I did a drive today with the N75 valve electronically disconnected in order to check how the boost profile looked when only on wastegate cracking pressure.

The pre-installation check of the wastegate preload showed the wastegates to be set to open around 7.5 psi:

Logging the boost pressure on the road confirmed that the wastegates appear to be functioning correctly at the specified preload reading.

One of the biggest annoyances that goes along with removing the engine from the car is spilling engine coolant down the transmission and onto my garage floor.  Even after draining the coolant from the lower radiator hose there is still a lot left in the engine block that finds its way out the back of the engine once the coolant lines for the heater core are removed.

I decided I would try and do something to address the coolant that drains out of these ports.

I had a leftover set of coolant hoses for connecting the heater core to the engine and decided to use the connectors on those to make a bridge between the two engine block coolant drain openings.

The attachment point is held in place by a seamless metal band, so I needed to cut the band off.

After the connectors were cut off the two coolant hoses I joined them together with an appropriate diameter silicone hose.

My goal is to put these in place before the engine starts to be tilted upward, thus preventing the coolant from running down the transmission and all over the place.

Last winter I spent a few days working in my frigid garage and the cold weather put a big damper on my progress.  Now with intentions of doing another turbo swap, or two, over the winter I decided that I needed to make the workspace a more pleasant place to be if I wanted to do non-critical work.  When you have to get your car running that can be a strong motivator to get work done.  When you have a DD and the S4 is just for projects, working on the car in frigid conditions becomes hard to justify.

I took a break from the K04 turbo swap to fully insulate my garage and put on order an insulated door.

I’m hopeful that even when the temperatures outside drop down to the freezing level the conditions inside the garage will be mild enough to make working on the car seem like a normal activity.