The Project Pad

those bussman fuse blocks also come in a variety that accepts DIN style relays. saves having to have a billion external relays like that. otherwise, looks nice though

This fuse block would have accepted those. I already had ordered about 12 of the regular style ones though, so regrettably I just wired it up as you see it. The relay style you are speaking of would have make my life a lot easier.

But its functional right?

Maybe tonight?

Quick update.


Since I last posted, more wiring has gotten done, made all the hardlines in the brake system, mounted all the reservoirs and got the masters, including the clutch all hooked up and bled. Made mounts for all of the gauges, and did a whole bunch of other little things that needed to get done before the car could run. Mostly all of this got done while I was waiting for some new fuel system parts. Why did I need new parts well, here's why.

I have had nothing put troubles with the fuel system. I knew I would have a leak or two, but I had a lot more trouble than that. Started at the back of the car off the tank. There are two barbs coming off the bottom of the tank, under the car, feed and return. I was getting a leak from the return line and didn't know why. changed hose like 3 times, changed clamps like 3 times still nothing. Each changed took 30-45 minutes just because it was in such an awful spot. Plus each time I changed it I had to crawl out from under the car and flip on the fuel pump to see if it worked.

There was a big rubber grommet that keeps road grime out of there blocking my view of the top of the barb. I finally took that off (which meant taking the feed off and draining the tank completely ) , and of course I found... rust. Small pin hole on the upper part of the barb. Luckily I was able to push the hose up farther and clamp above the leak, which solved that issue. The whole part barb was shinny just the top have developed rust, so for now it will be okay. But it seems like this issue is just pushing me closer to a fuel cell.

Next was the rail. I bought a rail off ebay, seeing good reviews of it on the forums. One large-ish issue was mine didn't come with mounting brackets, so I made them. Came out good but I assume my angle was slightly off, and that combined with the fact that the hole bored for the injectors to sit in being slightly oversized when compared to the factory piece meant leaks, or at least if I didn't have it perfectly positioned there were leaks...

Also the 180 degree fitting I was using on the front of the rail was leaking interally, NOT where I assembled it so that needed to be changed too.

Decided to stop messing around and just spend the money on a good rail. The last thing I want is for this car to go up in flames from a fuel leak, or is it? hmmmmm

Got ahold of IE and had one shipped out. Once the new fitting was on and the rail came in I was able to get it installed in a slightly altered configuration in regards to the FPR and gauge. The way this project has been so far I expected more issues, but the first time I turned on the pump the system came up to pressure and I found NO LEAKS! I was pumped. Finally something going my way. Or so I thought..

With the brakes installed and the wiring in the car I was eager to fire her up and go for a test drive. Plugged ECU in, fuel system primed and up to pressure, crank crank crank crank... nothing.

Great what now. Check power and ground, those are good going to the ECU, WHAT IS GOING ON! At this point I'm kicking shit in the garage in frustration and teaching the neighborhood kids some new words...

Pull the ECU out and supply power and ground to it with a 12V power supply I have in the garage, still nothing can't connect with my laptop. My laptop recognizes that something is there but I can't connect. Problem is it acts the same when I have power to it and when I don't. So for some reason its not getting power... Not even sure I can just give it 12V and a ground to connect, that was just a shot in the dark. So basically I have a lot of trouble shooting to do still and at this point I'm fed up.

This project has been consuming me and causing me a lot of stress in these past weeks. I tend to put a lot of passion into these meaningless, supposedly 'fun' projects, and this one it eating me up. I was trying to get it running to drag it at Waterfest, thats not happening now obviously, so I am going to step back away from it for a few days or a week. And hopefully I can come back to it refreshed and with some motivation, because that is lacking right now.


Few pics.

lorge1989 wrote:This project has been consuming me and causing me a lot of stress in these past weeks. I tend to put a lot of passion into these meaningless, supposedly 'fun' projects, and this one it eating me up. ... I am going to step back away from it for a few days or a week. And hopefully I can come back to it refreshed and with some motivation, because that is lacking right now.

I know the feeling.

Go do something else with your time that you've been neglecting, and it won't take long. You'll either have a eureka moment, or that burning sensation at the back of your brain that causes you to turn over, restless in bed at night. Guilt. You could be wrenching. lol

PRY4SNO wrote:
I know the feeling.

Go do something else with your time that you've been neglecting, and it won't take long. You'll either have a eureka moment, or that burning sensation at the back of your brain that causes you to turn over, restless in bed at night. Guilt. You could be wrenching. lol

Im glad I'm not the only one! Sometimes I'll sit down and just relax drink a beer turn on the TV and like 5 mins in i think of the stuff I could be gettting done. I guess its a gift and a curse honestly.

But Indonhave good news, the person I bought the megasquirt from totallly randomly texted asking if I could use a hand this weekend. Its always motvating when someone who is capable is willing to take time to help. Hopefully we figure it out Sunday.

Shortly after posting my sob story, the guy I bought the megasquirt off of offered to come and give me a hand, and look over a few things yesterday. I was super pumped and that helped to get me moving again.

We sorted out a few small wiring issues and the car fired right up. I spend all day yesterday routing vacuum/boost lines, topping off the coolant and running some hoses and a whole shit ton of little things that still needed to be done.

So, the car runs, but not super great. Idle is all over the place and the wideband is not reading correctly. So I have to fix a few probably leaks.

1. Vband flange coming off the turbo
2. Wastegat flange
3. Throttle body, I need a new gasket

Once those are fixed I can try troubleshooting some more. I also am going to look up a calibration process for my AEM wide range unit, not sure if that exists or not but that could be the problem. Still have some gauges to hook up, plus the lights need to be hooked up as well.

Pretty pumped on it running, I technically did drive it yesterday haha, just up and down my driveway.... IT COUNTS!

lorge1989 wrote:Pretty pumped on it running, I technically did drive it yesterday haha, just up and down my driveway.... IT COUNTS!

Definitely counts! Congrats keep us updated as you finish up the little things.

There is a wideband calibration in TunerStudio, but your AEM unit itself won't get calibrated like LC1's do (Free-air style). I don't know MS3 at all so I can't tell you where it is but in MS2 it's under "Tools> Sensor Calibrations" to give you a place to start looking!

vt10vt wrote:

lorge1989 wrote:Pretty pumped on it running, I technically did drive it yesterday haha, just up and down my driveway.... IT COUNTS!

Definitely counts! Congrats keep us updated as you finish up the little things.

There is a wideband calibration in TunerStudio, but your AEM unit itself won't get calibrated like LC1's do (Free-air style). I don't know MS3 at all so I can't tell you where it is but in MS2 it's under "Tools> Sensor Calibrations" to give you a place to start looking!

I tried the preset MS calibrations with my AEM, and I was exactly "1" off on the screen VS the gauge. I ended up useing the manual that came with the AEM and setting my own calibration in the MS. Now it matches perfectly. If you need help with this, let me know.

Count it for sure! Awesome work. I wish I had the patience to just rewire everything... Sigh. No more old crap floating around broken or unterminated or totally unknown. Love it. And I'm just gonna keep saying it: damn you and your e85

Thanks dudes, it feels good to be making progress!

I disconnected the exhaust and the downpipe, then just put the downpipe back on by itself, making sure it mated up perfectly. Now when I fire the car the AFRs are more acceptable, not great, but they are okay. I don't have an idle control valve working right now so that would make sense.

It also idled a lot smother after I removed the set screw holding the TB open slightly.... This was the way the person before me did idle control. I rode in that car and it actually work quite well. My TB is much larger than the one he was using so that and the fact I might have small leak at the TB gasket itself was making my idle super jumpy. Now all I have is a check valve coming off a small nipple on the intake manifold (letting air in), this kept the idle much more steady which is great. Idle was high for sure, but it worked a bit better.

I plan on getting some other OEM idle valve working, especially because I am considering picking up some cams sooner than later. But that isn't my first concern right now.

I didn't get a chance to change the calibration on the ECU side of things for the wide range, but I will get that done tomorrow, thanks for the heads up!

Good news is I have a new TB gasket, vband gasket and a wastegate gasket coming in tomorrow so I can get those eliminated once and for all. After that, barring anymore setbacks with the car running decent, all I need to do is wire the headlights, running lights and brake lights in. Then its time for a real test drive.

Edit, I guess I should be more clear. The headlights and tails are wired completely, I basically have to connected a few wires, either screw terminals or a spade here or there. So that will take only the better part of an hour after I organize all that junk. And about the wiring, it feels GREAT to know what every wire is and where it goes. I thnk I am going to remake that fuse panel again though, just because after doing it once I have a bunch of ideas on how to make it a lot cleaner, more compact and most of all easier to work on/troubleshoot. Don't get me wrong, I still like it much better than the OE setup, but I just like things like that to be perfect.

I'm having a load of fun just reading about the little details I can mess with on the mega squirt. Like MAT timing retardation, anti lag, launch control/2 step and a few more. Still have a lot to learn, but it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Worked on this a bunch today. Started to what I knew to be a decent tune. Meaning, I rode in the car that it was installed in before, watched AFRs and just got a general idea of how it ran and it was okay. That gave me high hopes to just plugging it in and going but so far not so good. The hardware my car has vs the car it came out of are identical except for a different exhaust manifold, slightly different turbo size and I have a large throttle body.

I encountered a bunch of issues just getting the AFRs decent at idle, and just to get it to sit at any steady RPM. I haven't driven it at all really so any other condition other than idle, at the moment, I didn't care about. The behavior was inconsisent and not regular. Sometimes it would idle pretty steadily around 1300 (not running an IAC at the moment), stay in the 12.9-14.3 range for 10-15 seconds then just completely die. So I did that a few times, messed with how far the set screw opened the TB and stuff, and I ended up with another high bouncy idle + super lean AFRs. Like off the gauge lean.

So I began play with ignition timing to try to get it to settle down. Thanks to some instruction on the tunerstudio website I was able to create a 'valley' at the timing I wanted it to be at idle, and it was stable. Still super lean. Next I took a look at the AFR table and it looked pretty standard so I left it alone. The VE table was the next thing to tweak, but I still didn't understand why it would be sooooo lean. Anyway, I jacked up the VE values in the cells that it was idleing in, and basically that just made the idle get higher and higher, because it finally had fuel.

Naturally I took some spark out to try to settle it down a bit and that made the idle more jumpy and not predictable. I did this process for a while going back and forth, but it was hopeless. The only thing that did work well was the EGO correction. The person before me only had this on for a small part of the tune, but I gave it a lot more authority and it was able to keep an idle AFR between 13.5 -15. Still the corrections were all over the place and once again not very predictable.

All of this made me want to just start from scratch because the process I was using was getting me no where! So I bought the legit version of tuner studio and got to work.

I just made they maps with the help of tunerstudio, and I would like some feedback. I'm really in the dark of the ignition table, so any advice is appreciated. All of what I have done so far, in the settings section remains the same as when I first booted up the ECU. Everything seems right but because of the nature of the issues I'm having, I believe something must be funky in there. Either way, here they are.



So far when starting, I have no idle control, I have turned off Idle VE and warm up enrichment/afterstart enrichment are both relatively conservative. I'm just trying to get it idling normally and going from there. Probably not making much sense, as it has been a long day. Hopefully with some fresh tables I will be able to get some consistency/predictability going the next time I am able to dig into it.

edit: I am going to pressue test the intake and triple check for leaks because thats the only thing that would make sense. I pressureized the end of the exhaust to prevent air being pulled in from any small leaks and that yeilded no change in AFR readings, I jumped a few grounds to different places thinking that might change some things, and again no change. Once thing I have to do is change the signal calibration from the wideband sensor to the MS, because like other said that is typically messed up, and mine is as well. Quick note there, I know that they were off after looking at them, because the gauge and the MS screen did not match but they were off by about a point not, 5 ha.

Also, I'm a bit lost when it comes to why my AFR table is in gasoline AFRs. I set the stoich AFR to be 9.85 in the general settings you can see, but then I keep all my AFRs like I'm tuing gasoline? So basically I just think of 14.7 in the AFR table as 1 lamda and forget it? I don't need to have a target AFR of 9.85 in there right? Same thing goes for the gauge, it also says 14.7 when running right but stoich is 9.85. What am I missing here?

So it ended up being a stupid setting. I set the stoich ratio to 9.85 (for E85), but apparently the req fuel calc takes care of all the changes you need for E85. Basically although its asking for AFR in the general settings, its actually asking for lambda. So I was telling it that .67 was stoich and that just made a mess of things.

I reverted back to the tune I got with the car, with a few small tweaks, fixed that value and the car runs good. Took it for a spin and AFRs are solid throughout the powerband, and off boost torque is amazing. Gotta love that corn. Going to button everything else up over the next few days so I can start putting some miles on this thing!

I have been messing around with this thing a whole bunch its running well. I put about 100 miles last night alone. Have some chassis issues, brake light switch failed for the second time, need an alignment etc, but other than that, everything is going well.

I did some 60-90 pulls and the best one I got last night was abou 2.65 seconds. That was on 17 psi. She feels pretty good!



From 4600 to 6950 is what I'm figuring to be 60 to 90.

nice work! Keep at it!

Thanks! If anyone want to look at my VE table or timing table I would like some input. I'm having this weird issue that about 6800 RPM I hit AFRs i the 10s. I have leaned it out constantly a few points at a time and it is getting better, but I'm not quite understanding why my VE at 6500 RPM would be the same or less than the VE at 7000 RPM. Only thing I can think of is that I'm reaching the limit of the head/intake cam? Being that it is moving more air but thats just beause of the increased rotaional speed of the motor, not because the motor has an increase in theoretical VE. Is my thinking kind of correct?

Heres a screen shot of the log.



You can see my VEs are pretty constant up top, increasing slightly. But the AFR drops fast. Needless to say I'm changing the oil tonight, for the 3rd time in 2 weeks.

VE will drop at higher rpm on a car with flow limitations ie after peak power and torque. 10vs do it bad after torque peak, after like 4500-5k they start needing a ton less fuel even with more timing.

After some help from some guys who have done it before, thats exactly what I needed to do. After peak tq, like 4.5-5K I had to drop the VEs.

So it was running better, took it to VAGFAIR and blew up 4th gear. Which ended up like this:

Great job, cool project!

That sucks. I managed to wipe my trans out this weekend too. You planning to put another 01a back in, or go 01E?

My buddy has one I can grab for $100. I'm tempted but to be honest I'd rather spend the money one time and get a 6 speed 01E. This project had consumed me lately so I'm thinking of putting it down for a month or so, and maybe have it back in action in late fall. I'm happy where I am at but for now I need to save up for the new trans setup and take a small hiatus.

Long time no update...

Endd up picking up that transmission from my friend. Put it in, worked on the tune for a bunch of hours and had her running healthily on 23 psi. Brought it to work, for the first time in a long while which felt awesome!

While showing one of my co-workers the setup I noticed the compressor wheelhad kissed the housing.

Babied it home, took the turbo off and cried....

Had the turbo for 18months and put very few miles on it. So I was pretty bummed when I saw what happened. Ended sending it back to COMP, I paid for the rebuild and sold it.

I am in the process of aquiring a built 01E and a GT35R, so I can send it to HTA . Saving up for this is taking a while mainly because of another big purchase I just made. Cough, ring, eh hemm, diamond.... you get the picture.

I had to remove mine for painting mainly because I have rust forming at one spot.

I removed the one side with extreme care and was able to keep in tact. The drivers side was much harder and I need to figure out a replacement.

My question is what have people used instead of OEM Audi parts for this piece because I really don't see a way in which I can re-fix the 'good' side without using some sort of adhesive. From the factory, the fasterners that keep these in place look almost like the back side of a rivet.

I'm talking about the piece that runs the length of the car. On both sides I have kept the back part (the part that clips/slides in, in tact) I'm basically just going to try some different firm rubber/plastic strips to fill the slightly gap left there when the door is shut if no one has any advice. FYI my trim is not polished like this pictures it is black.



Any first hand expierience?

No idea about the door seals (?), but something else caught my eye...

lorge1989 wrote:My buddy has one I can grab for $100. I'm tempted but to be honest I'd rather spend the money one time and get a 6 speed 01E.

Just a thought, the top gear ratio in the 5 speed is the same as most 6 speed 01Es except the TDI versions. $100 is a far cry from the $2k you'll spend on a rebuilt 6-sp, and the difference would help you get into an HTA or EFR ( ) sooner than later...

Well my second last post I did cover that.

Got the cheap trans, then the turbo went ca-boom. I should be picking up a built 01E from a friend and a GT35R that needs a new compressor wheel (perfect for upgrade) in a few weeks. Got a great deal on all of it, but I still want to get the paint to the point I'm proud of the way the car looks.