ALH Turbo Delete: Daily Driving a Naturally Aspirated 2001 Golf

[Nero Morg]

There's more to power than just boost pressure. I don't think the logic of no turbo halves the hp rating works that way.

 

[Mozambiquer]

I saw your mention in the what did you do thread. I think it's kinda interesting. I've thought about doing sdi for fun. Maybe on a swap into an mk1... I put a NA 1.6 diesel in a 1998 Jetta that had been the 2.0. it was a gutless wonder, but could go highway speeds with no problem. Well,I say no problem... Getting to that speed was interesting, to say the least, not to mention having ac on (yes, I did keep that)
But now I have my golf that has a stage 4 tune, bigger injectors and turbo... It wouldn't be so fun. But I still know how it goes, since my truck is a 1983 ford ranger with the factory 59hp perkins diesel. There's no getting anywhere fast with that!

 

[[486]]

Well, driving home today and the turbo in my stock wagon started making louder bad noises than it had been making for a few thousand miles now, lost boost and gained a lot of smoke.
Got pulled over into a gas station parking lot and got the intake pipe off with a vise grip and used a sawzall blade as a screwdriver to loosen the hose clamps that someone had put on it... sure enough, compressor wheel dangling about in there
popped the upper charge cooler pipe off to keep more metal from going into the motor
crimped the oil feed line shut with the vise grips
unplugged the MAF and drove home, prolly only stopped for 10 minutes

These cars are just great, even a major failure can be fixed 'good enough' with junk laying in the passenger's footwell.
Gonna block off the oil feed and drain better tomorrow.
IIRC I used an o2 sensor plug to block off the drain port in the block on the insight swap so I should be able to find one of those pretty easily. Oil feed just needs a short 12x1.75 bolt and a stack of copper washers.

Might just put a bolt through the CHRA like you did, it'll block the oil drain and the exhaust manifold at the same time...

 

[[486]]

Ended up breaking all but the two stainless bolts holding the CHRA in as it was rather rusty back there
Tore the oil drain hose up because the block adapter came loose with the hose's nut

ended up just drilling out a 1/2-13 nut to use for blocking off the oil feed, used an o2 sensor plug to plug the block port for the oil drain, then hit the center housing with a bit of weld to plug the holes, then welded the center housing into the manifold rather than mess with the broken off M6 bolts

took a page from your book and zero'd out the boost request maps to 999 mbar and set the smoke limiters to a flat AFR of 17:1, doing it again I'd bump it up to 16.5:1 or thereabouts but I'm much too lazy to get the laptop out for that small of a change

While driving it around I had the thought that this would be an easy way for people without winOLS to do a wastegate turbo conversion to an engine map. Just let the MAP sensor dangle on the wires reading atmospheric pressure, then use the MAF readings alone for the fueling control. You don't have any overboost protections but that isn't exactly as much a factor with wastegated stuff like it is for vane stuff.

 

[NarfBLAST]

and set the smoke limiters to a flat AFR of 17:1, doing it again I'd bump it up to 16.5:1

Can you elaborate on how set up a specific AFR? I just turned them up until I saw smoke and then turned them back. I guess there is some math, okay I could probably figure it out, but then I guess different injectors and other setttings are going to make it hard to "measure" the fuel part?

 

[[486]]

Can you elaborate on how set up a specific AFR? I just turned them up until I saw smoke and then turned them back. I guess there is some math, okay I could probably figure it out, but then I guess different injectors and other setttings are going to make it hard to "measure" the fuel part?

well, both the fuel and air in the map are mg/str so its pretty basic math...
if you've got stock fuel hardware and maf based smoke maps (actually I've never played around with pressure based fuelling so maybe its the same?)

with a different set of injectors or a different injection pump setup, you pretty much just guess at it by looking at the smoke as you did

 

[wonneber]

Anybody that thinks this is unsafe due to lack of power has never experienced an A2 Jetta with all of 52 hp out of a NA 1.6 IDI. ?

I would have to agree with you.
A Prius would also be in that pile.

 

[[486]]

I would have to agree with you.
A Prius would also be in that pile.

priuses are actually quite spritely compared to stock VW diesels
hell, I'd put one up against a stock ALH as a pretty even match

now a 1st gen insight with a dead hybrid battery is starting to get there, but its still 60hp in a 1600lb? car

 

[Mozambiquer]

priuses are actually quite spritely compared to stock VW diesels
hell, I'd put one up against a stock ALH as a pretty even match

now a 1st gen insight with a dead hybrid battery is starting to get there, but its still 60hp in a 1600lb? car

How about a Prius with a bad hybrid battery... Oh wait, then they won't even go (I've experienced that)
Not sure why people think a stock ALH is gutless. My sister has a bone stock 03 Jetta, and it's not too bad. Much better than a Prius for sure.
But the people who say an ALH is slow probably haven't driven a mk1 rabbit pickup with the 1.5 liter diesel with all of 48 horsepower.

 

[Nero Morg]

Y'all keep comparing them to priuses, well apparently you've never driven a 7.3 idi crew cab. Sometimes it's scary to merge onto the freeway, it's so God awful slow.