Joey's Totally Predictable DD V2.0

[SlimKlim]

Yeap. I had the dog in the car, and i kinda-sorta short circuited on the poor bastard at first until I realized he barely spoke English and was trying to apologize to me by putting his hands in a little prayer formation and it sucked the wind out of my sails. I had him follow me to the next intersection to get out of traffic and then called his ins. company and filed the claim for him because of said English difficulties.

Claim adjuster is supposed to call me this afternoon and I'm gonna get my friend's brother who does body work to give me a second quote, not worried about it getting fixed right, just bummed that this is going to follow me on a carfax report and come up whenever i try to sell or trade it.

By the way, for all the MK7 owners bitching about "Mexican build quality," look at how creased in that license plate is on the Camry. The impact felt WAY harder than the resulting damage would have you believe, which is partially what fueled my intial rage out on the guy. He hit the corner where the indentation for the license plate is and my bumper barely deformed, just a small hole from the license plate screw and maybe a 2" diameter indentation around it, plus some paint scratched off in the rough outline of a license plate.

[WRXtranceformed]

I feel your pain dude, same thing happened to me in the Jag if you remember and now 95% of dealers wont touch it or will give me like a third of its value because of it. We just can't have nice things can we?

[SlimKlim]

The MKV had two much bigger incidents on it's carfax report and every time I got a trade in quote for it they used it as an excuse to give me a downright offensive offer.

"Well it looks like you have a couple carfax inci-"

"Yeh, looks like they were both early on in the car's life and both repaired at VW dealerships"

"Well, that may be but it's still going to impact your value, looks like it's saying the the trade in offer is $5500"

"No fucking way, go talk to your manager"

"Well what are you looking to get for the car sir?"

"What it's worth."

Then he scurries off and comes back 5 minutes later with an offer right on trade-in market value. I hope people don't actually fall for that bullshit and take like 60% of their car's value because it has a fender bender on the report.

[WRXtranceformed]

You would be surprised. It's worse when you own a niche car because they legitimately don't want to sell it themselves so they give you a lower offer so that they can sell it to another dealer.

[SlimKlim]

I'm pretty sure they wholesaled the old GTI, I looked around for it when I went back to the dealer the weeks after picking up this one and never saw it. The offer was close enough to trade in value that I was happy with it. It was no secret that I was pulling a turn and burn on the thing to avoid replacing the water pump/t-stat on a car I had been thinking about getting rid of anyway.

Anyway, insurance adjuster called me and got my statement, said he has to get a statement from the guy that hit me, and then will work with me to get quotes for the repair. He said they dont actually have adjusters in this area, so I guess it'll be up to me to get a couple shop quotes? :dunno:

[Beej]

Bummer. To add to the Carfax Regret Story Pile: I still regret going through insurance for a parking lot ding, that I still haven't even gotten fixed.

But hey, these are the reasons for a daily driver, eh? Metallic paint or regular-ass white?

[ScottyB]

aaaaaaaaah sorry man. frankly i'm amazed you made it that far in DC traffic without something worse happening.

sounds like its a pretty mild bangup and shouldn't be too painful to repair. at the very least, the guy that hit you sounds like he understood the gravity of the situation and didn't try to pull any shenanigans to try to deflect the situation.

[Senor_Taylor]

They don't have adjusters in the nation's capitol?

[SlimKlim]

It's "The General" insurance company, yeah, the one with the little animated commercial from 1998. I was surprised the person I filed the cliam with was real. I'm not worried about the lack of adjusters in the area though, that just means they have to trust the quotes I get. I'm more worried about them dragging their feet to pay out because its a skeezy "non-standard" company.

I also filed a claim with my insurance company who's going to help me stay on top of "The General" and if it comes down to it, cover the repair, but that'd probably affect my premiums.

Bummer. To add to the Carfax Regret Story Pile: I still regret going through insurance for a parking lot ding, that I still haven't even gotten fixed.

But hey, these are the reasons for a daily driver, eh? Metallic paint or regular-ass white?

Regular ass-white. :thumbup:

[SlimKlim]

In Which Joey Tracks the New Commuter Car He Swore He Wasn't Going to Track

Shortly after purchasing my first new car ever, and opting to skip the "performance package" and summer tire options because it's "just a commuter" and would "never see any track time, except maybe an autocross here or there", I signed up for Dub Deliverance #5, which is an annual event put on by Trackdaze and subsidized by VW North America. $90 for 4 25-minute sessions on the Shenandoah course at Summit, plus access to the skidpad.

Overall impressions: 1.) Shenandoah is the most fun course I've ever driven. I've been out on VIR Main, the Patriot course, Jefferson and Summit main and Shenandoah is by far the most satisfying with "pistol grip" long left into a downhill right, and the uphill dash into the carousel. 2.) For something that is very much not a turn-key race car, the car did a surprisingly good job of pretending to be one.

Alright, so my day started at 5:30 AM, which sucked, but I was rewarded with a gorgeous sunrise out on Rt. 9.



I got down there around 7:15, unpacked, went through tech & registration and wandered around for a few minutes when a wild Jake Thiewes in a coked out 90s convertible showed up. The first session was supposed to be a lead-follow deal, where an instructor would lead 3 student cars at a reduced pace so we could get to know the line and practice safe passing, Jake being Jake, he arranged permission to ride with me for the first session and help me learn the course. When the second session came around, it turned out they were a smidge short on instructors, so Jake became my personal Trackdaze instructor for the day.

I think I made a lot of improvement through out the day on the line for each of the corners, and did a pretty decent job of keeping my eyes up and not just following the car in front of me. I picked up a lot of confidence about the braking zones, although I'm still way too soft and too early. The biggest challenge for me, at least on Shenandoah, is remembering the goddamn course. There are so many blind entries and elevation changes that without Jake I would've gotten lost like James May.

The car felt & performed much better than I expected. It's still a FWD hatch with a tendency to understeer, but not nearly as bad as you would expect, it's lightyears ahead of the MKV/MKVI cars. You can feel the chassis has a willingness to dosome lift-off oversteer but the ESC will only let you get so naughty before it cuts in. The lack of a limited slip was most apparent when you came out of the apex into the uphill straight towards the carousel and burned all your power off on the inside wheel, I'd love to see what a performance package car on summer tires would've done.

Between my 2 sessions and Jake laying down a hot half-session in the afternoon, we absolutely caned the shit out of the car. The oil temps spent a decent amount of time hovering around 260*, and we didn't really get significant brake fade and/or tire gooey-ness until about 15 minutes into a session. Really not that bad for a not-a-racecar right off the showroom floor.

[youtube]vd_qLKMMCgk[/youtube]

Matthew came down to hang out and grabbed a shot of us going under the bridge.



We also went and dicked around on the skidpad for a few minutes. The "ESC" can only be reduced to a "Sport" mode and not fully deactivated. This became a problem when trying to get the car to hold an angle. I could introduce a tiny bit of oversteer just by lifting off the throttle and cutting the wheel but as soon as I opened it to try and counter steer the ESC grabbed the brakes and straightened us back out. I ended up standing on the throttle, letting the front wash out, then jabbing the brakes and cutting the wheel hard to get the rear to come around far enough where the ESC couldn't fix it.

I think I may have accidentally cut the best footage out of the youtube clip, a few seconds before I started this clip we got a less dramatic angle but held it for a lot longer, maybe 1/3-1/2 a rotation of the pad. The ones in the video I could get it to turn in but couldn't keep it there.

[youtube]Y0l3_zPDA80[/youtube]

Off the track, the event was a total kick-ass nerd fest for hopeless VAG lovers like myself. NGP and APR had tents set up and were doing brake pad/fluid jobs and tunes for people.



I got to talk to the APR engineers that do the actual product R&D, and sit in and start their current testbed car, a white 4-door MK7 like mine with a Golf R turbo swap, most of the common parts out of their catalog and a few prototypes.

This car to be specific:



I also got to talk to one of the REVO engineers, check out their test bed car and the CAI prototype he's been working on lately. Virtually every cool VAG was in attendance. I parked next to a guy that had an STI swapped VW Type II Notchback, who disappeared over lunch and came back in his completely custom '73 911 with a 3.5 stroker motor in it. There were a ton of dedicated track cars, lots of fast Audis and VW R street cars, and some super weird stuff like what appeared to be an off-road prepped MKIII Golf.



I also caved and bought myself a boost gauge from NGP, I've been eyeballing it for a while and figured it was only a matter of time, so I might as well get the event day sale pricing.



I installed it yesterday morning, and it was way more of a pain in the ass than it should've been. The instructions that came with it really were not comprehensive and I was left to figure a lot of stuff out on my own. Such as how to run the boost line through the dash, or having to guess at which wires to tap for the illumination. The gauge makes a whistling/buzzing noise and flickers when it's under boost, after doing some googling it sounds like the knuckleheads forgot to give me a t-fitting which supposedly fixes that. I'm gonna give them a call and ask them to drop one in an envelope for me. Totally and utterly useless mod, especially since it doesn't even read vacuum, but it makes me happy when you stand on it and the gauge starts jumping around like crazy. Apparently a stock MK7 will peak at a smidge over 20psi and maintain 17-18psi in the higher gears.

Overall I'd give the experience a 10/10. Awesome track, great low-key event, awesome cars, cool people. Will probably do it again next year.

EDIT: I doublechecked the NGP site and the goobs gave me the "TDI" gauge which doesn't show vacuum for some reason. I called them and they set aside the correct one for me, but I gotta go pick it up in Lorton.

[Jake]

Saturday was a blast - I thought the car was pretty well set-up for being totally stock on all-season tires. Summer tires + LSD would have helped significantly but we were able to power out of turns with some care.

Was fun instructing, too. This was my first time in the right seat at a track event - prior to this I've instructed at some autocrosses but nothing more. Not sure how I feel about instructing people who aren't long-time friends that I explicitly trust to listen to me... but Joey was a great student - picked up on things and listened well. So, not a lot in the way of nerves on my end. We had some big improvements from start to finish.

And a big thanks to letting me beat on the car, too...

[youtube]Xfhlpfnjqtg[/youtube]

[SlimKlim]

I know y'all are super busy arguing whether a CX-5 or Ford Flex is a better way to chop your dick off today, so I'll just keep smelling my own farts over here...

Called NGP, they said to come on down to the Lorton shop and they'd give me the right gauge. When I got there they offered to install it fo free, which was super nice of them even if it did take the better part of an hour to swap it out.



Much more fun, the gauge twitches every time you downshift and is constantly jumping around whenever you touch the throttle. Still a completely useless mod, but it makes me happy, I've always wanted a boost gauge since coveting thy neighbors Saab 900 SE when I was stuck in a lowly N/A S.

Then I pulled into the garage at work and the headlights switched on. The gauge lights up blue, they gave me a fucking MKV gauge. :roll: I have a call in at the MD shop that typically handles sales, waiting on a call back. I'm not driving back to Lorton or fucking Aberdeen, gonna ask them to just drop the correct one (after quadruple checking) in a box and send it to me.

[*insertusernamehere*]

Niice. It fits really nicely in the A/C vent. Nice and neat.

I'd have to agree on Shenandoah being super cool. The ride I got in that Euro-spec M3 was just absolutely awesome. The car, driver and track was fantastic. Shenandoah is small but seems to be a technical little course. Like Jake said, a big autocross circuit.

[SlimKlim]

Yeah if we exceeded 100mph it wasn't by much, definitely a tight course. I bet that was a fun ride along, that guy was my first-ever instructor when I did my first Hyperdrive at Summit way back when. Funny that he ended up parking next to us.

EDIT: NGP is putting the correctly colored gauge in a box and sending it to me complete with free t-shirt. Hopefully the 3rd time is the charm. :lol: I can't really be too frustrated, mistakes happen and they've been really accommodating to make it right.

[SlimKlim]

Tough to see the illumination in the photo, but the 3rd boost gauge installed in this car this week appears to be the winner. :thumbup: At least I'm like, really really good at installing them now.

[Jake]

Sweet! Sucks it took three gauges to get the right one, but at least they were willing to make it right for ya.

[SlimKlim]

Oh, maybe you turbo people can shine some light on this. It's not terrible, but at certain throttle positions the gauge makes an annoying buzzy sound, from what I've read I need to install a t-fitting or a in-line fuel filter in the boost like to "smooth out" the airflow and prevent that buzzing. Any suggestions on what I should use, specifically?

EDIT: Also reading about people stuffing a little bit of cotton in the boost line... :dunno:

[Kaan]

buy a MKII and come to the track. I'll give you some suspension parts I still haven't gotten rid of

[WRXtranceformed]

I've never heard of or had a boost gauge buzz

[SlimKlim]

Have you had a mechanical gauge or just electronic ones? Are you referencing your old Scoob too? It's possible the car was just too loud to notice, I can only hear mine doing it with the windows up and the radio turned down.

From what i've been reading it's extremely common with mechanical gauges because you're actually tapping into the manifold and piping boost all the way up into the dashboard where it's measured at the gauge, so at certain throttle positions the turbulence of the air makes the needle vibrate and buzz. On the flip side since you're piping that stuff into the cabin you hear the turbo scroll and diverter valve as clear as a bell, which might get old at some point, but right now it's still fantastically entertaining.

Looks like Lowes has some lawn motor fuel filters that should work to "smooth out" the air in the line, i prefer the idea of trying that over just stuffing some cotton into the line, so I might swing by there this afternoon and pick one up.