| Friends! I have been initiated. I got my 90' TT auto a few months ago. It'd clearly seen better days, but I had no idea of what was yet to come... I lifted the car up the first week I had it and discovered that it'd been in a front end collision on the driver side and was repaired by Elmer Fudd. I definitely need a new lower radiator support, hopefully not the entire front assembly. I also found a crack in a weld right before the driver-side cat converter. I'm thinking I can have some welding done on these two things to hold me over while I take care of the rest of this story. The brakes took a sh*t after a two weeks of use, and I noticed that it drinks more gas than a diesel truck from the eighties (even after repairing a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at the "fuel hose from hell"). I poked around a bit and found a re-manufactured ECU that I could not get to go into its diagnostic mode. Clearly there should be at least 1 code present due to the screwed wiring to my TPS and OPSU (among many other things). I'm pretty sure I did this the right way after a lot of reading here (it's not difficult). I suspected foul play due to the fact that it's a turbo with an N/A cluster installed. It seems like the engine was pulled for some reason and re-installed by Mr. Fudd. It's a true turbo because the doorjamb VIN says so. Anyway, after rebuilding and replacing everything in the brake system but the booster and hardlines, I drove into the sunset! But then I took it to get smogged :-/ I'll let the attached pic speak for itself. The smog tech said he'd start at the ECU considering the level of gas the thing is burning. If it passes, check everything else: 
I've decided to keep this car for a few reasons:
Invaluable automotive experience to be gained by doing most of this myself (i.e. successfully rebuilding an entire brake system).
Numerous write-ups that should be good contributions for TT.net. ("From Gross Pollution to Squeaky Clean" sounds like a catchy build thread)
It's the first car that I've stared at in pictures for years and finally acquired.
I got it with a loan (FAIL). I've paid too much in time for this car, more so than money, as I have most of the means to correct these problems. I'm sending the ECU to Z1 to be diagnosed...then I'm going from there. Yay! I'm open to constructive criticism, but let's keep punches to the face to a minimum :-) Thanks for reading. Oh, my rear spoiler flew off on the freeway today because of faulty hardware I was gonna replace...today :-) Maybe I'm paying for something I did in another life...lol
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The money pit that is the Z32 :-) - 
15:59:49 07/15/11
