My first build thread!!! VW Rabbit AutoX/Hillclimber

Spinout007 wrote: Anja glad to hear it. FGC I got my copy through amazon, brand new. Passed it on when I sold my challenger. Though this thread has me contemplating another vw.

Maybe I can help you change your mind.....

I had a HORRIBLE night in the garage today.

Actually, I suppose that none of it actually had to do with my Volkswagen HERSELF, but really all me and my own human things.

So, I started out with putting things back together. I put the newer windage tray back on, reinstalled my oil pump, and then the oil pan... umm... wait a second, what is that?? Something was wrong here... Something is not right... My transmission looks... naked??

At first, my heart jumped up into my throat as I thought that I had forgotten to install that cover plate that goes between the engine and transmission. Well, that would have been stupid! SO i crawled out from underneath the car and held my flashlight down into the engine bay.... Nope, there it is... but it isn't down there... HMM. What is going on here!!

I found the stock diesel transmission cover plate and noticed that it was quite a different shape. This one had a whole chunk on the bottom missing!

A little research and I discovered that this is the shape of mk3 trans cover plates with an auto trans. GRR. There is another little piece that fits in that missing section, and I ordered one on eBay to see if I can just install that and make it complete. I would so hate to take all of that out again. Augh!

Next, I decided, well! I had better just do something easy. Oh, I know, I'll install my radiator and hook up those coolant lines, sweet! Except nothing NOTHING would work. The radiator hardly fir in the front of the car with all of that newer ABA JUNK in the way. Ack! I had a few extra hoses laying around and they all seemed... just... SO CLOSE TO FITTING!!! So, I decided, "Ah what the heck" and started cutting away.

IT WAS A COOLANT HOSE MASSACRE! 3 became 6 and soon 12 and a bunch of clamps and razor blades all over the place, and I was further behind than when I started. I don't even know how to go about ordering these. The radiator is from some sort of mk2, the tubes into the heater core are much smaller diameter than the hoses coming out of the engine block... there is this other hose thingy coming out of the top of the driver's side of the head that goes to nowhere and I can't figure out what the heck that is supposed to be.. maybe its not coolant at all... and if I attach the overflow tank in the one place that it fits easily, then my strut bar will not fit. BAH!!

Maybe I can move some of these hoses around and re-design the flow of coolant to make my life easier. I don't even truly know if I have it right anyhow.

And, I still can't find my fuel pump. I think that I lost it somewhere in the move... maybe I left it behind, but I don't want to go back to my old place to find out... Not yet anyways... that's $100 at least...

AND, I discovered that I broke that rigid plastic breather pipe that goes across the front of the engine. DARN! Must have been from installing the engine or something. That's a $30 mistake...

AND, I can't find this stupid air boot ANYWHERE. And when I can, people don't want to seperate it from the MAF or throttle body, and I don't need either of those, just the boot.

JEEZ! Look at that, complain, complain, complain! Seriously, Anja. I guess it was a lousy day in the shop.

Well, better to get it all over with at once!

On an up-note, I used my birthday $$ to order the proper downpipe that I needed from Techtonics Tuning today. Now my exhaust from that stock 8v Rabbit will work on Gaia with the taller 2 liter. I got a 10% discount because she is going to be a race car! Isn't that awesome. :-)

More later... its way past my bedtime

zzz...

Waiddaminnit..you found a copy of Per's book? Every time I order one online, I get the usual stuff about being it being backordered (IOW: "we lied about having one in stock so you would click on our website.."). Should I just give up and look for used copies?

I don't know, it was my mom who found it!! :D

In reply to anjaloveshervw: hope your day gets better :-)

I realize this is not all that comforting (when you are 26), but that stuff is kind of normal when you are putting an engine in a place where it doesn't belong for the first time.

It's kind of how you learn. Dropping the motor in the bay is the easy part. Making everything fit nicely is quite a bit tougher. Well, it's not tough, but it will take a lot of patience, and many, many times of redoing things.

I figure if I am trying to build nice wiring harnesses, reroute hoses, etc. in a place they don't belong that I will assemble, dismantle, and reassemble pretty much everything several dozen times.

Deep breath, be patient. You are doing great!

People who watch me work sometimes say, "How do you know all this stuff? You never make mistakes".

I usually tell them, "I make just as many mistakes as you do. I just fix them faster, and don't cuss when I make them, so you never notice."

SVreX wrote: People who watch me work sometimes say, "How do you know all this stuff? You never make mistakes". I usually tell them, "I make just as many mistakes as you do. I just fix them faster, and don't cuss when I make them, so you never notice."

Amen. I'm constantly asked how I learned this. Heck someone even asked me where I learned to put a subaru engine in the wartburg. The only school for some of this stuff is trial and error. Just pretend you know what you are doing and don't let em see you sweat :)

Any "learning" I've done outside of trial and error has mostly come from the great community that is GRM. You have the best possible resource at your fingertips right here.

SVreX wrote: I realize this is not all that comforting (when you are 26), but that stuff is kind of normal when you are putting an engine in a place where it doesn't belong for the first time. It's kind of how you learn. Dropping the motor in the bay is the easy part. Making everything fit nicely is quite a bit tougher. Well, it's not tough, but it will take a lot of patience, and many, many times of redoing things. I figure if I am trying to build nice wiring harnesses, reroute hoses, etc. in a place they don't belong that I will assemble, dismantle, and reassemble pretty much everything several dozen times. Deep breath, be patient. You are doing great!

Listen to him, Anja. Lots of wisdom here. I've never swapped a non-original engine into one of my cars, but I've helped on a few of my friends' swaps. It seems like we spent half (or more! ) our time standing around looking at the thing trying to figure out how to make it all work together.

And sorry about your fuel pump. When I do stuff like that, I usually find the part within two weeks of the UPS/FedEx truck dropping off its replacement. I just try to smile & say, "..at least now I have a spare..".

I have a MK1 fuel pump that I'm about to toss. PM me if you want it.

SVreX wrote: I realize this is not all that comforting (when you are 26), but that stuff is kind of normal when you are putting an engine in a place where it doesn't belong for the first time. It's kind of how you learn. Dropping the motor in the bay is the easy part. Making everything fit nicely is quite a bit tougher. Well, it's not tough, but it will take a lot of patience, and many, many times of redoing things. I figure if I am trying to build nice wiring harnesses, reroute hoses, etc. in a place they don't belong that I will assemble, dismantle, and reassemble pretty much everything several dozen times. Deep breath, be patient. You are doing great!

You are absolutely right, and that's what I came to realize when I returned to work on her Thursday evening.

Coolant Hose Massacre part 2.

Even though I was frustrated, I seemed to keep my wits about me, and remain solution-oriented. I was in an Auto Parts Store, and I had my mass of hoses. I had taped them together to form the general shapes that I needed, and I held it up to the lady behind the counter. She took one look at my mess and told me to go back into the parts storage and look at all of them hanging on the wall.... I searched for a good 45 minutes, but came up with the closest that I could find for the strange shape that I needed for the lower coolant hose coming from the radiator.

(Note: The problem is that you don't want to get into too crazy of shapes, because you don't want to restrict the coolant flow at all... I think that this one will be okay. Oh, and I found my camera, so I can take some shots of all of this, too. Thanks goodness!)

Anyhow, another employee asked me what the hose was for, and I said that it isn't for anything, I am making it up. The car and the engine don't go together, the engine and the radiator don't go together, the radiator and the car don't go together, and the heater core and coolant bottle don't go together, and neither do the hard lines and soft lines and soft lines to soft lines and none of the diameters match up.... ACK!

The guy just looked at me with wide eyes and said "Oh, alright then... well, that makes you a better mechanic than I am, I couldn't do that. It would be too frustrating. I tried to help a friend with an engine swap once, and I left after a couple hours of trying to hook up fuel lines."

Thankfully, I have an original diesel body, so the hard fuel lines are on the right side.

Point being, yes, you are absolutely right. For some reason, I had kind of forgot about what I was actually doing, and forgot that I had started the project to LEARN and have FUN. (duh) If it were plug-and-play, then I wouldn't have to take the time to figure out what my Idle Air Control Module (and valve, for that matter) does and if I even need it. E36 M3, I didn't even know what the heck a heater core is and where it is located in my car before I started this mess on Wednesday. See what I've learned?? This is good.

Anyhow, I found a hose, and I bought it. Because it was a weird shape, it was expensive. I bit the bullet and dished out the dough, knowing that if it looked wrong, I could return it uninstalled.

Well, of course, only part of the hose was the right shape, and in order to get it to fit, I would have to cut it up some more. (The weird bend that I needed was in the middle of the entire hose). I got back to the garage, back underneath the car, and started jamming the hose into place, trying to tell if the hose wasn't going to kink up once I cut it to length... Because once I cut it, the show was over, and I couldn't get my money back.

The tension was building! The hose was as precious as the money that I spent to buy it, as my seasonal landscaping job is ending at the end of October, and I have no idea what is coming next... I can't be spending willynilly! I looked back and forth between the hose and razor blade... I had to commit!

Brittany, in her pristine white sweater and high-heeled sandals, was laying on a blanket that she had set out on the driveway. She was flipping through her Victoria's Secret catalogue while I was wrenching away, and took amusement in the fact that I enjoyed this kind of stuff. "You look so SERIOUS!" she said, and giggled.

Brittany works as the Hostess at the fancy restaurant for the same resort where I do landscaping. One morning, while I was sipping on my tea before work, she had overheard me mention that I didn't have a place to live (and more importantly, put my car) and instantly offered me her space to stay, and a whole garage bay to myself, free of rent. In exchange, I offered to do the maintenance on her 2002 Honda Accord. It hadn't had its oil changed in over 5,000 miles, and desperately needed a tune-up. And so the arrangement has been working out great ever since.

I explained to her about the hoses, and she got all involved in the situation with me. "I JUST HAVE TO DO IT!" I said, "YEAH, YOU HAVE TO COMMIT!" she echoed back. I had already measured hundreds of times. I was ready! I grabbed the razor blade, and stabbed it into the hose, coming out with a nice, clean cut. Then turned it over, and sliced through the other side...

The moment of truth!

It worked! Both angles were perfect, the length in between the two bends was spot-on, and the straight sections after the bends were long enough to fit over the lips of both the radiator and the thermostat housing with enough space for hose clamps and overlap... it couldn't have been any better!

We celebrated, clapped, and laughed out loud.

It was exactly what I needed.

Sometimes, when you are alone in your shop, at night, in the dark, after a long day of work, and you're tired, and hungry, and frustrated over something stupid, you forget to celebrate the success of making something work...

I gathered together the rest of the coolant hoses and stuck notes on blue tape to them, so that I could find the other 3 that I needed for this project. Then, Saturday morning, I headed to the junkyard to gather together some essential parts that had come up missing during the move.

SVreX wrote: People who watch me work sometimes say, "How do you know all this stuff? You never make mistakes". I usually tell them, "I make just as many mistakes as you do. I just fix them faster, and don't cuss when I make them, so you never notice."

HAHA! I like this! I used to have a friend who I shared a shop with, and he always seemed to do everything perfectly the first time. I mentioned it to him once, "How do you know how to do everything!?!?" and he told me that it was just from making mistakes. I didn't believe that he ever made any. Turns out, I was always too involved working on my own stuff to notice when he would make an error on something of his. He started pointing out every time that he screwed up, and then mentioned what he learned, or what he would try next... it blew my mind!

I am slow, I talk to myself, and I get really involved in what I am doing, so much so, that I tend to take things personally after a long day instead of just letting them roll off my back. SILLY!

JThw8 wrote: Amen. I'm constantly asked how I learned this. Heck someone even asked me where I learned to put a subaru engine in the wartburg. The only school for some of this stuff is trial and error. Just pretend you know what you are doing and don't let em see you sweat :) Any "learning" I've done outside of trial and error has mostly come from the great community that is GRM. You have the best possible resource at your fingertips right here.

Nice! Yeah, pretend that I know what I am doing... and then someday, I actually will know!!

friedgreencorrado wrote: Listen to him, Anja. Lots of wisdom here. I've never swapped a non-original engine into one of my cars, but I've helped on a few of my friends' swaps. It seems like we spent half (or more! ) our time standing around looking at the thing trying to figure out how to make it all work together. And sorry about your fuel pump. When I do stuff like that, I usually find the part within two weeks of the UPS/FedEx truck dropping off its replacement. I just try to smile & say, "..at least now I have a spare..".

Absolutely! I swear that 75% of the time that I am hangin' out with Gaia (my Rabbit) I am staring at her and thinking. THINKING! Ack. And usually after a long day at work, my mind is fried, and I just want to do mindless tasks with my hands, not engage brain in intense problem-solving!! Learning to retrain my brain to accept trial-and-error (more importantly, the "error" part, and mistakes being perfectly acceptable, really) at 8 at night on an empty tummy has been the problem as of recently. I need to figure our a better schedule!

If I had more $$, then I guess these things wouldn't be such an issue. Sometimes, I get into situations where, "Oh, it'll be this part, OR groceries.... OR student loan payment..." ack.

Someday I will have a "real job" and these things won't matter. And I'll have health insurance, too! Yeah!!

fornetti14 wrote: I have a MK1 fuel pump that I'm about to toss. PM me if you want it.

YES, I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

anjaloveshervw wrote: Brittany works as the Hostess at the fancy restaurant for the same resort where I do landscaping. One morning, while I was sipping on my tea before work, she had overheard me mention that I didn't have a place to live (and more importantly, put my car) and instantly offered me her space to stay, and a whole garage bay to myself, free of rent. In exchange, I offered to do the maintenance on her 2002 Honda Accord. It hadn't had its oil changed in over 5,000 miles, and desperately needed a tune-up. And so the arrangement has been working out great ever since.

That is totally awesome. The barter system at its finest.

I love how you're learning and doing this stuff on your own, without much outside help, and that you're not afraid to share the gritty details. This thread is like a good book that you can't put down.

Winston wrote: That is totally awesome. The barter system at its finest. I love how you're learning and doing this stuff on your own, without much outside help, and that you're not afraid to share the gritty details. This thread is like a good book that you can't put down.

Why thank you!!

Yes, nowadays I don't get much outside help at all, aside from the internet, but at one point in time, I asked quite a bit of advice from people that I knew. Now I am living on the other side of the country from most of my VW friends, and have disconnected from others... it has actually been really helpful for me to be on my own without any safety net... it has really allowed me to explore my own potential!

and I have to say, I DID get help... from 3 friends... when it came to putting the engine in! I didn't have an engine hoist, winch, or anything! 3 of my neighbors came over and helped me wrestle the engine into place.... :-)

But yes, and thank you !! I will keep it up...

anjaloveshervw wrote: Even though I was frustrated, I seemed to keep my wits about me, and remain solution-oriented. I was in an Auto Parts Store, and I had my mass of hoses. I had taped them together to form the general shapes that I needed, and I held it up to the lady behind the counter. She took one look at my mess and told me to go back into the parts storage and look at all of them hanging on the wall.... I searched for a good 45 minutes, but came up with the closest that I could find for the strange shape that I needed for the lower coolant hose coming from the radiator. (Note: The problem is that you don't want to get into too crazy of shapes, because you don't want to restrict the coolant flow at all... I think that this one will be okay. Oh, and I found my camera, so I can take some shots of all of this, too. Thanks goodness!)

lol, I've been there ... in the back of an autoparts store searching through the hoses looking for the one I needed. I eventually figured something out using a few hoses and a few inner hose tube connectors.

Now looking back though, there's a place by my work that sells professional tubes/pipes/fittings etc. They sell parker products. I'm in Canada so I'm not sure if they're international. Either way they have a solution for everything including hoses that will not kink when bent. Makes for clean easily installations.

bujbot wrote:

anjaloveshervw wrote: Even though I was frustrated, I seemed to keep my wits about me, and remain solution-oriented. I was in an Auto Parts Store, and I had my mass of hoses. I had taped them together to form the general shapes that I needed, and I held it up to the lady behind the counter. She took one look at my mess and told me to go back into the parts storage and look at all of them hanging on the wall.... I searched for a good 45 minutes, but came up with the closest that I could find for the strange shape that I needed for the lower coolant hose coming from the radiator. (Note: The problem is that you don't want to get into too crazy of shapes, because you don't want to restrict the coolant flow at all... I think that this one will be okay. Oh, and I found my camera, so I can take some shots of all of this, too. Thanks goodness!)

lol, I've been there ... in the back of an autoparts store searching through the hoses looking for the one I needed. I eventually figured something out using a few hoses and a few inner hose tube connectors. Now looking back though, there's a place by my work that sells professional tubes/pipes/fittings etc. They sell parker products. I'm in Canada so I'm not sure if they're international. Either way they have a solution for everything including hoses that will not kink when bent. Makes for clean easily installations.

Hmm. That sounds promising.

Yes, the next stop on my journey was Home depot. I arrived with pieces of tube in both hands, and headed straight for plumbing. My hoses had notes written in blue tape, "Need fitting that fits inside of this one, and is this long" with arrows and X's all over them. I came out with a brass fitting, and a steel pipe connector. If the steel piece fits, I think that I will see if I can't file down the inner diameter some, so that the threading won't hinder coolant flow....

...now I am just getting petty.

Just another day, today. Well, not quite. I had a case of the "Mondays"... a rare occasion indeed, but almost instantly upon arriving at work, I decided that I didn't want to be there. A sick day ensued, and I headed to Brittany's garage... henceforth, going to be referred to as the, "Shop". :-) That sounds better...

I decided on the one-hose-inside-the-other trick for fitting the heater core lines. I had some left over from my old Waste Vegetable Oil setup... jacketed coolant lines. Yummy.

A lot of lubricants and great deal of effort later, and my heater core lines were in place and happy! The only problem is the bracket on the hard line definitely needs to be saws-all'ed off, and filed down smooth, of course, as it gets in the way, and is holding NOTHING. :-/ Too bad I no longer have access to such tools. I'll figure something out.

Here's the proof of yesterday's coolant hose success. Darn, these tubes!! If only they were all flexy and the same Inner Diameter. :-/

Nice!

The last one, the upper coolant hose, will be the most difficult. The modification must be made to the very end, where it connects to the top of the radiator. The rest of it is very complicated, and can't really be replicated unless I want a million fittings and 2 million hose clamps.. ack! I already have 2 too many...

And now, riddle me this, folks... I have 2 intake boots here, one with a hose on the side, and one without a hose thing on the side. According to the local Pick-and-Pull, these both came out of 95 Golfs. Now, we all know how accurate these Junkyard inventory-people are... so now, which one is which? I guess I am assuming that one is OBD1, and the other is OBD2, and that extra hose connects up to my Idle Air Control Valve... you know, that thing that I didn't know what it does? Well now that I know what it does, that doesn't mean that I know if it goes with which Computer Management system here... :-/

THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG, PAINFUL BUILD, FOLKS.

Well, maybe not quite for me, as the build-er, but for you who have to sit back and watch me stumble over the basics.

I literally struggled for an hour and a half to put in my axles. OUCH. Seriously, and I didn't even get them in! But now, after dinner, a job interview, and a shower, I am laying in bed writing this and watching a YouTube VW axle installation video. Thank GOD I finally have the internet. What would I ever do without Google, the VWVortex, GRM, and my online support team?? Haha.

Seriously, though. This is going to be a long road... HA! Just wait! I haven't even gotten to the wiring part yet!!!!!!!!

In reply to anjaloveshervw: you will get there! :)

friedgreencorrado wrote:

SVreX wrote: I realize this is not all that comforting (when you are 26), but that stuff is kind of normal when you are putting an engine in a place where it doesn't belong for the first time. It's kind of how you learn. Dropping the motor in the bay is the easy part. Making everything fit nicely is quite a bit tougher. Well, it's not tough, but it will take a lot of patience, and many, many times of redoing things. I figure if I am trying to build nice wiring harnesses, reroute hoses, etc. in a place they don't belong that I will assemble, dismantle, and reassemble pretty much everything several dozen times. Deep breath, be patient. You are doing great!

Listen to him, Anja. Lots of wisdom here. I've never swapped a non-original engine into one of my cars, but I've helped on a few of my friends' swaps. It seems like we spent half (or more! ) our time standing around looking at the thing trying to figure out how to make it all work together. And sorry about your fuel pump. When I do stuff like that, I usually find the part within two weeks of the UPS/FedEx truck dropping off its replacement. I just try to smile & say, "..at least now I have a spare..".

FriedGreen never swapped a non-original engine. He just likes to suggest it.

In reply to N Sperlo:

The more that I talk about it, the more that I realize that not many people out there have actually swapped a non-original engine into their cars. We are the special few :)

N Sperlo wrote: FriedGreen never swapped a non-original engine. He just likes to suggest it.

Well, by "standing around looking at it", I mostly drank beer and pointed at stuff.

friedgreencorrado wrote:

N Sperlo wrote: FriedGreen never swapped a non-original engine. He just likes to suggest it.

Well, by "standing around looking at it", I mostly drank beer and pointed at stuff.

Like your hootus?

... now HERE'S a swapped engine for ya. Squeezed her in there.

Now if i could just get her to run....

Well hello there, everybody!

Coolant hose fiasco is officially over! Well... almost. I have 3 out of the 4 trouble hoses figured out. Only one more to go, and that should be an easy one. ...

"should be"

lol no really, it is almost a straight line, and its to the coolant overflow bottle.

It is true, though... every step of the way begins with, "Oh, this should take about 15 minutes," and ends up being a week-long process that ends up with several trips to the auto parts store, tool stores, and maybe even a Home Depot.

So was the case for this instance. I had to modify every singe hose, surprise, surprise. I cut up 6 different hoses and used 5 of them in order to create 3 connections. In the process, I had to acquire 3 new tools, a grinder, a super-sharp razor blade knife thingy, and a metal file. All good things to have, but not things I was planning on $$buying.... :-/ but I like buying tools.... :-)

There really are only 2 ways that I have of dealing with a road block like this one, and the first leads into the second. First, is the freakout. The "OHMYGODTHISDOESNTFITWHATTHEHELLAMIGOINGTODONOWAAAH" moment. Second, is the moment of clarity. This usually involves me sitting in front of Gaia and having a heart-to-heart. "There is this problem, and I need to figure it out." If I listen hard enough and keep an open mind, she normally tells me what I need to do. The answer is always right in front of me.

The coolant hose that feeds in to the top of the radiator is CRAZY!

Yeah... right. Try fabricating that thing, you'd need like 20 hose clamps!!! And to buy a new one from Techtonics Tuning would be about $70, plus shipping. ACK! What is one to do??

Well, I had already tried to hack it up, but had been unsuccessful in getting it to bend into the top of the radiator. Darn it. It had to bend the other direction, plus, the inner diameter was just a tad too small. It was stretched a little too much for my comfort level.

^^ Here you see the problem, and solution. The pipe fitting there from Home Depot did the trick. I ground down the lip one one side to fit into the smaller hose, and bored out the center to get rid of the threading for maximum coolant flow.

Sweet!

It even looks like it was kind of supposed to be that way.... kind of... sort of... My poor radiator, on the other hand, suffered some damage in the move. :( I hope it will be okay....

That's all for now! This was kind of a busy week, so I hadn't gotten around to much. I do need to fill in the middle of my story here, so that there is some continuity between the engine on the shop floor, and now with my hooking up and such.

Oh, and one last thing: I applied to school yesterday! HA! So now I can go get "educated" :-) More to come on that, also....

friedgreencorrado wrote:

N Sperlo wrote: FriedGreen never swapped a non-original engine. He just likes to suggest it.

Well, by "standing around looking at it", I mostly drank beer and pointed at stuff.

Maybe that's the route I should have taken ;) sounds relaxing!

But... my way is a little more fun !!!!!!