Justin's '85 UrQ'd 4000 20vt Project - Tuning Help?

[jretal]

Well, nothing is ever easy for me apparently

I got the car back together last night (it looks like a normal car again :woowoo:) Unfortunately, it was a short lived victory.

After getting all the dash buttoned up on the driver's side I figured it was time to fire the 'ol girl up and move her (with her new front end, etc etc). Car started rather easily (for once) and much to my dismay, I had no oil pressure on my elec gauge in the car. THinking I might have knocked a wire loose, I quickly popped the hood and checked the mechanical gauge I have in the engine bay... it's pegged at zero too :( :curses: :frustrated:

I quickly shut the car off. I had heard an ever so slight tick from the lifters, so I didn't starve it from oil too badly (only ran for ~30 sec if that)...

Right off the bat I checked the oil... had plenty (if not too much cuz the stuff from the cooler drained into the tank).

I then went to pull the pressure relief valve in the oil pump housing... and wouldn't you know it, the f'in thing is seized in there :bullshits: :frustrated:

For the life of me, i couldn't get it to pop out, so I started to drill it out in hopes of a) breaking it free and b) giving me a way to thread an ez out into it and pull it out. Well, it broke free and slid further up into the oil pump housing... dammit. At that point I was so angry and frustrated, I pushed the car out of the garage and left it be. I then spent 3 hours cleaning my garage to meditate and escape from looking at that f'in car :x

Game plan is... I'm going to continue drilling the hole into the valve and punch through it. Then I'm gonna get a long screw and try to thread the screw into the valve. If that works, I'll clean out the metal shavings and put in a second valve and spring combo and go from there... and hope that solves my problem. If that doesn't solve my problem, I'm gonna have to tear the front of the car off and R&R the oil pump... I really DON'T want to do this... so hopefully this works.

And if it's not the oil pump... well, looks like I'm going to have to drop the damn oil pan... in essence totally dismantling the front of the car again :x :frustrated:

So yeah, that's where it sits. The real bitch of it was, I was getting ready to drive the damn thing over to the shop to get inspected and realigned shortly after pulling it out of the garage... soooooo angry right now I can't even tell you.

[AudiSport4000]

The relieve valve on the MC motor is where the oil temp sender is at on the JT, correct? The large bolt at the front pass part of the oil pump?
I plan on putting the oil temp sender there but I was always a bit uneasy about undoing that bolt for some reason.

Hopefully you dont have to RR the oil pump and can get it figured out otherwise. Good thing you checked your gauge though, woulda sucked if you started to drive away!

Still :( :(

[jretal]

yeah, Mike... that's where the temp sender is located on the 4000s... and the same for the 5000/200s as well from what I can tell.

When I took it apart on my JT motor, everything slid right out... that's how I knew there was a problem right then and there when I pulled it this time around. That valve should just slide out cuz it should be free to move around.

about a shot glass worth of oil came out though, that's it.

oh well, we'll see what the days ahead will bring. I am thankful I caught it as soon as I did, just wished it wouldn't have happened

[jretal]

And yes ladies and gents... there's a light at the end of the tunnel!!!!!! me = :-D

After the little hiccup on monday, I gave the car a rest... and got back to it today to see if I could get the stuck pressure relief valve out w/o having to tear the entire front of the car off and take the oil pump off, etc etc etc.

I had started to drill into it, but when it slid further into the oil pump I stopped. My plan of attach today was to drill the rest of the way through the valve and thread a lag bolt into it. Well, as luck would have it the drill bit got caught on the valve and started to spin it in place. I kept pressure on it and after some horsing around...



I was literally hopping around the garage in delight! I proceeded to clean out all the metal filings I had made drilling into it w/ a magnet on a stick and then ran a rag through as well. Then I installed the spare valve float had, but not before liberally coating it with the goo I used to install the cam shaft.

Gave the key a turn and... we got oil pressure!!!!

Additionally, I needed to tackle the ducting for the Radiator. My cardboard pieces have seen better days to say the least, so with the help of a hammer, the 4k spare tire, and a sheet of AL I was able to come up with this:



trimming and fitting:



Works pretty good. I need to brace it a little better on the bottom because it's rattling against the radiator, but for the most part, it should work perfectly. I need to make another piece for the bottom since the cardboard piece will no longer work with my intercooler piping.

and here's the car all back to her former glory!





I took the car out for another 30 mile trip this afternoon to see how she's running... and it's running real nice I have a bit of a flashing light from my APC when i'm hard on the gas over 4k, so I have some tweaking to do with my tuning... but I won't do that until after I hook up the wire to the coil trigger to help solidify and hone in on what the motor is doing... we shall see. At this point though, I'm really happy It felt great to get behind the wheel and really lay into it a bit. Car def has a lil pick me up now, so once it's really tuned and ready, it's gonna cruuuise 8)

well, that's it for now. Gonna get to tuning it a bit, but not until after VIR on monday/tuesday... gotta have some fun with the A4... it deserves a good flogging

[AudiSport4000]

Awesome work. Yeah, sometimes ya gotta take a day off to let the nerves settle, BTDT!

You still have the bottom OEM radiator shroud?

[GTIVR62801]

Good work Justin! Glad all is well. Looking forward to your VIR Report, I'll have to check for it in my hotel room after I drive up to WG Tuesday night. 8)

[audidub]

car looks good, glad everything worked out with the oil pump. :cheers:

[audifreakjim]

:woowoo:

[jretal]

thanks guys! really pumped up right now about the whole thing. Walked out into the garage this morning and saw the car in one piece and just couldn't help but smile and pat it on the fender. AND I could even walk around the car w/o tripping on parts... double bonus! Guess talking to the car for 5 min about how this was for it's own good before getting to the valve paid off haha I can no longer tease my mother for talking to her plants

You still have the bottom OEM radiator shroud?

sure do, Mike. Why, you need it? I might need it for some measurements/ideas for the aluminum I wanna make up, but I could be persuaded to sell it off if need be haha

Good work Justin! Glad all is well. Looking forward to your VIR Report, I'll have to check for it in my hotel room after I drive up to WG Tuesday night.

thanks Carson.. yeah, will def have a good report up from VIR, but wont be till the end of the week I'm sure... I'm literally driving straight from the track to class on tuesday afternoon/evening... lol. Talk about a loooong day.

[AudiSport4000]

If you could email me some pictures of the bottom shroud I would greatly appreciate it

[jretal]

NP, Mike. I can do that, but it's gonna have to wait until next week. I have class till 10ish tonight and won't get home till 1030 or so, and then I need to pack for the weekend/VIR... shoot me a note early next week and remind me and I'll get 'em out your way

[AudiSport4000]

No rush at all, just whenever you get a chance. I do appreciate it

[PxTx]

Great to hear about your sucess. I'm looking forward to seeing how your fabbed shrouds turn out!

[jretal]

Great to hear about your sucess. I'm looking forward to seeing how your fabbed shrouds turn out!

thanks! I will def keep all posted on the shrouds... I think the bottom one is gonna take a bit of welding to get right though since it's all contoured down there and not a flat/straight shot to the back.

Gotta snag some more 'scrap' metal from work and see what I can conjure up 8)

[jretal]

Hells yes!



Me = stoked. Dropped the car off thursday night at the local firestone to get a state inspection and realignment (alignment was so off it wasn't funny, but I did replace both tie rods and assemblies... so that was expected). Guy called friday around noon to tell me the car was done and they found NO issues! I'm like... you sure??? haha. I got there and was only questioned slightly due to the very small high performance, 300 cell count cat converter on the car. They had never seen one so small before, but were able to match #s on the cat so they didn't give me a hard time.

I have pretty much been driving the 'ol girl all weekend. I drove around a lil bit on friday, then saturday decided it was time for her to be in one piece again.

as usual, I can never do anything easy... the car was an absolute mess from all the wiring and what not I've been doing in it over the past 8 months or so... so I yanked out the front seats and got to vacuuming like no other.



I took this opportunity to really clean up the seat tracks as well, because they were shnarsty to say the least. After a healthy application of brake cleaner and a papertowel, they were clean... then some white lithium grease, and the seats now slide like butta! Much better than bouncing back and forth trying to adjust the seat

From there, I needed to get my glovebox installed. Only catch was, I needed to cut an access panel so that I can access my 034 ECU to plug in my VGA cable and do some tuning and such.

Was pretty quick and simple with my dremel:



Also tapped in the isolator wire to my Saab APC, so I am no longer getting the irradic light from 3-4k when going WOT... I was relieved to see that, cuz I was worried my tuning was off.

Next on the list... I wanted to figure out why my gas gauge wasn't working. When I first bought the car and filled the tank, the gauge worked perfectly... but after that first tank, it stopped. I figured the sender $hit the bed... but low and behold, when I pulled it out... what did I find?



yup, the lil floating bulb was FULL of gas... . I could spray a stream from it when I squeezed it (was trying to get a pic of it, but I couldn't hold the camera steady enough while squeezing to get a good pic...). I moved the arm up and down and watched the gas gauge shoot up and down again... I had picked up a "new" (i.e. used from a junker) float from Bruce @ german auto connection so I had it onhand, tossed it in and noticed that the gauge really didn't move. Hmmm, am I out of gas? Walk back to the trunk, pull the liner back and give the tank a knock... oops, yeah, not much left in there. Good think I checked that! No need to run it out of gas... AGAIN!

So I buttoned up the interior and got all my nice quattro script interior back in:



and she's officially 100% functional! After installing the interior I immediately went off to the gas station and filled up... 15 gallons and $47 later (dear lord!!! ) I was ready to rock... got a whopping 13.5 MPG on that tank!!!!! She's still running a tad bit rich (~13.5 A/F at idle, and 12s just driving around)... I'll start messing with the tuning a little more once I start upping the boost... for now, it's fine.

I put about 100 miles on it this weekend (drove around for a few hours on saturday since it was sooooooo nice outside). Car runs nicely to say the least... the boost is nice. Again, the tune isn't perfect, and I do get some hesitation at 5700-6000 rpm or so when winding it out, but again... I'll deal with that down the road.

So after this morning when I renewed my DoD stickers... she's becoming a daily driver, sorta. I am gonna try to rack up another 700 miles on the car quickly so I can get to upping the boost and really getting her to sing That turbo and BPV set to atmosphere sound amazing, and so does the exhaust note... I LOVE the sound of a healthy I5 motor!

So I'm all grins now, to say the least... hopefully the MPG get a little better than the last tank, but I'm getting the feeling I'll be taking a pretty good hit next couple of tanks till it's fully broken in.

that's all from me... again, thanks to all of you that offered help and an open ear... I finally have this project kicked for the time being, and it feels good. I was able to lay around all sunday, hit the beach, and do nothing... not worrying about finishing the car, nothing.... and it was goooooood

[AudiSport4000]

Ya know what, this is probably my favorite project thread on here, with all the cool regular mechanic pictures and stuff, nice work.

Glad its all registered and "legal" for the streets! Keep us updated 8)

[jretal]

Well I figured I'd toss up an update since it's been a bit.

I spent some time last week trying to button up my fuel tables so that the car wasn't running so pig rich at cruise. I have never really messed with this stuff before, but after some tinkering, I really don't know what I was so scared of... this really isn't that bad. I am still playing with the settings as I drive around trying to get all my cruising a/f ratios to 14.7 under steady speeds (read: no load on engine, just maintaining speed), and for the most part have this pretty locked down from 1800-3200 rpms. I haven't gone any faster than that to mess with it, but will probably do so when driving up to PA this coming weekend

I also finally installed the HKS Elec boost controller solenoid



unfortunately, I mounted it upside down because I didn't have the directions handy at the time :tard:. I will fix this down the road when I'm ready to hook it up completely. I was hoping to add some boost this week, but alas, I'm having some issues with the car cutting out above 5000 rpms, which is most likely due to the windows in the distributor not lining up properly and the ECU not firing fuel when it's suppose to at higher RPMs. I'm meeting up with a Keith this afternoon to get this ironed out... because I can't calibrate my EBC until I can hit redline, and the car cuts out badly before that happens at its current state.

From there... I needed to add some bump to the 'ol girl. Buddy and I haven't been able to get time where we both were free to build/install the sub box, so I decided to go ahead and install the 6x9s I had laying around from the donor car. I didn't want to hack the cardboard parcel shelf up at all to fit these speakers, so I ended up cutting some of the metal parcel shelf behind it to fit 'em. Not the prettiest of things, but it's covered up:



and from the back side:



The last thing on the list was to get the damn gas gauge working right. The last float I put in had (be surprised here) yet another HOLE!!! I have now sworn off these stupid floats, I'm sick of messing with them... what did I use? Well, having a few ping pong balls around the house, I sized it up for the job... if mythbusters can float a boat with enough of these things, I think it'll be more than suitable for a gas float!

Yup, you guessed it... I ghetto rigged one up!





Works perfectly, but unfortunately... the gauge STILL doesn't go totally full... ugh. I hate messing with these things. If I plug it in and lift the arm all the way up, the gauge will go to full... so there's got to be an adjustment I'm missing, no? If not, I'm pulling it again and bending the arm till it reads properly... redneck engineering baby!


And now onto the toys...... This car has future plans to be a track toy. I have ideas in my head about what I'll be doing with it, but it's safe to say that it will be getting coil overs and brakes as a min... and I literally FELL upon a deal for brakes ((thank you AW classifieds!)



yes ladies and gents, the 4000 will be getting boxster calipers along with its new coilover suspension The deal was just too good to pass up and I would have been dumb not to take it.

These brakes also change my plans for the suspension... as I will be converting to B3 uprights for the ability to use A4 brakes setups (thanks for figuring that out Derek ) that bolt straight up... and then I toy with 5 lugging them, and then I start rolling down the slippery slope that will lead me to do a few other things to the car that I will keep to myself right now... haha. If they materialize, I'll start teasing then


so that's it for now... can't wait to start upping the boost, but alas that will have to wait a little bit longer since I'll need to add another bung on my IC piping for the EBC.

[AudiSport4000]

You can adjust the fuel gauge in the cluster. Pop off the passenger side small vent cover on the cluster padding and you will see a small lever. Move the lever up and down to move the face of the fuel gauge up or down. Try that, the needle wont move so the reading on the face will change

Nothin wrong with redneck engineering, lots of that over in my parts

[jretal]

So I got the car running "right" last night, at least so I thought.

I met up with Keith so we could rephase the rotor on the distributor cap so that it would hit the appropriate point on the distributor cap while triggering the appropriate injector to fire. Needless to say, it was quite a bit off from where it needed to be.

Since my IC blocks access to the front crank to turn the motor over, we had to use the p/s pulley... but inorder for that to work, we had to pull plugs cuz the compression of the cylinders was just too much. And this ladies and gents is where I ran into a problem... cyl 1, 2, 4, and 5 plugs were looking PERFECT... but Cyl 3... was black as sin and VERY VERY oily. I was rather upset to see this, and very worried. Me = not pleased.

So we got everything rephased, retimed and took it for a tear. Car felt great, but was still cutting out HARD at 5200 RPMs. Dumbfounded, we had no idea what was going on. We were about to throw in the towel when my Keith noticed that somehow (I probably did this) there was a '0' in the fuel table at (you guessed it) 5200 rpm and ~10psi of boost. So in essense I was hitting a fuel cut off (which is exactly what it felt like), but about 1100 rpm sooner than it shoulda. I had been tinkering with this for a bit and never saw it, which is the weird part... but there ARE a lot of #s in that grid, so it's def not easy to spot it. After changing that value, the cut out issue was fixed and we could take the car to 6300 rpm w/o issue (sans the tac dropping to zero when I near redline... that's a completely different issue).

Unfortunately, things were not so easy going. We came back and pulled the plugs again to see what they looked like. 1, 2, 4, and 5, again, were fine... and 3, again, was coated in black unburned oil (we had cleaned it up again before putting it back into the motor mind you, so it did this in the 10-15 miles we put it in the car).

Fearing the worst (piston rings didn't seat), we did a compression check on the piston. came out to 125psi. Did it to another piston just to check and it came out to 125psi as well... so compression was good. We then pressurized the coolant reservoir to see if the HG blew... nada. Held pressure fine and a few swabs of a q-tip in the cyl showed no signs of liquid.

We then moved on to check spark. Pulling the plug, it's def sparking. We swaped plugs, wires, and distributor caps and nothing changed. We then decided to alternately pull wires to see if the motor changed sound. Pulled plug wire #3... no change. pulled plug wire #1,2,4,5 and there was a noticable change in pitch in the motor... what's that mean? Cyl #3 isnt firing :( By slowly reving the motor, you can hear it slightly stumble as well... so that's the story right now.

We pulled the #3 plug again and noticed a very thin coat of fresh oil on it. The general concensus was that the oil on the plug was the light film of oil from the cyl walls not getting totally removed by the rings and not burning off due to no combustion and just sticking to the plug.

So at this point, I'm thinking my injector isn't firing, though it's clicking when the motor is running. Looks like I'm gonna be pulling the fuel rail out and hotwiring the injectors one by one to see how they spray. My guess is the #3 isn't gonna spray for $hit (I'm HOPING!)... if that's the case, I'll pull all 5 and send them off to RC engineering and have them flow test and clean all of the injectors and then toss 'em back in... or just buy a new single one and be done with it.

At this point I'm just REALLY angry/frustrated. It seems like this has been an issue since I started the motor the first time, which is not good. This is also the same cyl that the PO melted with this ECU... which has me concerned that there's a wiring problem somewhere in the harness. I'm sure this piston is fine since I really haven't been beating the piss out of the car, but overall just disheartening and making me a tad bit uneasy. I was looking forward to taking the car for a trek to PA to show it off to the fam... but alas, the stars are not aligned at the moment.

If I have time, the game plan is to pull the fuel rail today/tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's not the easiest thing to take out. I gotta pull the damn throttle body as well, which means I have to pull apart part of my intake track as well... and hope that I can get at it. I haven't taken the TB out w/o the headlight out and IC not in place, so this is gonna be interesting to say the least.

so frustrated... but that's it for this rant. Gonna distance myself from the car for a bit so I'm not tempted to smash it... lil softball this afternoon should help that matter I'm sure

[audidub]

hopefully its just a faulty injector and no issue with you engine, it sounds like your right considering that you have full compresion on the cylinder, congrats on the state inspection also. car is looking good you just gotta weed out the little problems and you'll be golden as a hash brown :cheers:
ryan

[RockinV8q]

Justin, just an FYI.....

Marvin didnt blow his engine with the Ic. He did it by cranking up the boost when it was still on the Mac 11 and VERY EARLY fuel only ecu. (I think that ECU was the first one Javad sold)

It was pretty obvious he was hurting it as the exhaust note would go really "flat" above 17lbs.

Also, I ran into a bad injector once on the EKq, brand new fresh outta the box RS2 unit was electrically fine but no fuel outta the tip.

[Derracuda]

hey justin, i had a bad injector once on my car, came from a use batch of 6, so luckily i had a spare.

as to the fuel gauge issue.... pull the cluster and clean the terminals on the backside of hte fuel gauge. that did a bunch for the old zermatt car i had.

[jretal]

Justin, just an FYI.....

Marvin didnt blow his engine with the Ic. He did it by cranking up the boost when it was still on the Mac 11 and VERY EARLY fuel only ecu. (I think that ECU was the first one Javad sold)

It was pretty obvious he was hurting it as the exhaust note would go really "flat" above 17lbs.

Also, I ran into a bad injector once on the EKq, brand new fresh outta the box RS2 unit was electrically fine but no fuel outta the tip.

Thanks for the heads up, Keith. I had talked with little Keith about this when we rephased the distributor rotor as well, and he pointed out that Marvin had run the car for a quite some time when not running correctly.

hey justin, i had a bad injector once on my car, came from a use batch of 6, so luckily i had a spare.

as to the fuel gauge issue.... pull the cluster and clean the terminals on the backside of hte fuel gauge. that did a bunch for the old zermatt car i had.

Thanks, Derek. I will pull the cluster and give that a go. I need to pull it anyway to try to fix my speedo a little bit as well, so might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that this injector is the issue :frustrated: Last week I pulled the car into the garage to give it a look over. After pulling the spark plug again, it was, again, black and nasty. Unfortunately though, it reeked of gasoline this time That to me means that it's getting fuel, but not burning it off. I could also see a puddle of liquid on the top of the piston. So maybe the spark plug isn't firing hot enough to ignite???

So, before I tore apart the intake track trying to get the injectors out, I figured I'd just hotwire it and listen to hear if it's spraying. So after unseating the clip to the injector from the ECU I gave it a quick jump from the battery, and sure enough I could hear it spraying fuel (fuel pump priming, but everything else undone). So I decided to start swapping around the spark plugs and see if that had an affect and ran into yet another issue...

of course, as soon as I do this the f'in relief valve in the oil pump seized again!!! :x :curses: After swearing at the car for 20 solid minutes, I pulled the sensor and spring and found the valve pretty much lodged into the oil pump housing again. For those not savy with the thread, this is the 2nd time this happened!!!

So at this point, this is where the car has sat. I ordered a new gasket for the oil pump and I will start tearing down the motor on saturday, time permitting. I have 2 spare oil pumps from the donor car and the 4000, so I will toss one of those in and make sure the valve slips in and out easily from one of these pumps. For some reason, the valves were a LOT tighter in this oil pump than the one in my 4000. Even when I put in the 2nd one (that's now jammed), it seemed like more of a pressure fit than it was on the old 4000 motor... so yeah, I got my work cut out ahead of me. Hopefully I can get this figured out and back to "running" status mid next week.

Also ordered up another spark plug *just in case* the one plug is bad. I hope to figure that one out since I swapped the plugs around b/n the 2nd and 3rd cylinder.

So cross your fingers all... hopefully I can get this running 100% again soon, otherwise I might just light it on fire :-P

[AudiSport4000]

You sure are patient . But you gotta be when working on this stuff, so kudos to you!
Hope the teardown goes easy

[jretal]

You sure are patient . But you gotta be when working on this stuff, so kudos to you!
Hope the teardown goes easy

You didn't see me last thursday afternoon... patience was gone and the sailors at the shipyard could probably hear me cursing and were probably blushing with shame :-P

thanks though I dodged the bullet once with this oil pump, but obviously something is not right if it does it twice... just wish I woulda know this was an issue before I put the damn motor in the car, but there was no way in telling obviously. No ones fault, just "one of those things" unfortunately.