Chicago Treffen

Representing the Detroit Corrado Club (DCC) I made it out to Chicago's CVO Treffen car show this weekend. I don't regret going by any means, but I have to say over all the show sucked. It's not easy for me to say that because thinking back I cant help but think about all the good times I had over the weekend and everything that went well, and yet as I sit here and recollect about the show I'm not sure I'd return next year.

Like I say, there were a lot of good times and rather than document the sour points I'm going to try to point out my favorite parts.

Saturday We met up with some other Corrado friends and spent the night in down town Chicago. We took the train in, and then walked amongst the skyscrapers - I love the energy you get from walking between the buildings. We had some great Chicago style pizza and a couple local beers and then hopped over to Millennium Park to check out the Bean. I especial enjoyed getting to hang out with Stevo, Micah, Ben and Janee it was great catch up with them and it made me realize how much they have become such very good friends over a relatively short period of time.

The day of the show I found my self admiring only a select couple of cars, two of which being Stevo and Ben's, also among my list of jaw droppers was a beautiful orange mk1 Rabbit, the sherry red wide body Corrado, and a mk2 GLI painted NB coal red. Other than that nothing really stood out as a finished car and I found myself searching engine bays for fresh ideas. One stands out particularly - a 24v mk4 Jetta
with logo etched polished aluminum grafted into an otherwise standard beauty cover.

I got a chance to chat up some other Corrado owners. I met a guy by the name of Igor with 10k miles on essentially the same turbo set up as I have on my car - the only other difference being a methanol injection set up... as if I wasn't already convinced of its ability to smooth out the boost this guy confirmed it. This will definitely be my next mod. I finally got to meet Nick (ntonar), the guy that referred me to MIVE, so that was cool.

On the drive home we had a nice Corrado caravan going, followed by the "DCC Support Team" (Matt and Kelsie in my Rabbit, loaded with tools and supplies). True to DCC form we terrorized the toll booths with raging blow off valves and breakneck acceleration back up to speed. I have to say, if you're going to be a sandwich a black Corrado sandwich is the only way to go.

Working out the bugs

Today was pretty exciting. Matt came over to hang out for a bit and to take his Scirocco home.



Unrelated, there are a couple of things I'd been meaning to fix since I've been driving the car again.

1. Wire the leveler switch, and fix the high beams. The head lights only work on low right now. Also, only one of the fog lights is turning on, I probably just forgot to plug it in.



2. Re-wire the radar detector, I'll keep the current location for the switch/mute button but change the location of the detector so it's not blocking the passenger sun visor anymore.



3. The speakers only work on the driver's side all of a sudden... I suspect its just a janky wire. All the same, wtf!



Then it started raining, and we thought... this would be a great day to get rid of the wasp hive! This thing grew from the size of a hacky sack to the size of a rugby ball in about a week and since it was raining out all the wasps were lazy and just hanging out inside the hive.

This prompted the need for some liquid encouragement, it had to kick in fast and beer wasnt going to cut it.



Here's hive:



The weapon(s) of choice:



All it really did was keep the little dudes inside the hive but the ones that made it out didnt like it/us very much at all.







Rather than just letting the foaming poison do its work we decided that due to the size of this thing we had to take it down and burn it or else we'd just have a bunch of half poisoned beasties flying around the yard.

Matt readied the poison and Ryan got ready to take it down with a hoe.



then we ran....



They managed to get it into a cardboard box! and once everything calmed down again we lit it on fire.








Dont try this at home kids, burning larva smells nasty!





Some how I was the only one that got stung, that asshole crawled into my pullover and got me good right on the elbow. After I freaked out and ripped my shirt off he was flying around the living room looking for his next victim... he was swatted, captured, crushed a little so he'd stay still for a picture, and then drowned in cheap tequila.



EDIT: Lisa with the hose:

go...

Finished cutting, mocking up, and tacking a new larger 3 inch exhaust for the Corrado. Here's a short video of the first start up. It should sound a little better after its welded up all the way.



The tip turned out killer!!!



Off the car and ready to get finished welding.

ROFLCOPTER's gonna get yah

Detroit Institute of Arts

Went to the Detroit Institute of Arts today. Here I am looking at the huge Diego Rivera mural(s) in the great hall.

Victim of Paparazzi

The Paparazzi was waiting in the driveway when Lisa came home from work today. I've presented the photos in the order in which they were taken so that you can see the emotional progression.



HI!



Tired?




Oh, you can see the turning point here... I caught her rolling her eyes.



Yikes, I think she wants me to stop now.



No chance.



... and getting out of the car.

Laundry

Lisa and I need to work out a better laundry method. Our problem lies in the fact that we both use the floor as a closet/hamper, and after about a month it's near impossible to ascertain the clean stuff from the dirty stuff. The only give away of cleanliness is smell (ummm, smells ok to me), and wrinkled (normally the more wrinkled it is the more likely it is to be fresh out of the wash).

Last night I figured, what the hell I'll give it a go at sorting some of the mess. What you see in the photo above is the partial result of 5 hours of folding and ironing.

I was trying to think of a good life lesson here... all I can really come up with is: nobody likes doing laundry, and people that say they do are lying.

The Bane of My Existence

The only thing keeping the Corrado from being a reliable every day driver are cooling system issues. Since it's been back on the road:

1. The cooling fan motor only works on low speed and wont turn on automatically.
2. The lower radiator hose popped off driving down the high way and dropped ~4 liters of fresh G12 coolant on I75.
3. Lower reservoir hose leaks (drip drop) from a razor line sized cut. I've noticed these cuts on the upper radiator hose as well and suspect them to be a manufactures defect.

As luck does have it, every time I've droped liters of coolant I've been somewhere close to help. Here we are at Johnny B's house duct taping the lower resevoir hose.

ZOMG, It runs - and how!

Made it to the show on June 6th and I've been sorting little issues though out the week. Let me tell you, this thing moves!

More Progress^2

Got home from work today at 6:30pm and hit the garage like a mad man. Brand new thermostat housing and all new temp sensors. New one on the left, old one on the right.

I took the front cross member off sanded it and hit it with some rustolium. Also painted the front motor mount. Installed the thermo housing and new billet crack pipe.



The obligatory "Fuck you old crack pipe!"

Lower intake manifold, new gasket, fuel rail, 4.0 bar fuel pressure regulator (previous was a 3.5 from the Jetta, Corrado's came stock with the 4.0), and 30# injectors.

... and installed. It was pretty dark aout side at this point.

More Progress on the C

I got a ton of stuff done on the Corrado this weekend.

The new head gasket/spacer set up will drop compression from 10:1 to 8.5:1. The gasket is comprised of a two piece mk4 metal gasket that is split and then sandwiches the stainless steel spacer. This means more boost, safer.

New timing chains installed. The head is bolted down using ARP fasteners. Torquing order is same as stock (basically just diagonally from the center out) but the stronger studs can with stand a ton more torque. We stepped it up from 23-49-65-80 ft lbs.

While doing putting the chain covers back on I ran into an issue when installing the upper chain tension. My motor is out of a 96 Jetta, so I have the plastic valve cover and the dual timing chain. This being the first time Ive done the chains on the car, I ordered the new style chain kit-recommended for better durability and ideal for the dual chain setup (also cheaper). The only thing that wasnt back wards compatible with the new timing chain kit was the upper timing chain tensioner bolt. Pictured above-right is the full chain kit, the tensioner is the large brass bolt in the middle.

The new style upper chain tensioner doesn't thread all the way into the early style upper cover. The problem lies in that the new style cover is threaded all the way through, while the old style (the one i have) isnt threaded all the way. Apparently 92 distributors are some of the only cars to get the "old style" covers - which is what I have to make the new '96 motor work with me obd1 distributor setup.

Not being able to find a 22m x 1.5 Tap locally on the Saturday of memorial day weekend, I oped to port out the back end to get the new style tensioner bolt to thread in all the way. Vortex recommends forcing the new bolt in a 1/4 turn at a time using "lots of oil". I wasnt comfortable with this so I went with the Dremel and never looked back, I only removed (max) a few cubic mills of Al from the back side of the case.

Next up, the valve cover, lightweight flywheel (autotech 13lb) and the clutch(Sachs Sport) assembly.

Monday I was determined to get the transmission in. Here's the transmission lookin' funky fresh on the floor waiting to go back in his home.

Ryan and I struggled with it till it almost landed on my head, then we called around for an engine hoist.

Engine and transmission are in and bolted securely to the motor mounts. The shiny trans looks so out of place in the dirty ass bay.



I'm itching to get the car back on the road and plan to work on this as much as possible leading up to the first show of the season (June 7th).