for what its worth on the oil feed and tee elimination - im sure everyone has seen the vvt plug feed. It was super easy, take out plug, widen it with the same thread npt tap (1/8) put in a fitting to get it around somehow.

Get at least longer than 14” its a little more taught than id like. No issues with vvt angle or targets even with my old scratched vvt oil pump. Think the thinnest stuff ive run since turbo is 10w-30

 

If I had VVT I'd consider that. Good idea though (I assume), I don't think I've seen that setup before.

 

Completely forgot you didnt have vvt. jealous of the ease of taking off the valve cover or doing spark plugs. My bad

 

First time I’ve seen that setup for sure. Super trick. That’s about 2ft less line than I was running on my VVT motor haha.

 

I didn't get any photos, but I got the bearings and hubs pressed in last weekend. Most everything went smoothly. The only hiccup I had was around the snap rings. I did the first one no problem and got the hub installed, on the second one the snap ring sat in the knuckle but wasn't quite in the groove. I popped it into the groove with some pliers, but couldn't go back and check the other bearing to see if the same thing had happened. I tried to use a pick tool to go under the hub and press on the snap ring to seat it. I'm pretty sure it's seated, but it's one of those things I'll think about for a bit.

The next day I got the hubs, stainless lines, calipers, etc... installed back on the car. I added a bit of lube to the bushings that were accessible. I threw some generic Prestone DOT 4 fluid in and got everything bled after a couple attempts.

Photo from before I torqued the axle nuts. I did get those torqued and staked.



I also ran over to my buddies house and got the wastegate spacer brackets he made for me. Not on the car yet, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. It's pretty cool to go from drawing to 3d print to machined part.





And finally, some stickered NeoGen's. Always nice to have a buddy with access to a tire machine.





So far so good. Glad to see that the calipers don't seem to be leaking. I'll keep an eye on the fluid level for the next little bit, but I think they're good. I cruised around a bit and got to give my dad a ride in the car. He hasn't ridden in it since an autocross from before the car was turbo'd. He's not a car guy but I think he enjoyed it.

Oh, I also was getting some rumbling sounds/feeling from the firewall on hot restarts. I'm assuming that was air pockets in the heater core, so I bled the coolant again. I'm not sure that fixed the issue, but time will tell.

 

Was bored today so I took a few quick measurements and modeled this. Printed it in TPU so it's a bit rubbery. I'm not sure how it'll hold up being mounted right on the radiator, but the COP seals are printed from the same material and they've held up in the engine bay all summer. The model was pretty close but I'll probably revise it and get it uploaded somewhere. Come to think of it, I should probably do that with the trunk bumpers/bushings as well.





Now that 3D printing is my solution to everything, I think I'll probably be playing around with some coroplast brackets soon. Some of the ducting between the bumper and intercooler has started to fall apart and I'd like to get something more rigid than tape to keep things in shape.

 

need this file, mine look horrible 0-0

 

Someone should tell me I don't need to buy this...

 

I think you’re gonna want a bigger cooler than a 10-row, but that’s a great starter setup!

I ran a Mishimoto 19 row on my current car while N/A and it was more than sufficient. On my NA8, a Setrab series 6 25 row kept temps under 250*F in basically all conditions. Not sure how that would translate to your setup. And obviously airflow, type of abuse, and cooler placement will have an effect, but it’s a datapoint at least.

 

you don't need to buy that.

I have that same adapter, a larger cooler, and can make you hoses perfect to fit.
Just come on down to SLC.

 

I appreciate it. They have a 13 row and 20(?) row on sale as well. I was still just looking to add an oil temp sensor but I feel like that's going to make me want a cooler and then I've bought everything twice, which is how the rest of the car has gone. At this point I need to buy another NB to swap all my old parts onto.

Don't tempt me. I do need to rack up another thousand miles or so to crack 20K on the engine.

 

Is it a temptation when it's beneficial to both parties?

 

Maybe you should buy another NB so you have somewhere for all those future spares to go too!

Obviously you should look at oil temps first and size the cooler accordingly, but if I were to guess for your setup, the 20-row Mishi cooler will probably be the best fit for your setup out of those options. Obviously you're getting away with no cooler as-is, but at your power level, a 10-row cooler is generally gonna be considered a little undersized. I updated my comment above as well, the Setrab 25-row I was running was a series 6 FWIW.

I suppose I should also consider mounting a large cooler behind the stock front bumper isn't the easiest thing either. Maybe @Ironhydroxide can help set you up there too if you make the trek down

 

With the thermostat regulated sandwich adapter an oversized cooler is less problematic than an undersized cooler.

custom length hoses help a TON with mounting, as you can then put the cooler where it can fit, and run line to it without having a ton extra, or not enough.

 

I started to revisit my ducting again. It was starting to get beat up from the bumper pressing up against it among other things. I 3d printed some little brackets to try and make them easier to assemble and be less reliant on tape. Definitely not done with this effort though.





Below isn't the final product due to some haphazard cuts on my part. I either already cleaned these up or will in the future (this was about a week ago). Pretty sure they're sealed up better now. I also need to make the panel for the upper section among other things.




I also cleaned up some wiring. I had an o2 connector that melted a while back and I never fixed, along with a random VW plug that I pulled from the junkyard when I was doing the COP conversion. Both of those had lost their locking tabs. Obviously better to have those working, but they've been like that for a year or so without any real issues.



Swapped that guy out for one of the 2 pin Deutsch connectors I had laying around. I would've done this sooner but I completely forgot about that busted plug.




The O2 sensor melted quite a while ago. I conveniently had a plug on hand that I was able to depin and swap onto the existing wiring.




I threw some split loom on the wiring up by the firewall as well, but I'll probably end up pulling it and redoing it. I didn't pay much attention to how the wires were running in relation to each other, so the wires are braided around each other a bit. Not totally sold on the look, but I had this lying around from some house projects, so no hurt in playing around with it. Obviously this isn't a show car, but I do enjoy a tidy engine bay. I'm fairly indifferent about mine currently.




Any thoughts on filling in chips in the wings clear coat? Full disclosure I haven't done any research on methods to clean this up. I figured clear nailpolish or some type of epoxy might work? I'll probably skip epoxy just because I don't imagine it would be very easy to get off the carbon if I ever respray the wing.




Aside from that I've just been driving and tuning. The car started hitting boost cut randomly. I haven't made any significant changes to boost control lately. I usually hit around 220 KPA on high boost but hit cut at 235 yesterday and then 245 today after I raised it (I believe it was boost cut, but there's a small chance it was flat shift triggering falsely). I'll probably try to pull logs and see what's going on. My corrections aren't dialed, but I don't feel like I'm driving any different than I was the past couple weeks and the ambient temps are similar. Could be related to being in a higher gear so I might play with boost by gear a bit. I was also running up/down a mountain, so it might be that the turbo was hotter than I've gotten it lately. I haven't really had to care about that kind of thing in the past since the turbo pretty much limited the power, but I'd like to get it pretty consistent to keep the 6 speed alive.

 

Haha that bracket design is clever with the little prongs going into the flutes on the chloroplast.

You still have your factory O2 wired in addition to your wideband? Or am I misinterpreting?

 

Half of the time these projects are just excuses for me to try and design/print something. They seem like they'll work pretty well. I accidentally washed and dried one that was left in my pocket and it held up perfectly fine, so I doubt they're going to mind the heat/wet they'll see.

Factory O2 is gone, but I spliced the AFR gauge output into a factory style plug. The speeduino and Link look for the AFR signal through the factory plug so that seemed like the least intrusive way to get the signal to the ECU.

 

I had a vision last night of a better intake heat shield. Today I did not make that a reality, but I did cut up some sewage pipe to create something.

I've always felt like the air box I built was basically nullifying one of the hood vents and taking up more space than necessary. I didn't care too much, but for some reason this has been a thorn in my side for a while now. I was pretty set on 3d printing a shield, but after seeing some 6" diameter ABS pipe on HDR's website today I figure it was worth a $10 gamble.








That old setup ran right up to the hood, but cut off airflow to one of the main hood vents. It was pretty light and seemed to keep IATs down well enough, but I enjoy tinkering and wanted to get better airflow out of that hood vent.






This the type of precision fit I'm sure you've come to expect from this build.





Note that you can actually see the rad fan through the hood vent now. Previously it was blocked by the air box/heat shield.





I should take some more photos, but basically what I did was cut the pipe at an angle, stretch it over the filter (which is about 6" at the base), and then let it clamp itself down. I'll probably need to add a bracket to keep it somewhat secure, but it didn't seem to move on the few drives I took today. I used some bubble wrap style insulation to try to keep it from picking up too much heat from the turbo. It's also keeps the fit to the hood pretty tight so hopefully the intake will pick up more cold air from the big gap into the fender well.

Someday I'll fix the real issues with the car, like redoing the soft top and figuring out the AC/overheating, but today is not that day.

PS, after almost 2 years/20K miles of service the blender bottle catch can has split at the mouth piece. I just noticed it this weekend. I'm undecided with what I'll do going forward, but given that it has been seemingly everyone's favorite part of the car I doubt it'll be leaving. If anything we'll likely build back stronger.

 

2 years per blender bottle seems like a great interval, just enough time to change colors and keep things fresh.

 

I got bored and added more ducting. I don't think these angles are great for airflow but it's sealed up pretty tight now. Still looking into fan replacements to pull the air through this cooling stack.








I'd like to have something easier to work on that is less reliant on tape but this seems pretty well sealed to me. We'll see how this performs and go from there.