Caddy TD Swap

[Maarten]

850C is a bit on the highside for a stock engine, did you adjust the pumptiming? High exhausttemps are caused by over retarded-timing.

[veeman]

>>850C is a bit on the highside for a stock engine, did you adjust the pumptiming?

Sorry... I meant 850 F.  I haven't adjusted timing just yet.  The probe the exhaust manifold is pre-turbo.    Just found this thread that's saying the upper limit on a stock engine is 1500 F...

http://www.vwdiesel.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1578

[fspGTD]

Stock fueling and no intercooler right?  I'd expect your exhaust gas temps to be cooler than a stock 1.6lTD due to the 2.5" exhaust (perhaps by 150 deg. F), but 850 deg. F is still pretty cool.  To test the true maximum, you need to floor it all the way until the EGT gauge stops rising.

What temps are you seeing cruising at 65mph on the freeway?  I'd guess you will see around 600 deg. F if the pyrometer is working right.

[veeman]

Jake... the engine is indeed stock, running stock boost and no intercooler for the moment...

>>What temps are you seeing cruising at 65mph on the freeway? I'd guess you will see around 600 deg. F if the pyrometer is working right.

I had the chance to drive the caddy last night and this morning to work.  Cruising at 60-65 mph, I'm seeing around 700-750 on the EGT's and right around 3-4 psi of boost.

There's a long hill (expressway) on the 30 minute commute to work and I tried to floor it all the way up the hill in fifth gear (that would have been laughable with the 1.5).  

It held 10-11 psi all the way up the hill and pulled fine.  At the top of the hill, I saw around 1200 degrees or so on the gauge.  I could smell stuff burning off the new exhaust, so I can tell it had heated up quite a bit.   Assuming that's fine, I'm going to start investigating some performance tweaking to the pump / wastegate.

The only problems thus far are on startup.  Even if I glow the plugs and pull the cold start lever, the engine starts up very rough (like it's missing) and puts out prodigious amounts of white smoke.  Mosquito's in three counties pay the price everytime I crank it up.

If I let it idle and slowly easy on the accelerator, it seems to clear up and as it gets warmer, the smoke disappears rapidly.  I need to do some more reading in the archives, but a friend has suggested that the pump timing might be a bit retarded...  Any ideas?

[fspGTD]

Correct, the temp limits of a bone-stock 1.6lTD (when tested to the absolute MAX) are 1500 deg. F pre-turbine, and 1300 deg. F post-turbine.

700-750 deg. F 65mph cruise seems excessive, and indicates something isn't working right... probably in your fuel injection system.  Overly retarded timing could explain that as well as missing and hard starting when cold.

You should probably check/set your cam timing and fuel injection timing and then report back whether that helps.  Set the fuel injection timing right to 1.00mm.  Cam timing needs to be set before injection timing.  Good luck and have fun!

[veeman]

Well..the first two tanks of fuel came back with approximately 39-40 mpg.  Not what I expected.  I would have though I'd get closer to 44 if I keep it under 65 and don't hotfoot it around too much.

I checked the timing per Jake's suggestion and found it to be set nearer to .8 mm rather than 1mm.  Strange.  I imagine it could have been "bumped" a little during shipping / handling.

I reset it to 1mm and found that the exhaust temps have gone down a bit and the engine in general seems to run better with more power.  The engine starts up very quickly and doesn't seem to be missing / smoking so much any more when cold.

I also found that the clip on the cold-start cable had fallen off on the pump bracket.  That means that the cable could indeed actuate the arm  to cold start position, but couldn't return all the way back to the "normal" position.   I'm assuming that caused some problems recently as well.  It's my understanding that the cold start lever only advances the timing at idle and relatively low rpm's, right?

I put the clip back on the cable (at the pump) and adjusted the cable per the Bentley.

Other news...  Some buddies and I are collecting supplies to start brewing Biodiesel.  We've got some sources of good used Soybean oil and we've already brewed a few test batches.  

We're planning on going with the open source "appleseed" processing model and I'll start out by running around 30-50% BD once it's all done.
I'll probably need to replace a few of the rubber lines on the caddy to run BD over extended periods of time...

[VWRacer]

Veeman, my '80 n/a diesel rabbit would only get 44 mpg or better when I kept the speed at 55 on the freeway, so your 39-40 at 60 sounds like it's in the ball park to me. My rabbit also got about 40 combined city/freeway, but dropped to 37-38 in 65-70 freeway romps.

In any case, now that you've bumped up the timing I'll bet the fuel economy improves.

[veeman]

Update...

I've been daily driving the caddy to and from work (~60 miles each day, 7k miles overall) and so far, things have been great.

The only real problem I've had is that alternator belt was coming loose about every 500 miles or so.  

As a result, I had to replace the old alternator from my 1.6 NA with a new unit not because the alternator wasn't working, but actually because the mounting holes were distorted and broken.  

I found the bracket on the engine was in equally bad shape, so I had to change that out in order for the belt to tension  (and stay tensioned).   I really dislike messing with that bracket.  My friends and I joke about "three hour cussing sessions" with our cars, but that bracket is not so easy to change out.

Next... I had installed the 2.5" exhaust back in August, but never put an exhaust tip or tail pipe on it. This was sort of a problem because the exhaust resonated under the bed and covered the driver's side rear with soot.

Anyway, I had a fabricator friend of mine (Kevin at DTR Performance in Florence, KY) take a look and we talked about some ideas.  I thought of going with a single turn-down out the back, but eventually went back to the stock exit location.

Here's how it turned out...



I really like the slash cut tip and the angled exit makes me think of the OEM scirocco 16V exhaust.  The tips are actually made from stainless (schedule 5?) pipe that Kevin hand-polished himself. Great work...

I provided some mandrel bends and Kevin did a smooth over the axle bend...top notch work. Not easy to do.  Here's a crappy pic of the over the axle bit...



I've started producing large batches of biodiesel, so for the future, I'm tring to source viton hoses so I can run B80 or B100 in the caddy.   Eventually, I'll have to have the seals in the pump replaced as well.  MIght be time for a Gilles pump treatment at that time.  

I've also got to decide whether I'm going to ditch the A/C as it appears there's no easy way to add an intercooler with it installed.

I'd like to do the governor mod and up the boost, but that will probably wait until it's warmer.

[texaseric]

Terrific post. Nice work.

I'm working a Caddy/1.6TD project in Texas. Will post photos once I get to the point where I wouldn't be embarrassed. I'm planning to put the intercooler where the battery normally sits. Moved my battery to the bed and ran cables through the passenger compartment (after trying to route them under the car with unsatisfactory results). Also keeping the AC (As I said before, I live in Texas!)

Here's a place that does gauge pods for A1s (haven't bought one yet):
http://www.gaugepods.com/vw.html


How much was your turbo rebuild, by the way?

[RabbitGTDguy]

Very sweet caddy.... nicely done! love the exhaust!


I wonder if that place for the pods actually sells to fit MK1...i see they say so but their pic looks like its one in an MK2...  Would be cool though.

fastgerman on the vwvortex is working on having custom pillar pods built specifically for the MK1... has already gone through one test and run...going back to have it remolded.... there was a group buy "pre" list on there too...
 
believe his handle is fstgrmn  on the 'tex

Joe