my car is fast again! (a bit lengthy)

[abatzis2 at hotmail.com (Michael Abatzis)]

note: i broke my original post into 2 easier to digest posts. see speedo 
musings for more exciting thoughts!

so after discovering that my speedometer was reading ~12mph slower than my 
actual speed, i took it out and replaced with the 160mph motometer from the 
old rocc (the odometers were off by less than 400 miles. weird.). the speed 
sensors for the cruise control are different between the 2 speedometers. 
after being pissed off, i remembered that i had 2 spare cruise control 
units. one of them had the motometer speed sensor. i think this is the most 
obscure spare part i have ever had. i was pumped. anyway, i think my car 
being slow woes were due to the speedometer. turns out i've been going way 
faster than i thought, to the tune of averaging 95+ mph on the highway when 
i thought i was doing 80. i thought i had some trouble getting the car to 
100mph before; again, it turns out that what i thought was 100mph was 
actually 115(!), which i happily verified on my hour long commute today. 
other thoughts:
1) everything seems real slow now. i thought that 80 mph felt faster in my 
car before--i thought it was just because of old car+noise+high rpms in the 
rocc.
2) i'm a lot less frustrated on the road now by all the "slow drivers". my 
speedometer fix means that they now seem faster now too :) the corollary to 
this is that atlanta drivers must fricken' fly, cause it never seemed slow 
to me on rt 400, even with the bum speedo.
3) working speedo is the ultimate mod. i feel like i've gained about 20hp. 
actually, ultimate mod would be having a speedo that read 10mph too fast, 
although i guess that would be cheating...
4) i'm an idiot sometimes. i diagnosed the slow car problem based on a 
stretch of road in atlanta that i drove all the time. when i punched it at 
the light from a rolling start, i would pass a landmark and check my speed. 
this was remarkably consistent. my old 16v would hit this point at 65 mph, 
my g/f's saturn l300 v6 would hit it at 61ish, and my vr6 mk2 gti (which i 
traded for this rocc) hit it at 71. this one hit it at 58 mph, which is why 
i thought it was so slow. actual speed is probably closer to 68-70, which is 
competitive with that fast-as-crap vr6, right where it should be ;) without 
the gobs of low-end torque of course. in my quest to find out what was 
wrong, i did the following over the course of nearly 2 years: electrical 
checked EVERYTHING, replaced +/- cables, swapped out ENTIRE fuel system 
piece by piece, including ecu, fuel distro, injectors, fuel pumps. swapped 
out spark plugs, coil, wires, distributor, knock box, knock sensor, o2 
sensor, coolant temp sensor, thermo time switch, swapped heads, installed tt 
header (thought i might have a clogged cat), swapped a disk caliper (it 
actually was binding a bit), swapped cams. checked timing, mixture, cam 
timing, etc ad nauseum, and tinkered with it constantly. checked compression 
like i was checking my oil.  checked throttle switches like it was my job.  
i think that's everything. i even thought the speedo was off, cause my butt 
dyno was telling me the car was fast, but when i timed the car once it 
seemed ok. don't know how this happened. i was at the end of my rope, 
because the car always revved smooth and ran great, so i had no clue what 
was wrong. needless to say, i'm ecstatic now. and just to repeat, i'm a 
moron sometimes.



-Michael Abatzis
New Orleans!
1988 Scirocco 2L 16v RIP
1987 Scirocco 2L 16v...

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