I'm back, I'm chromed, and I'm rattle-free =)

[sTTanford]

Ahh, I've missed posting here! Been MIA for about a month, ever since TT West. I've been crazy busy with school and work, trying to get caught up for all the time I missed working on my car and going to TTW. plus midterms, etc.

OT: Here's a pic of my final project for my mechatronics class. project required a device with 3 different tokens (valued 1, 2, 4) that could be combined to retrieve 3 different products, performances, or services. most people did candy-dispensers and such.

my partner and i decided to provide a performance. the device was modeled off the fountain/light shows often seen at Disneyland or in Vegas. It could switch between audio line-in or microphone input (blue knobs on left). Using basic signal analysis, there were two fountains and one LED (at the base of the 3 Vs) that would respond to low, mid, high frequencies, each with adjustable gains (grey/red knobs).
All of this was done in two weeks.
More pics

Back on topic =) Some might recall i had major clutch/fw problems last time i posted. my last setup was a custom single-mass Alum FW and a 6-puck rigid disk, copper ceramic clutch. the lack of ANY damping in the setup made the tranny chatter like a banshee, and the hardcore racing-style clutch squeeked at every opportunity. definitely not suitable for a daily-driver.

so, enter Pete from Stratmosphere. decided i'd pay the premium and get something i knew would work, and work well. after some mix-up (on strat's part) as to which size clutch (228mm or 240mm) was supposed to go on my car, Pete came thru and over-nighted the correct clutch/PP (pressure plate). clutch is a copper damped-disk, 6-puck. PP appears to be a coated stock one and it feels like the coil springs might be a tad stiffer, but very hard to tell (esp since i havent driven a stock TT in months).

clutch is in, no rattles, no squeeks (after 15 min of driving). i used a new OEM FW since my lightened FW wouldnt work with strat's clutch. very pleased with the results. only time will tell how long this clutch lasts, as copper disks are notoriously short-lived. Strat ended up sending me two (first one was accidentally shippe dground) so i may just keep it for the next time =) sorry, forgot to take pics of it...

Second major problem i had was the power steering lines. Fotki is currently down (as of 3am PST), but if you look HERE you should see 2 pics of my stock PS hoses, and the area that got burned thru. the charred area unluckily ended up RIGHT between my turbine housing and the firewall (about a 2" gap). we planned to do something about it, but it got toasted before we had the chance. we replaced it with stock power steering lines from a VW Rabbit. worked like a charm and doesn't take as tortuous a path. i'll post pics later.

also finished my chrome job. chromed intake tract, MAF housing, all IC pipes and valve cover. also chromed strut tower brace, but it isn't back from the chrome shop yet. polished the entire intake manifold too (kind of a waste since i'm gonna eventually frankenstein it, making the plenum larger and adding ports for secondary injectors).



i'm still suffering on 360cc injectors, and the car STILL hasnt been tuned yet. these copper disks don't need to be broken in for that long, so i'll tune it early next week hopefully. i'll probably be using slightly modified 550cc injectors. still hoping to get up to 350whp.

[hoTTub]

[Larrytt]

[Abel-TT]

[nicetts]

[GoKart3]

[Uncle Silvio]

using microcontrollers?

Sounds like the car is comming along well too. Congrats!

[sTTanford]

Muxs, counters and logic gates for state machine,
basic op-amps for the active bandpass filters, H-bridges for the orange motors, MOSFET for the water pump.

incidentally, the water pump was one that i originally bought from autospeed to be used with their IC mister kit =) Since i dithced the aliens anyway, i figured this pump was spare =)

[Uncle Silvio]