2mAns Daily Driver Thread - who knows what it is today...

[uturn]

Reading my email updates and saw someone placed a bid on BAT... didn't meet reserve but was able to strike a deal.

So I'll have to say 2man's daily driver today is something that's Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious!

Congratulations!!!

[2mAn]

Reading my email updates and saw someone placed a bid on BAT... didn't meet reserve but was able to strike a deal.

So I'll have to say 2man's daily driver today is something that's Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious!

Congratulations!!!

FAKE NEWS lol

daily driver is still the sh!tbox TDi… but some updates are coming to the other threads.definitely some serious trouble

[2mAn]

Decided since I have to pay for registration on the car soon that maybe I should reward it with a part, so I bought a Kerma Tuner for the car. I still need to send it to Kerma to load a $500 tune on it, but likely going to wait until I buy the Euro PD150 turbo for it….

as a treat back to me the car decided it didn’t want to roll down the front windows at all while I was baking inside. While the A/C tried to cool me off, my hot head thought of the various cars I could replace the car with… luckily it was just a fuse so the car survives another day. I’ll be taking the kiddo up to go camping with family so as long as it doesn’t act stupid I will likely buy the turbo soon and have that replaced along with fixing the pesky coolant leak that I can’t seem to find. Supposedly it’s on the back of the head, right where the turbo is, so which work is necessitating the other is up to you to decide.

Probably give the car a bath soon when e get back since it will be finally breaking 240k

[2mAn]

And now… I need new fans, and probably an A/C pressure switch.

I rarely use my A/C but with front windows that don’t want to roll down (a new wiring issue with the door wiring...) and a trip up through Central California, I drove a solid 300+ miles with the A/C running the whole time. When I arrived the fans sounded horrible and after a quick inspection under the hood it appears that one of the fans is somehow separating from the fan itself. Not sure if it’s parts of the shroud or not. A couple pics of the fans, I will likely order these one of these days and might as well buy the A/C pressure switch since it seems to be a common problem and one that I believe was also toast prior to the fans following suit...








I checked my usual suspects (FCP euro, Pelican Parts and RockAuto) and there are a lot of options and wildly varying degrees of pricing. Any tips on which one to go with or avoid?

After a solid ~800 mile road trip up to 5000+ ft hundreds of miles of driving in 90*+ and the car, even with its noisy fans made it home safely and without issue. The one pic I took at the campsite.



I hit 240k on the way home, and will likely change the oil again soon since its been about 6 months and ~3k miles. Sure its early, but why not.



Getting my mind (and wallet) prepped for the next few things. Probably do the fans myself, but will need to farm out a few other things... or maybe just buy a new Daily

[2mAn]

Small window today so I figured I could tackle the fan and A/C Pressure Switch. Seemed like a fairly straightforward job. Biggest problem I foresaw was the fact that we’re replacing part of the driveway so I had to carry my biggass jack through Gaza. Eventually I got the car setup for the “5 minute” job




(Queue that SpongeBob “5 minutes later” meme)

I bought a whole fan assembly with the shroud to make my life easier, and… can you believe it didn’t fit perfectly?… ended up having to swap the fans over to the OEM shroud.



Looks like it’s “problem solved” as I don’t hear the horrendous noise from the fans anymore, and perhaps the new pressure switch is regulating it better. On to the next headache, but the hardest thing I’ll have to do is swipe the plastic, maybe I can get to the fun stuff soon. Also, I noticed the leak appears to be coming from the front of the head, not the rear. There’s a few hoses that could be the reason, but I’ll have to look again.

[lukeADE335i]

Good to see you in a small diesel for the daily Simon & that VAG aftermarket parts quality is about the same as BWM aftermarket parts that 'nearly' fit! My 320d is still going strong as my daily. Had to have a laugh about your 'normal car' conversation on the previous page. I had the reverse conversation with my wife - recently I had to replace the clutch and flywheel in the 320d + EGR valve & a plastic water fitting on the side of the block. I didn't have time to do it myself, so had a shop do it, and the quote was $6k down here. I said to my wife that maybe it was time I got a sensible family car, like a RAV4 hybrid or something. She looked at me like I was crazy, and just said 'just get on with fixing your car'! So I did, then bought a 318ti for the kids to learn to drive in (rather than a normal car). we now have an e30, e36 and e92 in the herd.

[2mAn]

Took two orders before I ended up with the correct door harness, but once I did it was game on! Took everything apart and was ready.




Here’s a glimpse of the madness I was staring at




More shenanigans on the inside




The wiring overall went well, and my windows are working again. I’ve also had an airbag light on from the door wiring, but hats still on and I think I need a proper VW diagnostic tool to reset that light, not sure this is one the VCDS can reset, if it can please let me know.




I also wanted to tackle upgrading the speakers mostly because driver side front didn’t work, and one of the rears is blown out, so this seemed like a good opportunity to upgrade the front.


Unfortunately the speakers aren’t exact the quoted sizes.


The 6 3/4” and 4” sizes each had their own challenges. Let’s start with the woofer:

First problem is that it’s riveted in. Drilled those out and noticed the second problem.


Ummmm




I think I need to use the stock speaker housing as a base to mount these to…







The 4” speaker install wasn’t terrible, the holes were slightly larger than what was on the speaker, which wasn’t too bad. Both were mounted solid, 3 on one side and 4 on the other.






I was hopeful to at least make these work, but the connector had 3 wires versus the normal two, so I left those alone and just buttoned it back up, with less functional speakers than what I started with

[McGyver]

Both the inner AND outer door panels come off?!? What hell is that!! It would be cool of the inside was totally sealed from the elements, but then you have the 6" speaker hole.

More power to you!

[roguetoaster]

Do all four exterior door panels unbolt?

If so, you know it's harlekin time, provided there are 3 differently colored, functional A5 Jettas left in the world.

[MrBurgundy]

His wife will love that

[roguetoaster]

His wife will love that

But his daughter will adore it, so who will win?

[2mAn]

Sadly the Harlequin dreams are on hold guys, sorry... so we get back to the previous tangent before this other tangent

Adapt, Improvise & Overcome

Alright, 2 weeks later and I have wrapped up the stereo tangent. I bought some wiring adapters and speaker adapters from Amazon. The wiring adapters worked for the front woofers but the 3-wire mids were different so I had to improvise... The Speaker adapters also didnt work so I sent those back and adapted.

and by adapted, I mean I went ape-sh!t

Speaker "Adapters"

Recall that the Rockford Fosgate speakers I purchased seemed to fit perfectly into the pocket of the old speakers. Well, the old speakers were trash so I decided to bust out the tools of destruction and gutted the housing.



After that, installing the speaker was relatively easy, but I drilled some access holes for the wiring to clean up the install.









The lack of adapter for the mids and 3-wires to deal with meant I once again busted out the tool of destruction and chopped up the old crap mids to use their connectors. I downloaded the wiring diagrams online and am sharing them here in case someone down the road runs into this scenario and actually uses the search function..









Some solder later and I have adapters.



and with that, this tangent is done. One step closer to adding more power, but first a trip to the local Indy to deal with that coolant issue that hasnt gone away.

[2mAn]

So the results of the shop were disappointing:

(1) Water Pump is leaking and they dont have the proper timing tools so they didnt charge me for that diagnosis. Luckily @Ajlal24 continues to answer my cries for help and got me connected with someone who will be doing the Water Pump, as well as the Timing Belt. Sadly my efforts to avoid a T-Belt job are now popping up just 18 months post-purchase. Done crying about it (maybe) and moving on.

(2) I had them reset the airbag light and while it was off initially, it came back on within a few miles of driving. The code is related to the door sensor, so I'm not sure if they went in with a 'sophisticated' tool or just a basic one. From what I've read/ seen here theres a test in the VCDS thats needs to be done.

This much larger than expected additional cost is a buzzkill as I was shopping for a fun car and this eats into that budget, and likely means I'm a ratty E30 instead of a clean Corrado VR6. First world problems haha

[roguetoaster]

I think you should get a mistress instead, she might be cheaper, and more reliable.

No, not a regular mistress, more like one who will treat you the way your cars do and flagellate you for your sins.

I'm sure 'burgs knows a few...

[2mAn]

The only mistress is kicking the Benz off the street and replacing it with something else to suck up my money

While the frustration about the cost of the work hit at just the "right time" I am now grateful its over. I got a chance to see the removed parts and I am glad it all got replaced. Water pump was going to die "any day now" so I'm glad its been replaced. Also saw that the Timing-Belt used was a Dayco, and not a Continental made me happy to see it replaced also. I feel confident that these two will give me many miles of trouble free motoring. He mentioned my vacuum pump is leaking and said its probably a repair that I can do. I have added it to the list!... fun...