Sam's build thread

[sambb]

Spent bits of time today fitting the new battery up to a tray that I'd roughed out that needed some finishing touches and deciding on amd bending up the hold down clamp etc. Battery is a Full River HC20 that's going to be fitted as pictured lying on its side down low sort of underneath where the OEM airbox is. The shape of the tray will make more sense once its fitted but its going to be bolted at the front of the tray to the two posts coming up off the gearbox mount and at the top to a point just below the ABS module/assembly.
Once that's in i'll have to switch over to a pod style filter that'll eventually either draw air from a partition at the front of the engine bay where the battery used to be or perhaps through the factory airbox again if it can be modified to fit. dunno about that bit yet.

[simon k]

noice

[sambb]

anyone know an online australian store where I can buy proper velocity stacks, not the silly long radius donut things but the traditional long un flanged bellmouth stacks. I need a 3in one that'll fit inside a pod.

[sambb]

Picked up the 6R Polo steering rack bush today. It looks to be identical in dimensions to the OE rubber 9N3 one and fits perfectly onto the rack. I'll bolt it to a crossmember before I can be 100% but I'd hazard a guess its the one. Not sure if that was common knowledge or not ( it wasn't to me) but I'm stoked I can hopefully take a bit of sog out of the steering.

[sambb]

a mech/tuner mate put me onto this aussie site Home
They have some pretty cool stuff. These are their airboxes that look the goods definitely for the asking price, and nice looking rampod bases.

[sambb]

Wife out and my turn to have the kids so did a bit more battery work. The plate fit perfectly. As you can see it bolts to the top of the vibratechnics gearbox mount and the pin that used to locate the airbox helps support the back plate. Its solid as a rock so I'm really happy with that. I fit a remote positive terminal post and have the starter and harness wired to that. The fuse panel is just tied out of the way for now but will be completely rewired with a new fuse box mounted inside the fender later on. For safety I'll also add an isolator between the battery positive and the remote positive post. The intake is just a temporary cheapo SAAS universal pod.
Main thing is I have shaved 7kg total but also moved the remaining battery weight low and behind the line of the strut towers rather than dangling out over the front tyre and 2 foot in the air. While its still a work in progress at least the weight is where I need it to be for the corner weighting once the MCA's go in. Also i'll be able to put the MCA's in with the strut brace and not stress every time I need to clean the airfilter - the OEM airbox location meant the strut top nuts and strut brace had to be removed to get at the filter and I'd be filthy if the tops slipped up inside the towers while that was happening.

[DUBBIN]

Very clean snug solution, nice one mate!

[sambb]

Thanks mate. Yeah the intake side of things is a bit of a dogs breakfast though. The pod is so loud with full rice woosh woosh sounds which aren't my thing. I'm looking now at re-using the OEM airbox by cutting its shaped bottom off, giving it some aluminium flat plate for a base and bunging it back in with a different velocity stack leading into the MAF. The MAF is 2.5in ID but the trumpet is only 60mm which undercuts it a bit so i'll try to address that. Or a holden VS ss airbox?? Working on mounting the fuse plate out of the way now and then I'll see what room is available to me. Anyone have a CDA for sale?

[sambb]

So my slightly softer 7kg/mm front springs arrived so I fit those to the tubes and installed them yesterday. First I had to cut off the strut top domes with the grinder/files/sandpaper and prime and paint it too which is where all the time went. The fit up was easy as - the only thing you have to look out for is that you align the top FARB droplink tab so that it faces the front before tightening up the hubs crush tube to clamp the strut.
This is them fitted. At his point I still hadn't picked up that the droplink is waaayy longer than it needs to be - see it reaching well down past the FARB holes despite the FARB resting on the driveshafts.
Test fit of the tyre revealed that the top droplink stud on the whiteline adjustable droplinks is too long - a bit of sidewall flex and I reckon the tyre would have been shredded. Still hadn't picked up that the droplinks were too long.
Sorted the top droplink stud length with the grinder -thought I was sorted.
Re-fitted the UR front strut brace and torqued it all up properly. Happy to see that you get full access to the adjustable tops even with the bar fitted.

Last step after getting the ride heights back to where they were was to bolt up the FARB, which was when I realised that the droplinks were way too long. Because the coilovers adjusters sit lower on the tubes compared to the spring base on the B8's, there was only really one spot where the droplink mount could be welded on. Problem is it is 35mm lower than the OE/bilstein B8's rendering my 270mm OE droplinks and whiteline adjustables redundant. So after a quick camber setup to 3 degrees neg and a toe and go, I'm driving around with no FARB connected. I found that Superpro do a set of droplinks that go from 210-266 (TCR10160) so I should have them tomorrow and will fit them up over the weekend along with the rear springs and then I can give a bit of a street driving review.

[sambb]

Bit more work on the battery setup too. The black part pictured is all that is left of that turd cover that straddles the factory battery. I cut all the rest away leaving just the part that the fuse panel fits onto. The fuse panel fits into those grooves and then slides until it clicks into place. I mounted it to a nylon (non conductive) plate to which I fitted an aluminium bracket that I bent up at work (during lunch of course!).
Here it is fitted to the engine bay. It fits between the headlight and washer bottle. Getting it to sit out the right distance and positioning it so that the fuse panel could fit to it and have room to slide into place was tricky but worked out well in the end. The only drama with mounting it here is that the main feed to the panels bus (that comes off the battery) is too short if you put the battery where I did. So I had to cut off the crimped connection which left plenty of spade connector left. I then rubbed it back to bar copper, bent it into a U shape and then soldered a new longer cable onto it which was a mofo of a job but good in the end.
This is the finished product. The ugly fuse panel sits out of the way with all it associated cables lying flush along the base panel below where the OE battery tray used to be. Everything is now tied away and conduited and there's acres of room, a giant void where I can now start thinking about what kind of CAI/inlet I want to run. I'm thinking just a simple vertical aluminium partition that seals when the bonnet is down that gets fed from the factory CAI point and also there's now a big gap below the headlight where I can get more air from. A pod will draw from inside the partition unless its just as noisy as it is now, in which case I'll do an airbox. I think doing it that way is legal in NSW - I just can't have a naked pod in the main part of the engine bay yeah?

[Sydneykid]

Looks good, very neat and tidy. Personally I'm not a fan of mounting the swaybar links off the strut legs. When steering lock is applied the rotation of the strut leg applies preload to the swaybar, which changes the anti roll depending on how much lock is applied. On a car with OE strut mounted swaybar links I always change them to the lower control arm. If I remember rightly the Polo lower control arms already have holes in place for mounting swaybar links. Albeit not a huge amount, but removing the bracket and associated hardware off the strut leg also reduces the net unsprung weight.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

yeah its not the best arrangement. The droplinks never seem to sit perdendicular to the FARB mounts even with the wheels at the dead ahead position. The boots on the whiteline droplinks had actually torn where the angles had gotten so great that the rubber had touched somewhere or just torn. I'll have a squiz when I'm under there next to see if any of the holes in the control arms look like droplink mount possibilities.

[sambb]

The superpro's defo look the part. I like that the ball joints have serviceable boots and that the mounting face/flange of the ball joints (where it fits up against the FARB and droplink tab) are much wider which will hopefully mean they won't come chronically loose like the others used too. They're also M10 which makes taps/nuts etc a bit more convenient if they ever need a spruce up.
It looks like their lengths will work so if anyone is interested in the whiteline adjustables let me know before I put them on the for sale page (preferably Sydney! cash is good to!!).

[rgvlee]

Oooh may have to look at the superpros, as I will run into the same issue
What did they set you back

[sambb]

I got them for 150 bucks through bursons. They say 160mm which is misleading. they are much longer than that. The 160mm refers to the length of the adjustment rod, not the centre to centre of the actual ball joint bolts. I haven't fitted up yet but they look like the ones. I could have modified the whitelines but would have needed a reverse thread imperial tap which seemed like too much of a headache. I alsi want to try to be ready for a rallysprint mid month so needed a quick solution.