So how was the drive home Jonny?!...
I hope your sat down?? lol..
Update..So!!! I dropped off the car with Sam and Mark at VW Racing on Wednesday, I was away all weekend so they had the car until today, so plenty of time to get through the jobs that I wanted doing!! Quite a long list really..
Before I go into it all, the car is AMAZING now, and my god im keeping this thing and im going to make it a bloody animal.. I have decided lol.. (quote this if I ever talk about selling it again)
Here we go..
First of all I wanted a quick health check on the car, so the engine oil / filter was changed along with a check on the plugs and cam follower. The plugs looked fine and the cam follower was in perfect condition.. Thats with an Autotech fuel pump, running it hard all of the time! Its been in there for just over 12k miles now, so to anyone doubting the Autotech..
The next job was to get rid of some more weight, the following parts were to be removed..
* Air con pipes, compressor and rad
* Fog lights
* Headlight washer system
* Rear seatbelts
* Misc brackets
* One horn
* Front and rear arch liners
Removing the parts..
Air con system..
The air con removal is a big job, the system needs de gassing, removing then a shorter belt fitted as the compressor is not present..
Plus headlight washers and fogs..
I never use air con or fog lights, so its not a problem for me at all.. The headlight washers needed to come out anyways as they were broken from being iced up over the winter.. No point fitting another set! ha..
The car needed plugging in to get rid of the codes thrown by the fogs and the headlight washers being removed, not a big problem..
The next thing on the list was to fit these..
The suspension is a race set up from a one make GTI championship.. They are extremely light weight but non adjustable, not a problem for the road, but for a race car not ideal so VWR changed them to some KW Clubsport dampers, overkill for the road in my opinion as once they are right then you will never use the adjustment again..
Anyways that all means that I now have a fantastic damper set up on my car.. The damping is ok for the road, yes its hard but very progressive and controlled.. Im going to go with some stiffer shorter springs in the front to control the car a little better, but im pretty pleased with them as a start!
And these..
Again, these brakes are fitted to most of the VWR Cup cars, there a good set up made by WP.. They are perfect for the road, progressive, light weight and reasonably priced too..
I have a different set of brakes being made up, but they are going to take about 4 weeks, so these are going to be a stop gap! A very good one at that though!!!
Both fitted..
Some more pics..
I wanted a pretty aggressive set up on the car, and Mark was able to achieve the settings that I wanted..
I have the KW camber adjustable top mounts, we spun them round to run max caster, this ended up with 2.2 degrees negative front camber (with the top mount maxed out) which is ok with the amount of caster that were running.
Running the top mount for max caster adjustment also raises the front roll centre which is nice on a low car..
Toes were set at 1.5mm toe in across the front, nice and positive, feels great..
Rear we went for 2.2 degrees negative camber and toes were set to neutral, this makes the rear nice and responsive..
Im going to dial in a little more static rake into the car when I get the shorter front springs, this should make it a little better also..
So some of you are thinking thats all a bit pointless removing them bits etc etc..
Before..
After..
The car had 3/4 tank of fuel (approx 35kg) and the spare wheel and tool kit in place, this is usually out of the car, just had it in as it is a long trip for me to VWR and I didnt fancy having no spare..
That would put the base weight (without fuel) at just over 1225kg, not bad really.. Consider the weight of other cars that have been measured and you know just how much has come out of it!!
The car feels amazing, again weight is the enemy here and its really made a big difference having a further 53kg out of the car!!
The brakes are great and new suspension / set up, although pretty extreme for a road set up, and probably not to many peoples tastes either.. I love it! Its just what I want from the car..
The biggest shock however is the difference that removing the air con has made, the engine revs far quicker (due to the fact that its not driving the AC pump any more) and it feels as if the intercooler is working better, not really a surprise when you consider the AC rad sits directly in front of the OEM intercooler..
Anyways! Its awesome, im happy and the car is even quicker now!
Big thanks to all at VWR, can't say enough good stuff about those guys, mega work!