Finally have a video...

I finally dragged the camera along on a test drive I took after doing a little work on the car. I didn't really want to make a music video like so many others out there... I wanted to catch the exhaust notes, especially seeing as I have never heard them from outside the car. Unfortunately between my worn out front bearings and this annoying clicking noise my camera makes, the exhaust is somewhat drowned out when inside the car... anyhow, here it is...

A little more care love...

She's come a little further since I took this shot last fall. I decided flaunting the intercooler was looking a tad too ricey, so I did a lot of trimming on the vents, taped up the intercooler pipes with black tape to get more of the sleeper look. These last few months I've been focusing on maintenance work more than anything. I've been battling some boost leaks for a while now and have slowly been replacing the whole PCV system along with the general throttle body and intake hoses. Trying to go as much silicone as possible on the hoses. I was intending on keeping a little more up to date on what I've been doing, time has just gotten away from me. Since I did the exhaust, I've thrown on some of Raxles heavy duty axles, HPS silicone intake and throttle body hose, as well as a few suspension goodies like the R32 heavy duty control arm bushings and soon I hope to get the H2 sport spindles I ordered back in January... Till then I have to crank up the stereo to try to cover up the sound of my shot front bearings...

This is my current setup. I've obviously done a little body work, but I think the cool stuff is the performance stuff.

I've also done some messing around with an HID headlight setup. I've tried all kinds of HID packages trying to get my desired setup. I've tried 35 watts and ebay specials and didn't like any of them. I had a buddy who used the ebay setup on his Mazda and it seemed to work well, but nothing ebay worked for me. I finally got a Monimoto kit that seems to work really well. The bulbs were a little shorter than the various kits I had tried previously, which allowed me to actually aim my lights properly. I also opted for the brighter 55 watt ballast and they're great for driving the small Texas farm roads at night. I'm glad I finally figured out a good HID setup, the Monimoto's were my last attempt before I scrapped HID's all together and went back to halogen.

I'll try to post some pictures of the sport spindle install if these things ever come in. Till then...

Past due update...

Here she is with the front mounted intercooler installed, 3" downpipe, and 2.5" downpipe back exhaust... Will try to get some more pictures posted soon. She drives like a dream right now, I would really like to get it out on the track some time...

Boost Gauge Install

Attempt at your own risk, I'm not liable if you mess up your car...

So, before doing any tuning I figured it's a good idea to throw on a boost gauge to help monitor the pressure put on the engine and keep from doing any damage. Found a pretty inexpensive and simple gauge on ebay along with a five dollar black A pillar gauge mount bringing the total to a whopping $20... I did need to get a 3/16" T hose fitting so I could splice the vacuum hose from the gauge into the fuel pressure regulator hose and a few ends to put on to the electrical wires so I could splice into the cabin lights wire and create a ground for the gauge. I decided to also get some interior paint and paint the A pillar gauge mount grey so it would somewhat match the color of the A pillar. All said and done, it cost me about $30 as oppose to $120 for some other gauges... Who knows, I may find this gauge is a piece of junk (edit: was a piece of junk but got a new one at pepboys and the co. I bought it from gave me enough credit to get clear bumper lights) but so far it seems to do the trick...


I should have taken more pictures of the proccess of painting and instalation, but I've kind of been doing a little at a time as I have a free 10 minutes here and there and was trying to make the most of that 10 minutes.

Basically, I got the gauge housing in the mail first and started painting it (think it took a good 4 coats of vinyl type paint to get it looking right).

Between putting on coats of paint I started removing the A pillar cover and realized I had side impact airbags and decided to do a little research to see if it was a good idea to put an A pillar mounted gauge housing on. It seemed like some thought it was crazy while others said it would be fine as long as you mounted the housing below the airbag. I was kind of committed and after pulling off the A piller houseing and seeing that the airbag occupied the upper half of the A pillar, I wasn't too worried and just put lots of space between the airbag and the gauge.

That night I finished coating the gauge housing and used my new impact drill that Tiff got me for christmas (Thanks babe!!!) and positioned the housing on the A pillar cover where I had measured it out to be and drilled 4 holes on all 4 corners to mount it. I decided not to drill any large holes in the A pillar cover for the wires and vacuum hose to go through in case I ever take that gauge housing off. What I did was cut the A pillar cover so there was a small hole where the dash and the A pillar cover meet and decided to run the wires and hose out the bottom of the gauge housing and into that hole down to the fuses and the vacuum hose out to the firewall and on to the engine.

(below)If you look at the bottom of the gauge houseing, you can see a little bit of wire & white pvc tubing descending into the dash. Came out looking pretty clean...

(below) Here you can see the white pvc hose going from the firewall to the engine cover (the vacuum hose to the boost gauge)

Today I got the gauge in the mail and spent about an hour putting it on. I first got it mounted into the A pillar housing (didn't want to splice into any vacuum hoses in the engine bay, rendering the car undriveable until I knew the gauge was sound and fit properly).

Once I had the gauge in and the A pillar cover remounted, I fed the electircal wires into the fuse box area (just under the dash just below the gauge) then fed the vacuum hose out to the engine bay through a rubber gromet located above the pedals (tough to get to from inside the car but since I was working from the inside out I had no choice) (Tip: If you can get that rubber gromet out from the engine bay side, cut a hole in it then stick back in, makes things much easier. It's located on the firewall behind the N275 valve.)

To hook the gauge's vacuum line up to the fuel pressure regulator (FPR) vacuum line (the FPR vacuume line is said to be the best one to tap into to get an accurate boost reading), you have to cut the FPR vacuum hose and stick the T fitting into the vacuum line with the perpendicular end remaining open. Then stick a piece of normal size vacuum hose (the size attached to your FPR) to the end of the vacuum line coming from the gauge (since it is a small pvc hose that won't fit on the T fitting.) (note: not all gauges come with that small pvc hose). The other end of that normal size vacuum line will attach to the perpendicular part of the T fitting. It's a good idea to at least zip tie the hoses to the fitting or would even be better to put a hose clamp around the hoses where they attach to the fittings. Also try to keep the gauge vacuum line clear of hot surfaces (I zip tied it to another hose).

After that, we can start on the electrical wiring. I tapped the gauge's light wire into my cabin light dimmer switch. So, I removed the side panel (it just pulls out once you open up the fuse box cover) of the dash between the driver side door and dash. Once in there, you can see where the wires come off the dimmer switch.

I pulled the dimmer switch out of the dash and disconnected the wires to make things a little easier to work with. Once you have grounded the black wire that comes with the gauge on the metal frame of the dash (you can just put a bolt, washer, & nut through one of the existing holes in the frame and bolt down that black wire to acheive a good ground), you can splice into the dimmer switch.

On my GTI the wire to tap into was the grey and blue wire coming off the dimming switch and I merely used a wire tap since I didn't have a soldering iron.

Next step is to turn on the car and make sure you get a reading on your gauge (if not, the gauges vacuum hose may be kinked somewhere) then turn your lights on and see if your gauge lights up.

In my case, I kinked the vacuum hose when I pushed the gauge into the pod so I had to pull it out and snip it a bit shorter to prevent kinking... Then the light on my first gauge turned off after 5 minutes of driving which was a major pain as I tried re-tapping the wires so many times that I actually broke the factory wire going to the dimming switch when I installed the new gauge. Only thing I have to work out is this weird rattle that increases as boost increases. It only becomes evident around 5-10 psi then gets louder as you go over 10... Have no idea what's causing that...

Changing up...

so, decided to make this page my GTI page... May post some DIY's of sorts if I get that motivated. Now that I'm back to having a VW from the 99 Altima, I plan on having some fun with it as much as a college student budget allows. I may find some inexpensive mods and will post when I do. Right now I have some ideas for greatly improving suspension (as mine is obviously tired), and maybe getting another 40 horse power out of the engine putting me a little under 25ohp. It's not like some of these GTI's with 400-500hp, but I want to keep it a fun everyday driver and not chirp the tires every time I shift... Haven't really looked at much body work yet, but think I would like to keep her pretty stock looking. She just needs a little cleaning up on the outside due to some dings and a driver side mirror missing some trim...

Think I'm going to rebuild the diverter valve today... The turbo seems to struggle holding a boost from time to time and I'm kind of messing with one thing at a time trying to find a culprit. Have a Forge DV and they're pretty easy to test, take apart, and put back together...

Where I'm at now:

Put an inexpensive $30 cold air intake on it as soon as I got it... I'm not sure if there is a reason it's that cheap outside of just having to take more time to install it or what. I definitley had to do some rigging to connect the vacuum hoses and make several trips to the auto parts store, but there is some very noticable HP gain even though I read that a cold air intake doesn't do much for a turbo engine... looking at a similar front mounted intercooler, but seeing as that's bigger, I'm a little worried about how much extra work it will require to install... It's probably either going to be that or no front mounted intercooler at all... so if I do it, I'll post up some pics and info on the install...