Karls 3.0 TDI build thread

[desertstorm]

Put the Team dynamics wheels on this afternoon. The Goodyear Eagles seem to have a really big lip to protect the alloy face, or it may just be the design of the wheel rim.

Close up of the front

And the car

Karl.

 

[viceroy]

Very nice gains there.
Would love to see actual dyno results & how they compare to the virtual dyno values.

 

[desertstorm]

Added some gauges to the car. I used to have these in the Passat

Blue illumination in the Audi not much good as the gauges are white, so needed to convert them to white.
Took the Boost gauge apart and found that the illumination is with surface mount LED chips, so measured them up and ordered some white ones off fleabay.

Original blue LEDS

New white LED's

Those observant people among you might notice that it had 5 blue LEDs and has 6 white LED's. When I fitted the white LED's they were very bright, So I put a resistor in the feed wire and they dimmed, however one of the 5 LED's was still very bright. The LED's were wired in series pairs with a current limiting resistor across the supply. Because the 5 original LED's were set up with the correct current limiting resistors to work on 12V the odd one wasn't an issue. Now I have introduced an extra resistor they are inbalanced. So I replaced a current limiting resistor with an LED on the odd LED which now made it 3 pairs so the illumination was even.

Fortunately Audi made it really easy to pick up a boost tap point by putting a removeable brass plug in the inlet manifold. An 8mm x 1mm 90 degree pneumatic fitting was perfect and then ordered some 4mm plastic air line and this runs straight to the gauge. Very quick , very tidy.

Fed the air line into the car through the ECU box passing through a hole in the boot. Just need a little silicone to seal it.

The EGT gauge sensor was planned to go into the hole where the EGR pipe connected to the turbo. As the EGR has been disabled when it was mapped this seemed to be the best idea, however the pins on the EGR pipe were pretty much welded in and wouldn't budge. So reverted to plan B and the EGT sensor is in the DPF at the moment replacing one of the sensors that used to be used to measure DPF temps.
Not the best place for it as post turbo you don't get proper readings due to the temperature drop across the turbine.
Response is also slow.
Looking for an alternative location pre turbo possibly using one of these clamps if I can find one thats sold in this country.

Amazon.com: Exhaust Gas Technologies Inc. EGT-0335 EGT Probe Sensor Clamp-on Hardware Stainless Steel NEW #32 Clamp: Automotive

The exhaust pipes that feed from the manifold to the collector on the turbo are a nice round stainless pipe that this would fit too well. I could put the EGT sensor in the pre turbo location and remove the factory one but there is a protection map that monitors the temperatures and cuts the fuel should it get too hot. We found this when mapping so had to tweak the temperature up as the factory limiter is very conservative.

I fitted the gauges into the RHS of the centre vent. I bought a complete centre vent from Flea bay to hack only £12 so I can keep the original to swap back at any time to restore the original appearance.

Boost gauge works great, reads within about 0.5 PSI of the MAP sensor. EGT does give you an indication of whats going on and from what I can see logging EGT's on the car the location where the EGT is mounted results in readings about 225 degrees C lower than actual turbine intake temperatures when really on it.
It appears the GTB2260VK is good for 850 degrees continuous all day every day, but short term can be taken upto 900 degrees plus.
Indeed looking through some of the tuning threads people have runs theses at 1000 degrees for several minutes and not had an issue. Flat out about 4K RPM the EGT temperatures are just creeping above 850 degrees. Below 4K RPM they are good.

Karl.

 

[desertstorm]

Been playing with the car today. Changed the oil and filter. Tad more expensive than the Passat seems to take about 7 litres of oil, which was something I knew when I bought it.
I used to use a small bowl to drain the oil when I did the Passat, not big enough for the Audi so had to use a bucket.
Found a good deal on Castrol Edge 5-30 FST

Castrol Edge FST Fully Synthetic 5W30 Engine Oil (4 Litre) | eBay

The seller is just up the road from me so picked up 2 tins for £50.

Also sorted the issue with the EGT sensor location as having it post turbo is next to useless.

The original idea was to remove the EGR feed pipe from the collector under the turbo and put the EGT sensor on a plate similar to what people do sometimes on the 1.9 PD engines.
However the one pin decided it wasn't going to come out and snapped off. As it's a real PITA job to get the collector out and I didn't know what else was going to snap/ break off etc I put a dab of weld on the flange to make sure it didn't blow. Easily removeable with an angle grinder if at some point in the future I need / want to sort it.

Plan B was a clip that mounts the EGT sensor in a small hole in the exhaust pipe.

The exhaust manifolds and exhaust header pipes on the car are air insulated double skin parts. All aimed at trying to keep as much heat in the exhaust gas as possible to make it easier for the DPF to be kept as hot as possible.
So had to drill through 2 pipes to mount the clip and the sensor.
Used a vacuum and some grease on the drill bit to try and trap the small metal fragments.
The exhaust turbines are designed to cope with rust scale and carbon deposits from the inside of the manifold so wasn't too bothered about the odd small bit of swarf.

Sender fitted and it works now as it should do responding quickly to demand changes on the engine and actually showing a representative temperature.

Karl.

 

[desertstorm]

Had a bit of a suprise tonight going to the gym. Just pulling off to cross an island and gave it a bit of gas to get in front of another car when all of a sudden it sounded like my car had turned into a V8 supercar. Slowed down a bit and could hear what sounded like something dragging on the floor so drove slowly to the side of the road to have a look.

The exhaust downpipe had come out of the joining sleeve and was dragging along the ground.
Fortunately only a mile to get back home so drove slowly back but had to record the noise the car made, this is just revving it to around 4k rpm.
It sounded nothing like this before the DPF /CAT was gutted. My home made silencer mod really seems to work quite well. I can see why the supersprint exhaust is so loud must just be straight pipes to the rear.




Karl.

 

[Jamie-S]

Sounds mint lol

My quad diffuser has just arrived so will have my quad pipes on soon without silencers but haven't got the funds for the dpf delete yet so won't be getting that sound just yet

 

[evans1089]

Great work so far mate. So just to clarify, You can take out the internals of the DPF but cannot take the actual DPF unit off the car?

Do MOT tests not check the functionality of the DPF or is it just visual?

 

[Audi Toby]

You can do whatever you want to your car. But the law says it is illegal to remove OR modify/tamper with an emissions control unit.

 

[Jamie-S]

The check is visual so they wouldn't know

 

[adamss24]

Great results there Karl, i was expecting a little bit more though from the extra 0.5L of displacement and modern turbo ! What boost you're running for the power ? WIll be interesting to see it on a 4 wheel dyno- want to see the torque plot and the are under the curve. Are you planing more upgrades ? Will be interesting what it will do with a hybrid gtb2571 turbo with a billet GTX style wheel !

 

[Audi Toby]

EGR valves fall under the same law, if you're missing the valve (egr delete) under the engine bay it will also fail. Why are you looking to get rid of all these?

 

[Audi Toby]

You can make VERY accurate power runs with VCDS. Plot them into a graph and you will have a perfect dyno sheet. Everytime I've done it, it has been within a couple of figures from an actual dyno, which of course isn't that accurate in itself.

 

[desertstorm]

Hello Chris, Power is limited by the available boost from the standard 2260VK turbo. It's only really good for just over 300bhp if you want to keep the lambda values reasonable and the smoke down as well as reasonable EGT's.Car is running around 1.75 bar of boost at 3K RPM dropping off to 1.6 bar at 4K RPM.The standard map runs 1.4-1.45 bar boost. I have a few more tweaks to do over the weekend then I will be booking it in for a run on a 4wd dyno just to see what it comes up with.I think high 300's is possible with the right turbo but stock fuel system is then the limit. I am very happy with it at the moment, I think the mix of performance and driveability is just right.
If I had too replace the turbo it would probably be with a GTB2566 which should be good for around 350bhp.

 

[adamss24]

The gtb2566vk will be hard pushed to flow enough air for 350 Bhp, i "only" had 303 Bhp with a hybrid gt20 (gtb2566vk internals machined in standard gt2052v housings, ran 3.6 Bar of absolute boost and almost smoke free tune... I am trying a hybrid gtb2260vk with a custom titanium 60mm compressor wheel. The titanium wheel should hold insane amounts of boost without breaking- the 66mm compressor i had before had a potential of flowing over 400Bhp of air but at double the rpm's (petrol engines of course) !

I bet the car feels just right, it's the area under the curve that makes the difference on how a car feels as a daily- we are not chasing numbers here...

 

[desertstorm]

Nice weather today so attacked a few jobs on the car.
Decided to spray the intercooler satin black so it doesn't stand out as much. Also took the oppertunity to put some air guides on the front of the intercooler. This should hopefully help efficiency slightly by getting more air through the core as it now cannot just flow over the sides of the intercooler, high pressure air hitting the front is forced to go through the intercooler.

Looks much better from the front I think as you now cannot see that the intercooler has been upgraded.

Also had another go at doing the EGT sensor for the gauge I fitted.
First attempt was to try and fit it on a plate where the EGR pipe came off the turbo, that didn't work because the pin snapped that was securing the plate. The second attempt worked but I only left it on for two days as I was concerned that because the sensor was mounted on a pipe with two walls the inner one is probably expanding and contracting at different rates to the outer one as the temperature will be a lot hotter. Thus the alignment of the hole that I had drilled through the two pipes was liable to move.
This may have caused a bending force on the thermocouple which could of a period of time have caused it to snap off, possibly resulting in the remains ending up in the turbo. Also the temperature it was measuring was probably higher than was actually arriving at the turbo.The EGT sesnor is now in the same place as the cars pre turbo EGT sensor so I can compare readings.
Thus decided to remove the turbo and drill and tap another mounting point for a sensor.
This was actually not that difficult, the turbo came off fairly easily, even more of an incentive to upgrade to a hybrid . .

I am finally happy with this and will wire it up tomorrow.

Karl.

 

[Jonathaan]

Really good read this fella!

I like the amount of detail you go into when you are modifying things aswell, great for people reading to have a go them selves....


Will be keeping my eyes open for updates on this :thumbsup:

 

[desertstorm]

Well took the car to MRC in Banbury today. There 4 x 4 rolling road is supposed to be one of the best in the country and more importantly is as accurate as they come.
When Rick from Unicorn Motor Developments who mapped it did it we did all the mapping on the road using data logged runs. Rick has access to rolling roads but I have made a few tweaks to the car after it was mapped to improve airflow and fuelling so this run was just to validate what the car should be doing.
Had a few issues with the first 3 runs in that the dyno print outs looked like a roller coaster below 2200 RPM the ESP was disabled but even so it seemed that the car didn't like being on the dyno.
Doug showed me how the boost was pulsing up and down as he accelerated upto the point when the turbo started boosting. After that it was OK.
Doug disconnected the ABS block and tried again and on the 4th and 5th runs it ran properly although I think by that time the car was a little hot as previously It had run nearer 325PS.

The final corrected figure was 316PS which is 312bhp and 717 Nm of torque which is 529 Lb/ft . This explains why the car picks ups so well past 2200 RPM.
Very happy with this, it's what I asked Rick to do, basically it's pretty much maxed out on the standard turbo, torque is higher than I thought it would be but the clutch isn't having any issues, pulls fully loaded with a caravan just fine.
On the road you hardly ever see the smoke except at night as you are moving, It's a worse case scenario on a dyno.

Karl

 

[Jamie-S]

I'm suprised at them figures, bet it's very neck jerking in the car haha what would you guess you 0-60 would be now?

 

[desertstorm]

Manual diesels not so good 0-60 as you can't do 60 in second as you can in most petrols so you need 2 gear changes but I would say it's some where in the low 5's 5.3 -5.4s if you get it right. Car isn't a lightweight it does weigh 1800Kg.
In gear acceleration when your up and moving is more impressive I think .
Hopefully going to the RWYB at Santa Pod on Saturday as long as the weather is good.

Karl.

 

[Rick @ Unicorn Motor Dev.]

It certainly pulls hard!

 

[Jamie-S]

Look forward to getting mine done, did you get my last email rick?

 

[desertstorm]

Made another mod to the car a few weeks ago. Seems to improve the low speed pick up and logging airflow before and after there is a definate increase in airflow as the turbo comes on boost.
I do loads of data logging runs and comparing back to back two runs with one small change there is upto 10% extra airflow from around 1700 RPM upto 2500 RPM this then tapers off down to 3300 RPM.
The air box has a vacuum operated butterfly flap in the bottom that opens at some point, not sure when.
I took the butterfly out and added an intake trumpet that is used on the S4 / s5 cars.

The trumpet as it comes from Audi,

After I finished with the hot air gun it was a lot more open and hence more flowing .

Adding the trumpet didn't seem to make any difference to the extra flow it was the same before and after, I think it makes a little more noise on the induction roar.

Karl.

 

[Jamie-S]

Is the butterfly just a fitted part that comes away? Did this take long/much effort?

How you found out this mod, I don't know lol

 

[desertstorm]

Just a matter of removing the air box and pulling the complete butterfly and actuator assembly from the bottom of the airbox, then remove the butterfly, it clips in and out.
Reinstall the actuator part and reconnect the electrical connector and vacuum pipe.
I haven't been able to find out when the butterfly is actuated, It's controlled by the ECU ,I suspect it opens normally around 3K as there is no airflow improvement above that.
I was looking at what was on the car and what could possibly improve the performance, small positive incremental changes all add up to make a bigger increase.
I wrapped the metal pipe that goes from the turbo to the intercooler in heat resisting aluminised wrap, not sure if it improves things possibly a small amount as the exhaust manifold is right under the pipe and all the heat from that must heat the pipe up, the air from the turbo itself is pretty hot when it's working hard but at other times the rising heat is probably heating the tube.

Karl.

 

[Jamie-S]

Ok cheers will look on elsa to check the removal out.

Yours did get some awesome results on the rr

 

[desertstorm]

Well it was a good day at Santa Pod today, did about 14 runs in all although the ones in the afternoon were not as quick as it just got too hot, I heard several people saying there times had gone off.
Car did better than I thought, was hoping for something like a 13.7 and over 100mph, went faster than that on the first run.
Final best time was 13.36 seconds at 103.3 mph which I was very happy with. For an 1800kg diesel estate car it's quite nippy.

The Blacketts photography people at the track got some good photos.

Probably the quickest car there was this Porsche or a Nissan GTR. Ran against this Porsche twice and both times I did get out in front for a bit.

The first time I ran against it took a video from inside the car. Click on the picture below to play it.




I was well in front but you can see him coming in the mirror like a missile . This car was running high tens low 11's around 125-130 mph.

Had a run up against a Mitsubishi EVO 6, I thought these things were supposed to be fast.
On the start line

A few seconds later

Heres the ticket for the run

I spoke to the Young guy driving it afterwards just to explain that he had been beaten by an old man in a diesel estate :hyst :hyst . He said that there was a problem with the anti lag, I suggested he gets a diesel as they don't suffer from those problems.

I moved the little go-pro camera I have onto the roof to see what that was like as vantage point. Heres a supercharged LS400 Lexus, all stripped out with a roll cage etc. It didn't seem to run very well , not well enough to catch me anyway.
The noise on the camera going up the strip is wind noise.



Had a run up against a twin turbo 3.0 Supra all stripped out with roll cage etc. Spoke to the guy afterwards and it was running 1.2 bar boost apparently . He did beat me by 0.15 seconds and was a few mph faster on the terminal speed but he seemed quite impressed that a diesel estate could be that fast.
The Porsche I ran against is on here as well.

Karl.

 

[desertstorm]

Many thanks to Rick at Unicorn Motor developments for mapping the car, I am sure it wouldn't be this good if I had gone to AMD or REVO.

Karl.

 

[kanecullen89]

Karl you're causing me a lot of issues!!

I'm meant to be saving for sensible things but every time I see your threads I just want to mod my A4!!
My wife will be emailing you next to tell you to stop making tuning so appealing and corrupting me! Ha

 

[desertstorm]

sensible things usually tend to be boring. Playing with cars is fun. It's a no brainer really.
Fixed some of the links in the previous post as photobucket was having a funny on me.

Karl.

 

[desertstorm]

Heres the timing slip from the Porsche run in the video.

It was the first run I made up the strip so was most suprised to see how quick it was. Looking at the 60ft time it was one of the quickest I did on the day but I had tried lowering tyre pressures and the like to see if that would improve the grip as it does spin the wheels when launching. Maybe I should have just left the tyre pressures where they were.
Runs were definately a lot slower in the afternoon when it warmed up.

Heres the second run against the Porsche, I completely fudged the start hence my slow time.

You can see the Porsche was heading for 130mph in 11 seconds.

karl.

 

[Zafi]

Impressive car you have there! I bet it had the best MPG figure on the way there, too

That flap is probably to reduce intake noise for the EU drive by tests. KTMs have something similar that causes low speed throttle lag issues so I remap them so they operate from 35% open to 100% open instead of fully closed at low throttle & low rpm.

 

[desertstorm]

Thanks for that. Interesting about the flap you do get more intake noise which I like as it reminds you there is a V6 under the bonnet.
It did quite well on fuel it's about 85 miles for me to get there pretty much motorway all the way, didn't really hang around and when I got there it was showing 45mpg, after running around there and sitting in quite a few queues it was down to 28mpg and by the time I had got back home I think it was 38mpg. So not too bad given the level of performance and the abuse it had.

Karl.

 

[Sandra]

Sounds like you had a fun day Karl. x

 

[Jonathaan]

Love it!

 

[Gazwould]

So Karl, how long do you recon you will keep this Evo basher ? Tempted at some point by a bigger turbo ?

Recon the future B9 could be twin turbo.

 

[Zafi]

I had a drive in a biturbo A6 avant last year. What a car! Masses of torque. I recon it is a better drive than an S6.

 

[desertstorm]

So Karl, how long do you recon you will keep this Evo basher ? Tempted at some point by a bigger turbo ?

Recon the future B9 could be twin turbo.

I am going to be keeping it for a few years at least, Had the Passat for seven years, As long as it's reliable looks reasonable and does the job I am happy.
The 3.0 Bi-turbo makes 313bhp and 479Lb/ft and the engine in mine is now making a little more, pretty much the same power but 45Lb/ft of torque more in a smaller car than the A6 or A7 , the Bi- turbo seems to map well though I have seen figures of nearly 400 Bhp and 800Nm
which is amazing for a 3.0 litre diesel.

Karl.

 

[Rick @ Unicorn Motor Dev.]

If i'm honest, I didn't expect your ET to be a sub 13.5 - you're quicker than Stage 2+ S3's!

Well done!

Rick

 

[desertstorm]

Thanks Rick, To be honest I was expecting something like 13.6-13.7 with just over 100mph. I wanted something that would match a standard B8 S4 Avant with the fuel economy of a diesel and looks like thats what I have.
Have a few more small mods to make maybe get into the 13.2's .

Karl.

 

[ben.w93]

Fascinating thread, looking at the tuning options for my A5 3.0 TDI, I particularly like the straight though back boxes, when researching, there was a guy on youtube that cut his off his A6 and rolling roaded to show hoe restrictive it was, I was thinking of just a remap and doing something with the exhaust, but soon I wont be doing the millage I am now, so might just hold fire and get the S4 avant as I'm missing my estate and the 3.0TDIs avants seem to hold their value rather well.