B6 S4 A/C Lines Removal For JHM S/C Kit

B6/7 S4/RS4
#1

Hey everyone, I’m going to have my s/c kit installed by 3zero3 Motorsports since they will be installing my engine once I get it back from JHM. Here is a picture of the car in which I think I can see all 3 of the 4 a/c lines needed by JHM:

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/12/28/vu3uju7y.jpg

As far as I can tell it should only take a few minutes to remove them. Is my assumption incorrect? If so, how long should it take to remove them? I ask because I’m a little bit skeptical after talking to 3zero3 about pulling them out so I can pick them up and ship them to JHM. They were making it seem like it was going to be a couple hours of work. Can anybody with experience installing the kit themselves verify how hard/long it would be to remove them? I offered to pull them out myself since they seem busy. It’s been about 2 weeks since I called them to pull them out and I still haven’t received an email or phone call.

#2

The 2 lines on the left that run to and from the dryer should take about 15 minutes. There is a bolt at the top that goes into the heater/dryer and then another one into the body. The other two lines should already be off if the motor was pulled.

#3

Thanks man. I figured it would be quick considering the engine is out and everything is exposed.

#4

wonder what size pulley they will run on your car being up in the mountains…

#5

That’s a good question. I haven’t had that conversation with them yet. I assume the tune will need to be tweaked at very least to compensate for the altitude.

#6

With the engine and transmission out of the car then it should take under ten minutes to get all the AC lines free that JHM needs to modify. It should be covered in the SC installation guide which lines you need.

When I dropped by JHM earlier this week, they mentioned something about this. They told me that the people at higher attitudes could lose pressure and JHM could tweek it to perform better but then they run the risk of popping engines if the car is ever driven hard at sea level like in Cali. So most people just take the basic tune that comes with the kit because of a lack of personal control. I know from recent experience that there was a noticeable difference with the 91 octane crap gas at 7K+ feet of elevation around Flagstaff AZ when compared to the 93 octane gas in the very low elevations of VA. All of that was with the car tuned for 93 octane gas too.

By the way, when I mixed in ten gallons of 100 octane race gas with the 91 octane Cali piss water it made a huge difference!

#7

MDUBZ, I would be worried about a shop that doesn’t answer your calls or acts like a 30minute job at most will take 10 days (exaggeration) to complete. 3ZERO3 was originally located in Raleigh, NC I believe. I know they were a new company and have since moved out to CO, so I’m not sure what their track record looks like, but we have seen in the past that shiny floors and a nice website doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to doing a job right.

They are taking on quite a task re-installing your new motor, a supercharger kit, clutch setup…and they need to do everything correctly because I’m sure you are paying them a pretty penny, not to mention the nice chunk of change on JHM parts that your adding. If they continue to give you trouble over small things like AC line removal, I would personally explore the possibility of shipping the car to JHM to have it done right. Yes, I understand you’ll probably spend a little extra cash, but honestly it will be such a small amount compared to what you’ve already spent on the motor build and supercharger kit.

You just seem like a good guy and I would hate to see an amazing work in progress turn into a troublesome mess that ends up back at JHM in the long run anyways. Too many shops have ignored installation instructions from JHM and burned customers with JHM trying to make things right in the end.

#8

I’m probably going to opt for the higher elevation tune and smaller pulley if they plan on doing as well because my car will for the most part stay in Colorado. I’m definitely going to buy the cable and if need be, switch out the tunes myself if I ever do decide to go to lower elevation. The other thing I want to do, unrelated to the supercharger, is buy 2 pairs of the section of the headers that have the cats. One pair with cats and one pair without so I can easily swap them out for emissions testing. I’d imagine you could easily swap those out in under an hour.

#9

You’re definitely right euroswagr, they haven’t been the best shop and they charge a pretty penny for their hourly rate. At one point I told them to get my car ready so Avalon Motorsport could come pick it up and even talked to the owner over there to express my concern. After spending hours on the phone with both shops I decided to keep it at 3Zero3. At that point the owner at 3Zero3 became my service advisor because the first guy knew less about the car then I do and kept eating his words. I knew that he was going to be harder to get ahold of but this is kind of ridiculous. I am a little nervous about the situation but when they get the engine back, it will be fully assembled and all they have to do is reinstall it correctly. I’m been contemplating installing the supercharger myself too. Either way I told them that I’m taking off work so I can supervise everything at their shop so nothing gets done incorrectly. I also told them I will be the one to crank the engine for the first time and that they will not be test driving it at all. Plus I plan on bringing a video camera to document the break in procedure, tuning, and anything else they may fuck up. I haven’t talked to the about price but it probably will be up there as they charged me about $3600 to pull the engine, pull the heads, and crate it up.

#10

I also forgot to mention that they told me they were going to need to spend time tuning it. This is my first engine build and I’m not too familiar with the procedures but what tuning would they even need to do? Wouldn’t they just need to load up the jhm tune?

#11

I got both sets of hot pipes, with high flow cats and without. It is really easy to swap out the pipes especially if you have someone that can pull down the catback so that you can slide the pipes in and out. It is also a good idea to mark the rear oxygen sensors some how so that way you don’t swap them accidently. For example I have a different color zip-tie on the passenger side rear oxygen sensor wiring.

That should have immediately thrown up red flags. I would strongly recommend cutting your loses and just ship the car to JHM at this point. It would frustrate me to no end if 3zero3 kept trying to feed me such bullshit. The JHM SC kit is a bolt in kit with minor cutting and then the software is flash loaded. So it is about as idiot resistant as it can be and they don’t have to do any tuning. Now as far as the engine break in goes I have to assume that JHM will give you the exact instructions that they want you to follow.

#12

+1 with the jbones - ship the car to JHM. They should know enough about the kit to know that it is just flash and go and subsequent updates are done by JHM over their servers.

Who knows what 3zero3 are going to get up to with your car?

But more importantly, shipping the car to JHM means that everything can be dialled in by them and returned to you in final form.

#13

Oh, nice. Yeah I remember the catback took like 15 minutes to install once the DPs were in. Good call on the different colored zip ties, I will definitely be taking that advice.

It definitely did, I just wasn’t 100% sure otherwise I would have definitely said something to them when they mentioned that. They may have also been referring to small tweaks to make up for the elevation because he just mentioned they would be spending some time tuning. Either way, I will definitely bring this up when I go there tomorrow to grab the A/C lines. As far as the break in process goes, Dru did mention they would be sending me instructions.

Unfortunately shipping the car to JHM is going to add like another $3000-$3500 ($1000 each way for shipping, labor to get the car ready to ship, and I’ll have to pay for 9 months of storage at $100/month which they comped when I threatened to take my car to Avalon Motorsports) to the bill. At this point I’m already topping the budget for this project. I may still take it over to Avalon pending a few conversations with all 3 shops. The last thing I need is an issue after waiting patiently for 9 months to get my car back. If they destroy the engine I can guarantee I will be forwarding them the entire bill at which point I will go buy a low mileage RS4 + the JHM stage 2+ S/C kit and wait for the built RS4 engine program to get started up. I don’t think I can take another 9-12 months of waiting to get my car back.

P.S. If I could, I’d bump some karma for you but I’m still waiting for that privilege. BTW is that at 150 posts?

#14

^^ Ya 150. You’re almost there.

#15

god damn that’s weird about 3zero3

these are the guys who installed the PES supercharger in the RS4 for that guy a few years back and were saying it make 550 hp or something insane.

Now…why are they talking about tuning it? They need to install the engine, install the blower, flash the new file and say ‘come get your car’. If they don’t know that…I would be a little worried.

Shipping shouldn’t be more than $1000. You’re already in what…$20,000…25,000? THis is a car that will be pretty much bulletproof for 10 years. I would invest the money and let JHM do this. Ship to them. Install at JHM. Break in at JHM (so you have no worries about the process being done right etc) and then fly your ass there to pick it up and have one hell of a drive home. At that point, you can load up an altitude file and bob’s your uncle. JHM pulls a motor out of a B67 every other day. They do chain jobs and header installs like it’s an oil change. 3Zero3 charged you so much labour because it took them forever to pull the motor…because they’re noobs.

Maybe I shouldn’t try to spend your money…but I would seriously try this out. It will make you feel a lot better. I also think if you negotiate hard with JHM they may be able to find $1000 in it for you…thus covering a good part of the extra expense. The time they save, and the price they’ll charge for labour at ‘knowledgeable’ pace vs. 3zero3 glacier pace is going to make up much of the perceived extra cost.

3Zero3 is the classic ‘We Work on Porsches’ shop. They think they’re great because they work on some exotics and charge accordingly. At the end of the day, they know less about your car than this forum does (even excluding the JHM employees). That’s not who I would want prepping my $25,000 build.

#16

I’m not 100% sure, but the owner or one of the partners should have had a red b6 S4 a few years ago because I was looking to buy it.

The “we need to tune it for a few days” is fucking bullshit. Please have them button up the car and ship it to JHM. $3600 for a motor pull is insane, how many damn hours did it take them?

#17

If you arleady shipped your motor to JHM you would save money shipping the car to them. The motor shipping alone is going to be 3 or 4 hundered dollars… We are all here to help if we can. Sounds like a lot of stuff isn’t adding up.

#18

Saki I’m actually well beyond that. I’ve given 3Zero3 $3600 in labor so far. My JHM build including all of the odds and ends is going to be about $36,000. Based off my experience, I’d expect 3Zero3 to charge me another ~$3000 in labor to install the engine and supercharger and whatever else before calling it a day. I also planned on having them install bearings at all 4 corners as well as the axles since they’d already be in there. I definitely need to call JHM up and see what can be done because I cannot even tell you how nervous I am now after talking with you guys. Flying out there to drive it home is also a great idea but in the end it would still be like $800 for gas, airfare, and a rental car to get there from the airport. Looks like I’ve got some time to spend on the phone tomorrow. I’ll keep you guys updated. Again all of the support is much appreciated. Expect some karma bumps when I hit 150.

#19

I think even if you take the following into account as extra costs:

  • Shipping @ $2000 (or flights and drive it back)
  • Storage @ $900

You will still come out ahead financially by shipping it to JHM. Because

  • They will take less time to put the engine back in
  • They will not charge you for “extra tuning” like 3zero3 seem to want to
  • They will not fuck it up

Like saki said they will do the break in for you etc. etc…

#20

3zero3 are a bunch of goons solely concerned with making money hand over fist not actually working for the enthusiast. Avalon is a ton better but if it was my cash JHM would’ve had the car from the get go.