Seven Years
Today marks the seventh anniversary of my purschase of this special car and I'm feeling a little reflective!
When I bought the car it wasn't running very well. Starting was inconsistent and it had a bad misfire under boost. There was also an intermittent short circuit causing the ignition fuse to blow. The short was in the ignition coil wiring and diagnosed and repaired by Brodie European during it's first service there (the car actually broke down during a road test by them due to the ignition fuse blowing and had to be towed back to the garage!). I discovered after some months that the vacuum lines to the boost control solenoid had been incorrectly plumbed. I'm sure this wasn't the case when it was tuned in Wellington at the end of 2010 by STM (as can be attested to by the smooth dyno plot and healthy power figure) but at some point subsequent to this they were messed up. This was the main cause of the misfire under boost, although I suspect the ignition system was also tired. With further research I was able to correct this and start my steep learning curve with the Link engine management system installed in the car. Installing an aftermarket ECU is probably not something I would have contemplated doing, but I must admit I was curious when the car came up for sale and I knew about the ECU. Since buyng the car I've completed half a dozen online HPA tuning courses and spent countless hours making tweaks to the ECU and reviewing log files. During this 'tweaking' I discovered the ECU was using an incorrect intake air temperature calibration and was able to correct this. Quite recently I discovered that the injector dead time table was incorrect and was able to correct this with data I found online. The injector dead times have little effect at high load as they are only a fraction of the overall injector duty cycle at that point, but at low load (starting and idle for example) the dead time is quite signicant relative to the total duty cycle. Correcting this has made AFRs more consistent on start up.
Not too long after getting the car I had the original alloys repaired and repainted in 'shadowchrome' by Arrow Wheels and shod with fresh rubber. I replaced the slightly 'boy racer' after market blow off valve with a working factory diverter valve I’d removed from my RS4. I was fortunate to be able to get my hands on an original shifter purchased off a fellow vasker and previous RS2 owner. I also purchased factory fog lights. There was a bit of a saga with KW suspension that couldn't be certified without jumping through interminable hoops. After running H&R lowering springs for some time I've now settled (no pun intended) on the original springs with adjustable Koni dampers, which I feel is a more compliant and road friendly set up than the same dampers with H&Rs.
There have been numerous mechanical and electrical repairs made during my ownership, some of which I'm sure to have forgotten about! A radiator was replaced, the alternator was replaced, the oil pressure sender and multi function temperature sender (MFTS) were replaced. The fuel pump failed at some point and was replaced with a new one (that was fun breaking down on Ti Rakau Road in peak traffic!). A TFSI coil harness and Audi R8 ignition coils were also added to the car to replace the old factory system.
A rather gash aftermarket radio was replaced with a more elegant Becker and I’ve more recently put in a Blaupunkt. Both the Becker and Blaupunkt are very good but the latter has built in blue tooth streaming whilst the Becker had an adapter for this.
After an unfortunate altercation with gale force winds and a glorified tent, I decided to have a full glass-out respray of the car which was covered in part by insurance.
More recently (but still a few years ago now) the car was sent to Dave at Tunetechnic (previously Dave was the Link tuning guru at Torque Performance) who installed an ALM wideband oxygen sensor, Link 4 bar map sensor and retuned the ignition and fuel maps along with dual boost maps, switchable via a discrete digital input to the ECU. The factory knock sensors were also wired and tuned to the ECU but using a single retard table for all cyclinders due to a shortage of available free tables in the ECU. About a year after this Dave was also able to get the factory fuel computer working with the ECU based on some information I had managed to unearth from the interweb (where would we be without it?!).
Over all this time the car has been ably serviced and repaired by the team at Brodie European. As detailed in my ownership thread above, WestWorx did a great job of repairing the interior trim for me.
As previously mentioned, I've been able to apply my learning from the HPA courses I did to manipulating the ECU software and have managed to enhance it in several ways, improving safety and driveability. For example, I've been able to make more efficient use of the available tuning tables to allow the built-in knock detection system (as tuned by TuneTechnic) to retard individual cylinders rather than all cylinders at the same time. The ignition map has been smoothed and adjusted to enhance drivability. The fuel map has been tweaked to get the AFRs just so, improving cooling at high load while keeping knock in check. Quite recently I've successfully been able to configure three live switcheable boost maps (using some trickery with 'virtual auxilary outputs' and an ECU timer). These are currently set for: A) The factory boost of 1.3 - 1.4 bar, B) 1.6-1.7 bar, and 3) Valet/limp 'no boost' mode (0.4 bar in reality as that is the factory wastegate spring pressure). All the maps are very progressive with full boost only commanded from 95% throttle and above. Any of these maps can be instantly selected via a discretely positioned switch when ignition is on, including while driving the car. It took me a while to figure out how to select 3 maps using only one on/off switch! For safety, I've configured the ECU tables so that full boost cannot be commanded until the engine is warmed up (it comes in progressively as the temperature rises, but in reality you only notice if you have no sympathy and bury your foot when it’s cold), and similarly the high boost map will not engage or stay engaged unless the coolant temperature is between 80C and 100C. Just like the factory ECU, boost is also reduced if the engine or intake temperature is exsessive. I've also implemented a fuel enrichment strategy for the same scenarios. Just for fun I've set up launch control, although I must admit I've never used it! I've configured it with a safe 'fuel cut' strategy which won't damage the turbo or catalytic converter (it still has the factory exhaust system).
So there we have it! It certainly hasn't been all beer and skittles by a long shot, but I'm fortunately a 'slow burner' which has allowed me to maintain a degree of enthusiasm throughout my ownership. Whilst she’s not 100% original, she is quite the machine and the modifications are now well executed and mostly under the skin. She’s a keeper!
