The Project Pad

Small update I posted on FB. Coolant pipes. Trying to use off the shelf where possible, but sometimes you just need a hard pipe. Also got a solution for the thermostat using a universal housing that I added a bypass to for the heater core.

Turbo to throttle body intake piping is officially done.

audifreakjim wrote:Turbo to throttle body intake piping is officially done.

Looks great. Is that aluminum polished up?

The mandrel tubes came pre polished. I got these on clearance from tread stone for super cheap!

That looks great Jim. I need to do this on mine. I have way too much silicone in my piping setup.

Awesomely small amount of intercooler piping. Minimal connections. Love it. Thats what I'm trying to do with my car too.

Mcstiff wrote:http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?t=7024512

Those are for 17mm ball joints, will not fit B3's or urq's., will fit B2's but will make ball joint rub on rotor....

Ask me how i know!!!
19mm versions on 2 piece B3 struts:

Thanks for the heads up guys, but I'm uncomfortable running those. It loads the uprights in a way they were never designed for. I'd rather torture myself and make new subframe mounting points. Or wait for a Billet upright to come out.

audifreakjim wrote:...Or wait for a Billet upright to come out.

Hmmm...I just ordered material for Phil's billet prototypes. Certainly a few months behind, but still moving forward at times...

And looking great Jim...a wee bit jealous of that room up front as I'm in the midst of shoehorning some type of intercooler in a 3" space behind a fixed core support.

audifreakjim wrote:Thanks for the heads up guys, but I'm uncomfortable running those. It loads the uprights in a way they were never designed for. I'd rather torture myself and make new subframe mounting points. Or wait for a Billet upright to come out.

I've been running them for over 5 years.... but I'm only putting about 90hp per wheel through them, not 200hp like you!!!

I also have the "PWM" versions that are shot peened and heat treated. Sadly the owner passed away a few years ago....

type85 wrote:Those are for 17mm ball joints, will not fit B3's or urq's., will fit B2's but will make ball joint rub on rotor....

Ask me how i know!!!
19mm versions on 2 piece B3 struts

type85 wrote:I also have the "PWM" versions that are shot peened and heat treated. Sadly the owner passed away a few years ago....

I think I was more interested that someone was making them vs the exact size.

audifreakjim wrote:Thanks for the heads up guys, but I'm uncomfortable running those. It loads the uprights in a way they were never designed for. I'd rather torture myself and make new subframe mounting points. Or wait for a Billet upright to come out.

Wheeljack wrote:Hmmm...I just ordered material for Phil's billet prototypes. Certainly a few months behind, but still moving forward at times...

A billet option is intriguing! Is it worth building them for the stock struts or going the extra 10% in for something like an Ohlins TTX?

Good to hear things are moving along Chris! I am sure I'll be itching for some once my wallet recovers from this project.

Jim do you happen to have the dimensions handy for that radiator you're using, with the two 10" fans. I just want to see how big I can fit in there.

The core is 18 high x13 wide. Factory is closer to 18x15"

Thanks Jim, I am trying to figure out exactly what I can fit in my car, height wise. Currently running 14.6" wide by 18.5" tall overall dimension (14.9 core height) thinking I may be able to go as tall as 21.5" and have two fans as you do.

Hey Jim, are you building in any kind of safety check for the coolant pump? Some way to tell if it's malfunctioning before a complete overheat situation?

Just the normal coolant warning sensors. That's a good point though, the factory sensors are such that they will sense the head getting hot without coolant flow. I am just getting ready to weld all of this together. Now that you mention this, I might re-think my sensor locations.

Ok, give me some ideas on a fail safe. I am thinking some type of flow switch on the heater core feed line..

use a low threashold pressure switch in the cooling system. we did this on our 944 1.8t lemons racer. the light will glow when the car is first warming up, but as soon as the system builds 1psi the light goes out, and should stay out till the car is cold started again. works mint.

ah nevermind. you're looking to test failure of your electric pump. erm. Probably just temperature is your best bet. it will rise very quickly when it stops flowing.

My concern is that the sensor will not be right on the head, but about 6" downstream in the heater core feed in my case. There should always be some slow circulation even with the pump off due to thermodynamics as long as the hot side is above the cool side on the engine, radiator, and turbo. I am maintaining all of this. I may play with starting the motor cold without the pump off for a short time to see if this is the case and monitoring coolant temps very closely.

This of course would not help if you dumped your coolant and didn't know, but that's usually a pretty obvious event.

So far online I have seen suggestions of monitoring differential pressure across the pump, and current draw on the pump. Neither one looks all that clean.

It's kind of a unique application, but the new 1.8 and 2.0 TFSI engines block coolant flow through the longblock to improve warmup times. There are some whitepapers out there that give good information on temperature vs. coolant flow vs. warm up time that might be informative for this.

I know BMW put a failure mode on their water pumps, and I thought you were using a BMW pump? I don't know if it was via CAN BUS or some kind of analog/digital signal, but they will give all kinds of crazy warnings if the pump speed deviates from specified values.

Sam

Yeah, it's BMW. They make a controller for the older ones that shows some of this. I'm not too sure if it's can or serial

audifreakjim wrote:

Hey is that a stock pulley on that alternator (I'm assuming the alt itself is stock) or an oversized one?

I'm thinking about relocating the alt like that on my build, but I want to keep the stock crank pulley. And I'm worried the alt will overspeed if I keep the OE pulley, as I'll be losing the speed reduction that normally comes from having it driven off the A/C compressor.