Sams Polo 3.0

[sambb]

Getting closer on the front suspension. Made up brackets for the fitment of droplinks straight onto the arms. They'll sit a little outboard of the ends of the anti roll bar but positioning them half way between the ball joint and inner LCA pivot made it pretty certain what change it was going to make at de-rating the existing 24mm FARB.

They're with the local engineer/fabricator getting welded so I should have them back in a few days and then I can suss out whether i'll make my own droplinks out of sphericals or maybe adapt the superpro ones I'm already using.

[Sydneykid]

That'll work, could have made them double shear but probably unnecessary.

Cheers
Gary

[Sydneykid]

There were a couple of Polo's at Wakefield yesterday;

[sambb]

The arms are with Andrew that ran that Silvia in IPRA years back. I guess we'll see how they look once done and decide then whether they need gussets or an extra plate top and bottom, but as it is there's a fair bit of surface area for the welds so it should be ok.

[sambb]

The arms are with Andrew that ran that Silvia in IPRA years back. I guess we'll see how they look once done and decide then whether they need gussets or an extra plate top and bottom, but as it is there's a fair bit of surface area for the welds so it should be ok.

I'll check out the times - curious to see what times they were doing. Thinking of checking out Luddenham on feb 17th but only have road tyres at this stage. There's not any second hand 225/45/16 a050's kicking around your garage are there Gary?

[h100vw]

There were a couple of Polo's at Wakefield yesterday;

Needs a lot more black this one

[sambb]

a germanic night rider

[sambb]

How to make a WRC car - behind the scenes at M-Sport - YouTube


Watching this vid on M-sport UK and their prep of WRC rally cars. noticed in this spot that the coils on this engine look suspiciously Audi R8

[Sydneykid]

The arms are with Andrew that ran that Silvia in IPRA years back. I guess we'll see how they look once done and decide then whether they need gussets or an extra plate top and bottom, but as it is there's a fair bit of surface area for the welds so it should be ok.

I'll check out the times - curious to see what times they were doing. Thinking of checking out Luddenham on feb 17th but only have road tyres at this stage. There's not any second hand 225/45/16 a050's kicking around your garage are there Gary?

Andrew knows what he is doing, should be fine.

There is a selection of 225/45/16 A050's at the workshop, if you are free on Saturday Justin will be there, I probably won't be. Give me a call and I'll arrange it.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

With Bathurst looming and the car way off being ready I badly needed to pull my finger out and get it track ready. First thing was getting all the gear mounted into this car for the race seat, harness etc. It always feels a bit criminal taking to the carpet to expose the seat mounting frame but it has to be done. I took a bit more care mounting the two crotch strap eye bolts so that when the stock seat goes back in they dont foul on the under seat tray/compartment. All sorted now and can tick that one off.
Here's the run down on the seat from the last car: starts here post#1308 Sam's build thread


follow up to the lower control arm mods: I got the arms welded by a pro and they came back beautifully done. With a coat of primer and paint they look legit and armed with Audi TT RS ball joints, new superpro bushes and complete with my old subframes that have the rear LCA bush pressed in at the 'max caster position', they are now in the car. Fitting it all up didnt go without a hitch though. When I went to bang out the passenger side ball joint, I freaking nicked the CV boot with the drift. Luckily I had a rebuilt driveshaft under the house that I could put straight in, but jeez, not a good way to start a job like this. Also with the rear LCA bush at full caster, and the subframe eccentrics set to max caster on the back and min camber on the front, it was very hard to get the front LCA bolt to line up. I'd set the front of the subframe in because otherwise I was going to have excessive negative camber with the audi ball joints. After lots of grunting, sweating and mozzie bites I got it all together.........literally 8 hrs later! But it really is amazing the effect of all that caster and the ball joints. I drove to work last night after a quick toe plate alignment and the car felt better than before without even running an anti roll bar.
I made up a pair of drop links for the front usimg 10mm threaded rose joints into the only steel tube I could find that I could thread into - thick walled industrial hydraulic pipe. It should be fine, there's only about 10mm of free space between the engaged threads and it is plates so it should last. If not I'll make something out of solid aluminium down the track. So i'll get them on tonight and i'm super pumped to see how the conversion has worked. I have no idea how taking the effect of steering angle out of the FARBwill feel and fingers crossed that retaining the 24mm bar yet running the droplink pick ups half way along the arm lands me at the right front roll stiffness. I do not want to get under there again for as long as possible so its the 24mm bar no matter what for the forseeable future.
I'll get some pics of the how far forward the wheels are in the arches and the camber and droplinks in a bit.
So all I have to do now is zero in on the right setup for the tune (still trying to bodgy the correct boost/timing in Lemmiwinks with the APR tune so it doesnt rattle its head off) and find some rubber and then I can enter the Bathurst Hillclimbs!

[sambb]

What I can say so far is that the steering is lighter at lock to lock when you are at pedestrian speeds. Before, the steering would be loaded up in your hands (which I’d mistakenly blamed on the clutch pack LSD) and then want to unwind really hard like when you have shagged strut top bearings. That now doesn’t happen which definitely points to the fact that the more lock you had on, the more the FARB was being twisted torsionally because the struts were dragging the drop links laterally and having a push pull effect on the bar.
I threw it into a few corners but its hard to get a gauge on this sort of thing until you’re on a track I think. Also previously I’d either been running around on the 24mm FARB when it was acting on the strut (way too front stiff) so I’d been running mostly with the bar disconnected completely. Anything I feel in the short term is most likely just re discovering what a well sorted front end feels like so I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve driven it a bit more. But as it stands the droplinks clear the driveshafts nicely and align almost vertically and don’t hit anything so I’m super happy with the initial outcome.
To re-iterate the 24mm bar when acting on the wishbone half way along its length should theoretically be the same as a 22mm bar in a stock setup. It does feel like that’s where its at in terms of front end roll stiffness (I’d run that way on the first car for a couple of years). Achieving that was my main worry, so so far so good.
pics to
come.

[sambb]

[simon k]

Very nice work Sam, well done!

[sambb]

thanks mate. only took me two years to finally do it. Hopefully it wont take another crash-rebuild before I get those S3 hubs in there!

[Sydneykid]

What I can say so far is that the steering is lighter at lock to lock when you are at pedestrian speeds. Before, the steering would be loaded up in your hands (which I’d mistakenly blamed on the clutch pack LSD) and then want to unwind really hard like when you have shagged strut top bearings. That now doesn’t happen which definitely points to the fact that the more lock you had on, the more the FARB was being twisted torsionally because the struts were dragging the drop links laterally and having a push pull effect on the bar.

The exact effect we talked about, it's dynamically horrible and I have no idea why manufacturers ever used it.

Cheers
Gary