Better Tyres and Suspenion for MkV R32

[thezoneR32]

I recently purchased my MY07 R32 privately and although the car is awesome I'm not entirely happy with the overall handling of the car. I'm not sure if this is because of 1) the tyres (although they look quiet new), 2) the stock suspension or a combination of 1) & 2).
The tyres are (fronts) Hankook and (rears) Continental. All 225/40/18s. I have never heard of either of these tyres. Anyone have experience with them?

My last car (which is currently for sale) was a liberty 3.0r spec-b which has bilstein struts standard. I also had fitted, sti springs and whitline heavy duty sway bars front and back. The handling of this car is incredible. The only set of tyres I had on this car from new were and still are Bridgestone REo50’s - 215/45/18s. Theses tyres have now done 40,000km and although the fronts are verging on bald the car still sticks to the road, even in the wet! The car sits dead flat through corners and only understeers when you accelerate to hard into the corner (like any awd/fwd). Mostly there is only 4w slide if you push it really hard and occasionally you get oversteer especially on loose surfaces. The handling is very predictable. Even if you get understeer you just back of a tad and the nose seems to correct itself instantly and off you go. Never felt out of control in this car

Not so confident with the R32 at the moment. The front end seems a bit spongy and it tends to understeer with tyre squeal through corners too much. I am in the process of getting a haldex gen 2 which will hopefully free up some of this understeer.

The result here is that the liberty is the superior handler of the two at the moment and I what I was hoping for is some opinions about what combination of suspension and tyres to use on the R32 to at least bring it in line or possibly surpass the lib.

Can anyone help? If there is already a thread on this please let me know.

Thanks

[cus]

Similar thoughts on mine - just got hold of an 08 model and it has more understeer than I would have hoped, but coming out of a bora 4 motion its not dissimilar. There's plenty of threads on this forum about the merits of the std haldex in the R32 which apparently doesn't help the understeer - its certainly set up quite differently from the Subaru system. I'm going to be changing that over too. Will be interested to hear your thoughts once you switch over...

Again, lots of threads on here about the difference a rear sway bar can make to handling joy too...

[Maverick]

I recently purchased my MY07 R32 privately and although the car is awesome I'm not entirely happy with the overall handling of the car. I'm not sure if this is because of 1) the tyres (although they look quiet new), 2) the stock suspension or a combination of 1) & 2).
The tyres are (fronts) Hankook and (rears) Continental. All 225/40/18s. I have never heard of either of these tyres. Anyone have experience with them?

Continental are one of the largest automotive companies in the world. Hankook are Korean rubbish IMO.

I've found the Goodyear Eagle F1 Assymetrical's to be a great tyre, I'm running a 225/40/18 and everything about them has been great.

The Continental CSC3 is another excellent choice. Both these tyres come out of top of all the tyre tests with Goodyear getting the best ratings. You get what you pay for so treat cheap tyres with caution.heck the tyre pressures first, you should be sitting on around 40psi all round.

[thezoneR32]

Thanks for tat. I usually run 40psi for best performance. Since I bought the car last Friday here in Adelaide the temp has been around 39 every day so waiting for a nice cool dip in temp to check pressures. Maybe I should replace the hankooks on the front, they really area awful.

Cheers

[John Deere]

Yokahama Advan Neova AD08 have just gone on my GTI (done around 3000k's)....they are the best I have used and only $350 a corner. They are a motorsport tyre but they have good grip in the wet, plenty of tread on them.

Continental are excellent tyres, but they are very expensive and I dont think they represent good value for money.

[Big Yellow]

Kumho KU31 are a very good option if on a budget.

around $160-$170 each from option1garage

[gerhard]

The Rennenhaus R32 delivered the highest corner apex speed of any car in the recent Motot extreme tuner challenge.

If you want the same, contact Ian and you can have what he has - the best handling R32 in the country.

[thezoneR32]

All sounds good. Who is Ian?

[gerhard]

All sounds good. Who is Ian?

He's a forum sponsor.

http://www.rennenhaus.com.au/

[thezoneR32]

Haldex v Torsen

Perhaps this debate has something to do with why my liberty handles better than the R32?

Anyone like to contribute?

Seems to be a lot of debate about it on worldwide forums. All seems very biased tho.

Maybe no amount of suspension mod will bring the golf up to speed with the lib handling wise?

Maybe I should just sell the R32 and keep the lib!

[thezoneR32]

Haldex v Torsen

Just found this on projektgerman.com forum:

Quote:

"The Torsen dif applies more torque to whichever drive axle is spinning slower via a fairly complex mixture of planetary and worm gears. It is dumb (meaning no electronic controls), and is completely controlled by gear ratios internally to it. These ratios are picked to optimise non slip torque transfer.

The Haldex system is insanely cheaper. It uses a hydraulically controlled clutch (exactly like an automatic transmission) to either lock, slip or freewheel. This is achieved by changing the fluid pressure on the clutch and generates a lot of heat. The other major difference is a Haldex has wearing clutches, where as the Torsen has no wearing parts.

There's one VERY distinct difference I would like to highlight:

A clutch based system cannot distribute torque with a split when the wheels are not spinning. Torque splits front to rear with a clutch system in an uncontrolled fashion, if the wheels start to spin, excess torque goes to the other drive axle since it just matches the speeds of all the wheels.

A Torsen differential ALWAYS splits torque even when there is no wheelspin. This, if biased correctly, will yield much better control over the vehicle while accelerating. You can tune this torque bias ratio to suit your needs, streetcars more forward, race cars likely more rearwards. Stasis sells a 20/80 split replacement center diff for racecars.”

Hmmm, I'm really starting to think I made bad decision buying this R32 over my lib! Someone come to my rescue and tell me this isn’t so!

[thezoneR32]

HPA Motorsports SHS Coilovers

Has anyone fitted these to their R32? I’ve read some good things about them. I posted on VWvortex and was told that these come highly recommended.

[windyzz]

The R32 aint a bad handling car, when Tuned properly it is proven to be one of the fastest handling car.

Of course your stock liberty has a better handling, as it has bilstein shock and sti spring as standard. But R32 is not all about Handling, it is suppose to be a Grand tourer car/Long distant tourer, So it is more comfortable then the Liberty.

IMO you shouldn't purchase R32 if you are looking for handling, more like you should get an Evo X MR, E36 Bmw M3,WRX STI, or perhaps Renault Megane R F1 if you want the hatchback look.

They are more Track focus then R32.

[Yevvy]

The R32 aint a bad handling car, when Tuned properly it is proven to be one of the fastest handling car.

Of course your stock liberty has a better handling, as it has bilstein shock and sti spring as standard. But R32 is not all about Handling, it is suppose to be a Grand tourer car/Long distant tourer, So it is more comfortable then the Liberty.

IMO you shouldn't purchase R32 if you are looking for handling, more like you should get an Evo X MR, E36 Bmw M3,WRX STI, or perhaps Renault Megane R F1 if you want the hatchback look.

They are more Track focus then R32.

+1 should have done some research before purchasing the car and then blaming it for your own disability to drive it properly

[thezoneR32]

+1 should have done some research before purchasing the car and then blaming it for your own disability to drive it properly

Mate is there something I've said to offend you or are you just bored and thought you'd hang some **** on me?

I drove the car for an hour or so in various kinds of road conditions. It was a private sale and its not like they were gonna let me take it fr a week. There was something about the car that drew me to it. That well engineered, german solid but refined feel that sucks you in. Plus I got it for $38k and its only done 30,000 km. So it was a bit impulsive. Dont get me wrong I really like this car but I want everything! So I'm using this forum to push the boundaries of peoples knowledge and hopefully glean some info in to what can be achieved with this fun little car.

I still have the lib. So if I get bored with it I may just sell it instead.