Time attack beetle

[Wally]

Great pictures!
Much less roll then before so it seems, looks well planted!

[Humble]

Finished up another race weekend! Did a little tweaking on the car saturday and took it on a long drive. I haven't had a chance to go through the logs yet but I noticed a weird behavior. On high boost shifts from 2-3 and 3-4 the wastegate and blow off valve seemed to get caught in a harmonic cycling fit, which prevented spool. If I slammed the throttle shut, waited half a sec or so then opened it up again it would be fine. I'm not sure what would cause this and it doesn't happen all the time. I adjusted my bottom end off boost timing which has really helped my initial throttle response and low end pick up.

After topping off with 100 octane I headed down to the autox in Marina for a double points fathers day event. The car was pretty squirelly under boost and turned the rear tires into smoke at full boost :P Here's my fastest run of the day which was good for 2nd in class and top 5% overall, not too shabby! As you can see, there was still room for improvement :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX0RxM4AEPc

[70Turbobug]

On high boost shifts from 2-3 and 3-4 the wastegate and blow off valve seemed to get caught in a harmonic cycling fit, which prevented spool. If I slammed the throttle shut, waited half a sec or so then opened it up again it would be fine.

Sounds to me like your wastegate spring is too weak or sticks? Maybe a problem with one of the "sense lines" vacuum/boost lines? Great video and very quick congratulations!

[NO_H2O]

Nice work. Thanks for the video.

[Humble]

Still haven't worked out the weirdness with the wastegate spring but I have a manual boost controller on the way to see if it helps any.

I also lucked out and happened to find a stellar deal but had to postpone paying off the credit card in return. Came across a set of good condition Fikse FM5 classics with hoosier r6 rubber for $900! The wheels are in great shape but the rubber is probably done for. It's a set of 17x9.5 et23 front and 17x10.5 et15 rear, and a quick test fit determined they are a perfect fit! These wheels and tires are also much, much lighter than the 18's with A048s.

[Wally]

Cool! they even look good
Very curieus: what do the weigh with tires?
Pls also weigh them when you remove/renew the tires.

[Humble]

So I got weights today and with a little guess work we can find the weight of the rims. This is per wheel...

Current setup: BSA 215A
BSA 18x8 & Yokohama A048 235/40-18 = 45lbs
Tire = 25lbs. / Rim = 20lbs

BSA 18x10 & Yokohama A048 285/30-18 = 51lbs.
Tire = 27lbs. / Rim = 24lbs.

New setup: Fikse FM/5
Fikse 17x9.5 & Hoosier R6 245/40-17 = 39lbs.
Tire = 22lbs. / Rim = 17lbs.

Fikse 17.10.5 & Hoosier R6 275/40-17 = 42lbs.
Tire = 23lbs. / Rim = 19lbs.

[Wally]

That is a significant gain for sure! Some will come from the reduction in wheel diameter, but still.
I was gonna make a smart @ss remark about fitting a 17" tire around an 18"wheel, but lets say, I know what you intended to write ;-)

[Humble]

Got it fixed now :P Anyway, it is a sizeable weight loss and I'm curious to see if it will have any "seat of the pants" difference during an autox.

[evilC]

Interestingly, the new tyre combination will change a couple of things apart from the weight:

The stance will change as a result of the rear being raised slightly ~12mm and the front lowering slightly ~9mm. Depending on speed that might improve stability especially with the rear wing.

The overall gearing will increase by 4%.

How stiff are the Hoosiers? can you drop the pressures any compared to the yokos?

Clive

[Humble]

I'll probably need to raise the front again once the bumper/splitter combo is finished, and I'm going to drop the rear 1" before the next race to see if that helps solve the traction problems I had last time. The hoosiers seem to have a softer sidewall so they should react well to pressure changes, where as the yokos don't seem to care.

[Humble]

Had autox #6 this year in the bug on sunday. It was cool and overcast which was nice but it didn't help my tire temps at all. I softened the rear suspension by taking 2 turns pre-load out of the rear springs but I don't think it was enough. The tires are too hard for autox to be competitive and I think I'm going to need real A6 hoosiers soon. I finished up 3rd in class, about a second behind a couple miatas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJsGiNsCaW8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI1Lv9RQhcs

I'll upload pics as they come in, I saw a couple of good shots on a friend's camera so I can't wait

[NO_H2O]

Nice vids. Thanks for sharing.

[Humble]

Finished another event this weekend, #7 of the series. I had a co-driver (read: tire warmer ) this time around to see if I could get some more heat into the tires but it was a marginal difference at best. Tire temps never reached 100, even with 2 drivers, which seems worse than a 200 treadwear tire to me temp wise. Both my competitors were on super sticky autox R-comps again, but I really narrowed the gap this time. I ran a 52.63, vs a 52.6 for 2nd and a 51.8 for 1st. I was also one of the fastest cars down to 100 ft. slalom topping out at 80-82mph going into the braking zone.

Here's a couple videos I got... I was playing with camera angles and these were my fav's

Bumper cam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egYoJtQ7akc

Wing cam facing backward
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhM1Vx5tVGM

[NO_H2O]

Nice work. Thanks for the vids.