Battle Born quattro 2011, a trip to remember. Epic by my standards in that more than 2500 miles was driven, almost nonstop, in a car that I've heavily modified, and not been able to put much bug flushing time into. There were no incidents or accidents. Ms. Audi went to the dyno with her chin held high and put down decent #'s, then kept trucking for the rest of the trip. She crossed several mountain passes, a couple deserts, a few hours of sustained 100mph driving, turned a best of 22.3mpg, wasn't uncomfortable to ride in (though A/C would be nice in the future), got lots of compliments, and in general, put a smile on my face for all the work that's gone into what she is now, for the last 4 years or so.
Dateline - Monday, Sept. 19th, Derracuda had been strategically planning the proper modifications to get his car prepared for the long journey ahead, had the last of the items on the list about ready to nail down, and BAM, food poisoning ruined it all. Out sick all of monday, and barely back online tuesday to finish up the day job end before leaving. A braided brake line had to be replaced as one of the fronts was too long and had rubbed a good way through the braid, and was waiting to play roulette with stopping in time. The rear suspension was apart, no power for the laptop to tinker with fuel and timing on the trip, a weeping turbo coolant line needed attention, and an alignment. Enter the Hero, Ben Stauffer(extremepath90) of La Grande,OR. He worked all day, drove 5.5 hours to arrive at my place at 6ish pm, and we attended to the car until 1am. I wouldn't have been able to get the car together without your help Ben, thank you very much 8)
We went to bed by about 1:30am, got back up at 6:30, took the car to the alignment shop to get everything pointed back in the right direction, and then went off to get food and snacks. Meanwhile up in Seattle,Wa at about 4am, Todd Barene(Tbar) left to meet up with us in salem about 8-8:30am. My car was ready shortly thereafter and we filled up with fuel, procured a fire extinguisher should the unthinkable occur and then rolled out. Full steam ahead to the south!
Todd has a super clean and shiny 200 20v 8)
The day went well, we made stops about every two hours to pop the hood and visually check things out. This stop was around Corning,Ca
We cleared about 580 miles from Salem,Or to Auburn,Ca where we met up with Dan (40v4kq), to be welcomed with fresh off the grille Burgers and pasta
We all got a good nights rest after roasting in the cars the day before (above 100F with no A/C) in the air conditioned goodness of Dans home. Got up around 7 and got ready to press on.
mm, bugs
The agenda for thursday was head to Fremont and get Ms. Audi on the dyno to see what crazy uncle Derracuda has been concocting and building, to see if any of it really worked. Coffee got our minds working and southwest we headed from the Sacramento area. As we headed to the bay area via I80, I remembered that 2bennett was right off the Interstate and they always have a plethora of Audis there, so why not geek Ben and Todd out since they've never been
Andrew was there and came out to look the cars over and socialize. A couple of the mechanics there was checking out my build and one of them even has the same turbo on his supra
We spent a good 40 minutes there and then hopped back in to hit up Fremonts Audi specialists.
We get down to Fremont about lunch time, make a couple changes on the car to accommodate a solenoid for wastegate control, and strap her down to the dyno 8) It was all happening so fast that I could barely take it in. All these years and finally, something of mine was going on a dyno. The man of the hour, Nate Stuart, strappin' the girl down for a beating she won't soon forget. When I stomp the loud pedal she moves out trying to escape the memory of being tied down in that hot box of a dyno room.
After a preliminary check over, and a partial run to get an idea of where things were sitting, and then he gave her a rip. Since I am normally driving the car, I only hear it from the inside. From the outside is a completely different experience. Any of you can ask Ben, so long as the windows are up, the car is super drivable and the sounds inside won't drive you batty at all. We had to drive with the windows down just to keep cool, so earplugs saved the day for the ol' ear drums. Back to the outside of car sound experience. It's like thunder on wheels. I've heard some good 3" 5cyl exhaust action, but this is something different, and I'd say the same thing even if I didn't build the exhaust myself. It's deafening, but in the most satisfying way possible. An aural assualt that makes you really contemplate taking the earplugs out to fully experience the last zones of hearing frequency get blown out of your hearing range. I got goosebumps even! I might say I was a tad bit excited to see my car reach this place and be exercised as she was.
We started off at about 215whp, and after a number of runs, worked her up to a best of 351@ 7250, about 300lb/ft, and 25psi max. Here is where you can see how the boost takes a dip once the vanes open up. It has a nice upward trend and then at 5psi, bows out until flow overcomes that new flow ratio in the turbine housing. We ran CA 91octane, it was rather warm and my intercooler would go from 45c to 90c in one pull, so I think that it's the weakest link at this point. Not enough air flow over it or not enough capacity for this turbo. We'll see what comes of it if I can get the turbo to boost up quicker like I wanted to see.
I will play with the actuator setup some more and hopefully get better results. Otherwise I may... have to build something different
I also had the pleasure of meeting up with a friend of mine, Maarten, from nowhere else other than Amsterdam,NL, as he was in the bay area on a business trip, stopped by 034, and I get a text from him! What a great surprise
All the way around the world to end up shaking hands at a chance occurance.
After the dyno session, we hung around and chatted with Sam and Nate, had a good time and checked out 034's GTI-RS, which is a monster machine. Impressive build and beautiful craftsmanship with all the custom work needed to put that thing together. We fueled up again about 9pm and headed out with Bakersfield in mind, putting us closer to Vegas in hopes of avoiding too much heat for the day. We made it to just outside of Bakersfield where we found three full hotels, and one not full Motel.... the Motel Cinderella
I think that's it for part 1 of my BBQ trip installment tonight. Old Man Derracuda has a bed time now!
