Rocco's Modern Life by jcpahman77

8 minute(s) of a 96 minute read

Alright so Rocco has been pissing me off. I sign up for the Army and the car thanks me by leaking oil, even in spite of a new head gasket, then blows a vw only coolant hose, and the battery dies. Ok so I'm a little pissed off at the car right now and to get my revenge I'M NOT TOUCHING IT during this holiday break.

Now more to the point of an update, I should be getting a healthy chunk of money here in 10ish weeks. Enough that I'm STRONGLY considering twin screws. The GTI motor I'm running on isn't suited for boost, it's a good motor but with a static compression of 10:1 and oil leakage issues, I'm not going there. I'm thinking about trying to get my hands on a good condition G60 motor. It should be a suitable starting point from what I understand. Also it'll be physically a direct bolt in for my scirocco, or at least, could be after some motor mounts are switched.

I need all the info though, I'm lacking some stuff. The full motor would be a G60 bottom end with one of Peter Tong's twin screw lysholm kits (fingers crossed on him still having some) and keeping the stock fuel and spark management. First, is a G60 bottom end even a good idea for a starting place? Second, I've heard bad things about the G60 head, this is why I was just thinking about using its bottom end, so is that true and if so would the head from the 91 gti 8v motor I have now be a better choice? Actually in the same direction, are they any other parts from the 91 gti motor that are upgraded in comparison to the G60 motor, i.e. the 91 gti motor has a windage tray in the oil pan? I think Peter's kits are designed to work with CIS but can the stock spark controller handle/understand boost? Right now it is setup for a knock sensor and electronic advance, would that be enough?

Basically if/when I do this I don't want to get half way in and go, oh shit it won't work because of "blank". Certainly I have other things in mind too like an LSD for the transmission but the motor is where I want to focus first. Any and all input is welcome as always, I hate to be unprepared when I go into a project so any who have been through this before, please chime in, I need to know.

5/12/07

Ha Ha, she made it to El Paso. Not without an issue or two of course but it's here. I snapped some pictures of the car today, I gave it a bath yesterday and I wanted a photo of the new ride height. Also snapped a pic of the newly modified strut towers. These are links to the full sized images, my new camera takes 7 megapixel images and they get a bit big to just put in a post.

6/11/07

I met a guy who's turned me on to a VW performance shop down here. I'm hoping to find a vw junk yard that will be able to supply the wire harnesses I need to finish the motor swap. After that I just need to re-time the motor. She's running like a top and sipping on the fuel. Stay tuned, I have some things planned in the next few weeks.

6/13/07

Seafoamed Rocco last night. Very pleased with the results. I also was able to get some more of the mini-spade connectors I've needed for the throttle switches so hopefully this afternoon I can hook those up and re-time the motor accordingly. It's nice, this car has finally become every-day-reliable, now I can focus on upgrades.

6/15/07

Alright, knock box 101, there are two switches on the throttle body on cars with knock sensors. One is an off idle switch the other is a full throttle switch. Each bump the advance 2 degrees. Now when I initially timed this motor I thought that the off idle switch worked by applying 12v to terminal 6 when the butterfly valve first opened. I didn't have the switches connected but I figured the safest thing to do would be just set the timing to 6* btdc. It turns out it's the other way around, it applies the 12 when the throttle is closed, so the way I timed the motor in I've been 2* behind all along. Also I'm learning from additional research that if you set the timing without the off idle switch connected that you're supposed to disconnect the vacuum line to the controller box. I didn't do this either. I wanted to fix it tonight but I don't have my own timing light, so I did as my friend so affectionately puts it and I "Pahmanized it" I figured if I ran a switched 12v line to the full throttle terminal on the controller box I'd get my 2* back even if it wouldn't be perfect because of the vacuum line thingy. It worked. The car idles quieter (is that a word, I'll ask George Bush) and pulls harder through the rpm range. The best part is I know now it's going to be even better soon. Once I get this finished it'll mean I get what I have now, plus another 2* of advance once I reach full throttle. I'm excited to see how she'll run all wired correctly. Let this be a lesson DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

I took some pictures of all the parts of the car's electrical system I had to tap into in some form. Here they are in no particular order.

This is the box in all it's wonderful glory.

The wonderful wiring to make it work without a wiring harness.

It needs to know when the car is being cranked, not sure why but I got the power from the small wire on the starter as recommended.

I think the instructions say to hook to the ignition coil just to get switched 12v power. Wish I had known that the first time, I accidentally hooked to the ground wire and smoked my coil.

All three wires connecting to the distributor have to be re-routed.

The signal that originally went from the ignition controller to the distributor has to be hijacked.

All of these wires needs to be in just the right place or no spark at all. I lost much hair the first time I tried this little endeavor.

I should note that all the driving I have done since adjusting the wiring has been sense the sun has gone down. The temp drops considerably here and CIS has no Air Charge Temp sensor or provision for one from what I understand so cool air makes a big difference. That said I'm still fairly certain I felt a change. Also I know that when I get this all done it's going to be cool to have a little more engine braking since when I let off the throttle the timing will be retarded 2*. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to finish the wiring this weekend.

The timing is DONE!!! I can feel a difference, not real huge yet but I'm thinking of pulling the battery to make the computer re-learn it's air/fuel/spark maps with the all the wiring finished. I did an oil change to get the seafoam out of the motor and replaced the 10w40 that came out with 20w50 since the average daytime air temps here have been over 90*. Now the only problem I'm having is my oil temps have gone up, not down. Unfortunately I didn't follow the scientific method here. I cannot confirm that the oil is the problem because the advance curves have changed and could be causing the motor to run hotter, also I was beating the living piss out of it tonight, had to take my son to the ER (more on that later -- he's ok). The oil temp was easily over 110 Celsius all night sence the changes I made. Hopefully it's just a fluke thing 'cuz it's only going to get hotter here.