PART 1
It's 4am in Chicago right now and I should be en route to Indianapolis to rendezvous with Chris, Nate and a few others and pointed to the mountains of West Virginia for Ruchlos 5.
Instead, I'm on my couch because Tuesday, this happened:
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A long long time ago in a galaxy... Wait, wrong story...
This is a story all about how my life got twisted, turned upside down... No, that's not right
Here's the story, of a lovely lady... yup, that's not it...
Sit right back and I'll tell you a tale, a tale of a fateful trip... Sure, close enough.
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This is a story of grit, tenacity and ultimately, failure.
Let's back up for a minute. After the dyno fiasco I spent a few days re-tuning the car and found that in fact there was noting wrong with it. I tuned it on the road to a very respectable place and spent many days ripping the one nice curvy road we have here in Chicago. I have found that the M1 cam is really quite mild below 4000 RPM but once you hit that, it's heaps more power and that's just lovely.
Last weekend in anticipation of Ruchlos, I cleared my calendar and devoted two full days to driving. Refining the highway fueling to give me nearly 30mpg, dialing in a wnadering idle and just shaking the car out. IT was wonderful- me and the girlfriend took senic drives, I made her giggle with a 40-120mph rip and life was feelign good.
I decided to commute to work this week becasue why not- it's a 4 mile trip through a forest preserve and spring has sprung so it's quite lovely. Monday was flawless. Tuesday was flawless... until it wasn't.
Midway through the drive the car died while going 20mpg. I got it restarted instantly but then it promptly shut down again. No noises, no smoke, no nothing. I pushed on to a side street and began diagnosing it.
I found a blown fuse on spark bank 2 (456) and changed that. Success! THe car fired up and I was on my way... or so I thought. It was idling rough and the AFRs were spiking to 20 but I could smell the fuel... Fals lean... Ok. In gear and under acceleration, it stumbled and nearly shut down. More RPM and it seemed fine... Until again, it shut down.
Tow called. Morning shot.
Back at my work where the car lives, I pulled out my laptop and started triaging the situation. I used TunerStudio to confirm the injectors were working and then moved to spark. I was able to get cyl 1 to test positively but none others. Moving back to cyl 1 and it too was now not responding. I confirmed all the wiring and continuity just in case something had become loose or melted and then called AMP/EFI the makers of the ECU to troubleshoot. The tech was great and we worked through a bunch of tests. Having no success with spark, he suggested sending the ECU in for evaluation just in case as he started to worry about a transistor or something…
So, I pulled and packed the ECU and relayed the news to the boys who had been texting all day trying to brainstorm: no Ruchlos for me.
I cleaned up my work, threw away a bunch of crap and went home gutted.
Sigh.
Wednesday morning comes and I’m pissed. I had been anticipating Ruchlos for a full year, the car had new cams, a new ECU, a brand new trans with a taller 5th and LSD. I was ready to rip! I started thinking about the system and what could have gone wrong. Gabe suggested that I go buy another coil and test it with the ECU just in case. Well it turns out that I had three VW/Audi coils… or I thought I did… where were they… IN THE TRASH and I COULD HEAR THE TRUCK COMING!
Like a raccoon in the early hours I was in my dumpster digging around for a bag of coils whine the truck waited. In what would be the first of many triumphs I shot up and exclaimed “not today motherfu…” with coils in hand.
ECU unboxed, and installed, coil rigged up as the connectors on my Denso coils don’t fit the Audi coils (dear reader, note this moment of foreshadowing) and into TunerStudio test mode and WE HAVE SPARK!!!
Ok, it’s 9:00 am and I have a plan: order more coils and connectors, build new harnesses and reap the rewards! Unfortunately, none of those parts are in stock locally at any stores. But NAPA will have then delivered for same-day pickup. Order placed. Now to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
I suppose the wait was good as in the ensuing 6 hours I completed the rest of the week’s work, cleaned my studio, and caught up on emails.
2:30pm rolls around and I receive a text that my order is ready. I hightail it to the NAPA store, giving my A6 Allroad a workout that undoubtedly left the turbo glowing red. 20 mis later I was back at work with PARTS IN HAND!!!
Success!!