Lettuce Build Thread, Fast Cars and Fast Women: Stage 2 and Beyond

[lettuce]

Any Possibility of your Coolant system needing to be Bled of Air in the System?

Not really. The last time I added coolant was when I put on the new turbo and I bled it then. I definitely think it's a thermostat issue.

Does the heat actually get hot? If it doesn't get hot I would bet it's the water pump (or air in the system). If it's getting hot then the thermostat, but it will usually throw a coolant system error cod.

Hm, not sure how to answer that. It gets 'hot', but I don't have anything to compare it to as this is my first winter with the car. It could probably be hotter.

Plus like I said I haven't really been using my heat lately as I'd rather have the car be running at a safe temp. Luckily it's been a pretty mild winter, but suffice it to say my morning commutes have still been fairly uncomfortable as of late.

The fact it's not throwing a code for that low a coolant temp baffles me, the Vw throw a code for the coolant error in a heart beat, but it's so vague you have to start throwing parts at it to fix it.

You and me both. I can understand not throwing a code for running so rich as it's probably in an open loop mode due to the low temps, but it should realize that something's wrong if I'm driving it for 15+ minutes and it's still not up to temp, or if it's fluctuating as wildly as it does.

a Co-worker of mine suggested if you have one of those Digital Laser Temperature guns(Hey why not ) You could point it at Thermostat housing or CTS, I read there is possibly a 2nd Sensor in Lower Radiator hose. a guy on VW Vortex who had similar issue with his gauge wound up having Both sensors changed and Stat and that Fixed his Problem. http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...erature-sensor

Dan,
If you need a temp gun to try this, I have one in the garage and land in Boston around 4:30 Friday. I can bring it to town if you want, not that they are extremely expensive.

Also, it's fun to point them at random things to see how warm they are. (butts)

Good suggestions, and thanks for the offer blbroo. I would take you up on that but I already have the pump, thermostat and sensor en route to my house and am going to change them out regardless. While I'm in there I'm going to check out my injectors and then after all that if I'm still having problems I'm going to change out the upstream O2 sensor. One of those ought to do the trick.

[lettuce]

So I changed out my water pump and thermostat yesterday. What a difference. I won't bore you with the details as the process is already covered extensively in Dan_Q's awesome DIY, but I will go through and highlight some of my findings and updated theories.

First of all, I really had a great time doing this. The past few projects hadn't worked out as planned, but this one was an absolute breeze. 3 hours total from the time I cracked the first bolt to when I got the last bolt back in. Only one real snag which didn't really hold me up at all and the results were immediately apparent (unlike my valve seal replacement, which I'm starting to think did absolutely nothing). The car now gets right up to operating temp and stays there, regardless of outside temp, cabin heat settings or driving style. I took it out today for a nice spirited drive along some of the parkways around here and it was running great. No more thick black clouds. I noticed a few little wisps of light smoke coming off a stop, but I'd expect that with the oil I'm (still) burning. But no more black diesel-looking smoke and I averaged close to 24 mpgs over the course of the drive, which was amazing considering how heavy my right foot was feeling.

First off I was greeted to this lovely sight upon removing my intake manifold:



Just absolutely soaked in oil. Even had some pooled up in a couple of my injector wells. Lovely.

Looks pretty close to how it did before my carbon cleaning (which I did less than 10k miles ago).



My tumble flaps weren't all caked-up like they were before I cleaned them last year, but instead were literally dripping with oil. Like actually dripping. Wonderful.

Here are my injectors. I bet I've been getting great spray and atomization with all that oil sludged up on top there.



I still had about half a can of BG ISC from back when I did the carbon cleaning, so I used that to clean off the injector tips before tossing them back in.

Lastly like I said there was one snag, which was sort of major but I'm not worrying about it for now. When I was reinstalling one of my intake bolts, barely even getting it in and way before it was properly torqued down I heard a loud creak and then a snap immediately after. The bolt lost all resistance so I pulled it back out to see this:



So I'm going to need to re-tap that thread and be a little more careful with my bolt torquing in the future. Could have just been bad luck, or it could have been me reusing TTY bolts (not sure what these intake ones are) and not following torque specs last time I removed and reinstalled the intake. Either way I'm down one bolt at the moment and it's running fine so I'll fix it later.


Now, for updated theory time. Basically we're going back to square one (bad rings). Yeah, big shocker. So taking apart my intake system after doing all this work taught me a few things. First, let me show you what I found. This is my throttle body looking at it from the charge pipe side, aka the 'outside', right after the air is leaving the intake charge pipe and before it's about to enter the intake manifold.



The top image is the backside of the throttle body mostly closed, and the bottom picture is the throttle body plate fully open. It's a little hard to tell there with the bad lighting, but it was basically like night and day in there. Everything before the throttle body plate was clean as a whistle. Not a spec of oil, carbon, anything. Everything was all new and shiny looking like it just rolled off the factory floor. However on the other side of that plate looked like one of those sea birds from the Gulf of Mexico you saw people cleaning with toothbrushes on the news after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Absolutely crusted with jet black carbon sludge.

So I'm going to be trying out a few new things, but basically my valve seal theory came about due to my ECS catch can not catching any oil, which it should have been doing (at least that's what I thought) if I was in fact burning oil due to bad rings which would be causing extreme amounts of blow-by. But apparently out of the two hoses coming out of the PCV, the hose ECS's kit installs the can in-line with (the turbo hose - aka charge/boost hose) barely gets any oil at all, while the hose ECS's kit deletes (the intake manifold hose - aka NA/vacuum hose) is the hose that's doing most of the work venting the crankcase and dumping the oil into my engine. I don't know if this is intentional or a flaw in the design of the ECS kit, but I'm having a hard time thinking this was what it was designed to do. If I'm installing a catch can to catch oil, I want it to catch oil. Not delete the line that's actually carrying the oil and pressurized air and then install the can onto the line that's basically just carrying condensation. I didn't buy this catch can because I was having a problem with water consumption.

So that's now leading me to wonder what's happening to all that pressurized air full of oil mist that used to be getting injected directly into my intake manifold. I had previously assumed it was going to simply be rerouted into the other hose, the hose that the catch can was installed in. But I've been getting zero oil out of that hose, and now my engine block is starting to sprout oil leaks. First it was the feed line a few weeks ago (that whole broken bolt fiasco), now I'm pretty sure it's leaking out of both oil lines from the block and maybe even one other place (there are now three small yet distinct drip spots under my car on the garage floor). That, combined with all the oil in my intake system and injector wells and I'm starting to wonder if this catch can kit is over-pressurizing my crankcase due to the intake PCV line delete and causing oil to just escape my crankcase any way it can, getting into areas I'd really rather it not get into.

So I kept the can installed, but replaced the stock PCV line to my intake manifold. We'll see if this stop my oil leaks. In the meantime I've been pricing out a new bottom-end build and it's a bit pricier than I initially estimated it'd be.



Anybody have any ideas where I could cut some costs? I'm thinking I could probably find some stock Audi pistons out of a non-oil-burner for less than $900. Maybe out of a TTS or RS or something? I know JE has cheaper forged pistons but they don't have the concave head which I think is important in our DI engines to get a good A/F swirl/mixture.

[A4 Centaur]

^ Darn it! I think you could have just gotten a short block for that price?

[lettuce]

^ Darn it! I think you could have just gotten a short block for that price?

lol I can probably get an entire used engine for that price.

I swear the Mahle pistons get more and more expensive every time I look them up. They were under $700/set a year ago. They were even only $800 a couple months ago last time I checked them but as of yesterday they're apparently now up to $900. Plus I know I'm going to find out halfway through the swap that I'm missing a few things so realistically I'll probably have to add a couple hundred bucks onto that figure as well. I was really hoping to come in under $2k all said and done.

[asfastas63]

Glad to hear the temp issue is solved. JE makes really nice Pistons, I have some in my over bored Kawasaki. Sorry for not going through the entire thread on my phone but you never had stage 2 oil consumption done? Can you buy just rings? I don't know about cars but on bikes usually rings get replaced when you're that far into a motor to freshen it up. I personally wouldn't toss used pistons from another car without fresh rings.

[lettuce]

Glad to hear the temp issue is solved. JE makes really nice Pistons, I have some in my over bored Kawasaki. Sorry for not going through the entire thread on my phone but you never had stage 2 oil consumption done? Can you buy just rings? I don't know about cars but on bikes usually rings get replaced when you're that far into a motor to freshen it up. I personally wouldn't toss used pistons from another car without fresh rings.

Hey man, nah I never had stage 2 done. I bought the car used with 115k miles and it already had stage 1 done about 40k miles prior which apparently made it ineligible for the class-action repair. Then shortly after that I started heavily modding it and at this point I think they'd laugh me out of the service department if I asked for a warranty repair with all the shit I've done to it.

I might be able to just buy rings, but I'm fairly certain with this car it's a piston and ring issue. Plus I already have a block and crank sitting in my garage so I was just going to build that up and swap it in over the course of a long weekend or something. Either way I wouldn't want to have to do this twice so I'd replace both pistons and rings just to be sure.

And I wasn't implying I'd install used pistons or rings, I was thinking of possibly buying new OEM TT S/RS pistons and rings if I could find them cheaper than the Mahles. JE does make nice pistons but I'm thinking their piston head design doesn't look all that great for airflow which is really important with our direct injection motors. All of our air and fuel mixing happens in the combustion chamber in a tiny fraction of a second as opposed to non-DI motors where they get mixed in the intake runners and arrive in the combustion chambers pretty much already premixed. The Mahles have concave tops just like our stock pistons which would promote a nice, even swirl, as opposed to the JEs which look like they'd increase turbulence and an uneven A/F mixture causing hot/lean spots over certain parts of the pistons. Basically for something like this I'd want a design as close to stock as possible. Audi's engineers obviously fucked up with the rings and oil burning, but as far as power and efficiency are concerned this motor is really something special so they at least knew what they were doing in that regard.

[A4 Centaur]

Yea, the EA888 won the award for best engineering when it came out. The Gen 3 version is a monster compared to the Gen 2 TFSI.

I hope you are able to find a nice set of pistons for the right price and get this build back on track. Fingers crossed!!

Good luck!

[lettuce]

Spent an entirely irresponsible amount of money this week. Stay tuned.

[jmeenach]

Spent an entirely irresponsible amount of money this week. Stay tuned.

Yesss

[hyperunion]

Spent an entirely irresponsible amount of money this week. Stay tuned.

Q5 brembos???

[lettuce]

Q5 brembos???

Those account for just under 1/4 of the money I spent.

Also I got these cool emblems in the mail, gonna go slap em on now. I figure if my car's actually as fast as an RS4 then it doesn't really count as upbadging.

[blbroo]

Those account for just under 1/4 of the money I spent.

Also I got these cool emblems in the mail, gonna go slap em on now. I figure if my car's actually as fast as an RS4 then it doesn't really count as upbadging.

Put that APR badge on your TR8 intercooler. It will automatically be magnificent and work 5X better. Plus chicks will see it and chase you down.

[lettuce]

Put that APR badge on your TR8 intercooler. It will automatically be magnificent and work 5X better. Plus chicks will see it and chase you down.

That sounds.. disingenuous.

[lettuce]

Aha tricked you all! April fools! Man you should have seen the look on all of your faces..

But seriously the APR one wasn't a joke, I just didn't use the APR part.

[S4_SH1640]

So lettuce... im curious to know, maybe i missed this in your thread. but what intake system are you or were you using when you ran at the track. Stock air box setup?

[lettuce]

So lettuce... im curious to know, maybe i missed this in your thread. but what intake system are you or were you using when you ran at the track. Stock air box setup?

Yes, stock airbox with an aFe filter and silicone turbo inlet pipe. Anything more on these cars is pointless unless you're running a big ass turbo.

[Allowencer]

Hey buddy - sorry I've been out for a while, been busy, then sick, and busy again!

Glad you were able to figure out the temp issue. Your research is correct on the computer would increase fuel, to run more richer, in an attempt to heat the motor up more (it would generate more heat in the combustion chamber which would heat the coolant up more). Problem with that condition, with the way we want to drive the car and the mods we have, that creates hot spots in the combustion chamber. That will raise the potential of knock, loss of timing advance and performance. Anyways, as you already kinda know, if you scanned the car, you could have seen the coolant temp and your SFT's would have been wacked out big time (might have even caused the LTF's to go wacky too). Anyways, glad you figured that out.

Either I'm dead tired (which is possible) or I'm just not interpreting it correctly - I'm trying to follow your explanation on how the ECS catch can circuit is setup as to why it's not functioning properly (or is it at all) for ya.

As for stage 2 oil consumption, BOTH rings and pistons must be replaced. The oil consumption issue stems from a few tenths of an inch (IIRC) off tolerance between cylinder walls (which are to spec), piston combustion wall and piston rings. The reason some cars have the issue worse than others is more than likely based on how the motor was 'broken in' during the first 5-10k miles. The rings would either have worn in OK or worn off and that would cause the delta difference of oil consumption from motor to motor.

Now, onto your motor build. My $0.02 since I've built many motors in my time; so take it for what it's worth . If you want to go aftermarket on pistons, ONLY go with the MAHLE's. You've already figured out the differences from the JE's and the MAHLE's; you're spot on. In addition, I can say that JE's "machining" QA is not pristine (it's quite ugly actually). It is the 'cheap' route for pistons.
Now, onto the 'other' stuff that you may not be aware of. When you build a motor, all of those items are not 'drop in'. My last motor (granted it wasn't a DOHC style) build had the following carried out:
- Line bore
- crank polish
- cam journal correction (it's like a line bore)
- deck line correction
- rotating assembly balance (rods, pistons, rings, clips, floating pins, bearings, bolts, flexplate, harmonic balancer, etc. is all required to complete the balance)
- Special coatings on the piston skirts (not necessary but you might as well if you're doing everything)
- Cylinders honed to spec for final sizing on piston and ring choice
- Rings cut to proper length to match spec (ties to ^)
- Rods shot peened

It's quite a list when you "build" a motor. As I mentioned, that one wasn't a DOHC and it's on an automatic trans (the flexplate), but you'll get the gest of all that needs to be carried out now. Otherwise, all the money you put into it, will only be good for a certain amount of time until something 'goes wrong'.

Going back a-ways, in regards to the cam control assembly / cam bridge, our cars are running the latest version/gen of it. There isn't a new one. There is for the B7 series motor though. I did confirm that the screen does help with oil pressure and needs to be replaced if broken so that it doesn't break up and get into any of the oil galleys / oil circuits where it will cause all sorts of damage.
That screen pops right off from the assembly, it's not pressed on. I was able to pull mine off with a pair of needle nose. I ordered a replacement screen and will install it with everything else in my motor. I'd recommend you to do the same before that screen breaks up on ya.

[lettuce]

Hey buddy - sorry I've been out for a while, been busy, then sick, and busy again!

Glad you were able to figure out the temp issue. Your research is correct on the computer would increase fuel, to run more richer, in an attempt to heat the motor up more (it would generate more heat in the combustion chamber which would heat the coolant up more). Problem with that condition, with the way we want to drive the car and the mods we have, that creates hot spots in the combustion chamber. That will raise the potential of knock, loss of timing advance and performance. Anyways, as you already kinda know, if you scanned the car, you could have seen the coolant temp and your SFT's would have been wacked out big time (might have even caused the LTF's to go wacky too). Anyways, glad you figured that out.

Either I'm dead tired (which is possible) or I'm just not interpreting it correctly - I'm trying to follow your explanation on how the ECS catch can circuit is setup as to why it's not functioning properly (or is it at all) for ya.

As for stage 2 oil consumption, BOTH rings and pistons must be replaced. The oil consumption issue stems from a few tenths of an inch (IIRC) off tolerance between cylinder walls (which are to spec), piston combustion wall and piston rings. The reason some cars have the issue worse than others is more than likely based on how the motor was 'broken in' during the first 5-10k miles. The rings would either have worn in OK or worn off and that would cause the delta difference of oil consumption from motor to motor.

Now, onto your motor build. My $0.02 since I've built many motors in my time; so take it for what it's worth . If you want to go aftermarket on pistons, ONLY go with the MAHLE's. You've already figured out the differences from the JE's and the MAHLE's; you're spot on. In addition, I can say that JE's "machining" QA is not pristine (it's quite ugly actually). It is the 'cheap' route for pistons.
Now, onto the 'other' stuff that you may not be aware of. When you build a motor, all of those items are not 'drop in'. My last motor (granted it wasn't a DOHC style) build had the following carried out:
- Line bore
- crank polish
- cam journal correction (it's like a line bore)
- deck line correction
- rotating assembly balance (rods, pistons, rings, clips, floating pins, bearings, bolts, flexplate, harmonic balancer, etc. is all required to complete the balance)
- Special coatings on the piston skirts (not necessary but you might as well if you're doing everything)
- Cylinders honed to spec for final sizing on piston and ring choice
- Rings cut to proper length to match spec (ties to ^)
- Rods shot peened

It's quite a list when you "build" a motor. As I mentioned, that one wasn't a DOHC and it's on an automatic trans (the flexplate), but you'll get the gest of all that needs to be carried out now. Otherwise, all the money you put into it, will only be good for a certain amount of time until something 'goes wrong'.

Going back a-ways, in regards to the cam control assembly / cam bridge, our cars are running the latest version/gen of it. There isn't a new one. There is for the B7 series motor though. I did confirm that the screen does help with oil pressure and needs to be replaced if broken so that it doesn't break up and get into any of the oil galleys / oil circuits where it will cause all sorts of damage.
That screen pops right off from the assembly, it's not pressed on. I was able to pull mine off with a pair of needle nose. I ordered a replacement screen and will install it with everything else in my motor. I'd recommend you to do the same before that screen breaks up on ya.

Hey man, good to see you back. Yeah, the temp issue has been 100% solved with the new thermostat and pump. The old tstat was definitely stuck open and was causing all my temp and smoking issues. The car's still burning oil unfortunately, but it's done looking like a diesel when I get on it. I also have a new cam bridge assembly en route to my house which I'll be swapping out soon. I've been meaning to edit that post but figured I'll wait until I get the new one installed. Turns out that I have been experiencing problems due to it, so it is a very necessary screen. On the highway over about 75/80 or so my car puts itself into a soft limp mode telling me I can't rev over 4k and pops a code for oil pressure. It's only happened twice, around town it's fine. It goes away completely when I shut the car off and turn it back on again. I figure that and a new oil pressure sensor will take care of that.

Most of those things regarding the engine build are being taken into account with the exception of the balance hopefully. I'm banking on my pistons and rods all being identical in weight and I figure the fluidampr and balance shafts will make up for the rest. Wasn't going to overbore though, just go with a thorough hone. That list was just a parts list, not an 'everything' list.

The ECS catch can debacle is more thoroughly detailed in my (and others' posts) in this thread. Basically the delete of the intake PCV line isn't allowing crankcase pressure to vent properly and blew out some of my oil seals on my block. Our PCVs have two distinct circuits and both of them need to be functioning in order for it to do what it's supposed to do. The kit design seems to be inherently flawed and it's only a matter of time before something more serious than a feed line blows out.

[Allowencer]

Hey man, good to see you back. Yeah, the temp issue has been 100% solved with the new thermostat and pump. The old tstat was definitely stuck open and was causing all my temp and smoking issues. The car's still burning oil unfortunately, but it's done looking like a diesel when I get on it. I also have a new cam bridge assembly en route to my house which I'll be swapping out soon. I've been meaning to edit that post but figured I'll wait until I get the new one installed. Turns out that I have been experiencing problems due to it, so it is a very necessary screen. On the highway over about 75/80 or so my car puts itself into a soft limp mode telling me I can't rev over 4k and pops a code for oil pressure. It's only happened twice, around town it's fine. It goes away completely when I shut the car off and turn it back on again. I figure that and a new oil pressure sensor will take care of that.

Most of those things regarding the engine build are being taken into account with the exception of the balance hopefully. I'm banking on my pistons and rods all being identical in weight and I figure the fluidampr and balance shafts will make up for the rest. Wasn't going to overbore though, just go with a thorough hone. That list was just a parts list, not an 'everything' list.

The ECS catch can debacle is more thoroughly detailed in my (and others' posts) in this thread. Basically the delete of the intake PCV line isn't allowing crankcase pressure to vent properly and blew out some of my oil seals on my block. Our PCVs have two distinct circuits and both of them need to be functioning in order for it to do what it's supposed to do. The kit design seems to be inherently flawed and it's only a matter of time before something more serious than a feed line blows out.

Well, I'm glad I went ahead and bought a whole new water pump and t-stat setup for my rebuild. That was a smart choice for sure for me! Glad all is well for you on that note. Did you take a pic of the t-stat itself 'stuck'? I'm just curious.
How come you decided on a new cam bridge assembly? The screen was like $5 I think. I verified that the checkball was functioning without being hung up so I was content with just replacing the screen and saving $100+.
Oh wow, that's scary but also good to know that the computer is that smart and is monitoring that type of pressure. Then again, I would guess it has to since the whole valvetrain is really hydraulically driven. If that's no workie, it's got to protect it the best it can.

I would plan on needing that balance. Technically the balance shafts are not there to take up that much of rotating 'off-weight'. Their real purpose, geometrically, is to cancel out the gap in stroke within the motor since it only has 4 cylinders. This is why there is a balance shaft on each side of the motor. I'll bet a lot that the pistons and rods you get will be quite different than the stock weights. When balancing the rotating assembly, everything is measure in grams and it's all calculated out. I think you can only have like, at most, a 5% variance. Gotcha on the list - wasn't sure if you knew about those areas or not since that seemed to be the 'build' list . No need to go overbore if you're not going to, but its quite possibly you may need to increase by 0.003+/-0.001.

OK, I'll dig through that thread on the ECS catch can. That's sad to hear that product has fallen short if that is the case.

[lettuce]

They're even more beautiful than I'd imagined.

Well, I'm glad I went ahead and bought a whole new water pump and t-stat setup for my rebuild. That was a smart choice for sure for me! Glad all is well for you on that note. Did you take a pic of the t-stat itself 'stuck'? I'm just curious.
How come you decided on a new cam bridge assembly? The screen was like $5 I think. I verified that the checkball was functioning without being hung up so I was content with just replacing the screen and saving $100+.
Oh wow, that's scary but also good to know that the computer is that smart and is monitoring that type of pressure. Then again, I would guess it has to since the whole valvetrain is really hydraulically driven. If that's no workie, it's got to protect it the best it can.

I would plan on needing that balance. Technically the balance shafts are not there to take up that much of rotating 'off-weight'. Their real purpose, geometrically, is to cancel out the gap in stroke within the motor since it only has 4 cylinders. This is why there is a balance shaft on each side of the motor. I'll bet a lot that the pistons and rods you get will be quite different than the stock weights. When balancing the rotating assembly, everything is measure in grams and it's all calculated out. I think you can only have like, at most, a 5% variance. Gotcha on the list - wasn't sure if you knew about those areas or not since that seemed to be the 'build' list . No need to go overbore if you're not going to, but its quite possibly you may need to increase by 0.003+/-0.001.

OK, I'll dig through that thread on the ECS catch can. That's sad to hear that product has fallen short if that is the case.

Yeah I'll get you a pic of the tstat in a bit. It wasn't obvious by itself, but installed in the pump you could see that it was stuck open by about a half inch. Dunno why I didn't just order the screen. I think I was just tossing cash around like a madman all week going nuts on shit for my car and figured hey what's another $100. I'm usually good with my money but last week was not one of my prouder moments.

Regarding the motor balancing, I don't know if I'm too concerned about it. As long as the rods/pistons are similar in weight, that is. I think it was you who shared this link with me, maybe not, but this guy has been building up his 2.0t and I've gotten good advice from him regarding other things as well, and he mentions he's not worried about it either (here). I'm assuming of course that the Fluidampr is going to be able to compensate for whatever minute differences are left. Otherwise I'd just get it balanced and skip the Fluidampr in favor of a cheap stock balancer instead.

On top of all that, part of me is thinking it would be a lot cheaper and easier to just reuse my stock block and rods and drop in some Mahles. I'm really not too concerned about blowing anything up at my power levels and am really only looking to solve my oil consumption at this point, so a $3k+ forged bottom end build almost seems not worth it to me. $3k is like, 600 quarts of oil. That'd last me roughly 15 years at the rate I'm burning.

[Allowencer]

Nice Brembo's!

Hah, I know how that is sometimes. I'm looking at suspension stuff right now since that urge has hit me.

Hey, you're motor man. If you were to ask any reputable engine builder, I'm sure they'll repeat what I said. The Fluidampr is great for MT cars as the flywheel and clutch will change the harmonics on the crank dynamically too over time. I still wouldn't put the faith into the Fluidampr to compensate for all of the weight difference and harmonics. To that point too, did you know that you can gain up to 15% more capable HP by properly balancing your crank? True story. All in all, your car, your motor and your money; just sharing knowledge to you and the community here.

I checked out the dude's thread and basically when I saw he didn't measure for bolt stretch, used ARP studs on the crank line but didn't check angle (aka line bore) and used plasti-gauge I hit the 'x'. I don't know the dude so I'm not gonna drag on him; however, I'm glad he's just building his own motor . I wouldn't want him to build anything of mine or any of my friends'.

LOL, I like how you did the ROI there.

[lettuce]

God damn these things are big. These'll never fit on my stock 17s..

Nice Brembo's!

Hah, I know how that is sometimes. I'm looking at suspension stuff right now since that urge has hit me.

Hey, you're motor man. If you were to ask any reputable engine builder, I'm sure they'll repeat what I said. The Fluidampr is great for MT cars as the flywheel and clutch will change the harmonics on the crank dynamically too over time. I still wouldn't put the faith into the Fluidampr to compensate for all of the weight difference and harmonics. To that point too, did you know that you can gain up to 15% more capable HP by properly balancing your crank? True story. All in all, your car, your motor and your money; just sharing knowledge to you and the community here.

I checked out the dude's thread and basically when I saw he didn't measure for bolt stretch, used ARP studs on the crank line but didn't check angle (aka line bore) and used plasti-gauge I hit the 'x'. I don't know the dude so I'm not gonna drag on him; however, I'm glad he's just building his own motor . I wouldn't want him to build anything of mine or any of my friends'.

LOL, I like how you did the ROI there.

Yeah yeah, I know. I'm just trying to cut corners. Or maybe I was placing too much faith in the Fluidampr. I usually end up doing things the right way eventually, thanks for the prodding.

[4ringnut]

I'm hoping to see some suspension bits arrive with your new wheels! Did you get drunk, and finally say fuck the sleeper look? Lol

[Project Quattro]

I was kinda hoping you were actually going to do the NASCAR white letter tires...


Sent from the Pedal Responce boardroom

[lettuce]

I'm hoping to see some suspension bits arrive with your new wheels! Did you get drunk, and finally say fuck the sleeper look? Lol

Me too, these would look pretty silly on my stock suspension. And yeah, basically. Inspection is coming up this month for me and I needed new tires and wanted a brake upgrade so it was either do everything at once right now or end up having to buy twice once I did decide to upgrade. Figured it'd cost less in the long run if I just got everything I wanted now and didn't mess around with temporary stopgap tires/brakes.

I was kinda hoping you were actually going to do the NASCAR white letter tires...

Well, yeah, I was gonna and still may. 19" might look a little silly with white letters though, if I was going to do that I'd want 18s ideally. But no tires come white letter these days, you gotta either paint em in yourself or buy a glue-on letter kit. But you need black wheels for that.. So we'll see. Maybe for the winter or something. Rep some BLIZZAKS lol

[blbroo]

Aha tricked you all! April fools! Man you should have seen the look on all of your faces..

But seriously the APR one wasn't a joke, I just didn't use the APR part.

This was my face

[lettuce]

This was my face

Why was that your face

Edit: Nevermind, I'm drunk. I thought you meant that was your face in response to my hella cool stage 3 badge and was confused cause I'm pretty sure that it is in fact hella cool.

[blbroo]

Why was that your face

Edit: Nevermind, I'm drunk. I thought you meant that was your face in response to my hella cool stage 3 badge and was confused cause I'm pretty sure that it is in fact hella cool.

It's 1:00 pm on a Wednesday...

[ToddBrunswick]

It's 1:00 pm on a Wednesday...

Does that mean you're jealous? or concerned?

[blbroo]

Does that mean you're jealous? or concerned?

Bit of both. Hell of a lot more interesting than my afternoon.

[lettuce]

Bit of both. Hell of a lot more interesting than my afternoon.

I'm not actually drunk but my company is moving into a new office over the weekend so we're finishing up our stockpile of office beers before the move. They had to empty the fridges so we have to drink them before they get warm.

[blbroo]

I'm not actually drunk but my company is moving into a new office over the weekend so we're finishing up our stockpile of office beers before the move. They had to empty the fridges so we have to drink them before they get warm.

Oh bullcrap! Office beers? You are just messing with us.

[asfastas63]

Oh bullcrap! Office beers? You are just messing with us.

Seriously, get me a job there!

[lettuce]

Office beers are cool, but now we gotta finish off the office whisky.

[blbroo]

Damnit! I am drinking my own whiskey.

[PCHS4]

What page are the fast women pics on? Reminds me of an old movie with the same title: Fast Women and Fast Cars: They'll Burn More than your Rubber.

[blbroo]

He posted a link to his photo page earlier.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/265853184227752487/

[jmeenach]

Office beers are cool, but now we gotta finish off the office whisky.

We only have scotch on Fridays. Which reminds me, I need to go to Bevmo tonight to prepare.

[blbroo]

We only have scotch on Fridays. Which reminds me, I need to go to Bevmo tonight to prepare.

Liar!

[jmeenach]

Liar!

We even had a sign made for one of our VP's that says Patton's Pub that we hang on his door around 4pm every Friday.