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SuperSkyline89's Timeline

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
Looks like things are coming along nicely.

Did you get the 034 billet engine/trans mounts. If so, I will be interested to hear how you feel about them. I have them and the arm and the pucks. Before we put the front end back on I tried to move the motor to see if I could get it to rock any at all, zero movement. Between these mounts, the spherical joints in the front tubulars, the adj rear control arms and the rear trailing arms combined with the removal of the balance shafts this will probably shake a bit. My car is still weeks away from running.

I'm getting there but I dont have the mounts yet. One of them is ready but 034 is working on making the second.

I intended to bring the car home from my mechanic yesterday but the weather took a shit and I wasn't able to. It was 5 Celsius with dry roads but then it snowed for literally a couple minutes and the temperature dropped to 2 Celsius. The snow melted but with the roads that cold and wet I couldn't safely get the car home.

I'm only two weeks away from my first outing of the season so I'll be picking up the car next Friday and getting an alignment on the weekend. I'm going to have the mounts put in after that event, possibly at the same time as my linear springs if they show up in time. It'll also be getting my livery put on hopefully within the following month. Then I need to get my new tires mounted and order a cage and harnesses. Still a lot to do but it's all within reach
 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
I went to the track for my first lapping day today. The day started off right around the freezing mark but warmed up to 15 Celsius by the end of it. The track was perfectly clean but everything else was still covered in several inches of icey snow left over from the ice storm that hit us last weekend. The paddock was pretty clean but there were huge chunks of ice here and there along with some pretty large patches of slick ice. The paddock melted within a couple hours but the track gradually had rivers of melt water start flowing across it as the snow and ice in the infield melted away. During my first session it was right around 5 Celsius and I was surprised by the amount of grip I found. I was expecting it to be a crap shoot but I was actually able to push reasonably hard. The rivers that formed posed a challenge later in the day but I got some good experience learning to deal with maintaining stability that should help me tame my car once I'm on a reverse stagger tire setup. I also got some good experience using the throttle to make my LSD pull the car into a tighter line. Any FWD car that claims to be a performance car really does need an LSD, the way it pulls the car into a corner just defies natural instinct.

This was my first time spending a considerable amount of time in my car since striping out the interior and I can't emphasize enough what a horrifying, miserable experience it is to drive on the street now. I went to Home Depot to buy some foam earplugs to use while driving on the street and it brings the noise down to OEM levels. Without them it sounds just like being on an airplane and you hear every single thing that touches the bottom of the car.

I have both race seats mounted in the car now and my tubular control arms are in too. The hood is painted and back on the car and I also installed a badgeless grille and a towhook license plate mount. I zip tied all the switches and door handles to the doors to keep them secure for now but I'm going to work on some brackets to mount them more permanently. Aside from that I'm still waiting on my engine mounts and linear springs. I've been talking to a printing company a friend works at about the "livery" for my car and we've arranged a date to do it but that's all I'm going to say about that for now. I also still need to order an Autopower half cage and Schroth harnesses.


 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
My buddy at work with the Terminator Cobra Mustang that I used to track with took a few pics of me on track. I'm waiting on the official photographer to send me his stuff, I already contacted him about buying it and he said he'll let me know once he has it all together. Car looks so boring without all the stickers now.

I called Autopower earlier to ask about the mounting points on their half cages. The standard bolt-in cage is attached to the sides of the fender wells but the U-Weld cages mount directly to them. The rear bars actually come completely separate from the main hoop and you attach them where you want. I'm going to order one of them and have the mounting pads drilled so I can use it as a bolt-in cage. I'm hoping to get it ordered tomorrow, as it is there's no way I'll have a cage and harnesses in before my first event of the year (May 26) but I want to have it all figured out for the second.

As far as my track day this past weekend goes I had two issues. First was very minor, the needle of my oil pressure gauge seems to have done a full 360 and got stuck underneath the peg that normally holds it at the minimum reading. I think it happened when I tore the interior apart, I must have turned the gauge pod enough to get the needle stuck. The second is kind of a big one, the tubular control arms loosened the day after and I'm getting a clunking noise from the right front wheel when I apply the brakes. My mechanic had checked every nut on the arms on Friday so in a matter of around 400km the right arm managed to loosen. We had talked about dealing with this on Friday and he mentioned possibly safety wiring the nuts so it looks like we're going to have to do that now.




 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
I haven't had the time to post an update lately but things are starting to get going now.

I had my mechanic check the adjustment nuts on my control arms and tighten them again last week. They're actually going to pull the arms off my car completely to clean the nuts (the install instructions said to use anti-seize so that needs to be cleaned out) and safety wire them to solve the issue for good. The next day I mounted my external GPS receiver in the radio hole using some velcro and set up my phone to allow it to work. It works out of the box with the Harry's Lap Timer app but by enabling Developer Mode I was able to use it with Google Maps too.



Since I'll be having stickers put all over my car soon I decided to get my niece and nephew to pick out a few they liked to put inside. I wanted them to be somewhere I'd always be able to see them at a glance and ended up putting them where the sun visors used to be.



I decided to go to Cayuga afterwards for some open lapping. I only did 20 laps but it was nice to get out and just enjoy driving my car. I didn't intend to push or time myself but that only lasts so long at this point. I slowly started closing in on my best time from last season and ended up within half a second of it with just enough time to do an in lap as the open lapping time ended. Considering I paid almost no attention to my tire pressures and the tires have been exposed to below freezing temps I'm confident I could have beat my time if I had tried. No big deal either way as that was never the goal of the day. I ended up enjoying some fresh air, an almost empty track, and took a few pics while I was at it.





On the way home I stopped by an industrial area to take a few more pics and ended up settling for the Loblaw HQ (grocery store chain). Nothing fancy but the sky did look nice and stormy and I got a few nice interior shots.






Onto the plan for the next two weeks. My engine and transmission mounts finally came in so they're going to be installed along with my dogbone mounts this coming week. I also got my front tires so I'll finally be able to get rid of my trashed Hankook R-S3's. I've been running 245/40-ZR18 R-S3's for three years now, this year I'm switching to 255/35-ZR18 Hankook R-S4's up front and 235/40-ZR18 in the back. It's going to make my car more twitchy but if you want to chase lap times with a FWD car that's the only way to go. Some of the crazier time attack cars up here run as much as a 60mm difference front to back. This does raise the concern of losing it and potentially damaging my car but the tracks I'll be running at this year (Mosport DDT, Cayuga, and Shannonville) are flat and low speed so the risk is minimal. My goal for this year is to see how the balance is and learn to tame it as best I can. Next season I'll install a wing and splitter to find the sweet spot between high speed stability and low speed rotation.

This also means I'll need to change up my alignment. I've been running -2° of camber all around and 1° of toe out in the back since last year. The camber was necessary to fit my tires and the toe was to promote oversteer. It worked very well. This year I'll be running -3° of camber up front, -2° in the back, and neutral toe all around. The increase in camber is to fit the wider front tires and to hopefully better use the full width of the tires. The return to neutral toe is down to my reverse stagger naturally oversteering. If I feel like it oversteers too much I'll try some toe in but I'm going to start with neutral.



The new parts, tires, and alignment are going to be done by the end of the week. At that point work will start on the stickers. It'll be done the day before my first time attack event on the 26th. Then on the 27th my car will be in my mechanic's booth at a VW show called Vagkraft so it's going to be a very busy and tiring weekend. I'll do my best to post pictures of the design at some point during the weekend. I've shown a bunch of people what I'm going to do and I'm pleasantly surprised with the response so far. With the exception of one co-worker everyone has loved it. I'm confident that the kind of people I get along with will like it but I know it'll get some heat from a lot of people too. Regardless of what anyone thinks I'm very excited to finally see it in person.


 

Das Gespenst

Go Kart Champion
Location
Glen Ellyn
Awesome update! If you need any pointers/help with the cage or aero work feel free to hit me up. Can't wait for you to feel the car with the cage/roll bar. It adds a huge amount of rigidity to the car, more than any chassis brace I've done. If you have high enough speed tracks the wing is a game changer. High speed stability is just magical with where I have the car right now, and low speed rotation is there in spades when I want it to be.

Can't wait to see the new liverly! Whole car vinyl wrap?
 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
Thanks man. The cage is turning out to be a real pain in the ass honestly. There are only two distributors in Ontario. One is in Toronto but I've been unable to communicate with them and the other is several hours away. At this point I'm going to talk to two shops I know about custom making a bolt in cage, based on what I learned while thinking about a welded cage it could even be cheaper than an AutoPower. And I'd be able to have them make it way stronger. I'm going to start talking to them this week.

I'm really looking forward to learning aero. My friend Zac with the crazy Mk7 has an APR GT250, a 4 inch splitter, fender vents, and splitter diffusers on his car now he says it makes the car feel magical.

Me and my mechanic were talking about doing a full wrap originally but that's really expensive so I'm just doing individual stickers. My thought was to do a replica of a real race livery but there just aren't many cool VW liveries to choose from. I'm going more towards the drifter style of just being in your face and attention grabbing. It's pretty basic because it kind of just got slapped together on a whim but once things calm down for this season I'm going to put some actual thought into a new one for next season.
 

xSabretoothx

Fast w/ training wheels
Location
Raleigh, NC
Car(s)
2008 GTI
Your radio looks great!! Definitely pumping the tunes in this one!
 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
Your radio looks great!! Definitely pumping the tunes in this one!

Haha, at this point earplugs are the only thing that make this car bearable. It's mentally exhausting to drive with all the noise

Yesterday was a busy day for me. My car spent all last week in the shop getting my new drivetrain mounts installed, tires mounted, and the control arms stripped down and re-installed. I stopped by around noon yesterday and happened to get there just as my mechanic was about to head to a local race shop he does fabrication for. They were going to do my alignment and since my seat is so tight I followed him there. They ended up spending four hours doing the alignment because they kept chasing adjustments back and forth. At a quick glance -3° of camber looks like it'll let me run 255-section tires fine but the real test will of course be under compression into a corner. The rear is still set at -2° like last year and toe is neutral all around now to maintain some stability.

The new drivetrain mounts made a huge difference to how the car feels. I haven't done any hard driving yet but downshifts are super smooth and power delivery is very direct. They aren't as brutal as solid mounts but they've added another layer of NVH to my car that really makes driving it on the street unbearable. It feels like the engine starts a little quicker than it used to but that might just be the noise levels making me feel that way. The best way I can describe it is that it sounds and feels exactly like the square body Jeep Cherokee one of my uncles had when I was a kid. At idle that is. Under throttle the noise inside the car is just like that rumble that Subaru's are so famous for.

I spent half an hour driving to the place that's going to print and apply my stickers. My car's become a symphony of horrible sounds now. There's all the creaks from the spherical bearings along with the unibody itself. My tires still had the stickers on them so I could hear them slapping against the pavement. I can feel and hear everything the drivetrain does. And the air blasting past the car is like being on an airplane. By the time I got out of the car the silence of not being in it was literally deafening. I enjoy the rawness of the experienceto some extent but it truly is mentally exhausting to drive now. I can't stress enough that you should never do this to your only car unless you truly hate yourself.

I also recently got a bunch of pics from my first track day. All the snow makes for some cool shots.




 

FF_animal

Ready to race!
Just binge read through your build love it!!! Quality and function [emoji122][emoji122][emoji106]

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
Just binge read through your build love it!!! Quality and function [emoji122][emoji122][emoji106]

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Thank you :smile:

Any thoughts about pulling the sunroof? I know it's a pain. Had you talked it through with anyone?

I have, I'm going to leave it in as long as I keep street driving it because I enjoy having the extra light and air in the cabin. Long term it's definitely going to come out though, along with all the glass except the windshield, the airbags, and the dashboard. It's not too hard to do either, just need to make sure the delete plate is metal to comply with safety regulations for time attack but otherwise it's really as simple as riveting a sheet in place.

Well, it's finally time to reveal the livery. I was in Nashville all last week on business and flew back home on Friday. I took a taxi straight from the airport to C17 Media to pick up my car. I had them print all the stickers and apply the large ones. They gave me the small ones so I could do them myself and save myself several hundred dollars. These are the Photoshop mockups I made using graphics provided by my best friend who happens to be an artist. The sides are the bulk of it. I kept the rear simple with the Instragram handles, from left to right, of my mechanic, the car club I'm heavily involved in, and my artist friend.





I changed the placement around a little bit because of some changes to this year's Ontario Time Attack sponsor list. Originally I meant to cut the OTA door cards down to just the number but because they have some new sponsors I left them intact and moved some logos around to make room. I'll have more pictures soon but for now this one is all I have. It's taken by a friend of mine that has a YouTube channel called Throttle House. He makes car review videos and vlogs about building and racing an E46 in time attack and another E46 he's building to drift.



I was expecting most of my friends to like it but I've also been very pleasantly surprised to see that aside from one coworker everyone has loved it. I'm completely in love with it and even days later it still makes me giggle whenever I look at it.

I had my first OTA event of the season on Saturday. I went very well. I set a new PB by a massive 1.9 seconds with a 1:23.800. The car felt and drove amazingly, the reverse stagger was very apparent but surprisingly stable. I could feel the rear end moving around more than before but never felt a sense of danger. My front control arms did come loose again but a couple guys gave me some advice so I was able to tighten them enough to feel safe driving home. I had to skip my last timed session but having improved by so much I was ok with that and didn't want to push my luck. I'm absolutely ecstatic with my time because the Mk7 guys I ran CSCS with last season were doing 1:21.xxx or lower with double my power. I never thought I'd be able to get close to them but based on this last event I might be able to get into the 1:21's this season and that blows my mind.

I weighed the car before the event and it came to 3060lbs with half a tank of fuel and my airport luggage and myself in it. I'm 150lbs so I think I can confidently say the car is probably 2900lbs with a full tank. I'm very happy with that considering I still have a sunroof, all the OEM glass, a full dashboard, HVAC, and an OEM battery.

Here's a video of my lap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLjJ0Vs6wAo

 

SuperSkyline89

Das Schiesse
Location
Earth
Car(s)
2008 CW GTI
[emoji102][emoji122][emoji122][emoji122]

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Freaking love it!!!!

Glad you guys approve. I was pretty sure my friends would like it but I was expecting to get some crap for it and surprisingly I haven't. In person and on Facebook I haven't gotten a single negative reaction. I see a lot of negativity and toxic attitudes in the car scene these days so I wanted to do something fun and turns out that's resonated with people. Last time I picked up my car from the alignment shop the guys at the shop said they loved it because "so many amateur racers take themselves way too seriously, it's nice to see someone that just wants to have some fun."

My second race weekend of the season was a huge success. It was a double header weekend so I was actually racing Saturday and Sunday. It was exhausting but so fun and rewarding. Both events were at Mosport DDT, just different layouts. Saturday was the "normal" layout that I started my motorsports journey on. Sunday was the "No Kink" layout which eliminates the slowest carousel style section of the track and replaces it with a blind crest over a hill that isn't remotely straight but can be taken at full throttle if you have the right line. It's not a layout that anyone aside from OTA runs as far as I know.

I've done a lot of lapping at DDT but having only started my time attack career I actually had less serious lapping time there than Cayuga. Back when all I did was lapping I was doing 1:55 laps. I never timed myself but from GoPro video that was the ball park I was in. To be clear that's horribly slow, a Sunday drive. It felt fast but I didn't know what fast was back then. My first ever time attack event was here with OTA back in 2016 and I set a best lap of 1:48.822. Then last year at the first CSCS event I did a 1:46.653. I never went back after that but all my experience at Cayuga the rest of the season did wonders for my confidence to the point that I made massive gains. My best time dropped by almost five seconds down to a 1:41.700.



I've only run the "No Kink" layout once. It was also back in 2016 and did a 1:42.359. Despite the lack of the carousel my speeds going into the last braking zone weren't any higher because I was too afraid to push. This time around a good friend that races an RX-8 R3 gave me some advice on the best line and I was able to work up to staying at full throttle all the way though that section. This lead to my gains being even bigger at just over eight seconds with a best lap of 1:33.858. That was the first lap of my second timed heat. Early into my second lap I felt my left leg cramp slightly and that threw me off mentally and slowed me down. I was so happy with my time though that I decided to skip my last run because the cramping feeling made me feel a little uneasy. I went to tell the grid officials that I was going to skip the last session and one of them said that I was probably dehydrated. He does endurance racing so he's familiar with the signs so I went to pack up my car while I downed two bottles of water, a bottle of orange juice, and a couple pieces of banana bread. He warned me that I'd have a headache later that night but by the time I finished packing up I could already feel it coming so I took a Tylenol right then and there.



Neither lap time was enough to put me on the podium this time but I'm dangerously close to it and I'm confident I can whittle them down a little more. Here's my lap from Saturday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDU0qud_34

And my lap from Sunday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srPnPaglndA

I seem to have gotten my control arm issue sorted. After some discussion with another competitor at my first event I asked my mechanic to put set screws into all the adjustment nuts on the control arms. I haven't had time to look under the car yet because I've just been too busy but my car did run perfectly fine for two days straight. Seeing as it struggled to make it through a single day before I'm hopeful the issues are behind me. I'll need to get the car up on a lift to be sure though and I'm still so busy with stuff it's probably going to be two weeks before that happens. I'm also so sick of my car being at my mechanic's shop more than my own house that aside from a few relatively minor things I'm done modding for the season. I wanted to have it caged for this season but I just don't want to deal with that right now. I'll probably have it done over the winter.

OTA goes to Mosport GP and Shannonville next but I won't be running. I decided to go back to Cayuga and Mosport DDT instead to see where I can get my lap times. I've never run Mosport GP at pace and it's such a dangerous track I don't want to do it with my reverse stagger until I have aero. I had planned to run Shannonville but I'm taking an extended period of time off work and I decided I didn't want to spend what would likely be $1000 for the weekend to race at a track I've only really run once anyway. Instead I'm going to do one more lapping day at Cayuga and DDT each to see what I can do if I really push hard.
 
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