, but could be smoothed out a bit and definitely make a bit more power depending on what boost it is targeting now.

Oh, and the turbo sounds like it’s working fairly hard. That made me suspect a boost leak somewhere, but the car runs beautifully and smoothly all the time, so I’m not sure if that’s possible with a MAF and boost leak. However, I have brand new VenAir silicone upper and lower intercooler hoses to put on, and will get a silicone TB hose next. I’ll also be re-doing all of the older vacuum lines with silicone as needed and will pressure test everything, etc.

As a final note here, I can hear the turbo really start flowing some air, but then I can occasionally hear what sounds a little more like a dentist drill… it’s pretty faint, but maybe the turbo is being overspun a bit due to a leak or maybe it is on its way out. Who knows!

5) The wastegate seems to be cranked all the way down and I don’t like the way it makes the boost control react. It’s almost all or nothing. I like a more progressive pedal on a stock turbo car. On the bigger turbos, it doesn’t matter as much. The cruise control also seems to struggle because of this. It works like it should unless the car is on a hill. When this happens, the boost builds and falls off too quickly for the cruise control system to react properly, so it surges slowly from accelerating too much to not enough. I think “uncranking” the wastegate will help with both issues. I never had to crank it down with my car on VEMS and everything worked great that way. Power was made nicely too because of the better control available with the N75.

6) The exhaust is quite droney as is the case for almost all 5 cylinder cars with 3” exhausts. It apparently still has a cat and some random muffler in the back. Apikol did a great job re-doing the downpipe bend to achieve more ground clearance as well as locating a QTP electric dump before the cat I’ll get pictures of that soon. Anyway, I would like to experiment with the possibility of building one of those vibration/noise cancelling exhaust devices. I measured the frequency of the drone while driving. It happens anywhere from 2,000 to about 3,200 RPM and then cuts off sharply in either direction. I don’t think one of those exhaust drone cancellers can be made to cancel a band of frequencies, but I believe if you try to cancel the frequency with the highest amplitude, it will help cancel the other frequencies as well, just not entirely.

At the bottom end of the drone around 2k RPM, the frequency is about 70-75 Hz. At the top end of the drone just below 3,200 RPM, the frequency is around 130 HZ. I didn’t take any measurements of the amplitude, but the drone is definitely worst (by ear) from around 100-125 Hz. Over 75 mph is where the drone goes away because RPM is above 3200, but I spend a lot of my driving time between 65 and 75 mph, so I will probably build a noise cancellation device which attempts to cancel the noise which occurs in this range. I believe that was around 120 HZ, but I will have to measure again when I’m ready to build one.

7) Fix driver’s rear window reg.

8) Figure out why sunroof motor make noise, but sunroof doesn’t move at all

9) Reupholster sunroof (the rest of the headliner is new).

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading

[loxxrider]

Man, every time I see a picture of this car, I become hardcore jelly. BAH!

Thanks Ben! It'd be the PERFECT stable mate to the 4k honestly. But I'm not letting you have it!

When did the trip happen? It would have been funny to see it on 80!

It was last weekend. I thought about you several times on the trip and wish we could have set something up, but we were too pressed for time and the trip was too last minute for it to be feasible. She fell in love with CO though (like I knew she would), so we will definitely be back! She wants to move LOL

[Grillage]

The man who casts no shadow!