Re: Do you,uh,Auto-X?

["Ian Overholt" <ioverholt@hotmail.com>]

Shawn,

Your car modification plan is pretty good, but you might want to consider a 
few things.  The ultimate goal of what you want the car to be will help you 
decide how to build it.  For example, if you are going to build the car 
mostly as a daily driver which you will occasionally autox, you will 
probably compromise ultimate performance a little for daily comfort.  For a 
daily driver, you would probably use a regular rear mount, where a dedicated 
racer would use a solid or VW Motorsport mount.

Your stock exhaust manifold should be of the dual outlet type.  This 
manifold does not need to be changed.  If you had the 4-1 manifold, you 
would want to change to the dual outlet one.

The stock swaybars from another VW are better than not having any sway bars, 
but for serious autocrossing, you will want bigger bars.  If you notice the 
stock VW rear sway bar ends before it reaches the shock mount.  The 
aftermarket bars reach all the way to the shock mount.  This gives you a lot 
better resistance to roll.  You can buy up to a 28mm rear bar.  Roll 
stiffness is exponentially related to bar thickness.  So even a 1mm increase 
in thickness gets you a lot more stiffness.

The Techtonics exhaust is good.  The only downside to their exhaust, is they 
are somewhat finiky to install.  A lot more people have been complaining 
about this recently.  The Eurosport exhaust is also quite good.

Definitely put on the stress bars before you autox.  Your front suspension 
WILL break very quickly if you do not put the lower front bar in.  BTW, SP 
rules do not allow the 16v lower stress bar.  You can only use a 
point-to-point bar.

Your springs and shocks will be a big decision where you decide how much 
harshness you can handle on a daily driver and how quick you want to be 
through the cones.  On the MK1 Doug and I drive, we went with Koni 
adjustables and H&R race springs.  It is very stiff.  You can use certain 
types of coilovers, and I've wondered if we should have gone the coilover 
route.  The coilovers allow you to corner-balance your car and you can more 
precisely tune the spring rate.  On the MK1, the coilovers have a lot better 
ride than lowering springs.  Mike Potter put coilovers on his '80 S and it 
rides a lot smoother while maintaining excellent cornering.  You might want 
to consider a coilover suspension if you want to race and drive the car 
daily.  The drawbacks to the coilover suspension are price and you will have 
rubbing issues to deal with.  Eurosport and Ground Control have pretty 
reasonably priced coilover systems.  You just have to add shocks.  Full-body 
threaded coilovers like the H&R system are illegal for SP.

As for wheels and tires, the best thing to do is buy a set of wheels and 
tires specifically for autox.  The reason for this is that you want a 
smaller rolling circumference and a wider contact patch for autox.  This 
will kill your fuel economy and limit your top speed if you use this combo 
on the street.  For autox, you want to run wide 13" rims.  For the street, 
you might want larger wheel diameter.  What wheel/tire size were you 
planning to use?


Ian Overholt
'88 16v
'78 Champagne Edition


From: Shawn Rader <rader@engr.orst.edu>
Here's all the stuff I hope to have done by the time the season
starts:
new shocks (probably Bilstein sports)
new suspension bushings
Techtonics Exhaust
better exhaust manifold (havn't decided which)
springs (H&R or Neuspeed sports)
K&N air filter (already done)
Bosch Triple Electrode plugs (already done)
high performance plug wires
new tires (I have three different brands on my car now)
vented brake rotors
better brake pads
stress bars all around
sway bars from another VW (junkyard part)
bigger wheels (probably not this year)
Techtonics front engine mount (already done)
Sythetic Oil
redline trans oil
watter wetter


I havn't added up how much this is going to cost, and i don't really want
to.

Shawn
'81 Scirocco S


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