The Project Pad

Nice update! Sorry i've missed hanging/catching up w you and Val.

super great results and story!
I think an air compressor and mixing the finishes with a super slow activator would have saved you about a month and half of pain but I am guessing that knowledge has already been driven home via hard knocks. In the end, perseverance, as always, can win out and it sure did.

pkw wrote:super great results and story!
I think an air compressor and mixing the finishes with a super slow activator would have saved you about a month and half of pain but I am guessing that knowledge has already been driven home via hard knocks. In the end, perseverance, as always, can win out and it sure did.

I could save myself a lot of work the second time around. The base and clear did really cover up some of the blemishes in the primer without a single problem...I spent probably months fixing those when it just wasn't necessary to get a good result.

The high build was sprayed in an air conditioned 72F garage. I think we sprayed it with a nozzle too small, and reducing it a little may have helped.

The clear was sprayed with extreme temperature reducer, meant for temperatures over 95F. I think that was just a matter of too much material and maybe gun settings that were a little off. The lighting in my garage left a lot to be desired, we were basically working with spot lights.

Sam

Great meeting you Sam, car looks great in person! Sorry you had to be stuck behind the slow cars for part of the drive!

alxdgr8 wrote:Great meeting you Sam, car looks great in person! Sorry you had to be stuck behind the slow cars for part of the drive!

It was great to meet you as well Alex! No worries--I was actually pretty impressed by how your car moved, it took a good head of steam to close up on you. Was not possible to do without downshifting and getting well into boost. I'm excited to see your collection of photos once you get a chance to go through them .

Sam

Thanks for the good write up Sam! That drive was a blast! I'm sorry about the rock chips though...

After that, I ended up at the head of the group and it was ON. We got a bit separated from the rest, but Ben and Wiley stayed close behind for the last 10-15mi as we hammered through the twisty roads out of the mountains and into the valley

That last run with you guys was a hoot, Rudy and I had a blast. Next year......
Good time with some good folks. Thanks

After painting just my engine bay I now have a respect for how much effort it takes to do paint . Man it's an incredible undertaking. Props!!

Great seeing you Sam, the car turned out amazing.

Wow Sam!

I had no idea you had put so much blood, sweat, and tears into the car leading up to the BBQ. The coupe looked awesome! Very nice work on the paint.

Great to finally meet you after all these years.

paint turned out great. nice job!

Met up with Jretal while he was in Phoenix last week. A joy ride was had and we had a good evening hanging out. So great to meet Motorgeek/TPP people in person, we're all a pretty good bunch.

My GTI had its ABS shit the bed, so the CQ has been on daily driver duty for the past week or so. Aside from mediocre fuel economy (18-20mpg), it's done fairly well considering how it gets driven. I bit the bullet and comprehensively retuned all of the fueling at low load, logging and documenting fuel trims to make sure I have a solid baseline now to detect possible hardware failures/air leaks later on. After doing that, it drives really really nicely. Something in the e-brake completely failed yesterday--one of the cables has been rubbing against the exhaust for a while, and I'm guessing it finally melted or somehow got stuck and caused the cable to fall off. I'll investigate soon.

I also gave it a bath...
12345626_10106962661961550_3928242658224167215_n by sam stone, on Flickr

...and went for a very fast 150mi drive west of the city out by Wickenburg last weekend.
12308389_10106965755866340_5783914871430039469_n by sam stone, on Flickr

Next on the list are to fix the e-brake, figure out a new catch can mount (it partially tipped over on the Wickenburg drive), improve the front bumper side mounts to square the bumper up to the fenders, and then make another pass at the paintwork to take care of more orange peel and buff the car out again.

Sam

December was fun. Got some great miles on the car while Hanicus and jretal were in town. Fun was had, gas was burned, tires were screeched.

10623823_10100821636133252_2650346958101643926_o by sam stone, on Flickr

Unfortunately, over Christmas I went out for a drive with my dad, and broke the motor goofing off in the desert. We were doing around 6000rpm in 5th when I felt a miss and saw a puff of smoke out the back. We pulled over right away, and while there was definitely a dead miss, there was no major blowby, no overheating, and no tailpipe smoke. We limped it home ~65mi and pulled the head the next day.

First bad sign was the #5 plug had a melted electrode and a bunch of missing ceramic. Zero signs of detonation on the plug and the piston, so wtf...
1934980_10107042043051210_391606685709006913_n by sam stone, on Flickr

We pulled the head and found the problem. Broken exhaust valve on #5, got VERY lucky as it did not take out the turbo or snap the head off. The valve seat is trashed and the head will need some repair.
10275915_10107042696386920_5423868219022817293_n by sam stone, on Flickr
10151262_10107042696471750_8771034304960020955_n by sam stone, on Flickr

The #5 piston is damaged as well, but thankfully the cylinder bore is ok. There is some very light impact damage, probably from the valve or the ceramic, but there is also a melty spot along one of the edges. It's a pain in the ass, but I'll replace this along with probably the other rings while I have everything apart.
554841_10107042696511670_8097977862007376567_n by sam stone, on Flickr

At the time, I was running over 2bar boost on 91oct fuel. That tune is pretty well fleshed out, but between it leaving probably little margin for error, the extended period of full-throttle running I was doing, and 25 year old valves with >150k miles, it was a risky proposition and I'm disappointed, but not surprised, to have to deal with a failure. It's bad timing as I just bought a new DD, a Mk7 GTI, just got done Christmas shopping, and am starting to pay for a wedding. But it will get fixed in due time, probably with inconel valves and hopefully some improvements to the exhaust manifold and other engine bay facilities while I'm at it, and be better than it was before.

Sam

I feel you on bad timing for this stuff. Just blew up my m3 and I'm trying to buy a house this year lol (not to mention the state of my industry).

That's probably to be expected though given what you were asking of it. You'll get it fixed!

Silver lining: At least you can address the header/exhaust leak you were experiencing when I was in the area

Sucks to see, Sam! But I had to laugh... "dad's in town - had the head off the next day..." Never a dull moment!

jretal wrote:Silver lining: At least you can address the header/exhaust leak you were experiencing when I was in the area

Sucks to see, Sam! But I had to laugh... "dad's in town - had the head off the next day..." Never a dull moment!

My dad and I had a great time together getting the car home then tearing it down. Last time we worked on cars together was three days before I moved to Arizona after I blew up an 01A, who knows how many more times we'll get to do that in the future.

Your brief experience is pretty much the life the car has lived for ~2200mi since getting it done before Battle Born, so not a huge shock something happened. A customer bought me a track day this season, so I need to get it back together and reliable to go enjoy that.

Sam

SEStone wrote:

jretal wrote:Silver lining: At least you can address the header/exhaust leak you were experiencing when I was in the area

Sucks to see, Sam! But I had to laugh... "dad's in town - had the head off the next day..." Never a dull moment!

My dad and I had a great time together getting the car home then tearing it down. Last time we worked on cars together was three days before I moved to Arizona after I blew up an 01A, who knows how many more times we'll get to do that in the future.

Yup, those wrenching times w/ the pops is always fun. Whenever my folks are in town, or I'm up there, we're always lining up projects to do around the house or on a car. Fun time to bond.

Sounds like a nice gift from the customer! Get'er up and running and go! Don't worry about funding the wedding... sacrifices can be made :-P

Hell, my wife's first paycheck after we got married/she graduated from grad school essentially paid for the 4000's paint job!

I ended up pulling the broken valve a couple weeks back, and found some terminal damage to the head:

Untitled by sam stone, on Flickr

Not sure if that's from the sodium in the valve burning, the combustion gases during the failure, or combustion gases after driving home lightly, but the head is done.

With a little help from some very good friends, I have the head sorted, but the 'while I'm in there' bug is getting going now...

The only thing 'wrong' with my current setup is my old Hank-modified Chinese tube header has a crack going 3/4 of the way around one of the runners where it meets the collector. I tried welding it up before BBQ and it only cracked worse since then. Due to limited access, poor quality materials, and metal contamination with previous repairs and soot, I don't believe it's a particularly repairable issue, so...

I'm looking at buying a header from Hank and some new items to get me somewhat 'standardized'. These include a new hotside and v-band wastegate. Of course, Hank's input on that was that I should go internal wastegate to save money on the header, and that the EFR turbos have that slick internal wastegate. Collin J is running a 6758 with good luck, which are available for cheap on eBay off of Indycars (around $750). The response would be great, but I think I would miss the power I have now. The 7163 is the money ticket, but it's not nearly as easy to find used which blows this little project out of reality. We'll see...

Sam

Hank header is definitely the way to go. I wonder how much business this community has given the Chinese only to give hank their business a few thousand miles later?

update?

pkw wrote:update?

I believe the head is complete but sitting somewhere at Iroz. Haven't put any time or money into anything else yet as I'm paying for my wedding at the end of next month. Once that's over with, I'll get serious about putting everything back together for BBQ. I'm going to refresh the motor, but I also want to replace the header/hotside/downpipe, which has really been the whole hold up with all of this in terms of budget.

Sam

So, on July 30th, I got married. It was awesome.

Married by sam stone, on Flickr

A month and some encouragingly less-hot weather later, I'm starting to put plans into motion to get the CQ ready for BBQ. I got a set of OEM pistons coming, and just need to pull the shortblock out of the car to get to work on fixing the piston. Somewhere in the ether, a wild cylinder head will appear as well, and some gaskets, rings, and bearings later I'll have a motor.

The motor should be the easy and cheap part, I still need to figure out what I'm doing with a turbo/wastegate/exhaust manifold. I have a good friend who solved an exhaust leak by buying a $5k TIG setup, and who is itching to build something with it. We will see, after a couple of years of painting the car and then throwing a wedding, I'm in the mood for a little financial responsibility. Worst case if the right solution is too expensive right now, I roll up to BBQ with working AC, 33mpg, flappy paddle gearbox, and something that bone stock would run circles around anything the factory ever made with a 5cyl back in the day.

Sam

Congratulations! You both look happy

Your friend with the tig sounds a lot like me haha. Get that thing up and running again!