Jetta project 200

[TurboJ]

Slowly getting there..





The water radiator is going to be a tight fit despite all my efforts.





The top mid mount of the aux coolers is a bit of a risk. I guess I'll have to make a secondary one as well.





From the underneath it's all looking very ugly 



The finished article will look different - air guides will help with that.
Everything reminds me that the mk2 is not a big car. Even though I have emptied a lot of the engine bay,
it's all still pretty tight. And there's so much new stuff to be added it's not all easy.

[Powered by Spearco]

  Did you play with "Erector Set" toys when you were a kid. My god, the quality your putting into this build awesome.

I cant wait any longer for this to be done. Keep up the fabulous craftsmanship.

By the way. In one of your photos, there was a Distributor Cap Insulator laying on the ground.  your not going "Gas" on us now are you?

Hahaha. JK.

[RabbitJockey]

[TurboJ]

Did you play with "Erector Set" toys when you were a kid. My god, the quality your putting into this build awesome.

I cant wait any longer for this to be done. Keep up the fabulous craftsmanship.

By the way. In one of your photos, there was a Distributor Cap Insulator laying on the ground.   your not going "Gas" on us now are you?

Hahaha. JK.

I did love legos, I can tell you that  

I'm very grateful for your feedback, I do appreciate it!
Tomorrow I will try to continue working on the rad support and perhaps with fitting the manifolds as well.
Last time at the garage I developed a nasty migraine attack so I've taken a few days off from working on the Jetta.

Ha, the distributor insulator luckily has nothing to do with my Jetta, I took it off my daily Felicia (poor state of which you can see on this thread as well if you're lucky!)

[TurboJ]

Started building a decent air baffle system so the radiators all get their fair share of air flow.







I feel like I have been cutting as much paper as I have steel... Which is because I have 





The ends of the lower frame spot welded in place.




Pardon my terrible looking welds on this and all the following pictures - I did borrow a very cheap non-gas MIG, and there are serious light issues in addition to no current setup option....


The intercooler shroud in place:





The ends of the shroud are made to match the vertical louvres on the grille:





Here you can see also the lower air baffles that are there to guide air from the aux coolers to the water radiator.





Then it was time to test fit the hood latch.. (thanks for your help, TheMan53!)





It was a close call - but for once, everything fit the first time. There's not an awful lot of extra room, mind you....





The water radiator was supposed to go in next, but it had to be covered first to avoid any damage during the mock-up stage:





I decided to use the lower support frame, well, as a lower support frame!







Fits like a glove 

[TurboJ]

The Ronals have been shod with Toyo rubber, 195/45 VR15. Can't wait to put these on and drop the car on its feet!





Aki sent me a custom-made billet belt pulley wheel - looking mighty good! Milled from a solid hunk of steel - no more cracked and loose rubber weights!
This also helps to balance the rotating assembly better than an old stock arrangement since there is nothing moving on this new design.
A similar wheel was also used on the legendary twin charged Vento of Aki - 80 hp of extra load on this had no ill effects on the sturdy billet wheel.







...that's a regular gasser pulley wheel there to give you and idea of the scale.

BTW, Aki told me that he might be able to make a couple more, just in case someone is interested  

[RabbitJockey]

If you have read your 'Maximum Boost' you will cringe at the sight of the wastegate oulet, but it has been carefully chosen.
The priority of this manifold by far is to use the exhaust heat energy as well as possible, helping the turbo to spool up.
The waste gate would have significantly increased the collector volume if fitted to the usually preferred spot - not good
for our IDI engines. And the good thing is this wastegate location has been thoroughly tested and there is no boost creep.

At 30psi, the wastegate will not be open much anyway ;^p

[TurboJ]

Since the build of the radiator frame is taking an absolute age, I thought I'd post up some pictures of the progress although there is still many an hour's work ahead of me before it's done.

It's funny how you never seem to be able to plan for the extremely long delays on your project when you're building/fabricating custom parts.
For what it's worth, making my radiator frame has, so far, taken me over 50 working hours  

The frame has also cost me more than just time as I was to find out when grinding some metal the week before the last.
My right eye got hit by a small steel particle that flew from my angle grinder ( yes, I was using proper safety gear ), and
it hit almost directly in the middle of the iris. The piece was then removed, of course, but my eyesight hasn't recovered
completely, and the doctor says it probably won't. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blind or anything, my right eye is just slightly
blurry now, and I'll likely be needing glasses. It's not worse than that, but it did put me down for a couple of days...

PEOPLE, ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR EYES ARE WELL PROTECTED !

Anyway, enough about that!

As soon as I could, I continued working on the lower radiator support:




The idea of this bar was to align the radiator right. It had to be precisely straight, as in here:



The original, angled radiator fitment would not suit me in terms of space, and it would also have made it next to impossible for me to build
a proper shroud for it.


Once the middle part of the pipe had been cut off and the mounting points reinforced somewhat, they were looking like this:





Here is one of the Passat rad's lower mounts mocked up on my newly made lower frame:





Then of course, some new upper mounts had to be made:



I managed to make all the new custom mounts fit the Passat rad's original plastic mounts. That will make things a whole lot easier if I ever
have to replace the radiator. It will be a direct bolt on now.

Here's the upper mount shaped and welded up. All four mounting points were made rubber-insulated for maximum safety.



As you can see, the top part of the rad frame was in need of serious bondo-play before paint could be applied!


Zinc coating on the lower and upper water radiator mounts:



(Well I ran out a little bit on the top part, but luckily it will get less wet higher up in the engine bay so normal paint should be fine)

[TurboJ]

On one picture there you can spot the air box too. Well, the one that will be fitted is actually the first, and also the fourth edition that was planned..



Here you can see the original Eco-TD air box, and next to it a Passat 35i TD one. The Passat air box was to go in, but after I got my new intake manifold
and turbo, I had to re-think the routing of all the air pipework. The air box now had to be located on the right hand side of the engine compartment instead of left,
as originally was the idea.

As for the first and fourth editions - the original box is going to be used, and during the build I have had a BMC CDA system, the Passat box pictured and now, the original again...


Then, I put in some bolts to hold the airbox in place:



No rubber bands will be used on this build! I wonder what VW was thinking when they designed the mounting of the air box!


Like so:



I will be adding a side mount too, with a rubber insulator just to keep the vibration in check.


It's actually sitting almost exactly on the original spot - I found that the best location, although my new fuel filter is going to be a tight fit.




I will be fabbing the intake pipe out of these aluminum parts:



Yes there's a crack on one of them as the pipe shop tried to make a 60->70 mm adaptor. No luck there, so I ordered the custom adaptor you see next to the broken one from another shop.

[TurboJ]

Then the work continued on the rad support, hey, what a surprise!

I was a little preoccupied with how much air flow the water radiator would be getting with nearly all of the front grilles' frontal area
being covered by the I/C and the aux coolers, so I made little scoops on each side of the aux coolers:




The one on the right in this picture is wider than the left, because the left (or the right actually, looking from the driver's place) has the tow hook
there to rob some of the available space.





It took quite a while to make the lower air baffle, because the aux coolers' openings were at different heights:



If you're wondering about the opening in the middle, it's there to allow for the lower rad frame to be bolted onto this - without that bolt
joint this structure would not be as strong as the original setup, which, of course, I can't have.

I suspect the comprehensive shrouding will help the water radiator do its job - even though not a huge amount of air flow is coming towards the rad,
at least very little of that flow has a change to travel past it.

Here you can see both the shrouds from behind:



The inner one will gather 90% of the air flow going through the grille and direct it towards the intercooler.
The outer one will try to gather as much as possible of all other air flow and direct it towards the water radiator.
There will be also be flexible rubber seals between the shrouds and the radiator cores to complete the tight channeling of air.

If this is not enough to keep the water temps in check, then there is still the possibility of cutting extra holes to the bumper - namely
where the number plate usually sits. I won't do that unless I have to, though, as I don't like how that would look.

Then it was time to start the finishing:




Ready for zinc-spraying:




Almost ready!





But the top part wasn't smooth enough so I had to continue with some more bondo and sanding...




But, at last, it's getting there. Now there's only some sanding and silicone-sealing of some gaps and seams so it will hold against rust.
And of course painting and clear coating.. But at least that's the fun part!

When that's done I'll get to modifying the intercooler end tanks and hopefully then doing the brake lines and fitting the rear axle.

Then after that, I will drop the car on its wheels and throw in the engine  

[TurboJ]

Oh, there's also one little tale of interest that I thought I'd share with you guys 

The news I heard made me very excited about the potential of my build as well, even though the news
were about a different engine.

So I was chatting with Aki on the phone the other day, and he had just returned from a dyno session with a VW Polo 1.9 TDI, ALH to be exact. The exciting bit was that the ALH had made 340 horsepower on the dyno. Without nitrous.

What is even more exciting, is the fact that this Polo is a well-mannered, daily driven automobile. And, there was still some turbo sizing and software optimizing to be done. The power should, according to Aki, improve quite easily after a few more tweaks.

The last thing Aki told me that getting the 1.9 heads flow enough is no longer a problem...

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Aki did the head and the turbocharger on that engine.

Now we also know just how far a Bosch 11mm VE pump can be pushed!
If you're thinking about a 12 mm plunger head for your IDI pump, then I suggest you reconsider! 

[theman53]

I sell the Industry leading crown product in the 97% zinc cold galvanize compound...it as well as others state to be careful when covering it with a solvent based paint. If you let it cure completely it will help, but the solvent I guess retards the galvanizing action of it. Great stuff as it passes a 400 hour salt spray test...I used about 12 cans on my rust bucket, so I know after 2 winters of daily driving in the rust belt it will work. Good deal on the rest.

FWIW, next time I build an IC setup I think I will make my grill out of expanded metal and not worry about making it all fit nicely under the stock stuff. As you know taking that core support out and welding and measuring 953 times got old for me. I am sure you too.

[TurboJ]

Oh yes, after every stage of this build I'm thinking: "Next time I'll definitely NOT do this and this the same way"  Sure!
This is all practice for me, but I believe that's true to every build and you'll always do things better the next time, and then again on the next one after that..

I am having fun now, but I just hope all the little things didn't take so very long to do.

About the zinc stuff; I used it just to get some added protection. The can said it was compatible with most paint products on the market, so I don't really know.
I'm using acrylic automotive spray paint and clear coat for the finishing layers. Do you think there's a problem?
In any case, will the problem lessen the effectiveness of the zinc, or will it result in a finish with less protection than with only paint? I wouldn't think that?

[rallydiesel]

Is there a link where we can learn more about that 340 hp ALH beast?

[nathantheengineer]

As usual, well done!! love to watch fabrication being carried out ( i am an engineer, so it is close to my heart).

Getting there now!