heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Another Bryson project:



Haven't driven it yet, but I have driven Bryson's car with this same brace installed and it does get rid of some very noticeable vibrations. Happy to be making the car more civilized on the street.

[Obioban]

Coby wheels are wrapped over the existing leather making them slightly thicker. Not sure about anyone else, but stock is already borderline too thick. It's more work to take the old leather off and rewrap from the bare wheel, but you can see the difference in the end result. Based on the pictures, Tanik's work is on par with OE, but a few hundred bucks less - 700 vs 1000.

"too thick" is subjective. A previous wheel of mine I had extra foam added, for additional thickness :P

[BADCLOWN]

Both my wheels did not have the old leather or alcantara wrapped over and others that I know have not experienced that either. Mine is factory thickness and reconditioned to, in my opinion, OE or close to spec. I obviously have never had my hands on the company’s product mentioned above but it does look extremely nice.

[Slideways]

Can you elaborate on that? I obviously haven’t experienced the product from the aforementioned company but have had two cobywheels (one in my former ZHP and one in my current) and I think the quality is excellent. Just curious what the difference is, that’s all. Cobywheel always seemed to be the “go to”.

Coby wheels are wrapped over the existing leather making them slightly thicker. Not sure about anyone else, but stock is already borderline too thick. It's more work to take the old leather off and rewrap from the bare wheel, but you can see the difference in the end result. Based on the pictures, Tanik's work is on par with OE, but a few hundred bucks less - 700 vs 1000.

[heinzboehmer]

That quality looks really nice but out of curiosity, why didn’t you go with probably the most commonly known guy that does steering wheel refurb, cobywheel?

Yep, exactly what ugaexploder said.

Basically boils down to me being picky.

[ugaexploder]

Can you elaborate on that? I obviously haven’t experienced the product from the aforementioned company but have had two cobywheels (one in my former ZHP and one in my current) and I think the quality is excellent. Just curious what the difference is, that’s all. Cobywheel always seemed to be the “go to”.

Sure, of course. I think if you care about the M-stitching stuff, I think it might matter more. My design vision may have overdone the M-stitching stuff, but I found out the hard way that none of the M-stitching shown in the photos from most vendors was not right at all. Most of them looked like how the Coby one arrived...which isn't bad, it just has a bit more spacing than I would like. You can see from the photos below for the comparison. This is the reason I ultimately purchased the maar handels steering wheel which was a few hundred more.

Maar handels customer service is actually really great too...I realized my e-brake handle and boot had the stitching not properly aligned in terms of colors. they just sent me a new boot on the house.

COBY E-brake Boot



Maar Handels E-brake Boot

[BADCLOWN]

Can you elaborate on that? I obviously haven’t experienced the product from the aforementioned company but have had two cobywheels (one in my former ZHP and one in my current) and I think the quality is excellent. Just curious what the difference is, that’s all. Cobywheel always seemed to be the “go to”.

[ugaexploder]

That quality looks really nice but out of curiosity, why didn’t you go with probably the most commonly known guy that does steering wheel refurb, cobywheel?

the difference in stitching quality is pretty great between the two. if you can spare the extra money, it’s a no brainer to go with maar handels gmbh. not trying to bad mouth coby stuff, but the stitching on the maar stuff is immaculate.

[BADCLOWN]

That quality looks really nice but out of curiosity, why didn’t you go with probably the most commonly known guy that does steering wheel refurb, cobywheel?

[sbay]

Bit more messing around with Gauge.S. Turns out it's got an internal pullup resistor (R13, 510 ohm) for the D bus that messes with flashing/other DME diag tasks (no I didn't brick my car's DME in the work parking lot, what are you talking about). So I swapped it out for one of a larger value (10k ohm):




All Gauge.S features still work just fine and now I can flash my car without disconnecting the unit!

I then figured out how to get brake pressure data from the MK60 (more info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...4#post266734):



Unfortunately, it requires sending out a D bus that's request different to the DME one, so displaying this alongside the DME parameters is not currently supported. Fortunately, Maciej (aka sorek, Gauge.S creator) is working on adding this feature to the firmware and it should be available soon!

I did also cave and ended up buying V5.1 of the board, as I wanted the upgraded hardware so that I could configure a stupid amount of parameters and not have the thing crash in wifi mode:



But of course nothing ever goes to plan and the new board doesn't work with the MSS54HP for whatever reason. It can communicate just fine with the MK60, so I'm fairly certain it's a firmware issue. Looks like I'm the first one to come across this, so waiting for my new logic analyzer to arrive to do some proper debugging.

And now moving on from electronics to interior stuff.

The fabric dye I used to dye the stitches on the Nogaros black was starting to wear off in high contact areas, so I gave it a quick touchup:




As long as you wipe the fabric marker off the vinyl quickly enough (on the order of a minute), it will not penetrate it at all, so retouching is super easy. Just sloppily paint over the stitches and then wipe away the excess. Took me ~5 min to do both seats.

Afterwards I swapped in something that I've been wanting to for ages. New steering wheel!




I realized I really liked the feel of an alcantara wheel after driving the grey ZCP car around for a while. However, I didn't love the grey alcantara on the ZCP wheel. I considered getting the ZHP wheel since it's ~$600 brand new, but for some reason I really wanted to keep the tricolor stitching (it's probably the only bit of color that I want in the interior). So instead, I opted for a wheel from Maar Handels GmbH (aka Tainik) in 9040 alcantara. Was $700 after tax and shipping from Germany, so about the same as the ZHP one, except with the tricolor stitching.

I'm honestly very impressed with the quality of the wheel. It's not 100% identical to the wheel that came with the car, but it's very, very, very close. So close that it's practically impossible to tell the difference once it's on the car. Here's some comparison pics:












And the best part about this wheel is that the old leather was removed and it's actually been rewrapped properly! None of that "rewrap over the existing leather" nonsense:



Overall extremely pleased with it. We'll see how much I come to hate regularly cleaning an alcantara wheel soon...

Not even mine but I’m also extremely pleased with it . Quality looks top-notch!

[heinzboehmer]

Bit more messing around with Gauge.S. Turns out it's got an internal pullup resistor (R13, 510 ohm) for the D bus that messes with flashing/other DME diag tasks (no I didn't brick my car's DME in the work parking lot, what are you talking about). So I swapped it out for one of a larger value (10k ohm):




All Gauge.S features still work just fine and now I can flash my car without disconnecting the unit!

I then figured out how to get brake pressure data from the MK60 (more info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...4#post266734):



Unfortunately, it requires sending out a D bus that's request different to the DME one, so displaying this alongside the DME parameters is not currently supported. Fortunately, Maciej (aka sorek, Gauge.S creator) is working on adding this feature to the firmware and it should be available soon!

I did also cave and ended up buying V5.1 of the board, as I wanted the upgraded hardware so that I could configure a stupid amount of parameters and not have the thing crash in wifi mode:



But of course nothing ever goes to plan and the new board doesn't work with the MSS54HP for whatever reason. It can communicate just fine with the MK60, so I'm fairly certain it's a firmware issue. Looks like I'm the first one to come across this, so waiting for my new logic analyzer to arrive to do some proper debugging.

And now moving on from electronics to interior stuff.

The fabric dye I used to dye the stitches on the Nogaros black was starting to wear off in high contact areas, so I gave it a quick touchup:




As long as you wipe the fabric marker off the vinyl quickly enough (on the order of a minute), it will not penetrate it at all, so retouching is super easy. Just sloppily paint over the stitches and then wipe away the excess. Took me ~5 min to do both seats.

Afterwards I swapped in something that I've been wanting to for ages. New steering wheel!




I realized I really liked the feel of an alcantara wheel after driving the grey ZCP car around for a while. However, I didn't love the grey alcantara on the ZCP wheel. I considered getting the ZHP wheel since it's ~$600 brand new, but for some reason I really wanted to keep the tricolor stitching (it's probably the only bit of color that I want in the interior). So instead, I opted for a wheel from Maar Handels GmbH (aka Tainik) in 9040 alcantara. Was $700 after tax and shipping from Germany, so about the same as the ZHP one, except with the tricolor stitching.

I'm honestly very impressed with the quality of the wheel. It's not 100% identical to the wheel that came with the car, but it's very, very, very close. So close that it's practically impossible to tell the difference once it's on the car. Here's some comparison pics:












And the best part about this wheel is that the old leather was removed and it's actually been rewrapped properly! None of that "rewrap over the existing leather" nonsense:



Overall extremely pleased with it. We'll see how much I come to hate regularly cleaning an alcantara wheel soon...

[Bry5on]

Is this tune available for public beta testing Bry5on Heinz is running the same setup as me down to the PCS tune, which I am happy with generally minus the fact that some of the adaptations/long term fuel trims are off. Been meaning to do the part throttle integrator tuning too.

Shoot me a PM and we can work something out It’s pretty dialed in at this point.

[repoman89]

On another note, I've been running Bry5on's mullet tune for some weeks now and have nothing but positive things to say about it. I'd say it's about as big of a jump as it was when I did the lambda integrator part throttle fuel tuning. No more weird hesitation at lower RPMs (there was a very noticeable one at ~2.7k that seems to be gone now), downshifts are super consistent now and there's torque!

I find myself downshifting a LOT less on the street now. Pretty great to have the car respond to throttle pedal inputs at lower RPMs. Feels very close to how I remember the stock tune (with stock hardware) feeling like. I'm super happy with the drivability and, as a bonus, my wideband is showing pretty much spot on AFRs everywhere.

Is this tune available for public beta testing Bry5on Heinz is running the same setup as me down to the PCS tune, which I am happy with generally minus the fact that some of the adaptations/long term fuel trims are off. Been meaning to do the part throttle integrator tuning too.

[heinzboehmer]

You should log engine speed with CAN instead of the k-bus. Much higher sample rate and it’ll be timed better with the AFR log.

Oh good call, for some reason I have it set to not log. Need to change that.

And with the brake-snorkel duct at 70mph I’m seeing about +4-5C above ambient, it makes a big difference.

Awesome. Project added to list!

[Bry5on]

Curve looks about right, but a bit leaner than mine around 6k and above 7.5k. I wonder if that’s because I have a pretty restrictive e36 muffler. AFRs generally look pretty safe though.

You should log engine speed with CAN instead of the k-bus. Much higher sample rate and it’ll be timed better with the AFR log.

And with the brake-snorkel duct at 70mph I’m seeing about +4-5C above ambient, it makes a big difference.