Sunset Red 1.4 TSI(TFSI) GT Sport - daily drive & track car

[rex]

The fastest lap of the trip:

https://youtu.be/Fi65YckKcqw

Not quite proud of the time (still 18 seconds away from my best in 2017), but considering the engine and gearbox issues, I think the rhythm is quite good.
But I am happy of how I felt behind the steering wheel  .

P.S. The data overlay is, at times, way off... All of us have been experiencing GPS connectivity issues during the trip.

[mk1mad]

Car looks great in that colour with the bbs.

Thanks for sharing your trip to Nurburgring, I plan on taking my mk5 when it's fully up together.

[rex]

Car looks great in that colour with the bbs.

Thank you!
I like the bbs's more than I thought I would...
Initially I would have liked a bit wider wheels with lower offset but same style. Like BBS VZ 033 (8x18, ET 44). But the price was to great to pass and now I am very very happy with the purchase.

Thanks for sharing your trip to Nurburgring, I plan on taking my mk5 when it's fully up together.

Just make sure you have good brakes and a reliable car and go. Don't wait until all stars align.
Have fun and share your experience as well!

[rex]

Coming back from Nurburgring everything seemed fine, until I got the "low engine oil level" warning after 500 km of checking the oil level.
It seemed strange but I didn't think much of it. But than the situation repeated... In short, during the trip to Nurburgring, 20 laps around the track and some driving around the place, in total about 2400 km the car consumed about 200ml of oil. Coming back, around 1700 km, the car consumed 1.7 liters of oil 
Something was clearly wrong with the car... It could have been the turbo, the PCV, the valve stem seals or worn piston rings / cylinder bore scoring.

Took the car to the mechanic and:

https://youtu.be/-af3o7z1FaQ

So, the car clearly had issues with the turbo. Not sure if the others were not contributing to the huge oil consumption issue or not...
I changed the PCV valves just to be safe and, since the worn piston rings (the ones responsible for cleaning the cylinder wall of oil) can't be tested, I just did a compression test and visually inspected the cylinder wall for scoring. There was a bit of scoring on cylinder 2, but I decided to leave it as is...



When changing the turbo I thought about a hybrid one or even a 2.0 engine swap. I think if I knew that for 5k EUR I would have a 2.0 TFSI engine and no issues with it and no warning lights in the dashboard, I would have done the swap... But nobody can guarantee that.
Also when looking for hybrid turbo, the overall cost would have been close to 2k EUR and my tuner didn't really trust any of the manufactures of the hybrid turbos. He recommended to go with OE or OEM and that's just what I did... The OE turbo was build by MHI (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) and I replaced it with another MHI turbo, but without the VW logo.







Here are some photos of the install.





Here is how the top of the piston looked before and after the turbo change. As you can see there was a lot of oil on top of the piston, oil that went away with the new turbo.



All in all, I don't know if the issue is 100% solved. I did a test, about 250km and the oil consumption seem to be very low. I need to have at least 1000km before I can give a definitive answer. 
As the next track day is sooner than 1000 km, I'll continue to "invest" money on the car :).

[rex]

With the oil consumption problem hopefully fixed, I continued with the maintenance items needed for my next track day (July 24th hopefully):
- new clutch
- new engine mounts
- new gearbox oil

All went smooth.
The OE clutch plate and pressure plate were worn but not excessively (this is after ~150k km). But the pressure release bearing was a bit shot...
The OE clutch is Sachs, very similar to the OEM I bought.







The engine mounts were in a good condition but I just don't want to have any issues shifting so I changed them with Lemforder ones:





The gearbox oil was very expensive, about 100 GBP/litre from the Dealership, without discount... With discount it got to ~60 GBP.



Now the clutch feels surreal. At first I thought the slave cylinder was leaking or not attached or something... It is so light and smooth is feels like a clutch used in a simulator.
After I took the car back home, I had to switch to the Porsche (as to pick one of my kids from kindergarten) and the clutch in the Porsche feels like a proper one, not a toy one :).
Hopefully all the problems are solved and I am going to enjoy the car for a long time :).

[RBS]

Allways great to read about your adventures😉👍🏼
You REALY push it to it's limits😎🫵🏼👊🏼