heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Cool...I've been wondering about replacing the seat studs in my car. Any reason to not install studs in the rear holes as well?

No reason really. Went with bolts simply cause I had new ones in the garage and I did not have two more studs.

[bigjae46]

Hardware I ordered to fix the seat studs arrived.

New studs installed with red threadlocker:

Cool...I've been wondering about replacing the seat studs in my car. Any reason to not install studs in the rear holes as well?

[heinzboehmer]

Yes S5 with DSC on, S6 with DSC off. The CSL tune will help with overall shift performance. Remember there are adjustments to make on the main DME and SMG DME. If clutch is slipping due to age that could impact as well.

Makes sense, thanks for the info. I'll give it a try in those modes.

For now, car is staying locked in the garage until I do the bearings

[oceansize]

Transmission is shifting much slower than I expect. It's possible that I wasn't in S5 or S6 though. Dumb question but S5 is max bars with DSC on and S6 is max bars with DSC on?

Yes S5 with DSC on, S6 with DSC off. The CSL tune will help with overall shift performance. Remember there are adjustments to make on the main DME and SMG DME. If clutch is slipping due to age that could impact as well.

[heinzboehmer]

It is. No auto mode, ever, just yikes. S5 or S6 only. CSL tune will help. Let off the gas just a hair on shift. I've gone back and forth on letting off the gas and I've finally settled on it does seem to help a bit. If you've got a 181k and the original clutch/pp I'd say your due lol.

Yeah I figured out the no auto mode thing pretty fast. It's not goot at all. Thing I have trouble with is timing when to let off the throttle. Transmission is shifting much slower than I expect. It's possible that I wasn't in S5 or S6 though. Dumb question but S5 is max bars with DSC on and S6 is max bars with DSC on?

Slave cylinder blew a hole through the clutch pivot fork 15k mi ago and all that was replaced. For some reason clutch wasn't, but invoice says it was inspected and "is good" lol. I'll throw a new one in if it starts giving me trouble.

Also, thanks for the reminder about the SMG work, forgot to list that above. Updated.

Yeah it's going to be really cool seeing the condition of the bearings. Please do keep us updated when you do that.

Agreed! Will definitely post pictures when I take the thing apart

[0-60motorsports]

Yep!

Here's all the good things about it:

- ZCP
- Built 04/25/06
- Clean title
- No accidents
- California car
- Cinnamon interior
- Has every single option (even the rear sunshade!)
- VANOS done
- SMG pump rebuilt
- Completely stock
- Cheap!

And the not so good:

- Originally alpine white (which would have been awesome against cinnamon, sigh), but was resprayed some sort of metallic grey by the previous, long term owner
- Car sat in a driveway most of it's life, so paint is hazy, but looks like a paint correction can fix that
- 181k mi and still on original rod bearings (!). Actually kinda excited about this one, really want to see what those bearings look like
- SMG. It's still on all stock everything, so maybe the CSL tune will help, but man SMG is weird

Yeah it's going to be really cool seeing the condition of the bearings. Please do keep us updated when you do that.

[oceansize]

Yep!
- SMG. It's still on all stock everything, so maybe the CSL tune will help, but man SMG is weird

It is. No auto mode, ever, just yikes. S5 or S6 only. CSL tune will help. Let off the gas just a hair on shift. I've gone back and forth on letting off the gas and I've finally settled on it does seem to help a bit. If you've got a 181k and the original clutch/pp I'd say your due lol.

[heinzboehmer]

Yep!

Here's all the good things about it:

- ZCP
- Built 04/25/06
- Clean title
- No accidents
- California car
- Cinnamon interior
- Has every single option (even the rear sunshade!)
- VANOS done
- SMG pump rebuilt with Burkhart stuff
- SMG slave cylinder replaced recently
- Completely stock
- Cheap!

And the not so good:

- Originally alpine white (which would have been awesome against cinnamon, sigh), but was resprayed some sort of metallic grey by the previous, long term owner
- Car sat in a driveway most of it's life, so paint is hazy, but looks like a paint correction can fix that
- 181k mi and still on original rod bearings (!). Actually kinda excited about this one, really want to see what those bearings look like
- SMG. It's still on all stock everything, so maybe the CSL tune will help, but man SMG is weird

[Obioban]

Ha. Did you get a 2nd?

[heinzboehmer]

Waaait what

[heinzboehmer]

Isn't 45nm like 35 ft-lbs? What am I missing?

45 Nm + 90 deg. Ends up stupid tight after the angle

[discoelk]

Isn't 45nm like 35 ft-lbs? What am I missing?

[heinzboehmer]

So, uh, I might need to work on my critical thinking skills a little...

I had previously been blindly following the TIS torque specs for the seat bolts (shown below) and it wasn't until yesterday that I started questioning why they were so ridiculously high.



I think it's fairly obvious that I caused these failures by sticking to that spec.

Anyway, new bolts are torqued to much more reasonable M10 numbers (~50 lb-ft), which should help preserve the threads. I do need to add the passenger side seat rail bracket to my junkyard shopping list, though. Pretty sure those threads are also going to fail whenever I go to remove that seat.

[heinzboehmer]

Hardware I ordered to fix the seat studs arrived.

New studs installed with red threadlocker:



I wanted to get a stud with an unthreaded portion in the middle so that it was easy to tell when it was fully installed and also easy to tell if it ever backed out. Unfortunately, I was unable to find one with the correct dimensions, so had to use a fully threaded one. I measured it out and marked the threads that would not be exposed when fully installed. If I ever see that mark then I'll know it backed out. I also drew an arrow facing forward as another indicator of the same thing.


And of course that wasn't the end of my seat mounting troubles. When I got the car, the threads for the back right bolt were cross threaded. I chased them and they held torque well, but it was only a matter of time until they fully failed. No big deal though, this one was way easier to fix with a timesert compared to the front ones.

Destroyed (and masked so that metal shavings wouldn't get between the chassis and the carpet):



Fixed:



Hard to see, but I added some locating marks to this insert as well. Not as important as the fronts, since this one does bottom out when fully installed, but figured why not.

Now just waiting for the thread locker to cure while I do some math and figure out what to torque all this new hardware to.

[heinzboehmer]

Recently went through the partial throttle tuning process described here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/s...or-drivability

Man, what a difference. It's hard to put into words how the car feels now because it just feels so normal. Almost boring? As in, the car just drives like a car and requires no extra attention/skill to drive it smoothly around town. No more weird bucking, hesitation or stumbling. Still a riot at higher throttle inputs though. I'm very happy with the outcome.

Wrote more detailed notes up in that original thread, but figured I'd post a quick summary here too.

Here's a comparison of my final warm VE table to stock CSL after all the iterations:



I also interpolated those corrections, applied them to the warm up VE table and did one iteration on it using the same technique. This is a comparison of the interpolated table and the table after one iteration:



Effectively the same, so I stopped iterating there.

Next up is WOT with a wideband. Should be fun.