If you haven't done the timing belt before on your S4 but read how large of a job it is... it's no joke. Soooo much stuff to move out of the way. Basically everything on the front of the card minus the inner coolers needed to be removed. Erik from I.P.M. Auto Service again helped me out a ton. Let's be honest I was more of his assistant on this job (like I normally am). Messing with anything in regards to the engine's timing is not something I wanted to learn the wrong way.
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I know I sound like a 2 year old but, I can finally say after 6 years and a lot of $$$ my S4 is finally paid off. So maybe 2014 will be the year I can finally start a big projects or two.... assuming I can get the "OK" from the wife.
Possible Ideas:
Over the weekend my wife and daughter went camping near Mt. Rainier. I joked with my wife that the S4 is going to be jealous that we got to go on some sweet twisty roads... little did I know that some how my S4 was tipped off about these roads. We get home, open the garage and find a nice large puddle of coolant sitting under the car as if it was giving me the finger. Oh, happy days.
So I got a coolant leak somewhere. Unlikely the Aux water pump as that was replace recently and the coolant temp sensor is looking fine and it was replaced recently as well. I hope it was just a hose that came off or something simple. In any case, I need to get my thermostat replaced (it's stuck open 75% of the time) so this might be the sign to get it done. Which also means I should replace the timing belt. Let's not forget the rear brake pads are in need of replacing (hope there is enough rotor left). Anyone got a credit card or two I could borrow? ;) For the time being, the S4 is staying in the garage for a week or so since I don't have the $$$ for parts to fix it. I have an aftermarket Alpine stereo installed and love it. No it's not as clean looking as the factory setup but, it offers the missing features the factory stereo just could not offer. That said the one thing that I really liked about the factory stereo was that it did not shut off until you pull the key literally out of the ignition. Installing the Alpine deck many many years ago lost that feature and I've always been searching for a way around that.
So for the past view days I've been literally sitting in my car trying to find something I could tap the "remote switch" wire from my aftermarket stereo into that I knew would not turn off until the key was pull out of the ignition. I only found two options, was the power windows or into the one of the small L.E.D. bulbs for the window and lock buttons on the driver side door. The down side to this is that once the door opens those stopped receiving power. Not exactly how the factory stereo worked before... but it was close. I used the projected fog lamps that came stock off a MK3 Jetta GLX VR6. No, not my old car, but my little brother's car as he was donating it. His car had seen better days so I took what I needed before it was towed away. Eye'ing the MK3 fogs and a spare set of stock B5 S4 fogs I had, there looked to be some possibility to making it work. Obviously I'm looking for simple functionality because the 3000k HID's I have in my stock fogs now just weren't being used to their full potential. First time in years I can finally say... my S4 is error code free! Fixed a recent misfire and replaces the bank 2 sensor 2 O2 sensor. My Evap Purge Valve was acting up, but I put some Seafoam solution in it and to my surprise that cleared up that code. Let's see how long this last....
**Update 11/30/2012** Ok well that didn't last long... just got a new code for the Bank 2 sensor 1 O2 sensor. I knew I should have replaced both. Oh well I was just trying to get past emissions at the time so another fix for another time. If it hasn't happened to you, it will some day. Our cars have a weak point with the headlight washer pump that causes all of the washer fluid to leak out of the system. Likely it's related to removing the front bumper from over the years... not sure. Anyway, since I would rather not wasting my money on filling up the washer fluid once a day, I just let it go dry. The down side is that everytime I start the car I get a chime and Mount Saint Helens like animation goes off in the cluster. At the time I discovered the leak and found out how involved it was to get it fixed, I figured I could live with the washer fluid warning light.... 3 months later I'm getting sick of it! I know, "just fix the leak", you say, but replacing the EGT's was just a pain in the a$$ and I'm a little low on motivation and cash.
So I did a little reading online and came up with a idea, I'm sure I'm not the first, but I didn't find any exact D.I.Y.. Sorry no pics as I did this about 5 mins prior to leaving for work this morning. Steps below the break:
Finally replaced both my driver and passenger side EGT Sensors. One was completely dead and the other was having intermittent issues.
Passenger side was easy to replace, but the driver side was not fun... not fun at all! I'm convinced that there is some sort of speciality tool to get it out. I'll put it this way, it took way longer then the suggest 2 hours. Even with help from my friend Erik from I.P.M. Auto Service, it took a while to get it out. I hope I never have to replace those again. Last on my list to replace is the Bank 1 & 2 Sensor 2 O2 Sensors. Those are the very rear sensors that you can easily get to from under the car. And finally replace a leaking EVap Purge Valve. Again another easy fix when I get the parts. I can say that the car pulls harder with the EGT Sensors replaced. It's still hitting the same boost level but likely has a better air to gas mixture. Not really sure as I'm no expert. I'm still running into issues were the car will do this randomly and light bucking/surging when on partial throttle. Very noticeable going down a slight hill with the cruise control on. Already replaced the TB and now the EGT, so I'm running out of possible causes for it. Maybe there is bad motor mount allowing too much movement. Or a ICM is going bad. Not sure and I don't want to throw parts at it. Need to do some more research and testing....
If you've seen my car in person there likely one thing you've noticed is my low hanging exhaust piping. Not a subject that I've wanted to talk about as I could have likely gotten it fixed a few years back, but I really did not like the place that I went to. When my wife noticed it a few weeks back I knew it was time to get it fixed.
So I went to a local muffler shop (mufflerkingperformance.com) just down the road and had them fix it. Told them while they were at it to go a head and remove the resonator as my exhaust just seemed too quiet for my likely. I don't want to wake up the neighbors... but I still DO want people to hear me as I'm passing them at full WOT! Anyway, two hours later and for $120 my exhaust was finally the way it was suppose to be. They replace the piping from the cats to the muffler. Now I just need to clean it up and give it a wash, polish the tips, and likely take some steel wool to get ride of a little rust around the old welds. I'll give it a few months and will do a new videos so you can compare the sound difference. I've been wanting to convert my brake lights to LED's for some time now, but simply the technology was just not there yet. I did replace the bulbs for my center brake light in the window some time ago which has worked flawlessly ever since. As for the actual brake lights it was going to be a little bit of an investment. This bulbs aren't cheap. About $17 a bulb which will likely to out last my car. As always I went with Superbrightleds.com. I order two 1157-R3X1W bulbs.
The S4 is back under the knife. Finally I'm getting my Power Slot Cryo Slotted Rotors and the Akebono Ceramic brake pads all installed at I.P.M. Auto Services. Also my right rear bearing decides it was going into retirement so that is getting replaced. I just had the rear driver side replace 2 months ago, go figures. Rear Swaybar link are pretty shot so those are going to be replaced as well. And lately the bots that adjust the camber are likely going to need to be replaced. I can't remember the technical name of them but my right rear tire was maxed out and my last alignment Firestone could not get it perfectly in spec. As for Coilpack conversion this has been something I've been following for a little while. As we all know the B5 S4 does not have the greatest record when it comes to our expensive Coils and ICM. I have been through 6 coil at this point. The great thing for this conversion is for one, you eliminate your ICM's. Keep in mind that if once of your ICM goes bad you are going to be misfiring on 3 cylinders as each ICM controls half the block. The 2.0t coils have them build into either coil, which cost $15-$25 each compared to the stock coils of $50-100 each. Also, the 2.0t coil have a easy twist on/off feature which makes replacing them extremely easy and insanely fast. And lastly they offer a much improved spark. Some Audizine users have said they have gapped their plugs up to .044" to experience a butter smooth idle and power delivery. No results on if this improves MPG but I have a feeling it likely will help maybe 1-2 mpg. To learn more about this conversion feel free to check out http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/452609-Teaser-2-0T-Coil-packs. I just learned that 034motorsport.com offer the complete kit, but it's a pretty big investment. I might be interested in getting the wiring from them but I'm still pricing around for the coils and checking if a local machine shop could make the brackets if I can find the specs. If you've been following my blog for a while you know we don't get snow often in the Seattle area. Well, we finally got some and of course I'm not going to miss my chance to take the S4 our for some fun... I'll add more picture later this week.
Also I'm still looking for a hood. Let me know if you got one for same that is the same color. Thanks! Don't buy from DDMTuning.com1/11/2012 I've had nothing but good experience with them when installing my past 4 hid kits, two on my car, one on VW Jetta, and anther on a Honda CRV. This time when getting another kit for my dad's F-150 they sent me the wrong color of bulbs in additional the bulb backing crack creating a poor seal to the headlamps. After contacting DDM Tuning they would only replace the entire kit and not just the bulbs. I explain to them that was not nessary since the bulbs just need to be replaced. I ask if I could just purchase replacement bulbs and they could refund the broken bulbs once they were shipped back. They replied back saying they were not willing to do that. I sent a reply asking why they could not do that and no reply for the past 5 days. Good thing my father works for a law firm (http://www.perkinscoie.com/). I guess we will be taking legal action unless they reply in the next 48 hours.
Both my front outer tie rod ends were bad so I had Erik at I.P.M. Auto Service replace them and an alignment completed at Firestone. Car drives butter smooth now. Looks like my Rotor have been delayed because of high demand, so I likely will not get them installed until next month.
Also, anyone that lives around Seattle/Redmond area, Erik is offering a 15% off discount for any service until the 12/23. There is more info at his site IPMAutoServices.com. Just tell him Todd from MyS4.org referred you. Finally got my driver side rear wheel bearing fixed. This was so bad it was like I was driving on a dirt road at 60mph. The sad thing is that this is the second bearing to go in on the same hub in 2 years. If this one goes bad in the same time frame then my hub is going to need to be replaced. Big thanks to Erik at I.P.M. Auto Service for getting it fixed. Next on my list is to get my passenger side front outer tie rod replaced. The boot around the end has gone missing and its creaking pretty good when you are going around a corner. Hopefully will have that done before our Christmas drive to Northeastern Oregon. Lastly, my new front rotors should be in the mail soon. I got a pair of Power Slot Cryo Slotted Rotors from aspectuning.com. After researching for several hours, getting the Cryo treatment seemed to be a good investment. Our S4's seem to run into a lot of warping issues, so hopefully this will help. I'm going to pair them up with Akebono Ceramic brake pads. Several people from the forums have been swearing by these pads as they leave almost zero dust and perform very nicely. Hopefully these rotors and pad will be a nice combo. I should have a good review in a month or so. Alternator is all fixed! I might be imagining things but the S4 feels a lot stronger. Maybe the old alternator was working hard to produce voltage and taking away some power from the engine. I don't know. Anyway had to re-align the fog lights since they were a little off because the bumper was removed. I think I might have some good help for feature project (see left). My daughter is only 1 (21 months) years old and she figured how to help me install a fog light after watch me with the other one. Anyway, all that is left on the repair list is a possible EGT Sensor and replacing the injector gaskets as one of them has a vacuum leak. Not looking forward to that one as it takes forever to removing the fuel rails, but I've done it before when replacing the Aux Water Pump so hopefully it will go faster. Well it appears my alternator is on it's way out. The little one was sleeping in the back seat and I was in a parking lot waiting for my wife to come out of the store when my radar detector flashed low voltage. It does that from time to time but usally a power cycle will fix it. This time it did not. A min later the battery light on my car flashed on. This is the first time I've seen that icon. Looked at the ScanGuageII and it says the voltage was 10.1 volts. Oh wow, that's not good. Turned the stereo, blower, and A/C off and volatage went to 11.1 volts. The idle started to get a little ruff so I drove around the block thinking it would help the alternator charge up the battery. Well no luck and the voltage level is starting to dip down again. I guess back to the shop to get it looked at. Currently I'm keeping the battery charged with a battery charger. It seems to be helping for the time being...
Well I got a coolant leak somewhere on the S4. Last weekend when driving to Portland, OR. it started overheating when we were stuck in traffic. I come out to the garage today to find a big puddle of coolant on the floor and zero coolant in the car. Thank god my wife now works at my friend's auto shop... we will see what the issue is now. Also, got a odd electric motor sound. Hard to explain but it sound like a electric motor running like mad. I don't think it is a bad turbo but something else. I hope it is not the Aux (after run) pump as I just replaced that last summer. I'm sorry to say, but once the auto loan is paid off it may be time to find something that is more reliable. Seems the more I baby this car the more it craps on me. The credit card can't take anymore... if you know what I mean. Update... So it is just a leak in the reservoir tank. So a easy fix with a new tank. Parts should be in tomorrow and replaced in no time. Likely time to do a coolant flush since it's mostly running on water.
When driving home with my wife and 1 year old daughter I noticed some hesitation on normal acceleration. So I did a WOT in 2nd gear and man my car did not like that. It start to misfire really bad. So I continued on home and within 2 block of getting there I lost at least 90% of my power. I barely could get the car in the garage. My ScanGaugeII was not picking up any error code so that was not a good sign. Also, my car smelled like sulfur.
I call up my friend Erik that owns I.P.M. Auto Service here in Redmond and ask him if he could bring the Vag-com over. After a quick scan it showed that cylinder 6 was the only one misfiring. We took out the spark plug and it looked just fine. So we swapped in a old OEM coil pack that I had kept just in case. Fired up the S4 and it was running fine. First time I was able to get something fixed in under a hour and at no cost. What's odd is that all of my coil packs were replaced 2 years ago/30,000 miles so they are not old at all. They are the Beru brand so maybe the quality is not that great. Hopefully the rest of them are ok and stay that way for a while. Well I got a 3 inch dent in my hood. My little brother in his CRV backed into me while we were installing a HID kit. I didn't notice the dent until a week later. I will post a picture soon. If you know of anyone that has a Santorin Blue Hood whether its for a S4 or A4 let me know. Send a message here. Update: Search goes on...
I still have not found a hood. Which is really odd. I figured there would be one in a junk yard around Seattle and nothing. I may have to see if I can go the PDR (paintless dent repair) route. I know I live in the Seattle area. We don't get much snow normally. This year we have the high chance of having the coldest winter in 50 years. So what does that mean? Maybe 12 inches or more of snow for the winter season. I know it's not a lot. The problem is when a storm hits, pretty much the entire western side of the state shuts down. We don't have enough snow plows nor enough money to really operate them. That being said and having a 1 year old in a one car family, I would say it is important that we are able to get to the place we need to get to no matter the conditions. Plus it is just fun driving around in the snow.... as long as the rest of the state stays off the roads. People around here don't prepare for snow and don't have a clue how to drive in it. Anyways I got these tires off of TireRack.com for about $162 per tire (including shipping). I order them on 11/16 and got them on 11/18... and that was with the cheapest shipping option. I was impressed. Once we get a storm I will let you know what I think of them. The only think I've notice as of right now is the tires feel very light vs my all-seasons Falken Ziex ZE 912. My thoughts are the side walls are likely not going to be as stiff but that's ok. As long as I don't crack any more rims like I did two years ago when we had a bad storm. Update: Well we just got our first snow storm this season last night (11/22/2010). I have to say these tires are very good in compact snow and ice. Great grip for braking. I took the S4 out for some fun last night in a parking lot and I have to say that this tires kind of take out the fun in drifting because the grip so well. We did not get enough snow to see how they handle in deep power but I'm sure that they will do well. Anyway, I highly recommend them.
I wanted to do this over a year ago and just never got around to it. I had ordered the fog bulbs (H7) a long time ago when I upgrade my headlights to the 55w DDM Slim Ballast kit but found out the hard way my stock HID ballast would not work with the bulbs that I had ordered. So I order the Apexcone Raptor HID Kit from DDMTuning, which are about twice the width of the Slim ballast kit. I wish I had gotten the Slim Ballast kit because finding a area to put the ballast and not block air flow to the intercooler was not easy. I finally settled on placing them under the intercooler ducting and the inside lower part of the bumper. Kind of hard to explain. Either way they are out of sight and should stay pretty dry. The fog lamp housing requires a little modifications to get the HID bulb and wiring to working. I'll try to post some pictures to show you what I did. After some quick wiring I got everything fired up. I was surprised to find out that the beam pattern is pretty sharp for the fog lamps. Almost comparable to a projected headlamp (meaning: using optical lens). I re-adjusted the fog lamps levels to make sure they were not pointed to high. With 55w HID headlamps (compared to stock 35w kit) and 35w HID fogs, the last thing I want to do is blind people and or get pulled over by the local authorities. So they have a 10-15 degrees downward angle similar to the headlamps. I took it for a test drive and living around Seattle, WA it was raining hard. The conditions were perfect since 3000K is a true yellow color so it helps illuminate the road better then other color ranges in wet or foggy conditions. At first, I was a little disappointed that they weren't brighter but then realized that this ballast kit aren't as quick to warm up vs. my the Slim Ballast kit. I would say they take 30-45 seconds vs the 5-10 seconds for my headlamps. The color starts off as a warm white color and then gradually turns to a true rally car like yellow. Once they are fully warmed up they work perfectly with the headlamps. The 4500k kit in the headlight is great at distance while the 3000k in the fog really brings out the road 20-30 feet from the front of the car. In summary, I'm really happy with the overall setup. If you live in a wet or foggy area I would highly recommend this setup. I hope to have pictures up in the next week. If you have any questions feel free to post a comment below. Pictures of the Install...
I'm sorry this took so long to get up. I know a lot of you have been asking for this video and I wanted to make sure it wasn't crap. I also wanted to make sure the exhaust was fully broken in. I do have to say that Audi did a great job keeping engine and exhaust noise out of the cabin because it wasn't until I make this video did I really notice what this exhaust system sounded like. I how you guys in enjoy the video! It appears my driver side EGT (exhaust gas temperature) sensor has gone bad. The passenger side is record the temperature normally and changes as the car warms up and cools down. The driver side get to a set tempature and then just stays there and does not move. The car does have a slight misfire and my thoughts are maybe is this is screwing up the air to fuel ratio. I found on ECS Tuning's site you can get a pair for $299. Next pay check I'll be ordering them.
Not a lot has happen for 6 months now since my wife and I having our daughter. Family first! I did get a second job so a little money is finally going to the S4. Got my A/C working again since the compressor switch failed. Had to take off the front end to get to it. Thanks again for the help from my buddy Erik at I.P.M. Auto Service.
Went to Dan Fast Muffler & Brake and got a 3 inch custom cat-back Magnaflow exhaust installed. I did get a resonator install just so it wasn't too loud. So far it is sounding great! I know over time the sound will change so we will wait and see what it sounds like several months later. I do have to say the S4 for sure feel much more torque'e... if that is a word. Most people say they feel more power at the top end with a exhaust but I feeling it more a the bottom end. Maybe it is helping the turbos spool up faster. It was around $550 for parts and labor so I'm happy with the end result! | ArchivesNovember 2022 CategoriesAll |