180hp 1.8t in Bug

[volkdent]

Originally Posted by ricola

Nice...
One thing I've never seen any mention of: are there general guidelines as to what sort of caster to run when moving the struts to the rear?

How fast do you think it is? Looks pretty nippy on the video.. Gone round any bends a bit faster too to see how the front end is?

Yeah, uh, I really don't know. I just kind of set it up arbitrarily, I do have tons of camber adjustment, both at the top of the strut and where the strut meets the bearing carrier, and there is about 1.5" castor adjustment in the strut mount bracket, but I really don't know where it's going to end up. I'm going to take it to some race shop and have them go through it, it might even end up needing a total rear suspension redo. It's definately not ideal right now, but it works, and for around town I suspect it will be just fine, it will be when it's pushed to the limits at speed where the weaknesses will show up. I imagine it handles better then a Chevy Citation right now!

As far as quickness, it's quick! I really havn't even revved it up yet. The tuning is not done on it, so I'm kind of nervous that I'm damaging it if I run it too hard. I don't have seat belts hooked up in it right now, so it's kinda scary how quick it is. Spinning the tires doesn't take any work at all, but that may be a product of poor geometry too. The engine should have around 200hp as it sits right now, and I can't imagine it weighs more than 2000 lbs at this point, so I would imagine around a 5 second 0-60 time shouldn't be a problem. Straight line performance should be pretty crazy, but it's really handling that I'm concerned with in the big picture.

It has not seen a corner at speed, I don't want to fly out the open door!!! I'll get the door on and the seatbelts in before I do any cornering, but I'm not optimistic at this point, aligment and general geometry needs some attention before I get serious about it's cornering ability. It's only run up and down my street here, and the next big trip will be on the back of a trailer to 034 Motorsport to have the engine tuned. Then I can run it without fear of doing any motor damage.

Jason

[Rob]

Man, that's awesome. Well done.

Always cool to see a project coming to life !

Must be a great feeling to drive it after so much work has gone into it !

Rob.

[volkdent]

Thanks Rob, still working out the millions of niggles. Today I found out the body moves around alot, enough that a little dent is appearing where the passengers strut mount is banging against the body. Next up it will be making stiffening mounts that tie the body to the rear superstructure.

This is my latest creation, maybe I should be working harder on the bug!

Bad Dub Racing

Jason

[volkdent]

Some brackets I made with the help of my Christmas present from my dad, a lathe. The back end of the bug was so wobbly that it was banging on the strut mounts enough to dent the body.








Jason

[Timmy_Barns]

Oh, perdy Audi. There was one like that for sale here in Michigan with the same wheels and color.

[volkdent]

Those BBSs look great Jeff!!! That's your Mini too? Those things track very well, throw some R compounds on there and they are hard to catch. Is that the 180hp or 225hp TT?

The dynoing is done, apparently I've got about 165 at the wheels, so about 190 is what he is telling me, but tons of torque, so that's sounds very good for now. He took longer than expected, so I wasn't able to pick up her up last Friday, will have to pick her up this Friday after work. It's 2.5 hours each way, so that's not really a weekday thing. If I can get her sooner I will.

I'll get a printout from the dyno results that I'll post here, but apparently it runs VERY well, and the compression tests told them the stated 15k miles on the motor was probably correct.

On a sad note, doing one of my pre-dyno trip shakedowns, I took a curb at the wrong angle and totally tweaked my radiator, it's not leaking, but it crushed one of the fans on the back side and it will definately need to be redone down the road. I might go a little wider if I can fit it, with more HP in the future I'll need more cooling.

Jason

[Panelfantastic]

That's the wifes mini. Has ridiculous torque just off throttle and goes like stink... but the ride! The ride is the absolute worst bone-jarring thing I've ever ridden in. She wanted one forever and absolutely loves that thing! BTW, you can double the base price with add-ons .

It's a 225hp. Bone stock except for the 19" wheels. I don't have a lot of mod plans, chip, exhaust, airbox.

I went to the dyno day down in GA. 165 would have put you well above quite a few "built" type 1s.

How big of a rad can you fit? I've got a leftover.

Jeff-

[volkdent]

Ah, that's why they go so well, race suspension!!!

The TT looks awesome, rear sway bars help a lot in those too.

I can't wait to drive it back up here. The reliability is what I love, apparently it's tuned so I can't do any damage to it!!!

Then new radiator will be the same general shape as the one I have now, I still don't want to cut into the body under the hood, but thank you for the offer. I might have one made that is wider than the one I have now, but the same height.

Jason

[volkdent]

Picked her up last night, of course it was the first time in weeks that it rained, so that sucked.

Scary is the world I'd use for it. Not just the power, but the rear suspension too. There is a LOT of torque, I was in second, hit the gas and I was spinning, back end sliding sideways. It was wet, but but I can't even do that in my M3! So tons of torque and power. The engine is sitting right behind me, so even with earplugs in, that turbo was really working. I was going over 100 easily, but it cruised really nicely at 85. At the faster speeds it was scary, the rear suspension is REALLY not working well. I'm going to look at putting some spacers under the steering rack back there to maybe give me some toe in bump over what I'm sure is toe-out bump right now. That's what is scary, you hit a bump in a corner and the whole rear end feels like it shifts sideways. The redline is 7200 rpm, and I didn't even get close to that at 100, so I don't know how fact it goes on the top end. Javad the tuner said he noticed some clutch slippage, but I have to say all I notice was wheel slippage.

The shifter works great, until it doesn't work well. I can't explain it, but it shifts great most of the time, then rarely its a struggle to get in gear. Don't know what's going on with that.

Temp was a steady 85 degrees, even with just the 2 fans running. They had set the thermostat for 80, so first the first leg of my trip the fans came on and stayed on, kinda worried me. The ECU was in demo mode too, and I didn't realize it, so I couldn't figure out why the temps were running 95 and the RPMs were staying constant!!!

I'm going to lay low for awhile now, between the 3 hours of tuning, 1 hour of testing and cleanup, and new coils and firmware for the ECU, it was over $1k, so I need to fill my piggybank up again!

Jason

[ricola]

Sorry for the OT! I'm in the middle of buying a Mini Cooper S as my new daily, great to have the TLC inclusive servicing for 5 years, hopefully now I'll be able to concentrate on the bug and not get so distracted by kit car daily drivers!
Rich

[Simon]

Hi Jason,

Great project!
It's great to see such an amount of dedication and time put into a car!
Hope you can get all the little kinks worked out soon!

Concerning your rear suspension issues:
Is it only the toe-out on bump that is causing the issues?
Mounting the steering rack a little higher (so the tie-rods point down) might help a little.

Is the virtual hinge-line between the front and rear mounts of the lower A-arm parallel to the car?

What kind of struts do you use in the rear?
Are they actually front struts?
Aren't you running out of droop travel?

Simon

[volkdent]

Hi Simon,

Originally Posted by $aint

Concerning your rear suspension issues:
Is it only the toe-out on bump that is causing the issues?
Mounting the steering rack a little higher (so the tie-rods point down) might help a little.

I'm not totally sure, I have it set for 1/16 toe in static, and I would doubt I'd have such a twitchy rear end if I didn't. Havn't pulled the springs and run it through total travel yet, but I'll bet you money I've got toe change problems. I actually looked at mounting the rack higher, but I ran into a bunch of little issues, one is that the bolts are too short for the rack and are embedded into the K-member. Another is my steering lockout would have to be refabricated. I think its the wrong geometry entirely so I'm not going to waste my time on it. I'll just redesign it properly and not worry about trying to make a no-win situation better.

Is the virtual hinge-line between the front and rear mounts of the lower A-arm parallel to the car?

No, the fronts are on there own, parallel to each other, but the rears are backwards, the 'hinge-line' axis' intersect in FRONT of the car (/\) , while they should be intersecting at a point somewhere beyond the REAR (\/) as far as I know. I don't know exactly what converging pivot axis' do, but I know mine is the opposite of what I see everywhere. I was aware of this little fact before I started, but I wanted to get the thing running before I modified too many things at once.

What kind of struts do you use in the rear?

KW Variant III

Are they actually front struts?

Yes

Aren't you running out of droop travel?

I might be. I might have to move the strut plate down a bit to get more droop. Just didn't want to have too little bump travel when I was getting it all together. I wanted to make sure I could run it low enough.

If things work out well, I'm hoping to use the front control arm mount as the rear mount, and create a new front mount directly in front of the rear wheels. I might be able to use the alloy casting off the end of a 944 torsion housing, it has a solid rubber mount with a intergral core of aluminum. I might be able to bolt this onto the end of the torsion housing, thread the core, screw in a heim, then attach a custom built arm that connects to a second arm running from the K-member to the lower ball joint of the strut. Essentially a large A-arm with the pivots creating a V towards the back of the car, then adjust the tie-rod length and pivot points accordingly, maybe even swap the struts side to side if it is an advantage for toe changes during travel. I don't have the expertise to do this myself, I wish I did, but I'm planning on using the services of Joe Huffaker to guide me.

Jason

[Scotts73SB]

Gotta stop hittin things!

[volkdent]

OK, long time no update!!!

Well, the new radiator is TOTALLY out of harms way, so I'm assured of no further issues there. I would seriously wreck the under belly of the nose and the frame head before the radiator would be affected.

Cooling was a little bit of an issue, as the new rad is not in airflow at all. I needed to cut one of the rad hoses a little more than I did so it made an odd angle and a high spot in the system that allowed air to be trapped there, but by manually milking the air to the bleed spot I think I got most of it out.

Still needed some airflow though, so before Bugorama(the night before in fact) I made an ABS scoop by heating and forming. It's quite lightweight and doesn't even do a particularily good job of forcing air through the rad, but it works SOOO well!!! The fans wouldn't come on at all unless I sat idleing for quite awhile. I will probably build another lightweight one like this that is the standard scoop making it completely sealed to force air ONLY through the rad, while the one I'm working on with the M3 lip would be more track only as it's lower and a higher risk of being ripped off because it's much more stiff.



The track runs at Bugorama went fine. The best time as shot by Humble(Will) was 13.5, but the biggest problem I was having was the shifter not being smooth due to issues with the Porsche shifter not really having a good gate setup. I'll work on that. The other problem was my little stock 1.8t intercooler sitting behind my seat. It gets no air flow, so by the end of the track it was totally heat soaked.

On Monday coming up I have an appointment at 034 Motorsport to have the intercooler plumbing squared away. I already have the intercooler and I'll fab up the mounts this weekend. Once that's squared away I can start working on the quarter window scoop that will deliver air to the intercooler plenum, then out the stock rear window ducts.

Jason

[Humble]

Can't wait to see pics! 034 does outstanding work So i'm curious to see what they do for you