The Sahara sand hit last week and the Golf, sitting outside, wasn't an exception - couldn't believe the state of it when I looked at it in the morning; That was soon washed however and never one to turn down a photo opportunity, grabbed this pic when out this week; Lastly, had a few issues with the engine light pinging on lately and after getting some sensors changed, it's been ok and the light stayed off for now but the suggestion was that there may be an issue with the map. So got this checked at a trusted and well known local tuning company and had it dyno run and data logged; The car made a respectable 197bhp on the rollers, not bad for the 20 years old, 123k miles and minimal mods and an unknown map, but not quite the 230bhp REVO map i was told when I bought the car lol! No matter, the fuelling etc was all ok and they were happy with the figures and graph the car produced so that's all that matters. As a side issue, I was going to get the car REVO stage 2'd whilst there as APT is a REVO authorised dealer and I only needed a 4 bar fuel pressure regulator in order to have all the hardware required for stage 2 and took one of these with me........ but after waiting there an hour or more to hear back from REVO to get the file, the reply finally came through that they do not have a file for my car, nor would they create one. Despite my engine being listed on the REVO website!! Another indication of how old these cars are getting now, they'd rather take the easy money for a Golf R or something I guess. Didn't matter, the car is quick enough as it is........
Beautiful anniversary. Shame about the re-map experience - have you thought about going somewhere like Stealth Racing to get it set up on the rolling road specific to your car? Bit of a trek from Norfolk mind. I was very impressed with what he did with my Corrado (219hp, 212 ib ft torque with 263 cams only).
Got some genuine BBS centre caps recently for a reasonable price, never been sure if I wanted them or not but as these came with the screw in centres and backing plates as well, I thought i'd get them as spares if nothing else. The screw in centres and backing plates would 100% need refurbing and are tatty where as mine are 'mint' but again, handy as spares............. eBay is loaded with cheap knock off BBS logo centre caps for like 8 quid but these are all genuine I was pleased to confirm; Trial fitted one of them on the front, using my existing backing plate and looked ok; ... BUT... i think i'll leave the VW ones on for now! Looking at those last two photos also makes me remember how much I want to get the budget tyres off it the previous owner fitted but have no money for that right now plus they were brand new when I bought the car.
On a comical note, i've added a Mk5 GTi to the fleet....... ok, so it's an old RC Tamiya but it still counts right? As with any new car purchase, you inherit the previous owner's muck and old parts and this certainly needed some TLC and renovation; New parts for the refresh, the racing suspension was much cheaper than the coilovers on my Anni, if only real car parts were so cheap!! All done and sorted New wheels, tyres, bodyshell with working lights, suspension, driveshafts, wheel bearings etc etc; Now all I have to do is not smash it into the skirting boards and split that fancy new shell
Well done on finding hte BBS caps. I must admit I entered the competition to win Calvin Car Diaries on youtubes 25th Anni but sadly didn't win. Don't normally do competitions but it was shortly after reading your thread and me thinking why not! That RC reminds me I have something simliar with a Toyota 4x4 body. Did you just buy a new body for it? Mine is missing some mechanical parts too.
A Tamiya RC car, that brings back memories! I used to have the belt drive 03 chassis with Porsche 911 GT1 body. Due to a small spraying failure it came out pearl white metallic, looked absolutely nice. I sold it for way too less money, I always regretted it. I did RC planes a few years ago, but all the electronics and batteries are totally different than 25 years ago Good job on the body work, looks absolutely great!
Well I do like to think about the rules for the road when modifying I didn't see that, was it a nice Anni? I must admit i'm not into all these youtube channels so rarely ever know what people talk about on there lol! Yeah as long as the body shell fits the chassis, you can put anything on it it... I also have a 1998 Tamiya Rover Mini Cooper, that there isn't many shell choices for as the chassis is quite... well.... mini!
Definitely not as nice as your car It was a silver one, 1.8t. He did do a few bits to it to make it nice - refoam drivers seat, centre caps, tuning at VRS in Northampton + fixed a load of little mechanical things. Actually thinking about it VRS in Northampton might be better for you and your tuning and closer to Norfolk than Stealth.
With the car still quite rough on cold start and having not got anything sorted on the previous dyno adventure detailed above, I had a good day down at AMD Tuning this week to get the map looked at again - considering the existing map was nothing to do with them, they have improved it all the same and now the car is much better behaved on cold start and also saw a slight increase in power on the dyno too, now running a respectable 208bhp and 328 torque. Recommended!
This might sound like a silly question, but what made you choose to tweak the unknown map instead of just getting a fresh revo map or sometime like that put on the car?
As detailed above REVO could not supply or even offer a new map for my car due to not having a 'flash' for my car's ECU and they didn't seem at all interested in doing one, this was very frustrating at the time as I was basically told if I had a Golf R it would have been very simple. I neither want nor can afford a Golf R, so had to look at other options. Regards AMD, the much preferred option would have been to wipe off the mess (map) that was on there, re-load the standard map, start again and then do it all fresh. However, same issue - AMD couldn't supply a standard map for my car as a new starting point and even phoned three other people in the know and they couldn't help either. This meant the only option left on the day was to 'tweak' what was on there and I was happy with that and the car as a result seems much improved so far although it wasn't their preferred option in principle. For another time, AMD have access to a mobile chap who goes around the country who would have the standard map they think, but I would need to go back on a day they are free, he is free, I am free and when that was a nearly 250 mile round trip to go there the other day, i'm not really thinking of doing that at the moment unless the car has any other issues!
I asked the question, as I know all of those firms and the owners, with myself having all the tools and knowledge to recalibrate M3.8.X to Med17, DSGs and beyond. I have most of the original calibrations for most VW AG cars your era, create my own map packs or matching OE definitions and what I do not have can be extracted from the vehicle's PCM. Scan your car with VCDS or similar, and it will bring up the ECU software ID and version number. From a business case, older PQ34 cars like yours, do not have as much money in them, as does a MQB Golf 7R or 8V S3. So it is not in a large tuning company's interest, to spend hours making a calibraiton to suit a customer when they could make the quite a lot of income tuning 3 or 4 later cars, in the same time taken to tune yours. I am not saying your car as an enthuisast is not worth it though.
Just another quick photo i got the other day..... with a black car that's almost impossible to keep clean, you have to grab these opportunities when they are there
Thanks very much! When it's your own car you know all too well the little nicks and marks everywhere but looks alright doesn't it!
Just wondered if you might know the answer to a (i think very familiar!!) issue I now have with the car...... For a week of daily use after the trip to AMD the car was absolutely fine, now yesterday, it felt slow and wasn't seeming to boost.... looking at the boost gauge it was holding at '0' so assumed this was a kind of limp mode. Great! Stopped, filled up with fuel, started the car again and it was back to normal boosting fine. Now this morning, it's doing it again. No engine lights on the dash, car otherwise runs fine. Is this is a kind of overboost limp mode? Possible MAF issue? Any way to sort it? Thanks in advance for any advise!
It is difficult to comment without a log of a DTC of the event. From experience, I suspect it is getting to an overboost cut, setting an error for the boost control system thus reducing your overall boost to just wastegate pressure (0.4bar). Restarting resets or "heals" the error. I cannot be definitive witout a log of the condition though.
It's been a while since I updated for anyone who's interested, the car has been running well since the last post, no more engine light or boost issues to date which were mentioned above, no further work done there. As I hit one year of ownership recently, this meant it was MOT time again. I always get an MOT underway as soon as I can to allow time for any issues, so despite not expiring until mid August, it went in mid July....... and FAILED! Great! Last year the rear brake lines were an advisory so it wasn't a big surprise that this year it failed on them. So the car had an unplanned two week holiday at the garage I use, as pictured above, whilst it waited for some free time in their diary. The result was all brand new brake lines, both sides, across the rear with new flexi's both sides to the calipers as well. He did a fantastic neat job on the lines, running them under the fuel tank and all round the hard to reach places with a fresh brake fluid change too of course, rear AND front. That wasn't all however.... Whilst the MOT was originally being done, the car almost over heated on the ramp but was quickly turned off in time. Never had any issues with it myself, but sitting running for 30 mins with no air flow in a giant metal box of a garage in all this mega heat we've had must have been the final straw. After much testing and faffing, this turned out to be the actual fan control unit, a chunky black box with lots of wires at the front of the car...... wasn't the fans seized or anything as these could still be turned freely and powered separately. A new replacement was sourced, a genuine VW one, but was £200!! Whilst the car was there, I supplied a genuine VW rocker cover gasket set as the car has had a little oil leak ever since I bought it but the source was hard to spot. Glad I bought the gasket as when they took the old one off, it was knackered, chipped off in pieces and had clearly been leaking on the corners.... The air con also hadn't been working with all this heat (always the way) and this turned out to be the actual compressor at fault and wasn't working, assume the original, we didn't even go there with a genuine VW part here as the one we got was £400 alone so just couldn't afford anymore on that. Now bolted on and air con is lovely and cold after a re-gas. So that was the MOT and other jobs noted at the time all sorted but when I took the car away and paid the bill, my mechanic had spotted that within the fuse holder which is the black box that sits on top of the battery, one of the fuses looked a little scorched and not exactly ideal if it got worse which I thought was a great spot and I'd never have seen it. You can get a cheapo replacement for 40 quid but I wanted the genuine VW one to be safe as it's electrics so ANOTHER 100 quid later and I had this.... To my amazement, you don't get new fuses, don't get a replacement lid, nor do you even get the little metal pieces that go across the connectors, so all had to be transferred across (not the fuses, these were new). But anyway, it's done now....
