The Itty Bitty NOVA VW Committee

[Senor_Taylor]

Very nice! Did you notice any brake fade from the stock pads toward the end of the sessions?

I felt 0 fade whatsoever. I was very surprised. I also wasn't REALLY getting into the brakes that consistently because I feared that with stock brakes, they would go from 100 -> 0 immediately when they got too hot.

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Not willing to write this car off, so no DE in it.

I'm only quoting it because it's on the same page.

I won't argue this. I shouldn't be DEing it.

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[rherold9]

Looks like you were pushing that thing to the tire limit in turns. Nice! I'd like to see it out there more in DE. If anything just stay in DE1 if you aren't willing to write it off while you find a track car. DE1 is for sure much less accident prone than other groups!

[Jake]

Glad you finally got out for some Real Live Track Time and got a hit of the GFCP! You did well, you listened and made some good progress in the ~2.5 sessions we had. A few notes from my end before you go do this a second time - not trying to totally curb your enthusiasm, just provide my take on the car and your driving.

My approach as your instructor, knowing you and that we only had a few sessions to make the most of everything, was a bit more "attack mode" than I normally would use with, like, anyone else. A lot of the instruction beyond basic guidance of the driving line was focused on heavy braking and aggressive exits out of corners. Which... you did well with and the car handled fine for the time it spent doing so.

If you keep doing this in the GTI, I would be very cautious about being so aggressive on those tires and with those brakes. The tires were getting greasy in your second session - hence some of how they handled with my DE 2 laps - and the brakes didn't have a ton of feel beyond aggressive-ish initial bite (that's every new car, though).

For round two, set tire pressures lower so they won't balloon up to 900 psi after you take T3 and T10 in full attack mode each lap. Better brake fluid is cheap/easy and would probably do wonders for that pedal feel. If you were going to make this a serious long-term DE car, I'd buy some pedal covers that allowed for heel-toe, the way it's set up now makes that near impossible if you're trying to concentrate on other things.

Otherwise, the car is fine. The mechanical LSD is pretty wild when you really start pushing. Thanks for letting me drive it, it was fun to compare it to Joey/Zach's white one.

One note on the student end - we had one instance in the second session where our line/speed up the uphill esses was... a lot. We made it through T10 because I realized we were carrying a lot of speed, you did as I asked, and the stability control gave a helping hand - I felt it a bit, not sure if you did or not. The concerning comment after the fact was "I took the esses flat because you always say you can."

We entered off-line after passing someone, in a car with hot all-seasons, no aero, and a novice driver at the helm and it was pretty uncomfortable for me. In the future, I would ask that you communicate something like that before just doing it - and on my end, I should have asked how you were feeling confidence-wise through that section of track. Chalk it up as a lesson learned on both ends and maybe shoot a tweet at VW's ESC engineers for a job well done.

Aside from that one nitpick, you did really well. The autocross/circuitcross experience in the past set you up nicely to move into HPDE and I think you'll progress quickly, whether it's in this car or something else. Good job!

[Senor_Taylor]

I honestly didn't feel the car catch
itself that time up the uphill esses and I didn't feel like I pushed it that much harder than the other times. You said what you said after that and I guess I didn't understand the gravity of the situation because, until just now, I didn't realize you were as serious as you are about that being a hairy situation. Now I'm concerned that I was being reckless.

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[Jake]

Eh, you weren't being too reckless - if you'd have kept putting the car in situations where the ESC was saving it or helping out excessively, I'd have reeled you in.

As you get more experience, you'll feel more of those little things with tires and traction. Until then, that's partially why you have someone like me riding shotgun

[ScottyB]

yeah you could definitely see some serious yawing at 6:15. nice catch, that's an easy place to get any car unsettled and a lot of opportunity to loop it to the left on recovery and bite a tire wall.

you've got some pretty abrupt turn-in motion and some of the apexes looked wide but otherwise inputs looked smooth. not saying i'd be doing any better with a car that can pick up that kind of speed on all seasons. its just good to see you getting on track!

[SlimKlim]

Got my new paddles installed last night. I spent an embarrassing amount of money on them, but they're just lovely. CNC machined out of a single piece of aluminum and anodized with a matte black finish so it blends in with the OEM plastic.

There are ~3 companies selling paddles that actually REPLACE the OEM one rather than just sticking onto them with 3M tape or clamping around them with set screws, and of the 3, this company is the only one that offers something remotely OEM-ish looking. This company sells 3 different styles, this is the 3rd and smallest variant they have.

It's genuinely a 5 minute install, there's a pin the paddles pivot on that you slide out of the bottom with a pair of needlenose pliers. Old ones fall off, line the new ones up and slide the pin back in.No tangible benefit to speak of, they just make the car feel nicer.

[JPolen01]

Those look really nice. Are they the same size as the OE paddles or larger? They look meaty and I like it.

[SlimKlim]

The OEM ones are almost completely hidden:




Here are the other styles this S2T company sells, now that I have them installed it looks like the first style leaves the most room for your fingers, but I think the ones I chose are the best looking, the 2nd style looks like it's trying to be a Gallardo, not a fan:

[Ken]

The OEM ones are almost completely hidden:




Here are the other styles this S2T company sells, now that I have them installed it looks like the first style leaves the most room for your fingers, but I think the ones I chose are the best looking, the 2nd style looks like it's trying to be a Gallardo, not a fan:

Nice!

Yeah i remember hating the paddle shifters on my GTI, especially coming from the very friendly to use ones on the Ralliart (which were also mounted to the column and not the wheel itself which i liked.)

[Sijray21]

(which were also mounted to the column and not the wheel itself.)

Yes... This is the way it should be...

[.RJ]

(which were also mounted to the column and not the wheel itself.)

Yes... This is the way it should be...

[Sijray21]

(which were also mounted to the column and not the wheel itself.)

Yes... This is the way it should be...

Paddle Shifters locations, not shifting mechanism, doofus :-p

[Senor_Taylor]

(which were also mounted to the column and not the wheel itself.)

Yes... This is the way it should be...

<Handshake gif>

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[HAULN-SS]

Things I never imagined were a mod you could do to a car.

[SlimKlim]

Continuing the trend of overthinking my front plate mount to the exasperation of you all, I was ruminating on an article I read where APR ran a dyno test with a completely free & clear grill and a grill with a europlate attached to the center of it, and recorded a 16hp/22ft-lb loss due to the spike in intake temperatures. 

http://fourtitude.com/news/aftermarket_t...orsepower/

Looking at the OEM US front plate mount, the lower 3 inches of the damn thing hangs down right in the center of the intercooler. However, off on the passenger's side of the car is some contraption that is covered in smooth black plastic, so I assume whatever it is doesn't need a ton of airflow. 

I took another look at this DIY design: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.ph...late-Mount and figured I could make it work with the GTI despite the differences in the design of the grill. 

That guy posted his files on thingiverse, so Justin grabbed them and shelled one out for me, time was limited so he had to do the mounting plate at a lower quality. 

I test fit it last night and I think it will work well, it's pretty fiddly to install because of the honeycomb pattern of the GTI grill, but otherwise it works pretty well.







He's going to make some adjustments to the design and run one off for me at a higher quality for the final product. Ironically the plate is still stuck on there with Velcro right now because I couldn't get my fingers behind the plate to thread the nuts onto the bolts with the hardware I had, I'll use stubby self tapping screws with the denser 75% infill production quality one.

I was going to ask him to increase the depth of part of the mounting plate to get a little bit more clearance between the license plate and the bumper, but looking at the OG guy's DIY again it looks like he just stuck a couple strips of rubber on there to accomplish the same purpose, I'll probably just do that because I can figure out exactly how much padding to add when I'm putting it together instead of trying to guestimate how much width to add to the plate.



Regardless of the method, adding some padding will allow me to mount the plate an inch or two further to the passenger's side than it is now without rubbing on the painted bumper, and completely out of the way of the intercooler and parking sensors.

[Senor_Taylor]

Continuing the trend of overthinking my front plate mount to the exasperation of you all, I was ruminating on an article I read where APR ran a dyno test with a completely free & clear grill and a grill with a europlate attached to the center of it, and recorded a 16hp/22ft-lb loss due to the spike in intake temperatures. 

http://fourtitude.com/news/aftermarket_t...orsepower/

Look at me over here with my tow hook plate mount. What do I do with all of these horsepowers?

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[Apoc]

Needs more blacked out badging.

[SlimKlim]

After a bunch of deliberation and heartache I finally pulled the trigger on a set of wheels w/summer tires and the JB4 last week. 

I scraped google images for every photo I could of aftermarket wheels on MK7s, but I couldn't convince myself the sexual Neuspeed RSe10 would look as good as they do on stock suspension in 18x8.5 vs lowered with 19x9s.

If I wasn't going to be completely head-over-heels in love with the end result, I didn't want to spend a premium to get some trendy brand of wheels. The RSe10s would be about $305/wheel, plus individual shipping on the wheels and tires, plus mounting and balancing at a shop. I found some Enkeis in 18x8 on TireRack that were $225/wheel, flow-formed, and 0.3lbs more than the Neuspeeds. I also walked back from the Michelin PS4s I had been eyeballing and went for a set of Conti Extreme Contact Sports. Add in the savings on shipping and mounting, and I was able to cover the JB4 with the money saved on the wheel setup. 

Anyway, final specs are 18x8 +40 Enkei TS-10s that clock in at 19.5lbs each, wearing 235/40/18 Conti Extreme Contact Sports. Just to say I did, I brought a scale down to the garage and clocked the OEM wheels + tires in at 49.5lbs and these at 44.0lbs. So about a 12% reduction in unsprung weight. 






Onto the JB4. I opted for the overpriced but convenient smartphone connection upgrade kit, so the first thing I did was pry open the JB4 box, connect the kit to the data link side and tap into the power wire, you end up running a wire out of both sides of the JB4 enclosure and sticking the bluetooth dongle to outside of it with double-sided tape, I would've preferred if it was designed to all live inside the enclosure, but whatever.

This install is supposed to be easy, and physically it was. 2 out of the 3 plugs you need to access in the engine bay are right in front of you. The infamous lower plug on the charge pipe I wasn't able to find from the top so I just took the underpanel off and got to it from the bottom. Now that I know where it is I can reach it from the top, but its the kind of plug that requires a flathead screwdriver to release and I don't have the visibility or dexterity to get both hands down there and thread the tip of the screwdriver into the little release on the plug. 


Once I had it installed it was immediately apparent something was wrong, the car would start but run pathetically poorly and cut out a few seconds later, I disconnected and reconnected each plug twice but the issue persisted, I was able to connect to the unit with my phone but couldn't see much. I thought maybe it just needed to be driven to settle in but it was pretty obvious something wasn't right, stumbling when returning to idle and overall driving very poorly. 

I uninstalled it again so the car was at least functional, went and cleared the 9 (Nine!) OBD codes it set, and emailed George @ BMS explaining what was going on. He responded later that night suspecting I got a unit with incorrect firmware on it, so first thing yesterday morning I went out, reinstalled the unit again, and attempted to check the firmware. 

It took 15+ minutes to get the phone app to successfully connect to it, but I kept retrying it and was finally able to see that it was, in fact, on the wrong firmware. I downloaded the correct file and spent another 20+ nerve-wracking minutes watching it try and fail to write the new files onto the thing. 

After a dozen failed attempts it finally loaded, and when I started the car all of the previous days issues were gone, it had zero issues running and felt just like stock. Except it was too much like stock, because it was stock. I was able to change maps on the unit but they weren't actually taking effect, and the gauge screen was only displaying values for Boost, nothing else. 

More emailing back and forth w/George helped me figure out there was a problem with my OBD cable, I checked both sides and it was fine, so I pulled it back out of the car, and lo-and-fackin' behold: 



A bit of solder and heatshrink and all is officially well with the world. I've been running Map 2 which adds roughly 5psi over stock, and there is now 75% more giggling involved anytime you get the turbo scrolled up. 10/10, would pull my hair out over incorrect firmware and a broken wire again.

[ScottyB]

niiiiice.

those wheels are a home run, especially in that color combo with the green. when it comes time to put new shoes on the Si, imma remember those.