The Project Pad

ya traction via auto braking

Well, once again I'm back with a question. But this time I have the answer also!

Here's the question: what do NuGeon brand rebuilt calipers and bilge pumps have in common?

Answer: they both suck!

Okay it's not really a "LOL" situation at all. At the ripe old age of 2 years and not even 10,000 miles, the right rear caliper I put on the car when I redid it croaked. On the way home from work today I noticed that "hot brake" smell that's all too familiar to those of us that have owned old Saab 900s, and when I pulled into the driveway it was actually smoking. Further inspection revealed that not only had it seized, but that caliper is apparently responsible for the mysterious brake-fluid loss I've been experiencing the past few months. Which is strange because you'd expect the pedal to sink with a leaking caliper and that never happened. But the goop all over the piston seal, inner brake pad, and dust shield tells the story.

Anywho, I learned my lesson and now have 2 brandy-new calipers coming from GAP. I just hope they're the right thing because I know there can be weirdness with the angle that the e-brake cable comes in from, and in the photos they don't look right. But those guys have done well before so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt...

DAMN! that really sucks. so now you have to do new calipers, pads, and more than likely rotors. All that because of a crappy rebuild. Sorry to hear this.

Well... I'm hoping to skate by without doing pads and rotors. I think it was only really dragging for maybe a mile at speeds of 40 MPH and below. And it wasn't dragging *that* badly... when I jacked the car up I could still turn the wheel by hand. The rotor looks okay, and the pads still have a ton of meat on them.

Besides, the rear brakes don't really do anything anyway! :wink:

The thing that's driving me nuts now is whether I want to drop another half a grand to put new calipers on the front too - since those were rebuilts (different brand - "Centric") installed at the same time.

You should be OK with the centrics. They are a pretty descent company. I havent had any problems with their stuff yet.

You could always tear it apart and clean up the sticky e brake mech. I pulled both my rears apart to powder coat them. Not super hard but the circlip in the bore kinda sucks...

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Yah but that wouldn't fix the fact that it's gushing fluid all over the place! :(

Also in my experience, when you take apart a crappy rebuilt caliper, you often find a piston and/or bore that's pitted (probably formerly rusted) and never should have been reused. So now to make things right you need a seal kit, new piston and/or housing, and possibly more. $230 for a caliper isn't chump change but I know I'm getting 100% new everything and it should last.

Plus it'll get me back on the road quickly. My backup car, a very nice (and fast) Saab 9000 which drove perfectly when I took it in for a sticker 2 weeks ago, started misfiring like crazy and got a flat tire today... because it knows it's got me by the you-know-what... :frustrated:

Isn't that the truth.....

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Okay folks, I need ABS help!

While the car is sitting in the driveway, I've got the entire ABS system from a 1995.5 UrS6 set up on my workbench and I'm trying to test it to the extent that I can. I've got all the components of the system itself: harness, computer, pump/valve thingy, sensors, even the goofy 4-wire brake light switch. It powers up, makes noises, and I can connect to it with VAG-com and read codes and the ECU info etc.

The problem is, the "ABS light" (a dash light bulb I've got wired into the system) lights up at power-up and never goes out. There are currently no error codes stored, but if I disconnect a wheel sensor I get a code so the system's obviously working to some extent. I can also feed a signal into the speed sensor inputs and read speed via the measuring blocks.

Let me describe what I have wiring-wise. The harness has two 6-pin connectors (blue and orange) and some loose wires. The two loose brown wires connected to a lug I've got grounded, plus I've got a heavy ground wire going to the screw on the pump. The heavy (red+black?) wire with a lug I've got going to +12 volts (a large gel-cell battery). I've determined the small green/black wire with a lug on it is the k-line, that goes to my scan tool or VAG-com.

The blue connector I think I've got figured out properly. The yellow/red wire on pin 2 goes to my "ABS light", the other side of which goes to +12. The black/green on pin 3 is connected to +12 (when my "ignition switch" is on) to power the ECU. Pins 4 and 5 go to the brake light switch. The switch is also connected to +12, and a bulb so the "brake light" signal is pulled to ground when the switch is off.

The orange connector has me a little confused. It looks like it would go to the transmission ECU on an automatic-tranny car... on a manual-tranny car should it be left unconnected? That's how I have it now.

The other thing confusing me is a loose green/black wire coming out of the harness. My documentation seems to say that wire goes to the Motronic ECU and is a "rough road signal" to tell the ECU to ignore misfiring for OBDII purposes.

So I know this is a pretty wide question, but does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

My best guess is it's related to the orange connector but where would it connect on a manual-tranny car? If anyone with a late UrS6 (it must be one with EDL, not a manual diff lock) could look and see if it's connected to anything, I'd really appreciate it! :-)

My other best guess is it's something with the wire that goes to the Motronic ECU. Does anyone happen to know whether if you turn on the ignition on one of these cars with the Motronic ECU disconnected, does the ABS light come on and stay on? I'm wondering if that wire is bidirectional and the ABS brain is expecting some kind of signal back from the engine brain. If anyone has converted to standalone engine management on one of these cars and had no problem with the ABS, that would be useful info.

Have a look at the coding in vag com and see what it thinks it is I'm not sure how much you can do with those older systems but that might help. I don't believe the normal abs systems really talked to the ecm but with traction control I doubt that is true. You might find yourself porting can signals from the ms3.....

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Aah... I thought of that! But according to ELSAWin, that particular control unit (4D0 907 379 J) is not codable.

Almost every vag module I have seen is codable....Won't really know for sure until you try...

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For anyone who noticed the new thread title, I'm not selling exercise videos. Sorry!

The solution to my "ABS set up on the bench and seemingly hooked up properly but the "ABS light" won't go out" turned out to be quite simple! :-)

Seemingly the system is looking for some, even a tiny bit, of motion of the car before it decides all is well. Every time I power up the system the light comes on and seemingly will never go out. But if I wave a magnet in front of one of the sensors... out goes the light! I think it just wants to see a "real" signal from one or more sensors before considering its self-test passed.

So until I find out otherwise after I spend hours and hours installing the system in the car, I'm gonna assume that it's working properly.

Speaking of installing the system in the car...

Can anyone describe, or even better post a photo, how the rear sensor cables are routed?

I see a little bracket on the back of the upright that looks like it's meant to hold the sensor cable, and another on the inside of the wheel well a little to the rear of the axle. I know the other end of the cable is under the back seat but how does it get there?

If you dont have an answer before I get there, I will snap some pics of the rear of the bandit. I will be going over on thursday to do more work.

Cool... thanks!

Even a verbal description might do the trick. I'm just a little lost as this car never had ABS so I've got no example to work from.

Okay it's official... I hate this new turbocharger!

Why do I hate it, you ask? Because it's making my clutch slip! Whoda thunk that bolting on a different turbo to increase performance would increase the engine's performance?

Actually I think most of the explanation for why it slipped today and not yesterday is the outside temp being 30 degrees colder, so the engine is making more power with the denser air. But clearly I've run up against the limit of how much torque my clutch can handle reliably.

So it's time to tap into your collective wisdom again. I think I'm getting pretty close to my power goal so I don't need anything too extreme - probably a "stage 1" setup would do? So for those that have done this - what's the most user-friendly stage 1 clutch? It looks like Clutchnet and Spec are the two likely options - are there others? I've got a Spec stage 1 in my Saab and initially didn't like it at all - it grabbed and chattered like crazy. After several years of abuse it's finally settled down a bit, although it's still a bit more difficult to use than stock.

Clutchnet in the rally car. And southbend in the S4 both awsome. Spec clutch in the S4 before that was really noisy till it warmed up. (but that one had an aluminum flywheel too...) It squeaked not chattered.

Ah... I'd forgotten about Southbend!

It looks like they only sell complete kits though... if I can get away with it I'd really like to replace just the disc. The flywheel's in excellent shape and the pressure plate only has ~10K miles on it so they should be fine. And the difference in cost is significant.

Actually, and I know this sounds like heresy, I might just turn the boost down a little until warmer weather comes... that'll solve the problem and won't cost a cent.

Okay... so who, once again, wants to play the "WTF is going on here" game?

Exhibit "A":

That's the ABS relay in the aux. relay panel in my car. There's only one small issue: my car doesn't have ABS (yet)!

The relay definitely is an "ABS combination relay", verified by the partnumber and also the fact that it matches the relay that came with the ABS system from a CQ I bought. And per the Bentley, it's in the correct position for an "ABS relay". But as I said, my car doesn't have ABS and never did!

My first thought was that some bonehead stuck an ABS relay in that socket and it's really meant for something else. But here's where things get even stranger: the relay socket only has 3 wires connected to it. A medium-weight brown that goes to ground, a medium-weight red that goes off toward the fusebox, and a light brown (+some other color? I can't remember) that goes to who-knows-where. The 3-wire "harness" has an Audi tag on it, so it's either factory or maybe dealer-added wiring. But for what? I actually looked at every wiring diagram in the Bentley for this car and can't find any relay that has only 3 connections.

I've also got another question maybe someone can help with... can anyone tell me the general routing of the ABS harness in a B3? Specifically what path it follows from the front to the rear of the car. Since the ABS pump and ECU are both on the driver's side, I'm thinking the harness should follow either the rocker panel or transmission tunnel on the driver's side, but would really like to know for sure before I start tearing the car apart!

It might have to do with the brake light in th dash and with the rear dif lock I chased and issues on a coupe and that relay does more than just abs stuff I'll have to look at the diagrams Monday

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You know you come up with the weirdest problems in your project cars. Just yank everything out and run bare bones like a normal person

I've never liked the antilock in the older cars. Brent is probrably right. Is there an input on the ecu for ABS?

But then I'd be bored!

Actually, after a few false starts, I selected the ABS system from a 1995.5 UrS6 just because of the ECU thing. That system, as far as I know, is the only Audi system that does EDL (electronic diff lock) *without* communicating with the ECU. It uses braking only, and if the documentation isn't lying, even has this goofy system where it tries to estimate the temperature of the brakes and will give up on the EDL function if it thinks they're getting too hot.

I like EDL because although the manually-locking diffs are a great setup, there's always that time when you're not paying attention or don't see and a wheel or two is on a patch of ice or sand* and loses traction. In that case, the EDL can act faster to stop the spinning wheel than my old slow brain and reflexes can get off the gas pedal. :-)

* Here in Massachusetts, it also may be hanging in midair above a pothole.

Lol, Never lift! Grip it and pin it... etc etc. I'm surprised you haven't started a second case for your MS using the audi mechanicals to create your own ABS. </baited fishline>

Does your MS setup even fit in two cases now?

Believe it or not, I actually considered making my own ABS setup... until I realized how cheap used ECUs are! When you can get something functional for $25 it's tough to justify making your own, even if you're as crazy as I am.

I don't get the thing about the MS case? My setup really isn't that complex compared to some people's - no launch control, no N2O, etc. Everything I'm using fits easily in the case except the little driver module I had to make because the VAG coil-on-plug units don't work with a TTL drive signal like every other coil on the planet. :(

I can't remember if I wrote anything about it, but I'm also no longer using the "divider board" to interface to the VR crank sensors. That's because I'm no longer using the VR crank sensors - with DE80q's help, I made a couple of Hall sensors to replace them. That considerably reduces the amount of extra circuitry required inside the Megasquirt - it's basically down to one 8-pin chip that lives in the proto area on the mainboard.