No. 1 or No. 2. A Diesel Story

[isonic]

I have been debating whether I should make a project thread or not. In the end I decided that even though I am not doing anything new or crazy with my Diesel I would like to share what knowledge I have gained regarding Diesels. Hopefully it will help some one else in the future to learn about Diesels. Plus I want to tell every one in Eurowerks how awesome Diesels are!

So the car: I bought it in August 2009 with about 87,xxx miles. As part of my purchase agreement with the dealership they had to change out the timing belt before I would buy it. The recommended timing belt service interval for the ALH (99.5-2003) VW Diesels is between 80K and 100K depending on the source.

I continued to drive the car, I put some snow tires on the 15" steel wheels and rocked them for the winter. In December of '09 I bought some bead blasted 17" Long Beach Wheels from Chimera.

I also replaced the brake pads all around. Here is Nathan making me a custom 11mm end wrench to fit in the rear caliper. (Belt sander in vise + 11mm end wrench. $hits custom)

Over the winter I traded Bimmertim for a badgeless grill. In the spring of '10 I bought some H&R Sport springs off Craigslist for $100. Hart and I installed the springs and got some General Exclaim UHP summer tires mounted to the Long Beaches. I also got the front Emblem shaved and filled. Finally some clear side markers. The car has looked the same now since EW 2010:



In the fall of 2010 I bought a wheeler for hunting a riding around. Since Diesels are made to tow, I put a hitch on the Golf. I bought this hitch here:

It installed pretty easily, the directions sucked, but I figured out what was what. The quality of the hitch is really good. (The pic is stolen from the Curt website. My actual pics will come later if any one is interested)
The car tows really well in its stock (power, all 90HP) form. With the H&R springs it doesn't squat when towing my ATV. I ran my own wiring for the trailer too.

This is basically the back round before any Diesel mods started. In my next post I will add the things I have since done to the engine and what I have planned.

[hamradio]

Yay, diesel!

Car looks nice on long beaches.

[momo]

I agree with ham... looks nice and clean on the long beaches and sport springs! I personally wouldn't change much at all, as far as visual stuff goes.

[grape ice cream]

I agree Long beaches do look nice
and
go diesel

[skyline513]

Car looks nice!!

[isonic]

Ohhh, look what came in the mail today

[Toftii88]

uh oh

[sprstu]

vnt17? what injectors and chip are you going with?

[JFettig]

so much for the stage 2 tune eh?

I think I see a 17/22 there, and a 3bar map...

Sweet.

[Rhetoric]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

[isonic]

To continue the story:
By November of 2010 I had pretty good idea of what I wanted to do to the car in terms of performance. I had driven a fellow TDI Club members modified car twice by this point. Knowing what my end goal was, in terms of power, I knew that the stock dual mass flywheel and clutch would have to be the first thing to be swapped. I wanted to do the clutch before any power mods because I knew that as soon as I added power I would want to be out driving the car and not have to be spending the time swapping out the clutch. I also didn't want to add power and have the clutch grenade on me. JFettig held a gtg at his house. I helped swap out a clutch on another members TDI while Jon worked next to us on his B5. The following weekend it was my turn. 13 hours later (everything was a battle/struggle with this job) and I finally had a clutch in the TDI. I choose the South Bend Stg II endurance clutch.

Here is my dual mass removed with 115,xxx miles on it:


Still had plenty of life left in it.
All excited to have the clutch in the car I promptly ordered Bosch T4 nozzles from Frank06 over at TDI club. The T4's are .216um and can be tuned in the neighborhood of 185 hp with the correct supporting mods. I believe that these nozzles are from the 150 hp diesels sold over in Europe (JFettig could confirm) but I am not positive on that. Since I only have one vehicle I choose to do the hot swap program. Doing the hot swap program would give me new injectors with out having any down time of my vehicle but it put me on a three month waiting list.

While I waited for the T4's to arrive I cleaned my intake and performed the egr cooler delete. Matthew Slimmer had an extra intake that I took and cleaned up. I then took off my dirty intake and swapped on the one I got from Slimmer. JFettig then made the EGR cooler block off plates. Here is my intake and EGR:


All cleaned up:

The block off plate under the EGR:

Block off plate on the exhaust manifold:

And some fuel to keep us working:

And this is the box of left over parts:

Having the intake clean made a HUGE difference in throttle response. The car was not any faster but it was less doggy.

So two more months pass and still no injectors. Then I finally get the call at the beginning of March that my injectors were being shipped. I went on vacation right as the injectors arrived at my house. After I got back I made arrangements with greengeeker (Nick from the TDI Club) to have him do the install. Nick installed the injectors on March 25. I had already signed up to be tuned by Rocketchip at a gtg being held in Marysville (Columbus) Ohio on April 2nd. My plan was to get a RC3 tune. An RC3 tune with the T4 nozzles would have given an additional 50hp and 100 ft/lbs (unofficially). While Nick was installing my injectors I ran the idea past him of doing a turbo and downpipe install before I went to OH (one week away!). I figured as long as I was driving all the way out there I should just do it right and be done with it. Nick agreed and said that my car was in good enough shape to handle the performance. Monday the 28th I called Peter from Idparts.com and had him ship me a Garret VNT 17/22 hybrid turbo, 3 Bar MAP, and 2.5" downpipe (no cat).

All the parts arrived on Thursday March 31. I went back to Nick's house and he installed all of the parts except the 3 Bar Map. Sorry, the batterys died in my camera right as we were doing the turbo install, so I couldn't take any pics. Friday I drove out to OH. Saturday I got tuned with RC4. RC4 is supposed to add 65HP and 130 ft/lbs (unofficially). Here is Jeff (Rocketchip) installing the 3 Bar Map:

RC4 will run the 17/22 at 25-26 psi. Needless to say I am pretty happy with the performance of the tune.

[JFettig]

Sweeeeet. is it pretty snappy?
Let me know when you're ready to run it against my Passat
T4s I believe are out of the 2.5L 5 cylinder 150HP TDI.
I figured out my boost spike issue - heat soak. Before you go with an 11mm IP, have a FMIC ready to go.

Last edited by isonic; 04-03-2011 at 06:06 PM. Reason: Spelling and Grammer

[isonic]

Having been driving the car for 10 days or so with the new turbo and tune I think that I would characterize it as a good compromise between driving an economy car and something a little more sporty. It doesn't blow the doors off but it has no problem keeping up with traffic. I will have a mileage report by next week. I am at 420 miles and I am between half and the first tick past half on the fuel gauge.

[isonic]

Two tanks now and I have averaged 46mpg with mixed driving.
I got Jetta vents installed now in the interior. They need some touch up here and there but for $10 out of the junk yard I am not going to complain.
I also wet sanded and polished the front headlights. They are not perfect yet but it is a start.

[sprstu]

Cool write-up. I too am looking to do the 17/22 swap but I think Ill run Malone tuning as Ive heard very good things about them.