98 TSi awd - Autocross Build

[Black95TSIawd]

Those look really good, nice work! I'm digging the wheels, too.

Thanks, Eric. I wish my fit/finish skills were as good as yours though!

 

[96Formula6spd]

The point of when a race car becomes a race car. Can feel the pain of cutting into a clean car. But its yours and you can do what you want with it. And its becoming more and more a SM car.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

The point of when a race car becomes a race car. Can feel the pain of cutting into a clean car. But its yours and you can do what you want with it. And its becoming more and more a SM car.

This tossed and turned in my head quite a bit, even after I purchased the flares. In the end, faster lap times > cutting up the car. As long as I try and do a good job and not make the car hacked up, I won't be too disappointed.

I actually just had that conversation with a buddy of mine this weekend. Believe it or not, installing flares the way I did it (ie cutting your fenders and adding flares to the existing material) is allowable in all except STOCK classes. Furthermore, I'll be competing in ASP this year. T-ASP to be exact as my region has a Street Tire SP/SM class. I'll be moving up to SM once I change my turbo.

 

[ileagleracing]

Admit it, you cleaned those wheels after I sold them to you. They weren't really dirty, but they were not that clean.
Not that it impacts you, but STX doesn't allow flares, or fender cutting.
Did you put something between the flare and the fender, or am I seeing things?

 

[Black95TSIawd]

Admit it, you cleaned those wheels after I sold them to you. They weren't really dirty, but they were not that clean.
Not that it impacts you, but STX doesn't allow flares, or fender cutting.
Did you put something between the flare and the fender, or am I seeing things?

Thanks for the clarification, oh autoX guru.

They weren't dirty? I'm pretty sure they had your brake dust from 2012 on them. Took me over an hour to clean all 4.

I put fender welting between the flare and fender. I linked the stuff in post # 124. Are you coming down for our season opener on the 18th?

 

[ileagleracing]

I ran out of https://www.dipyourcar.com/products/brake-dust-professional

The local club has their Rookie School on the 18th and I'm helping instruct. I'll probably be down for one of the first MSNE events.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

Ready for an alignment.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

Last year, I ran quite a bit of toe in both front and rear so trying something new this year. 0.3 toe out up front to help with turn-in response and just 0.1 toe in for the rear. Didn't want to toe out the rear as the car will be get too loose. 0.1 is just enough to preload the bushings. If I'm feeling adventurous (car is still controllable) I'll try a bit of toe out in the rear.

I'm not too happy about the loss of negative camber up front. I was expecting some due to raising the car, but not that much. (Ran -3 last year.) That's more than I'm willing to give up. I can't lengthen my lower arms any more as I'm pretty much at the safety limit so I'll have to look into something else. I'm going to ask Paul Volk to get his upper arms ready as soon as possible or I might give the megan arms a try. I'd rather not try the offset anchor bolts or adjustable upper ball-joints as they can be more of headache than anything.

 

[EC17PSE]

How far did you cut your stock arms back? I Dont remember as I know we spoke about it before, would about 1" of adjustment be more then enough?

 

[EC17PSE]

Also try to fix that caster and the bushing aswell, you need to try get more caster and this will help you eventually too

 

[Black95TSIawd]

How far did you cut your stock arms back? I Dont remember as I know we spoke about it before, would about 1" of adjustment be more then enough?

I cut about 3/8 inch inward. Another 3/8th inch would probably work. Maybe a little less.

I'm starting to think that my rude measurements when I originally redrilled the arms is what is causing the huge caster difference.

 

[EC17PSE]

I cut about 3/8 inch inward. Another 3/8th inch would probably work. Maybe a little less.

I'm starting to think that my rude measurements when I originally redrilled the arms is what is causing the huge caster difference.

have you flipped your compression arm bushes aswell or they still offset?

your caster may be doewn to the your holes not being exact from one side to the other! although over that short distance should not be that much in degrees like you have, yours is in fact close to mine, once i added camber from the lower arms i lost caster! its the natural effect from adjusting down there, as it pulls it in on its self resulting in less caster!

on a good note my prototype uppers wont be that long away, ive managed to get an adjustment range of around 20mm i may see if i can squeeze for a tad more but dont want to be unsafe and i want to leave some in still for adding positive camber still and for caster too so this should be plenty of adjustment to use!

 

[Th3ory]

Just found this build thread, very nice car

 

[Black95TSIawd]

What a weekend. First two events are in the books!

The rush started Thursday night. Had to take care of the last few things to the car before giving her a thorough cleaning. My RRE strut bar and lower tie bar came in last week so wanted to make sure they were installed for the first event. Sorry, no pics. Install is relatively straight forward. I will say, I LOVE the way the steering feel is now. These two bars really tightened things up and helped the steering feel more direct. I also raised the car up 1/8th inch all around. The suspension settled quite a bit more than I was expecting and in hopes of not rubbing the new tires, up she went. I have some new stuff coming in so I'll revisit the alignment in a few weeks. (more on that later) Got some new sparkplugs in the motor and checked all fluids. Lastly, double checked tire pressures. Car was now race ready. At this point, gave the car a nice bath. She really needed it.

Friday night consisted of claybarring the whole exterior and a good hand wax job. Last year's racing has taken a tole on the paint and I'm too lazy to do a paint correcting polish on her now. Luckily, she still shines pretty damn good with a nice coat of wax. Interior had a good layer of dust in it from sitting with the windows open so gave everything a good APC wipe down followed by window cleaning and vacuuming. I had an early work assignment for the SCCA event on Saturday so I head to my parent's house for the night as they live ~15 minutes away from Metlife Stadium vs an hour from me. This was also a good chance to really drive the car before the event. Other than a quick 20 minute ride to get an alignment, I hadn't really put the car through its paces.

Quick pic before the racing started.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

Saturday 3/25/2017 - SCCA NNJR Autocross Event #1

2nd place in class. (out of only 3) 24th fastest raw time out of 108. PAX was in the 40's.



Car drove VERY different than last year which I was expecting. Three pro's from this 1st drive: The tires did not rub at all. Super stoked about that. The Evo rear diff ROCKS. Powering out of a corner is no longer an under-steering nightmare. Ok, maybe it still is, but you can actually feel the rear diff working vs the super lazy stock viscous unit. I was not expecting it to be as good as it was. And last, the car absolutely rips in sweepers. The amount of grip, even with cold tires, is astonishing.

The cons: I want my front camber back. At some points, the front end felt a bit numb and my shock settings from last year just don't work with this setup. I beat an underprepped 911 C2S by a lot, but lost to a well prepped Evo X on corn juice and MC$ coilovers by 0.6 seconds. The guy in the Evo is a buddy and we race a lot of the same events so I think I'm going to make him my benchmark for this year. 400whp Evo X vs 200whp Talon. I like those odds. haha The tires did not want to warm up at all. Not even a little bit. Some guys were spraying their tires down to cool them off, meanwhile, I wanted to put electric heaters on mine. Ambient temps were in the low 60's and ground surface was cool, but not cold. And last, my passenger side ball joint keeps puking out its grease and I think my steering rack is starting to give up. It makes some nice creaking noises when the fluid gets real hot.


Sunday, 3/26/2017 - MSNE Autocross Event # 1

1st in class. 4th fastest raw out of 63. 3rd in PAX.



Made some slight changes to the car after yesterday's event. Cleaned and regreased the ball joint and lowered the front end 1/8th inch to get a bit of front rake. This is in hopes to giving the front end some more bite after initial turn-in. Also set the front shocks to nearly full stiff on rebound. (But subsequently had to turn the rear's DOWN because it was just so cold.) Sunday was about 20-25 degrees colder than Saturday with no sunlight. The ground was very cold to the touch. I had zero chance to get heat into the tires. I spun out a few of my first runs from pushing too hard, including a few nice drifts. (Did I mention I love this rear diff?) The results were good, BUT I have a goal of PAXing 1st at MSNE events. My buddy in the same Evo as above took FTD and PAXed 2nd. His raw time was 0.7 faster than me. (We are in different classes in MSNE so I should be able to out PAX him if I can get within 0.4 seconds or so.)


All in all, a good weekend to start the season. Car needs to be dialed in quite a bit, but sometimes that's the joy in what we do.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

Sunday, 4/2/2017 - MSNE Autocross #2

Co-drove ileagleracing's STX talon for this event. Car is in Class-C. While I have done events with him before, this was a first in one of his cars. I was looking forward to it as he is really good at giving driving tips and also because his cars usually have $baller$ coilovers on them. Outside of proper tires for the class and the driver, good shocks are key to a fast car. 750 front and 550 rear spring rates with custom Koni 28 series double adjustable shocks. If you were to drive both our cars without knowing anything else about them, you would think his car had a roll cage in it. Turn-in was so crisp and the weight transfer is extremely manageable. Honestly, my car feels like a boat compared to his. For those who claim a DSM is too loose with a very high rear spring rate have not properly set the car up. The ass would slide a bit, but was completely controllable. Very easy to drive, even compared to my own car. It took half my runs to learn to drive without ABS, but it was a good exercise in better braking tecnique. I kept getting faster and faster, but ran out of runs. Finished 4th in class and 7th in PAX out of 90. He took the class win and 2nd in PAX.


Me about to cross the finish line:

Side by side of mine and his fastest run.



So I'll be saving up for some big boy shocks as my koni yellows don't hold a lick to the good stuff. Maybe I'll sell a kidney or something.

 

[Scott McIntyre]

I shed a few tears with each hole drilled into my quarter panel.

You're not going to cut into the rear quarter?

That's half my problem... The rears hitting the wheel arch. I need to run near stock ride height to keep the tire off them.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

You're not going to cut into the rear quarter?

That's half my problem... The rears hitting the wheel arch. I need to run near stock ride height to keep the tire off them.

I will, but only by paying a body shop to do it. Maybe next year. My car is barely lower than stock at this point. The flares do a good job of hiding that. Even with 550lb rear springs, I still had some tire contact at yesterday's autocross.

(Update to come on new mods and events soon.)

 

[TSiAWD666]

How you can see a course in that parking lot is beyond me. I would hit everything.

 

[EC17PSE]

How you can see a course in that parking lot is beyond me. I would hit everything.

i say the same thing to myself every time i watch an auto X video! i would suck so much with cones showing me the way haha, 5 points per cone right? so highest number of points win???? seems i would rock at that game

 

[Black95TSIawd]

How you can see a course in that parking lot is beyond me. I would hit everything.

i say the same thing to myself every time i watch an auto X video! i would suck so much with cones showing me the way haha, 5 points per cone right? so highest number of points win???? seems i would rock at that game

Its a lot harder to see the course in a video. I used to say the same damn thing and while it is easy to get lost, its not as difficult as the video suggests. Plus, you have to walk the course at least 2 or 3 times before the runs start and you should be looking way ahead. I don't really. I just try and memorize.

 

[ceedawg]

What is the advantage of having an evo differential,sounds like a must have

 

[Black95TSIawd]

What is the advantage of having an evo differential,sounds like a must have

Its all about getting on the throttle as soon as possible without the car pushing out. (understeering) Proper diffs allow you to do that.

(and expensive shocks, proper suspension geometry, sticky icky tires, the proper driving technique, and a lot of $$$)

 

[ceedawg]

Feal coil overs are coming soon and my RE71's I have will have to do for now. Step by step,however still interesting to know about the diff.

No one says racing is cheap! $1000's invested in my machine already so this will just be an added needed investment for road racing. "Gotta pay to play". Wil certainly look into this diff.

 

[TSiAWD666]

http://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/lets-talk-difs.400884/page-13#post-153510244