hahaha but seriously, that's a damn good idea for the washer reservoir!

>

lol @ picture.

At first I was trying to shove it out of the way, but it kept shifting and would push my plastic wheel-well guard thing into the tire when I turned. I just used black RTV silicone to hold the plastic pieces together. I noticed a while ago that black lasts longer in the tube before drying out, so I can keep it around for longer.

more blue!

I found some little blue anodized 1/8 NPT plugs to put in the intake manifold instead of the ugly brass hex-head ones I had. I just had to tap the intake manifold deeper since it only went in one turn.

..and of course my temperature gauge doesn't work. I put a new sensor in the car a year ago, tested the resistance and decided to buy a new sensor any since it's only $23. Not the problem. Gauge still pegs the top when the engine is cold. THEN I put in my cheap aftermarket gauge that has been new in the box in my closet for 5 years, it has its own sensor and it doesn't work either. ugh..I want to drive the car around safely without worrying if I am overheating the engine.

DO THAT ^^ When I first bought my RS, both the factory and aftermarket temp gauge weren't working. I wasn't anywhere near my shop or tools so I drove it around like that..Needless to say, it was overheating. So I did a full STi swap

Sounds silly, but make sure the coolant is topped off

And, if all else fails, I have a brand new Autometer water temp gauge that I don't need. #5732

>

well..my laptop has 3 hour battery life. I can plug it into the Autronic ecu and drive around anywhere and look at the laptop screen to see if it's overheating, BUT I would rather have a water temp gauge. We have safety inspections here, and I'm pretty sure I would need to have a working temperature gauge (not laptop). Temporarily I think I'm going to wire in a resistor in line with the sensor since the resistance of the sensor drops as the temperature rises. I tried a 470 ohm resistor and the gauge registers just above cold. I hate radioshack's overpriced junk, two resistors through them is the cost of 100 on ebay, but I need it now...so I'll have to resort to ripping apart broken electronics to find the right resistor, unfortunately I have nothing broken but laptops with very tiny resistors.

For safety, the Autronic has an overheating shut off feature, so it kills the engine when it goes over a certain temp. Decreases the boost when it goes over 105 C. And I can do other things with it's "limp home" feature. The autronic was the only choice (in my mind) because of it's overheating protection safety nets. I can easily justify spending the money on it if it saves my engine from a potential meltdown.

wired in a 470 ohm resistor to an old water temp sensor that I think goes to a camry. The gauge now reads nothing at a cold start and 1/4 at normal temp. Somehow the gauge calibration is off. Anyone have some bad gauges and can you mail the temp part of the cluster to me for a small fee? I'm pretty sure it's just the little motor thing, so that's all I would need. The convertible top was falling apart a year ago from sitting, and moisture/mildew got in the car, I'm thinking it messed with the connections on the temp gauge.

***I should add..this is IN NO WAY a fix to any gauge issue like the one I mentioned above. The temperature sending unit is a thermistor (thermal resistor) known as an NTC sensor, or negative temperature coefficient sensor, meaning that as the temperature goes up, the resistance from the sensor will go down. I believe the range on the sensor is 600 ohms (resistance measure) to 40 ohms, but I'm not sure. All I have done in adding this resistor is trick my gauge into showing a lower temp which makes my max value on the gauge display 1/4 up the gauge (so I can pass the safety inspection by showing the inspector a working gauge until I get the issue fixed). Since the sensor range is 600 - 40 ohms, now it will start out at 1070 (600 + my 470 resistor) to 510 (40ish plus 470). So if the normal operating temperature's resistance is 220, then it is now 690. My faulty gauge shows that at 1/4. I'm only explaining this so no one else does it. It's tricking the gauge into never showing an overheating temp (again, so I can pass safety).



This post has been edited by match220: Mar 27, 2013 - 10:32 PM

someone hit my car overnight it's not bad..I had to paint that fender anyway..but really? I've been living at this place for 5 years, and no one has ever hit any of my vehicles in my parking stall, then I have my car running for a couple days and someone hits it?

This post has been edited by match220: Apr 4, 2013 - 6:55 AM

I have a female friend that works at a graphics design place locally, she hooked me up with these. My own design , I couldn't find anything like them online, so i drew it up and had it made. I'm not a huge fan of racing stripes, but I think these are cool and unique. I'll probably wait until I have decided on a new front bumper before putting them on. They are black, not gray.

You should have put the QR code for 6gc in that stripe hahaha

>

oh man, that would have been a great idea. I thought about doing the one for my youtube channel (avatar pic), but I didn't want anyone that I pass to pull out their smart phone, look at my channel, watch the video on the car, and then decide to steal my car for the engine/autronic ecu. So I opted out of that idea.

110 miles on the new engine and I have successfully killed my IK24 iridium spark plugs. They are clean, and the gap is still correct, but they run horribly. From what I've been looking up, these Audi 1.8t individual coils deliver too hot of a spark for iridium plugs. Iridium and platinum plugs have great longevity but can't handle heat very well. I pulled them out and sanded the tips with 400 grit sandpaper since I paid $11 a piece for them. The general consensus on the audi forums is that the copper ones perform better but have to be changed every 10k miles, copper ones wear away faster but deliver a hotter spark. I put in some ngk bkr6e for $1.50 a piece and it is running great for now..haha..I guess we'll see how long they last.

Rewired my little fuse box area for the coils, ecu, and gauges today. The old fuse box that I was using had a loose fuse holder, and a loose relay connection. So it died on me a couple times or wouldn't start. This one is from an 05 mercedes. I opened up the fusebox and drew out a map of the internal wiring. The sucky thing is that one relay uses a ground switched signal to trip the relay, the other two use positive switched signals. So I had to be creative in order to use that relay and the three fuses it was powering. Good luck to whoever buys my car in the future if they want to figure out the wiring..haha. I drew up a wire diagram, but everyone loses manuals and wire diagrams, so good luck again! I believe the fusebox in the mercedes is for the fuel pump (among other things). Three 60 amp bosch-style relays came with it (the euro ones that are $20 a piece). According to the ebay listing, the fusebox can be found on w215, w220, s55, s550, clk500, and I think all of the other 2005 mercedes models from what it looks like. This one was only $15 after shipping with relays! If any of you guys want to buy one on ebay or pull one from a junkyard, let me know and I'll send you the wire schematic that I drew up on it.

I still have to tape up the wires into a bundle so it looks more clean instead of wires everywhere!





This post has been edited by match220: Apr 10, 2013 - 10:25 PM

Haltech wideband controller came in the mail today!!! YAY! I just finished mounting it, I'll have to wire it in tomorrow. Took forever to find a good mounting place for it where my wires will reach (unfortunately I couldn't use the firewall ). Now I just have to pull out that crappy AEM wideband (tomorrow as well).

1 year update! (almost)

in short: Put in prebent mandrel tubing with couplers to replace the intake piping, rewired the fusebox, put in a mishimoto radiator, and used some 3-way switces to combine the signals from my oil/water temp sensors and oil/water pressure sensors so I now have 2 gauges where 4 were, along with some other small mods.

Car is still running strong, I'm planning on making a new youtube video. Had some issues with the factory radiator fans two weeks ago. The 100 amp alternator fuse had a bad connection and just shut off. After looking over the fuses and seeing none blown, taking off the relay covers so I could manually move the relays when the Ign was on I realized the 100 amp fuse problem. Pull out the fuse, and realized I cant clean the connections as thoroughly as I would like, so I put in another fuse and it worked great will a few days ago when it did the same thing. SO I'm now putting in backup 5 pin relays in line with the rad fans. One on each pos fan wire using a 5 pin relay with the normally closed connection on the relay connecting the wire as normal, and the normally open pin connected to the backup power source. Positive conected to the battery and the negative connected to a 3-way switch that would be wired as always-ground/off/EMS-ground-trigger. I'm waiting on the 5-pin relays. After I receive them I will put an update here to revive my build project. Basically when it's done I'll have a fully functioning stock electrical system that can be switched off by my EMS if it is on one setting of the 3-way switch, or fans that are always on if I flip the switch the other way, or I could just leave the switch in the off position for the system to work like it is supposed to.

Unfortunately when my fans cut out I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, temp shot up, as did the radiator pressure, resulting in a crack in my radiator 6 inches wide and 2 inches tall forcing a large amount of coolant on my engine and a mushroom cloud of steam. Of course that means me getting an all aluminum radiator! I paid for a Megan Racing radiator and they said they were out, so the sent me a Mishimoto radiator, which I'm happy with.

I put in a water pressure sensor 6 months ago through a 3-way switch, and also ran my oil and water temps into a 3 way switch that goes out to one gauge. So the wiring for both water/oil pressure and water/oil temp are wired as oil/off/water, so I can switch between them at will!

I upgraded my fuse box not long after I got the car running last year, and I'm going to have to make some more changes to wure in the turbotimer and the Jetta power distribution box I got.

I plasti-dipped a GTFour hood that I got in the mail because it was all black and dinged up a lot (how resistent are these hoods to rocks and things that might hit it while on a freeway??? since they are in fact aluminum and lightweight)

Just switched to 5w-20 full synthetic last week, developed a small oil leak that is getting my oil filter wet but nothing else above it, so I'm hoping it's just the oil filter seal. And before that, my cheap chinese oil pressure sensor that I bought blew a seal, so I plugged the hole with one of my 1/8NPT plugs and ordered another cheap chinese oil pressure sensor/gauge .

This post has been edited by match220: Mar 8, 2014 - 10:28 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9khGeS4Go

I started my rewire today, since the ground at the fan is always grounded I decided to run a 5-pin relay off of each of the fan positive wires. This allows me to control the fans from the autronic or choose to leave them on all the time from a 3-way switch I'm installing. Or I can leave my switch in the off position and it functions as normal.

Just like this

Good video, I learned something.

I am using my relays for my stereo so it doesn't loose power when you start the engine. I love relays.

This post has been edited by The_enD: Mar 12, 2014 - 7:57 AM

>

The most creative thing I've used them for is swapping a positive switched signal for a negative switched one. The positive signal trips the coil in the relay and there is only a ground connection going through pins 30 and 87. So the result is a positive on/off signal that is now negative on/off. They are very useful indeed

This post has been edited by match220: Mar 12, 2014 - 8:21 AM

GTFour front end bolt on video
(note: both my fenders were dented, that's why I got different ones and had them painted[non convertible fenders on a convertible are a pain])

and I added this guy to replace my other one since I couldn't pass safety inspection without a crash bar


This is from a few months ago. I'm trying to revive my build thread. I've been getting a stolen/recovered s2000 running again lately so I've been neglecting my celly.

This post has been edited by match220: Jan 31, 2015 - 5:08 PM

Had interior accent pieces painted professionally by a friend who owed me some favors.

repinned st204 gauge connectors to accept ST205/ST202 gauges (I wrote instructions if anyone needs them). For now I have my old speedo and fuel gauges bolted back in for now (not because the others don't work, just until I figure out how to change the kph to mph).



these are the auto gauges BEAMS gauges, I got them so I could use the PRND21 lights for indicator lights


This post has been edited by match220: Jan 31, 2015 - 5:06 PM

Got a new project to flip. It runs now after I replaced the EMS, tuned it, and added some gauges and wideband controller.





This post has been edited by match220: Jan 31, 2015 - 5:16 PM

Added this dual-function gauge(middle). It will replace the ones on the left and right once I get something to fill the holes(wideband O2 and maybe exhaust temp). The signal wire going into the gauge splits to two different pressure sensors (3-way switch) and two different temp sensors, one on oil and one on coolant. So I'll mostly leave it on coolant so I know if I get a leak and lose pressure





This post has been edited by match220: Feb 1, 2015 - 4:46 AM

I like the 3 way switch idea

>

they've come in very handy for sure.

LED floor lights! Since I replaced the incandescent bulb in my key ring light with an LED one months ago I decided to solder a leg off of each of those two wires and run two more LED bulbs for the floor board lighting. These LEDs don't use as much electricity as the incandescent bulb, so it shouldn't even come close to overloading the circuit with too many bulbs (I love LEDs!!!). The advantage is floor lighting that is controlled by the car on/off lighting system and fused by the factory fusebox, and floor lights that stay on for a couple seconds after the door is shut. Not running anything off of the door switch makes the wiring neat also. All of the connections are soldered and heatshrinked.

License plate light fixtures from a junkyard, plus old wires I saved from when I wired in my 3sgte to the Autronic SM4


Driver side lighting


Passenger side lighting


both sides


turned on the overhead lighting (replaced those with LEDs also)


This post has been edited by match220: Feb 10, 2015 - 12:59 AM

after a bath and vacuum

I've been tossing around the idea of running a dump valve/diverter valve around my cat that opens with boost or TPS. Until the other day when I had a great idea, I was trying to figure out how to control it via my EMS. Then it hit me, I'm trying to run an electrically operated valve with wires and not to mention it's bulky, why not use a wastegate!? So I'll be ordering a TiAL wastegate soon and running a bypass around the highflow cat I need to replace from running rich under boost. Problem solved! It's not bulky, not controlled by a stupid wireless on/off switch, and will last longer than an electric motor/butterfly exposed to ridiculous heat. It's got me pretty happy, perfectly steps up with boost as long as I install the right springs and will take up less room than the fat motor/dump valve setup.

fog light button in the vent hole! Took some plastic cutting, but it's there now (the scratch was already in the paint)

3 point strut tower bar installed! I also made a youtube video on installing it, so hopefully overtime the views will pay me back for purchasing it

Youtube video on the install





This post has been edited by match220: Mar 3, 2015 - 5:57 AM