Frankenwagen build thread AKA TD Corrado

[rodpaslow]

my $.02 for an oil pressure gauge.  I've tested several electric gauges and I trust a new VDO as much as a mechanical.  They are very accurate.  I tried a stewart warner - this one would jump around and not show and accurate pressure and similar results with autometer.   Mind you I've been testing in -20° weather as well.

Nice build.  Thanks for all the posts, keeping informed.

[Thezorn]

Got about 1000km on the engine now, everything feels good!

Two problems I've got right now though
My boost gauge decided it didn't want to work anymore, so I drove without one for a while. I plumbed in a temporary mechanical gauge (that will be used to keep an eye on the intermediate charge pipe pressure, make sure the wastegates are working properly.
I don't think I'm making boost as quickly now as I was before. Also, when I pull my intake tube off, everything's coated with oil in there. My PCV isn't connected to the intake, so it's not coming from there.
Someone I talked to today at a small car meet said that my K14 pulling a vacuum before the K24 spools up will wreck a seal in it, but that doesn't make any sense to me. Has anyone ever heard of such a problem? I would more expect it to be just a bad oil seal in the K24, and I'd need to rebuild that. I'm consuming very little oil; I can't tell a difference in the last 500km, so it's not burning all that much, but the inside of my intake and compressor housings are well lubricated!


Second problem is that my oil pressure gauge has decided to start leaking.. or more specifically where the thin hose goes into the fitting on the back.
I used one of the little plastic tubing kits from Lordco as I couldn't find any fitting that would thread onto my gauge. Is there any better solution? I might take the gauge off temporarily, but don't want to go too long without an oil pressure gauge...

My local crappy tire sells copper tubing kits for this purpose. Same size tubing as the plastic ones. Im pretty sure the manufacturer is EQUIS, or what ever it is. The local napa here also has them in the same brand. If you cant find them let me know and I can grab you one.

[RadoTD]

Okay, so I got bored today... strange things sometimes happen when I'm bored. Fortunately, a good strange thing happened this time.
I decided to make a spreadsheet where I could input various info about an engine for ever few hundred rpm and it would calculate power/torque and graph it. So, basically the relevant stuff on not2fast.com, but every 500rpm and a dyno plot of it! Turned out kinda cool. It'll be interesting to see how well this actually lines up once I get the engine ready for a dyno

[Thezorn]

wow that is definatley cool, 283 foot pounds of torque would be quite the upgrade. It will be interesting to see how acurate this is compaired to a dyno reading.

[Thezorn]

I'm not actually sure why that oil light is blinking. Particularly without the buzzer going off. That gauge I had sitting on my valve cover was for oil pressure and my oil pressure is good. The wire from the sensor on the head and the wire from the sensor on the filter housing are both connected to the sensor on the filter housing, so that might have something to do with it, although that doesn't make complete sense.

Either way, I know my oil pressure is good and will soon be installing a permanent gauge to keep my eye on it. I pulled the wires off the filter sensor and the buzzer went off right away, so I know that circuit still works fine

Are you still having this problem? Its the same thing im dealing with too. I have an actuall oil pressure gauge that is ready really good oil pressure but the light in the cluster just keeps blinking for me. Im thinking it either has something to do with the new cluster or my sensor died somehow when I wasnt in use.

[RadoTD]

Are you still having this problem? Its the same thing im dealing with too. I have an actuall oil pressure gauge that is ready really good oil pressure but the light in the cluster just keeps blinking for me. Im thinking it either has something to do with the new cluster or my sensor died somehow when I wasnt in use.

Haha, actually no, I haven't fixed it yet. The simple solution would simply be grounding the wire that went to the switch in the head. Either that or somehow getting a second pressure switch hooked up if you want to retain the OEM functionality

[RadoTD]

Alright. Starting the second stage of this build now.
A few too many things were rushed getting it back together and I drove it for about 5000km after the rebuild/compound setup, but without my real pump mods, without my intercooler plumbed etc. Basically the same as it was before, except less turbo lag and far more scream. I was having some issues and didn't want to deal with it all right away, so I bought a truck and pulled it off the road. Things are starting to happen again. Updates will probably be slow but hopefully steady

The new to-do list, in no particular order. I'll hopefully add to it as I go along

-Clean/install the rest of my interior. Still a little rough but definitely looks nicer than ever before. Did that Sunday, but I always like to start a to-do list with something crossed off. Accomplishment makes me feel special.
-Make mounts for new rad and install new radiator and custom plumbing
 -Custom intake manifold. I've got an idea in mind that could work quite well in theory. Just gotta get around to making it.
-Install fan wiring harness. I pulled a standalone harness from a mk3 that I'll use in place of the rats nest that occupied the front of my engine bay before
 -Delete my friggen ABS. Working on my car yesterday, it tried to light itself on fire. It's overcomplicated, unnecessary and coming out soon.
 -Plumb the intercooler. It's tight in there and I'm going to run some funky stuff. It'll be welded mild steel insead of aluminum with silicone couplers everywhere. Stronger, more reliable and easier to snake around the engine bay.
 -Run an external wastegate off my exhaust manifold and a very unique combination of boost controllers. Yes, plural. You'll see.
-Press in new wheel bearings and swap my knuckles out. Just gotta find where I put the wheel bearings I bought for it about 2 months ago.. :/
 -Get my pump modified a little (lot) more. I'm interested to see for one thing how much power I can pull off of a stock 9mm AAZ pump. I like to think I have an idea of what's going on in there and can hopefully pull out everything it's got.
-Wire up ecode lights. Corrado N/A lights are weak enough on their own but my broken adjusters giving it a lazy eye just made it worse. Oh, and I need to make some new tabs for my lights as well
 -Get my Passat TDI cluster working. I tossed around the idea of making various custom gauge faces but I think I'll scrap that and just convert the tach for my TDI cluster. Probably just run a Dakota Digital DSL1 converter.
 -Possibly make a rear strut bar. Someday I'll make one.
 -Probably a few more things I'm forgetting right now

[RadoTD]

Yesterday I had the day off work and some good weather. The pile of interior pieces I hadn't bothered to actually put back in yet was bothering me and I'm not sure how well the good weather will stay, so I tore everything out, cleaned it and put it back in. Didn't take many pictures as I didn't plan on writing up about it, but I may as well.
Most of the interior is actually in pretty good condition. Some leather peeling off the rear door cards and C pillars not fitting great, but I love a black interior and the leather is quite a nice addition. It definitely looks better all together. Not complete, but getting there anyway

While I was working on it though, there was a funny smell. At first I figured it was either from the vinyl/leather cleaners I was using or from my next door neighbour cleaning. About 15min after I first noticed the smell, however, I saw some smoke coming out of my engine bay. It was the first time I've had the battery hooked up in a while, so I ran out and pulled the battery terminal off.
Turns out my ABS pressure pump tried to commit suicide. That's not something to mess around with and I've wanted to get rid of the ABS anyway, so that added a non abs swap to my list.
I'll just be running a full B3 passat setup with a 22mm master. Corrado's came with 3 channel ABS, so just one line to the rear where as the Passat master cylinder has 2 lines for the rear. I'm not sure if I'm going to cap one port and run a proportioning valve or run a second rear line the whole way back. I'm leaning towards the single rear, partly because I can get an adjustable proportioning valve through work and have full easy adjustment of my braking bias. Either way, the ABS unit will soon be history.

Pile of interior trim

DSCF0138 by Pursuit_01, on Flickr

2 quick shots of the interior

DSCF0140 by Pursuit_01, on Flickr

DSCF0141 by Pursuit_01, on Flickr

And, 2 pictures around my exhaust manifold in case I forget. I'll need them to see where I'll be tucking my external wastegate

DSCF0111 by Pursuit_01, on Flickr

DSCF0110 by Pursuit_01, on Flickr

[RadoTD]

After too much being lazy, I got some actual work done on the car today. I've done a bunch of wiring and related crap, but that's all boring. This is cooler.

First thing is I left my ignition on for an hour or so while working on the car one day. To my surprise, some smoke started pouring up from the engine bay. It turns out that part of the ABS pump is always running when the ignition is on? Well anyway, my ABS system won't build pressure any more. That's alright though, I wanted to get rid of it anyway.
Corrado's came with 02A's with a hydraulic clutch on them. Apparently non ABS passats had a bracket that held the clutch master, fluid reservoir and booster. I tried to find one of these, but had no luck. So, I bought a mk2 golf booster/master and just started taking things apart.


I thought I took a pic of the ABS master, but apparently not. It had a black bracket that bolts through the firewall and holds the clutch master as well. Here's a photo of the ABS bracket on the left, non ABS from the golf's booster on the right. The studs on the top are what go into the firewall and the bolt holes sitting down on the floor are where it's bolted to the ABS master and booster. Unfortunately, the ABS master had 3 holes, the booster had 4, so it wouldn't all bolt up nicely



Huh. Oh well. I just grabbed the grinder instead, cut the one in half, mocked them up on the firewall and welded it back together. Voila.
I'll sand blast that down at work one day soon, respray it and just leave it at that. It's nice and strong and sits perfectly square against the firewall.




Quick photo first of the booster just sitting in the engine bay, nothing's actually bolted in and second of what will probably be my clutch reservoir. Mini HVLP paint pot and a barbed fitting. A quick bracket holding that off of the coolant bottle bracket and it should work just fine!

[RadoTD]

Next job was starting an intake manifold. We all know the stock manifold sucks... well, for our intentions at least. It flows all 70 some odd horsepower these engines were designed for just fine, but what's the fun in that?

I searched and found a thread by ROR not long ago making an intake for himself that turned out awesome! I'm somewhat copying that design, but attempting to make it tapered. I took a piece of 3" aluminum tubing and cut an angled slot out of it. Then I grabbed some T bolt clamps (hose clamps exploded too easily) and slowly/tediously tapered the aluminum tube down into a cone. The first picture is before I ran the clamps over it. After that picture, I cut the taper out even further. In retrospect, I should've tapered both cuts instead of one still being parallel to the tube, but that's not a big deal. It won't all be my final slit between the two plenums anyway.
The slit is still open on one end, but that won't matter. I'll cut a new one once it's welded up.




I had some low temp aluminum soldering rods that according to the internets are amazing. I figured I'd run some beautiful beads with those rods and everything would be held together wonderfully! Errr... not quite. I couldn't get them to stick to anything. It just sat as a glob of molten rod on top of the metal. Looks like I'll be buying a spool of alum wire and borrowing some pure aargon. I've only tigged once before, so I think migging it together will turn out better.





Hopefully more to come later this week!

[nathantheengineer]

I much prefer mig welding ali to tig welding it.  Lots of arguments rage but basically if you can mig better than you can tig then you will do a better weld with the mig.

I often mig welded 5mm thick ali and its beautiful, thinner stuff is harder, but as with everything, practice makes perfect.

I run a 180amp Lincoln welder and it is fine on both steel and ali, ( only problem is that the duty cycle is a little low when going for it)

Make sure the wire speed is turned up and that you get the next size tip for the wire you are using. i.e here in the UK i use a 1.2mm tip on 1mm wire, ali mig wire likes a little 'clearance'

Keep it up, i have just read this thread from start to finish. 

[libbydiesel]

On vanagons, the clutch and brake systems share the brake fluid reservoir.  There is a small nipple poking off the side of it that runs the fluid down to the clutch.  You might be able to fit a vanagon reservoir to your master cyl or use a vanagon master cyl and dispense with the clutch reservoir. 

[RabbitJockey]

Looks great, try some jb weld haha