Sam's build thread

[pogopins]

can't legally have a mechanical oil pressure gauge inside the cabin though can you?

might have to mount it on the hood, 1990s stylee

[sambb]

Yeah don’t know about that. What concerns me most would be the capillary wearing through and making a big mess. At least you’d know for sure what you are looking at though.
Spoke to the gauge people this afternoon and they are sending another sender and loom for me to tests before we do refundage. I’m happy with that cos it took a while to fit and wire so I’m happy to give it a bit of a fault find first.

[sambb]

Racetech Dual Oil Pressure and Oil Temperature Gauge from Merlin Motorsport

If another sender is a fail I may just do a mechanical gauge like this.

[Sydneykid]

If we have a suspect electronic oil pressure gauge, or these days mostly for checking the calibration of the dash and logger, I connect up a mechanical oil pressure gauge on a short braided line. I do the same with oil temp, using a sensor that fits down the dip stick tube on a wet sump engine or reaches into a dry sump tank.


Cheers
Gary

[NLanham]

As a follow up to the manual timing belt tensioner conversion I did, here is a document that IE has to complement their kits now (as well as the youtube vid):

https://pbie.s3.amazonaws.com/guides...LL%20GUIDE.pdf

Hi sambb,

I am soon due a new timing belt now have 100,000kms on my polo gti, do you recommend this kit for all purpose motoring or is it race specific?

cheers Nick

[sambb]

yep that kit will do it. Its not race specific as such to go to a fully manually tensioned roller. Track guys do it because under that kind of punishment the OEM hydraulic damper for the OE tensioner roller can fail. For example Seangti just did his belt and his hydraulic damper/tensioner was cactus straight out of the box! The manually tensioned system gets you away from that onto a comparitively failure proof system. Its dead easy to instal too and makes the OE system look like a rubicks cube. The down side though is that it is comparitively noisy which affects the "all purpose motoring" bit. Just a rumble that comes from the tensioner roller I assume. Also some say that when you go to a manually tensioned system that you have to re-tension at some point. Mines been on there for 65,000km and the tension is like the day I did it. With the manually tensioned system its nothing to pop the top plastic timing belt cover off and reach down and do that twist test so its not like you'd be surprised by it if the tension did change anyway. I dont have the blue gates racing belt though. I used OE which may be a factor?? couldnt say but if you tension it correctly to begin with I've found it to be a set and forget.
Just make sure you get the 06A transverse version. I think the spacer that goes under the tensioner roller is a different thickness on the 058's. And I'm pretty sure on the IE site you can tick the options and select an OE belt if you so choose.

[sambb]

Did a bit more digging on OE inlet manifolds, their shapes capacities etc which sort of harks back to this time:
Sam's build thread post#1703.

So what I can conclude is that the S3, TT, Polo and Mk4 Golf Gti AGU large port inlet mani all have 1.3L plenums. I'd done water measurements of the S3 small port vs AGU large port mani and they were identical despite completely different shapes. I hadn't compared the Polo one though. It looks much narrower and more tapered towards cyl 4 and I was sure it'd be a smaller capacity plenum. The idea was going to be cut off and weld this smaller plenum to the large port mani in the hope of chasing better throttle response. But side by side with the AGU large port manifold it becomes clear pretty quickly that this is just an optical illusion. There's a dimple/relief under cyl 4 on the Polo mani to make way for the SAI air pump that makes the whole plenum seem tapered but its not, and other than that its actually a direct copy of the Golf's large port plenum, so 1.3L also.
Gary has talked about getting the plenum + runner volume in an inlet mani down around 80% of engine capacity in a single throttle bodied circuit car. So 1.3L plenum puts it at about 72% which on first look seems ok, but the problem is the way that the extra runner volume in the large port mani affects things. Each runner is 200cc which brings total capacity to 2.1L which is over 100% of engine capacity obviously. So if the biggest determinate of throttle response in a single throttle body inlet manifold is capacity between the throttle body and valves, then the large port AGU mani is at an instant disadvantage to the small port inlets just based on that.
So I'm going to have to shelve the idea of putting a Polo plenum on a large port runner as that will yield me nothing and look at whether a custom plenum is the go. 80% of 1.8L is 1.44L. If the runners are 800cc total then I'd need a plenum of around 650cc. That will appear very small against those long honking large port runners. I did also look at doing a cut and shut on the runners but the problem is they are a nice trumpeted shape along their length and a cut and shut will mangle that.
So I guess what I'm wondering is, if I retain stock runner length and their substantial 800cc capacity, is there a limit to how small the plenum can be from a turbulence/pulse tuning viewpoint where it could become detrimental to be too small in that area?

[metalhead]

Was surprised to see you not on the list for the Ringwood state round this past weekend Sam? Not that I was either... Small field.

[sambb]

Hi mate. Yeah I spoke to Graham and he wasn't going as he'd done a few local rounds, petes car/life is all over the place and when I looked I was rostered on that whole weekend night shift so I left it. Probably would have been a good one too - wet and probably 5 runs on the 2 lap course would have been fun.
Just getting a few things sorted. Got a full exhaust system now but awaiting a bit of a retune with that as its overboosting. I'm all out of tyres too. Actually considering getting a pair of 16 inch team dynamics or something just for the front so that I can get onto the more available 225/45/16 yokos and run out the last of my 215/50's on 15's on the back.
How's your thing going?

[metalhead]

I hurt the engine a month or so back. Haven't done anything with it since. It was expected... I think with everything else that's been going on I've not been as cautious as I otherwise would be. The bottom end was pretty rubbish when I put it back together - but I figured that I already owned it so had nothing to lose by doing so. But then I stuck on bigger heads and intake and retarded the cam timing and was regularly spinning it over 7500rpm - not a recipe for longevity. On the day at the khanacross that it started knocking it saw 7800 a bunch of times... Anyway, I've got it out of the car but haven't pulled it down yet. Am hoping that the top end is all intact and I can just build or buy a new short block to stick under it. Will probably add a few extra cubes at the same time - which won't give me any more hp, but will increase torque and bring the rpm range back to around where it was previously. If the top end is hurt then I'll seriously consider whether I go all out and build a monster big block instead.