The painted valve cover and timing cover have been installed. They look great, but it apears the hood inulation rubs the timing cover because it left a nice big worn spot on top. Now seeing how good that looks I plan on going farther, definately more parts going red/white.

5/5/03:
Weel I installed the BOV a while ago (7 weeks now maybe). Been too busy to post on it fully, but heres the short story, later I'll write a full article (got a bunch of pics too). Fist things first, I'd like to send a special thanks to my friends over at the Champion Racing S4/S6 team who donated a spare blow-off valve to the project. The install was fairly straight forward. Started by getting my spare intercooler to get an idea of where the BOV should go, and noticed this rpund raised section, looking like it was perfect to be drilled out for a fitting for the BOV. Drilled it slightly smaller then needed, then found a suitible 3/4" brass pipe fitting, threaded on one end with a nipple fitting on the other. Then I die cut notches into the fitting because I didn't have a propper sized tap handy, and carefully threaded it into the IC. After it was snug I put a bead of RTV silicone arround it for good measure. Then I went on the shop-wide quest for the right hose to put between the 3/4" fitting and the 1" BOV. Amazingly I found a hose from a 944 that was about 4 inches long, angled 45 degrees in the middle, and the right size on each end. This perfectly angled the BOV away from the turbo and other various things in the way. Then a vacuum line was run from the back of the intake manifold up to the BOV. Swapped the IC with my stock IC, remembering to change the giant hose clamp too, and all was done. Full article to follow in coming days.

3/6/03:
In an unexpected turn of events last night I got the chip installed in the car. In an attempt to turn a bad day (long story) into a decent day I decided to work on the chip. The ECU had a bunch pads pulled off during the removal of the stock chip a few weeks ago (hence the delay, re-wiring traces is a pain in the but!), but after removing all of the conformal coating I realised that only 1 pad was partially missing, the rest were fine. I got Larry to solder in the socket because hes much better at the prescision soldering. Then we popped in the chip, plugged the ECU into the car and she started right up! Then we shut it down and put the cover back on the ECU and swapped it with the old stock ECU (which was still screwed in to the car). Warmed it up, and took it down the road next to the shop, but it was too small. Then we decided to hop on I-95 and do a run down to the next exit. Wow, an extra .4 bar makes a big differance. Before I knew it we were coming up on the next exit at 120mph, good thing the brakes work good. I didn't get a 0-60 run because it was on 89 octane gas and I didn't want to run it too hard for too long just in case. I'm going to fill it with 93 once I get the tank close to empty. So far bottom line - it was worth the work. Nothin extra on bottom end, but the top end just pulls like never before. 3rd gear puts you hard into the seat, 3rd now pulls harder then 2nd ever did before.

2/21/03:
Got a boost gauge today out of a Porsche 935 race car. Its a really nice 3 1/2" VDO unit, but its a bit overkill. Its range is 1 to 3.5 bar atmospheric (0-2.5bar boost, I always speak in atmospheric), and for now my car only run 1.4bar so a had to manually set the tell-tale needle to a respectable number ;-). Also during testing of the gauge hook up I blew a wastegate diaphram, now I'm back to having to lift to avoid the cars overboost safety fuel pump shut off. Now with the real boost gauge in I can see exactly how bad the stock digital unit is. Its pretty bad. The real gauge will start moving and read 1.2bar boost before the the digital gets past .8bar. If you are doing ANY modifications I highly recomend that you run an aftermarket gauge, the digital is realy terrible. The gauge that I have now is really a nice unit, but its too big for my car, and I really want a boost/vacuum gauge. I'm going to get an Autometer 3401-M gauge, which is smaller at 2 1/8". The Autometer gauge is boost/vacuum at a range of 60cm vacuum to 2bar of pressure, which should be just about right for the car once I am running the chip.

02/19/03:
I got the intercooler strap on today. Was unplanned actually, I was looking for a small hose clamp for a vacuum line and found two big 2ft long hose clamps. Screwed one into the other and it was the perfect size for my IC so I went ahead and put it on. Not too difficult, remove the front grille (4 screws) and wrapped the clamp arround and tightened it down.