Durty-Sanchez

Hi all, Interesting problem I've got here - hoping it's easily solved! My gearstick started making quite a decent rattling noise around a month or so ago, kind of like I had coins stuck down it chattering away together. Just in the last week the gearstick has become increasingly loose to the point now that when it's selected in 3rd the stick wobbles from side to side quite freely (in some cases just slumping to the bottom left corner). It's still able to select gears but with increasing difficulty, especially for the middle two (3rd and 4th). Any ideas? It sounds to me like something's just got ridiculously loose and needs tightening up. Will be taking off the plastic covers and stuff tonight for a look, but any hints are most welcome! Thanks, DS

Pretty much any primary turbo from the TT range will fit on - the newer the better. The primarys start to whine after a while, had a new one put on mine (warranty) and it was whining within 50,000kms. I'd start looking for a replacement one from one of the newer TT's, but I wouldn't swap it until it fully dies (if it does)

After 14 years my primary BOV started to leak.. (or at least I suspected it was). Replaced it with an aftermarket plumback and gained 2-3psi! As koom said, it's just an age thing rather than them sucking. You could get a new factory replacement and it'd be sweet

Good car you're looking at there, but given it's age stuff will always need replacing on it - that's just what you get with an older car. Mines done 270kms now, no sign of giving up just yet (touch wood). It still goes well on the open road and pulls like a school boy over the 'takas. They're a heap more reliable than the slightly newer GTB/RSB's, but at the cost of around 20kw. Intercoolers are almost identical to the STI ones (aside from maybe they have a thicker core?), but it's probably not worth the swap. Flag the boost controller and get a sequential controller for the turbos, that'll help manage the dip in power between the two a bit better. Other must-have's would be a new fuel pump, new coil packs, new primary BOV if it doesn't have one already, and a good servicing. Other than that it should keep going without too many problems. If you want to tweak your ECU a little too I can help you out there

Wanna check for det on the cheap? If you have some spare unwanted headphones, a small capacitor (0.47uF from tricky dickies), 2 pins, and a recording device you could just record the noise from your knock sensor input while giving it a good fang (reproducing the environment you think knock is happening). Put the recording up here for us to take a listen to. Of course if it is det this wont fix it..

Take ECU out/leave battery off overnight.. that'll be enough to wipe it clean

My guess with the AFC device is that it alters the AFM signal by adjusting the two pots (screw things). In that case i'd expect red = power, black = ground, and the other two will be the input from the AFM, and the altered output that goes to your ECU. As to which power source you use I don't know, probably ACC so it's not on all the time. Anyway, that's my guess. Ignition system.. looks interesting. If you look at your coilpacks they will have 3 wires going to them.. one will be 12v from the main power bus, the other ground, and one more will be the ignition signal. Your coils take the 12v from the main power bus and amp it up to something ridiculous to put through the spark plugs. The bigger the primary voltage, the bigger the output voltage. Anyway, the dashed purple line looks like it's meant to be the original 12v bus lines to each coilpack. What it's suggesting that you do is disconnect these wires from the coilpacks, and instead run a wire from the unit (yellow line) to each coilpack. That way the coils will be running off 16v instead, and the output voltage through the sparkplugs will be bigger. Remember to do something with the power wires to the coilpacks, you dont want them floating around or grounding anywhere. I haven't got a clue what the purple lines are for. The white line might be the ACC signal to tell the unit to turn on. Best of luck!

TT ECU Maps are identical to their single turbo counterparts.. there's no black magic involved here! Some are even in the same code locations! One would tune the TT's for timing and fuel exactly as you would tune a single turbo. Airflow through the engine is not a massive problem, as they already flow a decent amount to red line. More air is not the easy answer to power either, rather refining the factory settings will provide very good gains. Factory AFR sits around 9.3 at max load, which can easily be upped to around 11 provided the split rail and after market pump is present. Ignition timing has good room to move too, particularly the base map. End of the day the only difference between a TT and a single is the turbo setup, and you would tune for that using the ZS controller. For all other parameters you would tune the engine management just as you would for a single.. At the extent of sounding like a TT hippie now, I believe that although the TT has some serious flaws that singles do not have, they have more potential than they are given credit for. They're not rocket science

I reckon pants to these single turbo hippies, stick with the twin and try something different. You've got some great ideas so far, the new BOV and exhaust are particularly good options. Here's my 2 cents worth of what you can add to your list: - Walbro fuel pump - Split-rail fuel lines - 2002 ECU's can be reflashed, so once you've done the exhaust, fuel lines, pulleys, go and get it tuned.. the improvement will be huge. As mentioned by mr kaos: - AVCR or other reputable boost controller - ZS Sequential controller (I see they're $399 on TM at the moment) Things not to bother so much with: - Intake - Stick with a factory panel filter, it has the same flow as a pod, cheaper too. Build the CAI if you have money left over, but it's definitely not must have. [/2cents]

It's some locally made one I picked up, works a treat! I can send through the gerber files you want, just leave your email address. Like I said, it's a com-port/max232 based design though with built in 5v voltage reg. If you were going to use USB you'd probably just start again

0.5bar? .. that's fairly low.. It's probably good up to 1bar without too many hassles, after that you may be pushing your luck

Wasn't done in protel but exports gerber files, which you should be able to load?

At a quick glance at that diagram.. top left 'boost controller' is actually the differential pressure sensor

I don't think anyone in the country can currently upgrade this ECU for you, however you might be able to find one floating around trademe or the likes. Most japanese tuned ECU's will work fine with 98 gas, I even ran mine on 95 without problems (although it 'tarded the timing considerably to suit). The upgraded ECU's are more efficient so long as you use the correct fuel grade (higher the better).

Hot engine = an engine that has been running so oil is distributed around the engine, hence there's less in the sump to gauge if you have enough or not. Cold engine, ie one that has not yet been started, will have all the oil in the sump. That's why I can have a perfectly full amount of oil on the dipstick when cold, but if I check it after running the engine it drops off considerably

Adding too much oil can be a costly mistake - one I made twice. Looked at dip stick when warm, bugger I thought there's nothing in it! (barely up to low notch). Filled it until half way between the two... a week later I'm getting the crank seal replaced (and cam belt along with it). Didn't click though, a year later did the same thing with the same result. Learnt my lesson that time, only ever judge the oil level when it's cold!

This is second hand information, but from a reliable Clubsub post made many many years (and versions) ago. One of the major causes for beb failure, particularly on the EJ20R, was put down to a design fail by Mr. Fuji and his heavy industries. The open-deck block design caused bad things to occur with the engine harmonics at high speed/load. Although this itself wouldn't always destroy the engine, it definitely laid the foundations for this to occur. Not all of the engines problems can be put down to crappy fuel/detonation/ancillary parts. The predominant reason for this engine being a grenade was just simply its poor design. Note how they went away from open-deck, probably after the increased number of blown engines? It's a pitty the old post (by Doogs) was lost, it was a great read

The OBD & OBD2 protocol probably does need extra gadgetry, but then you don't want to be using that anyway. Sure it's standardised and you know where to look for all the sensors, but it doesn't give you access to the interesting bits of the ECU - and its slow. That circuit is to use with the SSM protocol, which is just a serial protocol over a TTL link (5v). I've got some PCB's already made for that circuit if you want the gerber files, it's designed for a com port connection though. Wouldn't be much to add a FTDI chip to it

Aftermarket swap in ECU's for your model car are rare as hens teeth, so I would say if you spot one grab it. It does everything that GT_Head said; remaps the timing to get more ignition advance, leans out the fuel in certain regions, remaps the boost and removes a few limiters. Mines/prova/syms all seem to be similar products, I think you'd be happy with any of them. Be wary of the weaker EJ20R engine you've got though, I hear they don't like being pushed too far

The max chip maybe more sensitive than the transistors, but its flaw lies in how it detects logic transitions. The huge signal attenuation, weak line driver, and additional line noise on the OBD port all conspired for some bad connections - which the oscilloscope backed up. The semi-szalkai pair setup, when biased right, was just what was needed to get things going reliably. Without a doubt the FTDI cables are pretty awesome, and probably the only option as com ports are a thing of the past these days! If anyone gets their cables up and running i'll try and dig out some of my older FTDI based software for reading the OBD data.

The transistors are required on my ECU (and others of its flavour) because the ECU's line driver leaves a lot to be desired. The signal at the OBD port from the ECU is so weak that it needs to be aplified (or maybe needs pullups) as the 232 chip doesn't detect the logic levels. AFAIK the FTDI devices also run in to the same problem (at least they did with me), so the transistors on weak signal ECU's are needed. You're right the circuit above runs off a voltage regulator driven by the OBD port, ground is provided through the OBD port too (remember to connect the serial port ground too!).

Some ECU's dont work well with just the FTDI cable straight in to the OBD port, I think the tranmission lines need a pull up resistor or something, which the FTDI cables don't have. I found that early FTDI devices aren't too friendly with the strange baud rates used by the ECU if the software is using the VCP, but the newer ones are all good. Here's the circuit that I originally used a few years back to access the OBD port. I used USB->OBD after that for a bit, but it's still limited to slow transfer rates. These days I run a subroutine within the ECU's firmware that dumps data on the system bus where it's picked up and USB'd back by another embedded system. You can log almost every channel at a ridiculously fast data rate (250Kbps), but it's still very much an experiment.. Edit: .. those pins (2,3,7) on the right are the serial cable pins. If you were to FTDI cable this I would recommend you keep the resistor/transistor setup and put it in place of the IC

Serial cable (already had one) -> serial/232 converter chip ($5) -> bastardised sziklai pair for amplification (2x transistors ~ 20c) -> socket ($19.95) -> Car loom. There's a few added extras in there too though, like 5v voltage regulator ($3) that draws power from the OBD port (12v). There's also pull up resistors, protection diodes, capacitors, crap like that, that probably only cost like $1 total. I wrote the scan software myself though, although im sure most downloadable stuff works just fine.

I did my PC -> OBD tool for ~$30, and the most expensive part by far is the plug.. definitely do-able

The guy wants mixture vs rpm though, which isn't available from anything but a wideband unit. If he wants boost vs rpm too he might as well get a wideband unit that does other logging, rather than just a wideband + avcr or scantool, which together would probably cost twice as much. If he were after more sensor logging then it'd probably be worth while getting the scantool + the wideband.