Bang for buck fabrication jobs...

[Bullet Fast]

Hey dude,

Have you seen the Supaloy LCAs up close? Id have to make an educated guess that these are cast with some finish machining. As opposed to entirely CNC'd. They can be had for $540 on eBay which suggests the same. Heaps of static caster could be introduced at the LCA but may play havoc with suspension kinematics. It'd be worth finding someone who races the polo on fast road tyres, who knows caster and camber ideals and go from there. Just be aware, narrow tracked vehicles, mac strut front ends and high-ish COGs are going to need a bit of camber to turn best at limit of adhesion which causes some traction issues under hard braking and acceleration in FWD cars. I'd expect this to have further implications for life of CVs. If you want a pictoral example of this have a look at improved production race cars via google images.

I'm happy to explore the option of prototyping a control arm for visual evaluation and then casting if there was a market. And by market I mean enough customers to support a minimum order quantity through a foundry. The other, and probably more viable option is to consider raplacing the crossmember with a tubular cro-mo steel item that simultaneously widens track, introduces more camber, dynamic caster and allows the use of Golf/Audi/etc control arms.

Thoughts?

[Polo GTEye N9]

Yes strut top bearing are a regular to fail on Polo and mine are noisey and what Noone said' If you could work out a better system for adjustable top mounts and bearing to adjust the caster, I'd be very interested.'
Cheers Al

[VWindahouse]

Hmmm wider track polo's I'm keen!

[vwthunder]

Maybe we should try to get Eddy in here to explain how is car is set up and what ideal street settings would be without going too crazy

[nightphotographer]

I'd be interested in a 2.5" DP and the top mounts if you're taking orders haha

[Bullet Fast]

Seems like these two bits are the most popular. Happy with a mild steel DP? Anyone got an OEM one they're not using I can reverse engineer? Point to a cheap on eBay?

My front left top mount is stuffed so I might have a crack at this too.

On the lower control arm / engine cross member issue - I have alot of suspension reference material here to read through to make an educated decision about +/- benefits of a mod like this. On the wider track discussion - this is probably better acheivable with wheel offset and rolled arches.

[Bflat]

The guys on UK-Polo are saying these fit out car

VW Golf MK5 TOP MOUNTS (PAIR) - Golf MK5 - VW - Parts by Car Manufacturer

Someone has ordered them and will be trying them out soon.

Off topic, but are they adjustable tops? If they are, and they work, I'll be all over them!

I double the LCA request, they're always desirable, perhaps even drop plates for the rear also? (eliminate the toe and caster whilst gaining a few degrees of camber)

[vwthunder]

Looking forward to seeing where this thread goes, might be able to get some custom parts done that could really help out the little polo's

[Bullet Fast]

I'm not a fan of the compbrake unit, they look an absolute pain to adjust when it comes to wheel alignment time... and there is this:

Hey I've had a look at a couple of different adjustable strut tops and I'm not entirely enthusiastic about how they've been made. The spherical plain bearings used in the majority of the 'race' or solid setups are not specially designed to take large axial loads at the sizes that allow a strut top to be adjustable. I'd suggest retaining the large spring hat bearing against the bottom of strut top and reverse engineering the noltec design with a commonly available spherical bearing size. In doing so, the bearing will only take the load to the damper shaft movement, rather than the corner weight of the car.

What does this mean for those with coil overs? I'd be interested in knowing how you have the units in now. I don't see the OEM top mount carrying the entire corner weight of the car particulary well. Is this why they keep wearing out? It could be replaced with a plain bearing, but i'm not sure how long this would last either. Any bespoke open wheel race car would use these components but in radial loading, exactly as the bearing designer intended. I spoke to a rally mechanic today and he was optimistic that it would be okay with a step down from the spring hat to the spherical bearing. However, even at 20mm bore dia on the bearing, the contact area on the edge of the bearing is only: 20mm bore, 24mm shoulder on the shaft, so 2mm worth of contact all around. Yikes...

[Redliner]

Check out this link for top mounts in the UK:
VW POLO GTI TOP MOUNTS (PAIR) | eBay

[Bullet Fast]

200 quid!?

[nightphotographer]

Are the OEM top mounts really that bad? Like for road use, on a slammed car (assuming I'm in that category with 85mm clearance on 17's) surely it's cheap to just go OEM? My car won't be tracked and only does 15k a year, mainly on the freeway which isn't bad for ride quality.

[noone]

They seem to take damage from bad roads at speed with lowered suspension. I'm guessing that as the standard setup is soft, they used soft components if that makes any sense, less noise / vibration transferred into the chassis.

I've not noticed any clear issues since going KW, the short springs meant there was uncontrolled travel and the AP's were just hard.

Shouldn't have any issues other than premature failure (damaged, noisy, binding) before other suspension components have, I've seen a number of cases where people have miss diagnosed suspension issues, unfortunately for us it would be easy to replace the wrong bit and the noise / issue remains. VW in Aus never seem to have these around, so what happened to me was they found the issue and had to wait a few days until they were in the country. VW don't seem to put any effort into stocking parts, its easier to let owners wait a few more days with cars that are in pieces than keep more stock to maintain what I feel are reasonable stock levels.

<close gripe>

[waxgti]

Seems like these two bits are the most popular. Happy with a mild steel DP? Anyone got an OEM one they're not using I can reverse engineer? Point to a cheap on eBay?

My front left top mount is stuffed so I might have a crack at this too.

On the lower control arm / engine cross member issue - I have alot of suspension reference material here to read through to make an educated decision about +/- benefits of a mod like this. On the wider track discussion - this is probably better acheivable with wheel offset and rolled arches.

MILD STEEL would be BOSSSSS, someone cut theirs out

[h100vw]

MILD STEEL would be BOSSSSS, someone cut theirs out

I only have the very front section of my pipe. Sorry. There must be a whole landfill dedicated to standard VW downpipe somewhere. I have taken 2 off in 7 days at my place.

Gavin