Time attack beetle

[judgie]

the understeer you are getting is it slow or high speed? is it happerning under power or on first turn in? mine suffered from understeer on the exit of slow corners under power and until i had some video of the car i could not work out why. under full power coming out of slow corners it was almost pulling wheelies and i have a lot less power than you, raising the rear helped this. In high speed corners i was getting turn in problems, some toe out on the rear helped a bit but putting the front spolier/splitter on cured most of it.
looking at your car it seems very low on the suspension although the ride hieght is not bad due to the wheel size. going up on ride hieght might help as it will let the suspension do its job, allowing more travel thus letting the tyre grip, when you go from a spring to solid [ethier on the bum,p stop or coil bind] the wheel rate goes through the roof and kills grip no matter what tyres you are running.
i see your running coil overs on the rear, is this with the torsion bars as well?
i would try and go up on the front anti roll bar, kercher do a 22mm one. once thats on get a 944 20mm rear bar, in fact get as many rear bars as you can get hold of and test test test. tyre temps will let know when your getting close and then it getting it right for your style of driving. if your just sticking it in to corners and planting the throttle i dont think any suspension set up is going to help as a light rear engined car with your sort of power is allways going to understeer.
dont take this the wrong way but take a look at how your driving the car, might be a case of tweeking your driving style to match the car rather than trying to set the car up to match your driving stlye.
Hhave fun.
cheers rob

[Humble]

Turn in was fantastic, trail braking into a corner planted the nose and she dove right in, but when the weight transferred back I'm pretty sure i was on the stops on the outside rear. I could just breathe on the throttle and she would plow coming out of high and low speed corners, but it was easier to see on the low speed. The ride height is actually too low, I knew that going in but I thought the springs had enough travel and poundage to cope, but that wasn't the case. The rear coilovers are the only rear spring, there's no torsion bars in this setup. I'll have to keep my eyes open for different rear bars. I want it to be slightly softer in the rear for grip and stability coming out of corners, so I'll probably try a few different rear bars like you said. I noticed the problem on my first run and had to drive around it the rest of the morning. I was anticipating problems though and didn't expect it to be perfect. The last few events this year are all test sessions to prepare for next years point race

As it was I placed 3rd in my target class, and 22nd of 105 in raw time with a shake down weekend. I'd say that's not a bad start

[judgie]

deffo sounds sound like going solid on the outside rear, increase in ride hieght and a rear anti roll bar will help. i would try not to go too hard on the spring rate, try and reduce the roll with anti roll bars. be carefull with going to hard on the anti roll bars as you can turn it in to a drift car all to esay.

[Humble]

Got a little work done on the car this weekend. Crawled under there and tried to get the bolt out but it's too hard for the bolt extractor. I've got another pair of trailing arms on order so I'll swap it out to get to the next race. That should make getting the bolt out a bit easier as well.

Since I was under the car I swapped out the rear springs for some longer (9" vs 7") 550# springs so I can dial in some more ride height. I had some tell tale o-rings on the shock shaft and sure enough both sides had bottomed out. When the new racer's edge bolts come in I'll probably replace the driver's side for good measure. I also noticed that the new inner cv boots on both axles are toast, cracked and torn all the way through. I'm half tempted to drop the car off at the shop to take care of the fiddly stuff. :P

[Humble]

We've had these inconvenient weather cycles lately, nice during the week but raining on the weekend. I finally got a break this weekend and got a chance to replace the trailing arm.

Old arm comes out easy enough


Close up of the shock bolt, I wasn't able to drill very far into in


the new set of aluminum arms came from a '90 944 S2. The casting is a bit different, no bump stop pads, lightly trimmed, the abs ports are drilled out, and it's 1-2 lbs lighter than the turbo trailing arm.


Abs stub axle is slightly different




Finally back together, waiting on new cv boots since the new set I just put on disintegrated


Lastly updated engine pics, I replaced the oil cap with a filter breather to relieve case pressure under boost, and rerouted the oil out line to get it away from the exhaust

[Humble]

Due to weather and life in general the bug's been parked since the end of September. I finally got the new trailing arm in, replaced the ripped CV boots, and put it all back together. Yesterday, since it was so nice, I raised the front suspension 1.5" and took the bug out for a quick spin to test the new mods.

The filter that replaced the oil cap is now oiled, I plan to put a white towel around it to see how much oil is blowing out. I hit 23psi or so a few times and the valve cover gaskets stayed put so we'll see how it does at the autox on sunday. Just need to get an alignment done on saturday and get the wipers working.

It's been too long since I last drove the bug and I totally forgot how ridiculously fast it is. I'm used to going quick but I was shaking with adrenaline after I hopped out of the car... 4 hours later! Can't wait for sunday now

[NO_H2O]

Glad to hear that it has a pulse again.

[chug_A_bug]

very nice can't wait to See the pics


Chris.

[Humble]

Last couple of events had to be run in my DD unfortunately. Rained out in Jan and Frozen out in Feb. It was too cold to start the bug (28F, needs cold start adjustments) and I had thought about using a heat gun in the intake to get it going but ran out of time. I really wish I had got it started because the day warmed up beautifully and not a cloud in the sky.

Recently, I've been trying to get the suspension aligned but have had a couple of non-starts. I'll call an alignment shop, ask if they do custom alignments and describe the bug. When I pick up the bug, no work was done because they were afraid to change anything. They didn't think I meant "Custom" alignment :P This has happened a couple times now. I have an appointment with another shop next week who has aligned actual race cars, and custom built specials, so if weather holds up it'll finally get done.

[volkdent]

Roger Krause Racing in Castro Valley, they race and have good prices too. I know it's a bit of a drive, but it might be worth it if the place you've selected doesn't work out for you. They can do corner weighting and alignment at the same time.

510-582-5031

[Bug@5speed(US)]

Humble

Any issues with the Racer's Edge rear lower shock Bolts?

Just curious..
Alex

[Bug@5speed(US)]

Humble

Any issues with the Racer's Edge rear lower shock Bolts?

Just curious..
Alex

[Humble]

The only issues I had were my own fault, setting the rear suspension up too soft with not enough travel. I talked to the guys at racers edge regarding the bolt failure and we both agreed it was because of bottoming out. The trailing arm had ovaled out where the bolt goes so there was obviously too much stress there.

I've had no problems with the new bolts since the car was set up correctly.

[Humble]

We've been inundated with rain here in Cali, got more than 10" at the house during the worst storms. We finally got a break in weather and I was able to get some work done on the car.

First I got my alignment done after raising the suspension up, but the left rear is still out a bit. I've got -3* camber, 0* tow and 2.4* caster up front and -1.6* camber on the rear. Rear tow is still out, it's 0 on the right but -0.25 on the left which seems like a missing pivot washer, but I haven't check it out yet.

Some time ago I put the new front and rear swaybars on but I only just got the pics uploaded. I went with a topline 7/8" front with the caster fix bushings, and a topline rear 3/4" with heim/urethane droplinks connected to the porsche camber adjustment bolt with swaybar pickups.







This weekend I decided to hike up Lucy's skirt a bit and put some windows in the front fenders. I took off about 5" off the bottom of the rear fenders which should help with drag a bit.









For the front I used a template to put 3 4"x4" holes in the fenders which should let enough air out at speed. I still need some mesh in there to keep rocks from chewing up the paint. You can also see the new spa designs gt convex mirrors which were tightened up before they went on the car so they keep their adjustments.









Now it's kind of a rush to sort out all the little stuff before she goes in for paint on Wed! Yeah, she's finally getting painted, Saturn yellow L13M on the body, mirrors, and wing, and flat black on the hood, and decklid.

[owdlvr]

The lower shock bolt is in single shear...do you really trust that?

-Dave