Purple Tom's Corrado TDi - gone

[Purple Tom 0]

Day 5 in the big brother house of diesel conversions.... :lol:

 

Cheers Dave, think it'll be worth putting the effort in at the start to end up with a decent job at the end of it :)

[poll250 0]

Really impressive work Tom, love reading the daily updates.

 

I did a similar thing last year and it's really satisfying to sit down at the end of a long day having made good progress! Hope it continues today :)

[Purple Tom 0]

Day 5 - Todays' been a day of doing lots of little small jobs that have been playing on my mind but needed doing.

 

First things first I took my wheels down to http://www.thewheelspecialist.co.uk in Burton to book them in for their refurb. I was pretty impressed with the facilities to decided to leave them there for them to do over the space of a week or so, which got the price down slightly and has also free'd up some room for me in the garage! On the way back I called into TPS and picked up my order of parts. As usual they'd managed to lose some of the order and only gave me about 3/4 of what they wanted to charge me for; I'm used to it now though so I checked the order before I left. The guy went 'round the back' again and found the rest of it so all was good in the end. The price wasn't quite as scary as I thought it might be either so I was pleased.

 

Once I got home I decided that I really needed to clean up the garage a bit. Its amazing how much room a car takes up when its in lots of different pieces and I'd got myself into a bit of a pickle with space. A couple of hours later and some dismantling of various parts and I'd made a usable workspace again! I was getting fed up with tripping over things or standing on potentially important parts so I think it was a job well done.

 

While doing that work a courier came up the drive and delivered some stuff that I'd ordered from the aptly named http://www.rust.co.uk. The Corrado has a small amount of corrosion on the battery tray and a couple of small areas underneath where the underseal has broken so I thought now would be a good time to treat it. I've gone for some FE123 rust treatment and a couple of cans of wax, one for the cavities (rear arches!!) and one external spray wax for the underneath components once they're fitted. I was pleased because I only ordered it yesterday so I wasn't sure if it'd arrive, but it did which meant I could get on with cleaning the engine bay :)

 

:) soon turned into :( once I realised quite how much cr@p there was, particularly on the chassis legs. However a couple of hours later, roughly 38 gallons of degreaser, 4 barrels of elbow grease and the bathroom cupboard a couple of towels lighter and I was left with a relatively sparkly engine bay. It's not concours but it'll do for the time being!

 

Cleaning all the rubbish exposed the rust in all its glory around the battery tray so I set about treating that. The FE123 works really well and I'm hopeful that it'll do a better job than some of the other rust treatments on the market. We'll see I guess. While it was drying I thought it'd be a good time to have a look at the engine bay bulkhead insulation/heatshielding that I'd removed from the Passat. It sort of looked like it would fit the Corrado but once I offered it up I realised there was no way of it fitting with some serious modification. So it got seriously modified and while its now quite a bit smaller, it does actually fit the bulkhead and will do the job its intended for so that was good.

 

The last job of the day was to examine and rewrap the fan and ABS wiring looms. They both checked out OK with no damage so I just removed the crappy old black insulation tape and rewrapped with the cloth rayon stuff. They look good and I hope they'll improve the look of the engine bay once fitted.

 

Tomorrow I'm going to be tackling the immobiliser wiring as I completely ignored it today. There's only a couple of wires that I need to identify but I need to make sure its done properly otherwise its not going to be very good! I'm also going to prime the rusty areas in the engine bay ready for a quick blast over with some topcoat.

 

I'm back at work on Tuesday and I'd really like to have it running by monday afternoon. When I say running I don't mean drivable or anything like that, but what I'd like to do is quickly drop the engine in, connect up just the wiring and at least make sure it runs. It won't need anything other than the electrics connected up for that, and it'll also mean that if there are problems with the immobiliser I can sort them out before getting too much further on with the wiring.

 

No pictures I'm afraid, I was too busy, but I'll get some tomorrow. Sorry if that reads as a little boring but I'm just trying to keep a record of what's been done.

 

Cheers

Tom

[aide 0]

great thread Tom, great to see another derv rado being created, especially at light speed lol :salute:

[Diesel Junior 0]

Nothing boring at all about that Tom its the best thread in a while. Dont know if you can upload to You Tube but i dont think i would be the only one to be interested to hear how this Rado runs. Enjoy the weekend!

[dalhalvaig 0]

This is a great thread you're really setting a great benchmark. Even my wife is getting how good this is...

[Purple Tom 0]

Thanks for the comments guys - I plan on videoing the first start, I'll likely be on my own so it'll be on my phone but it'll do :)

 

Right, day 6 - only had a few hours on it today for one reason and another but I got quite a bit done. Finally bit the bullet and got on with the immobiliser wiring. Not sure quite why I'd been putting it off but it was a piece of cake to be honest...I think part of the reason was that I'd always looked at it late in the evening when my brain was already pretty fried and I just couldn't get my head round it! However, consulting wiring diagrams, the fusebox schematics on http://www.a2resource.com and testing with the multimeter I soon got it sorted. I removed the existing Corrado immobiliser and wired the Passat one in its place. As well as doing that I relocated the K-Line distribution block to a colour coded block on top of the fusebox rather than on the centre tunnel and got the diagnostic socket mounted in its correct place on the centre tunnel.

 

The K-Line for the diagnostic socket will now run above the top of the column down to the diagnostic socket rather than all round the houses via the centre tunnel, seat crossmember and O/S sill. Seems a lot more logical to do it that way, although I have made use of the existing 12V and earth supplies that were already in the existing wiring. In hindsight I could also have used the original K-line wire but I decided to reroute it. The ABS K-line also makes its way to the fusebox (don't forget I am upgrading the ABS to the newer type so its wiring is different) so it all falls nicely into that rerouted distribution block.

 

Here's a picture of the interior now. I'm sure it still looks like a mess but it is actually all sorted, all that needs adding is the ABS wiring and that's the interior wiring sorted:

 

 

Thought I'd get a picture of the rewrapped looms - nothing exciting but it gives you an idea of what I've been doing:

 

ABS loom:

 

 

TDi engine loom:

 

 

Fan loom:

 

 

I've also extracted the headlight loom as obviously I'm going to rewrap that but I'm also going to upgrade the lights at the same time. I'm going to essentially do what Kev has done (cheers for the diagram Kev!) but I'm going to include the uprated wiring inside the original wiring loom. The relays will be inside the car next to the fusebox and I'm going to draw power from a fused supply directly from the battery rather than from the Z1 wiring supply (main feed for glowplugs on my car). This is only because its easy for me to do that when the loom is all apart so it makes sense to do it that way.

 

As well as getting the wiring sorted I managed to paint the engine bay in its final coat and have a general tidy up in the garage too. So the bay looked like this:

 

 

It now looks like this (spot the new paint!):

 

 

It still needs a decent coat of polish and wax to get the shine into it before installation begins properly, but I'm just going to pop the engine in and get it running first before worrying too much about that.

 

Thats about it for tonight, I'm next in the garage on monday (last day off!) when I hope to get it up and running, so fingers crossed :)

 

Thanks

Tom

[KipVR 1]

Wow!! your work is so fast! Putting the better wire in the light loom and using relays inside the fusebox makes lots of good sence. I used the same cloth tape to wrap my loom, it's good stuff isn't it. Well done so far mate, top work.

[Purple Tom 0]

Day 7 - what a day it's been today!

 

I set out today with the specific intention of getting the engine in the car and having a general look at how it sits in the engine bay, paying particular attention to the exhaust downpipe clearance from the ARB and also the potential routing of some intercooler pipework. So, it all started off well, I got the powdercoated subframe on (ignore dirty steering rack, just there for clearance purposes) and bolted up, looks good:

 

 

Then got the engine out from where it's been languishing, here's what it looks like:

 

 

And dropped it into the car, all went in well and I got the front crossmember and powdercoated rad support bracket in place, again, all looks good:

 

 

I then decided to fit the pedal box and the engine/headlight looms in order to run the engine. This is where I hit the first snag. A Passat B4 TDi pedal box does NOT fit a Corrado. The DBW module (seen sticking out of the top of the pedal box a few posts up) severely interferes with the scuttle panel. There's 2 solutions to this problem; one is to totally modify the linkage and pedal box in order to make it work without fouling the scuttle panel, and the second solution is to modify to the scuttle panel. I opted for the second approach as to be honest it's the easier option and it can easily be hidden as it's right up inside the scuttle near where the throttle cable would have gone in originally. No pictures I'm afraid but it took a good couple of hours to decide on a suitable approach and cut the necessary steelwork out. I've got a nice small grinder but even so access was tight and I didn't want any sparks to hit the windscreen, wiring or doorcards so I spent a while covering everything up. I eventually sorted it and got the pedal box in and securely mounted but I wasn't in the best of moods. I guess it must be that the B4 pedal box fits fine in LHD Corrado's as the dashboard is a totally different shape on that side from what I can see. Anyway, got the wiring looms back in and the engine wired up. Made sure the air filter assembly fitted (which it did) and I also fitted a temporary fuel tank into the O/S strut mounting hole :)

 

 

Got the clocks, column and stalks fitted and plucked up the courage to connect the battery. There weren't any sparks or fire so all good :)

 

 

I left the ignition on for a number of seconds but then started to smell petrol :S Turns out the fuel pump had primed even though I've removed the fuel pump relay and replaced it with the glow plug relay. No idea why this is, I need to have a look over the wiring diagrams! Once I'd unplugged the fuel pump from the tank end just to stop petrol going everywhere I thought I'd best have a go at starting it. A final check over and I turned the key....it burst straight into life and then immediately died....immobiliser problems :(

 

I plugged in VagCom and it wouldn't communicate, although the immobiliser module was making lots of clicking so I knew it had power, just not a lot else. Checked over all of the K-line wiring and everything was as it should so I was pretty puzzled. I'd taken the immobiliser wiring out of the Passat exactly as it had been wired up, but the wiring was a little strange - the immobiliser module wasn't supplied with an earth in its 6-pin plug. It wasn't that it had been cut or ripped out, it just wasn't there. I tried various things to get it working and then decided as a last ditch attempt to try wiring in the Corrado 6-pin plug which has the 2 K-line feeds, a 12V ignition live and 2 earths. Wired that up and suddenly VagCom came to life and I was able to scan the ECU. It's really strange that it worked with the Corrado-type wiring but wouldn't function with it as its was originally in the Passat. Been as though I'd got VagCom online I thought it wouldn't hurt to give it another try on the starter, and this is the result:

 

 

So it runs :) It sounds rough and loud as there's no exhaust other than the downpipe and there's no intercooler pipework or soundproofing of any description! But all the gauges work, the cluster works fine, the MFA works, the throttle works and there is loads of room between the downpipe and ARB so it's all good.

 

I was so pleased to get it running even though it was approaching the evening before it sparked into life. If I hadn't I think I could easily have got a bit annoyed with it, but thats the nature of an engine conversion...nothing is ever simple!

 

Thanks for reading so far anyway, more updates to come soon :)

 

Tom

[lilfuzzer 1]

Superb Tom have not kept up to date for a few days. Noticed teh thread as was wanting to go to bed but just spent 20 minutes reading. Great skills chief and also patience as I think I would have thrown the toys out the pram at the problem with the pedal box. Anyway enough of my spamming of the thread

 

loving your work chief and if you fancy doing another one for fun I be up for that :)

[mikkijayne 0]

I left the ignition on for a number of seconds but then started to smell petrol :S Turns out the fuel pump had primed even though I've removed the fuel pump relay and replaced it with the glow plug relay. No idea why this is, I need to have a look over the wiring diagrams!

 

The exact same thing happened to me! The fuel pump and glow plugs share the same relay contacts but are wired in to different terminals in the fusebox. The glow plug wires come out on the engine harness, whereas the fuel pump is on the rear body harness, so you would never make the link until you powered it up and got sprayed in petrol! Once I worked it out I actually left mine wired up so that the in-tank lift pump primes the fuel system whenever you switch the ignition on. It helps start up faster, and makes swapping the fuel filter a lot easier too!

 

I also fired mine up at exactly the same point as you :D I love the sound of a turbo diesel with an open downpipe!

[smithy220 0]

well done mate,i am doing the same conversion to my raddo.But with nowhere near the same pace,im still stripping the diesel loom of bits i don't need.never one for doing things the easy way my donor is from a mk3,seeing yours up and running has inspired me to get more stuck into mine.question whats the white 80amp fuse & holder(thick red&white wire) responsible for?

Edited April 12, 2011 by smithy220

[Jim 2]

Absolutely awesome. Superb work mate. Really enjoying reading this :)

[VRTrickster 0]

Only just seen this. A really good project you've got going on, well done!

[poll250 0]

Congratulations getting it running, I remember all too well the anxious moments before the first turn of the key, ten scrambling around trying to work out what I'd forgotten.

 

Top Work! :)

[smithy220 0]

updates pretty please

[Diesel Junior 0]

Couldn't agree more....you ok Tom??

[Purple Tom 0]

Thanks for all of the positive comments everyone!

 

Mikkijayne - I tested the fuel pump wiring by rigging up a test light to the fuel pump plug itself and running the engine. It primed as it should and then carried in receiving 12V once the engine was running. Really pleased with the way its worked out in that respect as I was thinking I'd have to wire in another relay to feed the fuel pump but no need, jobs a good'un :)

 

smithy220 - the 80A fuse and thick red/white wire is the glowplug fuse and wiring which feeds straight from terminal Z1 on the fusebox. Good luck with your project dude, I'll hopefully be able to offer some advice once mine is done!

 

Not much in the way of updates to report other than Mark and Dave have blasted and powdercoated a few more bits for me and I'm ready to fit everything back on now. I've soldered and wrapped the immobiliser wiring properly and fitted the headlight switch modification to prevent the notorious loom fire.

 

I've ordered a load of wiring from VWP (Vehicle Wiring Products) and tonight I'm going to build my new headlamp loom with inbuilt uprated wiring. Looking forward to getting that done because then I can fit the wiring once and for all and get the interior back together! I've ordered a few more bits from VW which I'll pick up on Saturday and my wheels are also ready to collect - slowly but surely coming together now!

 

I'll update again later or tomorrow once I've sorted the headlamp loom :)

 

Cheers

Tom

[Diesel Junior 0]

Tom, can you pop over here and do my heater matrix for me when you have a minute? They're really useful on the Costa Blanca........

[Purple Tom 0]

Just been reading about your heater matrix woes! I will if you'll cover the cost of the flights ;)

[Diesel Junior 0]

Nice one! We would be the only Brits not wrecking Salou right now......off to see Carlos with his U bend copper tube (here's hoping!) now....great link on YouTube BTW, keep up the work on a top thread!

[Purple Tom 0]

At least you don't need the heater for a while! Good luck with it, the U-bend sound like it'll do the job perfectly :)

 

I thought the youtube video was pretty rubbish to be honest, would have loved it to be better quality but it was done in a hurry on my phone :lol: I'll get a better one soon hopefully!

 

Cheers

Tom

[Diesel Junior 0]

I know,bloody typical its 80 degrees here and what trips me up but a heater matrix. I am annoyed as in the last year have changed the hoses to silicone ones, radiator, water pump, crack pipe, oil cooler and this is about the last thing left and its demise was inevitable and maybe should have gotten round to doing it but......the video was ok for a phone, it was great to hear it - especially without the exhaust!:smug:

[Purple Tom 0]

These things happen and I guess in the circumstances it could be a lot worse! At least its not -10 degrees! The only thing I could say for not having it is that you won't benefit from the ever-so-slight extra cooling that the matrix provides. Even if the heater dial is turned to 'cold' water will still flow through the matrix and I firmly believe it helps with the cooling of the engine. But if the rest of the cooling system is up to the job you shouldn't notice any difference :)

 

I hope it sounds a bit quieter with the rest of the exhaust on, as nice as it sounds without it!

[Purple Tom 0]

Day 8 (of proper work!)...

 

Mark (Laser Mark) came round today and basically stripped the entire rear end of the car for me :) It worked out well for both of us as he got to learn how some of the bits that he hadn't dealt with before came off and I got to carry on with other stuff!

 

As well as stripping the rear end, which included the rear bumper, rear brakes, rear suspension, rear beam, fuel tank, exhaust, exhaust shields, handbrake cables, exhaust hangers and fuel filter, Mark also spent some time cleaning up the rear arches which were caked in 15 years worth of mud, crap and grime. There's a few small areas of surface corrosion that I need to deal with before going any further but nothing major. Turns out a Dyson and stiff brush is quite a good way of doing it :lol:

 

While Mark was doing all that I got on with doing some painting of components that needed paint (rear discs, front subframe) and also carried on with the modifications to the headlamp loom which I didn't get chance to do the other night as I got called out to work.

 

Tomorrow I'm aiming to treat the underside surface rust before doing anything else, then finishing off the headlight loom and getting it fitted. I also picked up my wheels today, they look good :)

 

Here's a few pics anyway, nothing exciting again but showing the progress nonetheless:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the short update, will be able to put more when I'm a bit more awake (got called out 3 times last night!)

 

Cheers

Tom