180hp 1.8t in Bug

[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

[volkdent]

She's been out for a few runs now. I don't have a water temp guage, and the laptop I use has bad batteries, so I can't use the virtual dash to watch them, but the fans don't come on unless I'm stopped for awhile regardless, so that sounds about right!

It's a little twitchy at at any speed, not unstable, just twitchy. I think it's the almost bald 255/40/18s out back tramlining, so I'll put the new 235/45/17 Pirelli PZeroNero's on and we'll see if that feels better. I don't know how fast I'm going, the speedo get's pegged, but I do know that I'm passing people on the freeway very quickly, I'm thinking 80 at least, maybe faster. It corners great, none of the push it had as a BJ front end. I did have one incident on an inclined cloverleaf off/on ramp as I neared the end of it and was accelerating to merge there was some rough road repair and the front kind of jumped sideways then hooked up again, probably the compression settings on the shocks and maybe even the A-arm bushings are a little tight still. Regardless, it hooks up. I did get the back end sliding out a little on a fast braking then hard hard right turn offramp, but that is to be expected under those conditions with a mid-engine car.

The brakes aren't to my liking yet, too much pedal pressure and not enough bite generally, especially from the front. I think the pads may be part of the problem, but I'm sure one of the master cylinders will have to be replaced to reduce rear braking forces or conversely increase the front braking force, the rears are still the ones that want to lock up first. Hopefully that will give me a little bit more pedal at the same time. I talked to a Wilwood tech, and he gave me suspicious info, first saying one thing then the opposite, I'm really not sure how well the guys understand the fluid physics of what they are "teching" with, but it sounds like I need to get a smaller front MC.

Got the static alignment done, and it came out amazingly well. Apparently my fabrication skills are not terrible, as the specs came out better than new factory alignment. It will need to be looked at from a dynamic geometry standpoint in April at Huffaker Engineering at Infineon, he's going to pull the springs and look at toe changes during travel as well as camber changes. I think it will require a rear suspension redu, but we'll have to wait and see.

Jason

[volkdent]

Finally have a dyno appointment at 034 Motorsport on March 17, so I can finally rest easy getting on the gas hard. Spoke with Javad who is the owner at Laguna Seca this last weekend. We were there with the Audi Club and had an amazing time. He thinks things will go smoothly and that we should be done tuning in a couple of hours, but I'll be leaving it there for the week so they can be sure it's cold starting well.

Having a little issue with the battery dying, I have some sort of drain somewhere, but don't know where it is yet. It might be related to the resisitor in the 12-6 Volt adapter for the windshield wipers, I'll have to investigate...

Jason

[Panelfantastic]

Cool!

Speaking of Audis, I recently added one to the stable...



Jeff-