Categories
Idle

Getting wired (again)

Taking a chunk of wire out of the harness did improve matters for me, but not quite enough and more needs to come out. This time, however, it’s extra plugs that are being removed.

One of the recommendations on the forums was to create an adapter harness to go between the A4 and A6 plug mapping so you don’t have to cut up the 2.7T harness. This seems good in theory, until you realize you need to cut into the harness upstream of the A6 plugs anyway.  The adapter harness really just ends up being a bunch of extra plastic bulk that won’t fit into the plenum chamber (and you need to make sure that’s closed so the ECU and/or your feet don’t get wet).

Started with the slow process of cutting individual wires on either side of the A6 plugs and immediately reconnecting them. Doing it one at a time made it easier to organize the wires by plug. By grouping the wires together I hope to better bundle them to save space.

A short 6 hours later the majority of the extra plugs are removed and the wire rearranged. I can now fit the TCU and ECU both into the plenum box. there is, however, still a long way to go to tame the rat’s nest enough that it will fit back into the plenum box.

Categories
Cars

Exhausted

My new pipes are now fully on the car and mostly tightened down.

Still a bit of straightening to do, but at least now the car can be driven without annoying the neighbors or, more importantly, me (the drone in the cabin was aweful).

The Magnaflow cat-back system was mostly plug-and-play. A bit of customization was, however, needed.

Because my cheap import down pipes wouldn’t fit around the automatic transmission they needed to be cut up. We did the best we could to get them down and out in the correct location, but they were way off. Fortunately they cheap pipes also came with some straight test pipes which I cut mercilessly.

My buddy and I then proceeded to learn how to weld on them. They are super, super ugly, but what the hell. It was a good learning experience and I’m not trying to win any car shows with the work. Besides. These are in place until I swap the automatic for a manual and get a fresh set of down pipes.