ArosaMike

101k on a Jan 54 plate for me.

It's always worth getting the alignment checked every now and again, but it won't make any difference if your changing tyres. If you get it checked, don't bother going to some fancy laser alignment place as a good old fashioned equipment does the job just as well and will cost half as much.

INA-FAG (no pun intended) are an OEM supplier and one of the biggest bearing manufacturers in the world and that's fact! The bearings are manufactured in Germany, and I can guarantee there will be several bearings made by them in your car already! Anything made by SKF, INA-FAG, Koyo et al is as good, if not identical to the one the dealer will sell you for £20 more. There are obviously rubbish pattern parts out there, but you just have to do a bit of research which isn't really difficult and easily worth 20 beer tokens. I can promise you the ones you get from your dealer have come off the same production lines as the ones you get from a good motor factor. I work for a major automotive company as a design engineer, and many of the spare parts that are sold in dealerships are in fact shipped in to our warehouse, taken out of the box they came in, and put back in another with our company name on it! The reason we do it this way is simply to allow us to track components that are replaced and to ensure we know what components are being replaced with when a product is still under warranty. It also makes it easy for the dealers to order replacement parts as it's under our part numbering system.

Don't buy a dealer part! It'll be identical to a good motorfactor one, but twice the price. Eurocar Parts and Central Auto Supplies stock OEM stuff. CAS stock FAG bearings which I know for a fact are as good as anything that is fitted at the factory since they're a genuine OE supplier! Are you sure it's not the other bearing that's making noises now? Remember the bearing has two races in it so it the LH bearing can still moan when going round a LH corner (ie when the RH wheel is more heavily loaded)

Whilst we're on dodgy temp sensors, my gauge died over Xmas and traced it down to the plastic casing round the wiring chafing on the earth for the sensor. Sealed the cable back up with instant gasket and it's been fine since. Worth while checking this if anyone has problems with the temp sensor. The design makes it very easy for the cables to chafe on the plastic.

I ocassionally get this, but I think it's probably just the syncros. It only ever happens if I'm really gunning it and trying to shift really quickly and it wouldn't surprise me if you can beat them. It's possible in quite a few cars, and the 5sp isn't exactly the most advanced 'box in the world. I wouldn't worry, unless if starts doing it all the time.

Had mine replaced under warranty. Up until that point, I'd done the similar thing to everyone else and wedged foam down the sides of the rad. Crap design from what I've heard. They'll always wear out over time.

Brookes, Herts or Bath? :P I was at Brum until last year. Was epic fun, but like you say, the stress and all nighters were not a huge amount of fun! One of the years on our team we successfully set fire to the dyno...that wasn't too clever :P If it wasn't for taking delivery of a Caterham next week, I'd definitely be modding the Octy. Ultimately, I guess you need to ask yourself what you want to achieve from your mods. There are two clear directions from a performance point of view.......drag strip or race track. Personally I'd go the track route, but I'd imagine the two different types would go something like this: Drag: Performance aims: -350bhp full boost 450bhp with Nitrous for the end of the run -Sub 12s 1/4 Chassis: -A good set of uprated shocks, but not coilovers. You'd want plenty of compliancy to deal with the power and to shift the weight during acceleration. -Uprated bushes in the suspension and engine to reduce the compliancy -No rear ARB, softer front ARB -Strip as much weight out as possible -Full cage -Standard 17s with trackday tyres on the front and the hardest compound you can find at the back. -TT forged ally lower wishbones -Lead posts in the engine bay to add ballast if you're having problems off the line Engine: -Forged rods and pistons to make the thing as bulletproof as possible -Billet crank -1.9 or 2.0l displacement increase for better torque off the line -Big turbo kit. Turbo lag doesn't matter! -FMIC -APR exhaust manifold -Race cat -New exhaust -New larger TB -APR Intake manifold -Gas flowed head -New or reprofiled cams -100bhp Nitrous kit with programmable boost strategy for different gears -Possibly a thicker head gasket to lower the compression ratio for big boost. May need testing to validate though. Electronics: -DTA or MoTec programmable ECU with TC and Launch Control -Flat shifter -5th injector and anti-lag turned on -Adjustable boost Powertrain: -TDI 6 speed box -Uprated clutch -Quickshifter -LSD with agressive clutch ramps in it so it's basically locked the whole time -Driveshafts out of a 1.9TDi if they'll fit or if not, some custom ones Track: Performance aims: -Around 240-260bhp -Reduce weight to around 1100-1200kg -Sub 7s 0-60 (Maybe about 6.5s) -Over 1G lateral in steadystate cornering -Similar Nurburgring lap time to the Megane R26R -Great fun on a good B road! Chassis: -Good set of fully adjustable coilovers to give the adjustment. You could subsequently sell them and get some custom valved struts once a good setup had been found. -S3 lower front strut brace -Uprated suspension and engine mounts -Adjustable front and rear ARB's -Half cage -Take most of the sound deadening out, the spare and rear seats, but leave carpets -6 point harness for the driver, 4 point for the passenger -Some decent Recaro buckets lowered about an inch from the lowest standard seating position -Remove airbags -Retrim the standard wheel with an alcantara rim -Lightweight 17in motorsport wheels -TT forged lower wishbones to stiffen things up and reduce camber change from deflection -Adjustable top mounts -Leon Cupra R front calipers with EBC Yellow stuff pads and groved discs -EBC Yellow stuff pads on the rear -Quickrack from the LCR/TT/R32 -Toyo 888s or similar Engine: -APR KO4 upgrade -Uprated panel filter in standard airbox -Race cat -Miltek exhaust WITH resonator so it doesn't give you a migraine on the way to the track day, but so you can hear the engine with a helmet on -FMIC to keep boost levels consistent when doing hard track work Electronics: -Standard but remapped ECU -Lap timer -Leave the aircon in because it really won't make that much difference and let's face it, most girls don't like people who drive modded cars and they like sweaty people driving modded cars even less! Powertrain: -Light-medium acting LSD -6 speed box if possible -Uprated hubs from the LCR to deal with increased loads You can probably tell, I thought about it quite a bit in the past :P

I did drive an Arosa yes :P It was a laugh on the back roads and sounded better than Octavia, but had the steering rack out of a boat which was completely at odds with the rest of the car! Sorry my dissitation there is probably a bit heavy going :P I'm afraid when you spend all day with other engineers, it's hard to switch out of that mode! To summarise IMO -Spend you're money elsewhere unless you're just after a fancy looking manifold -If you still want a manifold, there's a lot more to it than just flow rates -The Dahlback one is probably designed for a restricted engine and hence is designed to give high torque and not necessarily high power. It is basically the same design as that found on the 2.0l (bored out 1.8l) WRC engines they used to use in the Octavia WRC: This APR design is good and, from reading the VWVortex thread, they do (despite what some of the keyboard warriors say) really know their stuff: This 007 intake is not particularly good: -Longer shift the torque curve down the graph (make it more torquey) -Shorter ones shift it up (make the engine more peaky)

High flow isn't necessarily everything though. You may well get more air through it, but that's not what dictates what power and, in particular, torque it produces. The Dahlback design has clearly been engineered to perform a specific job and, judging from the length of the runners, maximise torque ouput at mid range rpm. I would suggest it's either a copy or outright first principles design for a restricted Group A engine where top end power (and hence flow) is limited. Either way, it's around the same flow rate of the standard intake which can easily achieve 300bhp or more. I would be very surprised if overall manifold flow rate was the limiting factor of power in any 1.8t as you need a hell of a lot more restriction in the intake to be worried about that. As an example, the 600cc bike engines we used in Formula Student were limited by means of a 20mm air restrictor. For those of you who can't be bothered to get a ruler out, that's a bit smaller than a 2p piece. Despite that, it's still possible to get over 100bhp out of them normally aspirated, so unless you're looking at tuning your car to over 1000bhp, then restriction to air flow is not going to be the problem. Furthermore, the valve ports are still the same size whether you have a standard manifold or a 2ft wide drainpipe attached to it. The two main things you want from a good manifold are good swirl (controlled turbulence) and a good compromise between runner length and packaging space/throttle response. The last thing you want in the manifold is lamina (non turbulent) flow, as it won't mix the fuel very well and also results in poor air balance between cylinders. A good example of what happens with no swirl can be seen here: http://home.comcast.net/%7Ehughhenderson/pics/Intake_CFD/velocity_contours.png The red areas show high velocity flow, and the blue, low. Because the air is entering the airbox in a lamina non turbulent state it heads directly down the nearest port. The Dahlback manifold looks very much like it's a version of a design used by Audi in the 80's on the Group B Quattro's that feeds the air round the outside of the manifold to a long slot that runs along the length of the casting. This helps to distribute the air as best as possible and swirls the air in a great big tumble before it heads down the runners improving mixing when it does get to the injectors. Rather than just comparing maximum flow rates, it's much better to compare the flow rate balance between the cylinders. The number below are the difference between the highest and lowest flowing ports on the various manifolds: Monster 007 Big - 18 Hypertune - 9 APR - 21 Ross Machine - 7 Homebrew - 24 Monster 007 Small - 9 ABD - 4 Stock Large - 27 Dahlback - 5 Stock - 23 The clear winners are the ABD and Dahlback and both I would say are pretty much as good as you could hope to get for flow profile. The APR and the Big port Monster are pretty shocking, although not really any worse than standard. Having not seen any of them apart from the ones posted here and the standard ones, I'd guess from the flow profile they're simply copies of the standard runner and plenum design that have been enlarged. In the case of the Monster and APR ones, I'm going to take a guess that the throttle body has been moved to the other side as the leaner cylinder opposes that on the standard intake. Out of the ABD and Dahlback, the Dahlback will provide the better overall performance with more torque since the runner length is significantly longer than standard. As I said earlier, it looks like it's designed for a rally engine where torque is everything. In my opinion, I would say that you'd be better spending your money elsewhere unless you're making a race engine. Dahlback are an experienced tuning company who make and enter cars in various motorsport events. Their stuff is properly engineered and the tuning stuff (apart from their 900bhp Golf admittedly!) is designed to provide maximum PERFORMANCE. That's as in reasonable power but with a good spread of torque and driveablity, which is precisely what long intake runners and a swirl inducing intake will do. Power isn't actually everything! If of course the real reason is a bit of bling (which I suspect it is!), the by all means go for it, but you'd get a better power result from a new turbo or internals. Or if you're after better mixing, get the ports polished.

Just to let those of you who have nothing better to do know that I've cobbled together some words in an approximately readable order on Auto Journals about my experiences with the vRS. I'll be trying to add a new article every month depending on whether anything interesting happens. If you've never visited the site it's actually a good read and is run by David Yu who's been a contributer in EVO for many years and has owned a number of pretty exotic cars including Godzilla (A very highly tuned R32 Skyline) and Gozilla II his new GTR. My journal can be found here Any comments or feedback would be welcome!

A guy at work stacked his Elise in the second half of the lap last year. Split both clams (£6k) snapped one lower front wishbone and did various other bits as well as the barrier. It cost him £1k in recovery fees alone! It was held together with duct tape until about 3 months ago! Needless to say though, it's a risk you take if you go there. There are plenty of precautions you can take though. It's worth joining ADAC since they will apparently recover you from the ring for free if you're a member, and track day insurance is well worth it. You wouldn't be liable for damage to anyone else's car if you hit them, but obviously if you take out 20m of barrier and destroy your car you'll be stuck with a broken car and 1000 miles to get the car home. This by the way is coming from someone who is about to start the expensive hobby of racing Caterhams. Staying out front is one of the big ways of keeping out of trouble.....motivation I like to call it!

He'll still have brakes. You'll just need to beef it on the pedal!

Amused to see that I'm not the first to have the idea of using the spare. I guess they're impossible to get now. The ContiSport 2 seems to be fairly good value and highly rated. Might get myself a set of those. Whilst we're on the topic.....did all the Mk1s come with a full sized alloy spare? Seems almost impossible to comprehend that they would these days, but it's what mine's got!

Insurance is going to vary massively depending on your circumstances, but compared to a lot of similar cars I found it a little cheaper to insure. Servicing varies where you take it obviously. I took mine to Awesome for the cambelt change and a major service and they're fairly typical of what you should expect to pay. Major service (20k) is £170 and interim (10k) is £100. Cambelt change should be around the £300 mark (so not cheap!) but it's only once in a blue moon (60k or 4 years). Shop around though because some dealers will charge silly money for cambelt changes. As for problems....as most people have said already....search on here and it'll sound like the most unreliable car ever made. The typical issues though which you probably will encounter are: *Coil pack failure - I've had 2 go in 8 months. One failed the day I got the car...the other broke in half in Jan. Very poor design IMO and it's not limited to VW. Renaults, Saabs, Mercs....you name it, they have all suffered. Buy a couple of spare ones (£40) and keep them in the boot. It's a 10min job to diagnose and fix *Some form of the hesitation - It seems that a lot of 20VTs develop at least some hesitation. I had the DV replaced under warranty which helped slightly, but it wasn't fixed properly until Awesome reset the ECU for me. It's been fine ever since, and part of what I thought was the hesitation I've recently realised is the ECU coming off the start-up map (the choke in old money). The engine should be very smooth in standard tune. Although there is turbo lag, it shouldn't be hugely noticeable and it shouldn't be jerky at all. Look out for it on the test drive *Radiator mounts - It seems the lower radiator mounts (plastic) wear out and you might find it starts to rattle/squeak. It's not a mechanical issue....just annoying. It can be fixed with new ones, but getting to them isn't easy. *Air con diverter flap - It can get stuck leading to an annoying click, click, click that comes from the glovebox. It's fixable, but I can't really be bothered atm. It sorts itself out after about 10 mins. Other people have had driveshaft problems, bush problems, snapped arbs....you name it really. I think those are fairly rare though. Most of the problems are fairly minor and won't cost you a lot to replace/repair. Same as any second hand car really.....take your time and be sensible and you can't really go wrong.

It depends what word precedes it though. NOTE: Means - It is advised that you follow this information since it will guarantee correct operation (e.g. using approved washer fluid) CAUTION: Means - This MAY cause mechanical damage and or may mean something may not perform as intended. (e.g. this might precede any note about the use of tyres outside the list of approved models) WARNING: Means - Doing this (or not doing this, whichever is appropriate), IS LIKELY TO cause mechanical failure or a loss in performance that can lead to an accident that may cause injury. (e.g. driving at over 50mph on your space saver). A NOTE generally means 'we would rather you do this, but it's up to you as the owner. It's unlikely to cause any serious damage but may decrease the value/appearance of the vehicle. Washing the thing with detergent would be a good example. It's not going to cause you to have an accident or damage the operation of the car, but it will make it look crap and damage the paint.

Had another one go on me yesterday. Can't say I expected it to be quite so broken though! It had felt a bit lumpy on Friday, but when I started it up yesterday to clean it, the engine started trying to make a bid for freedom, jumping around all over the shop. Diagnosed it as being No 3 cyl, so phoned up the AA man since I didn't have a spare. Came out and confirmed the problem and, to my shock only pulled out half the pack! From a design perspective, it's awful. The end of the upper chamber coincides exactly with the unsupported area of the coilpack where the chromed cage bit meets the upper steel casing. I'm amazed it ever got accepted in the first place.

Trust me.The thing will be programmed not to damage the clutch in such a commonly occurring situation! I would say that well over 75% of people who will drive a DSG car will have no idea how it works, and hence will not see it as being any different to an Auto and will therefore hold it on the brake for a long period of time. VW are not stupid, unlike the majority of their customers (not you guys). The question 'what if the driver is at the lights and leaves it in drive like a regular auto' will have been covered in their programming strategy. It would probably be the first situational programming they did on the thing since it's probably the most likely thing to occur that doesn't involve shifting gears around. If on the other hand you were asking 'If I'm towing a caravan that's overloaded by 10% stuck in traffic on a 1 in 3 gradient, is it OK to hold the car on the accelerator and hence DSG clutch' ...then no. I would say, don't try it since it's a situation that would be considered an abuse case. I can almost guarantee you that they will have tested for it, but it won't do the car any good. There are abuse cases we test for where we overload things by 100% vmax it and generally abuse the crap out of it and we very rarely have any problems. People are really stupid. Everything ridiculous you can think of doing, someone will try and do it. Equally, any bizarre operating condition you can think of will have been thought of as well as what if's like sensor failure and ecu resets. As an automotive design engineer, this is exactly the kind of things I have to think about on a day to day basis. Basic stuff like leaving the thing in drive is taken as given. It's not something they would consider an abuse case. Unless it specifically says in your manual 'Caution: Leaving the transmission in drive whilst holding the car on the brakes can cause serious damage to the clutch possibly leading to loss of control and an accident' there is no problem doing this at all. If there isn't a very obvious and explicit warning about something, it's generally OK to do it! Liability culture does have it's uses now and again.

Never driven a DSG equipped car, but being an Automotive Engineer, I would be very surprised if this situation hadn't been considered. VW are very good at this kind of thing, so, considering the car will be driven like an Auto by a good number of people, I can't see it being a problem leaving the thing in D. There are sensors galore on the 'box, so if the clutch was dragging and getting hot (which I can't believe it would) it would do something to stop it getting hot!

Sorry. I'm thinking out loud! Automotive Engineer geekyness. To paraphrase.....if you have a chassis that is completely stiff (impossible in reality, but a single seater is close): -Fitting an anti roll bar to the back if previously you haven't had one will increase oversteer. -Fitting an anti roll bar to the front if previously you haven't had one will increase understeer. By this I mean ultimate overall grip at each end, not the feeling you get as a driver. Because you cut out roll, the lateral acceleration will be higher initially because the body rolls much less giving the feeling of a more responsive chassis. In a steady state corner like a long motorway sliproad though, the car without the anti roll bar will generate a higher peak than the one that does have one. In a constantly changing corner though like a slalom the car that has the best balance of anti roll and grip will be fastest since the weight transfer will be less. In reality though, because it's hard to make a big saloon car very stiff, it will twist quite a lot. This makes it much tougher to get the suspension to do what you want. What may actually be happening when you fit an ARB to the back of an Octavia is that it's stopping the rear of the chassis flexing. This will probably then help keep the inside rear wheel on the ground and hence increase grip at the back reducing oversteer. I would imagine this may well be the case since the vRS has the cross braces behind the seats which suggests that they knew it was quite flexible. In fact, I would suggest it was a bit of a bodge since they would avoid something quite so obvious at all costs since it massively compromises loading space. Hope that makes a bit more sense!

OK, maybe I'm reading things wrong then. It would make sense that it would increase oversteer since stiffening one end of the car generally improves it's response but decreases the overall grip. Finding the correct balance is pretty difficult to do and depends a lot on driving situation. There is a point sometimes though where the increase in roll stiffness can have odd effects, particularly if the chassis is particularly floppy, which the Octavia is compared to a current generation car. I should probably do some more research into it myself really and dig out my vehicle dynamics notes from Uni. I know that torsion bar rear ends behave slightly strangely when compared to the relatively simple to understand multilink/double wishbone setup.

I know this is a bit of an ancient thread, but was looking for info on the RARB. I take it everyone is in agreement that fundamentally it reduces lift off oversteer? To me, this seems the complete opposite of what I want to do. Reducing lift off oversteer will only help to increase understeer and adjustability. Perhaps I'm just happier with the car moving around more than most. Any further clarification would be great

You know I have this. I can smell hot rubber sometimes around the back of the car. I took a guess at it being the rubber exhaust mounts. I don't think they're burning, just hot.

My Arosa developed the same problem. It was the spray clutch not disengaging when really cold and fixed itself in the warmer weather. My Octy does it as well.

Ah, that's where I think my wires were crossed. Where I go, the guys use the same clamp that is used in our factory. Admittedly where I work, it's motorbikes, but the principals are the same. When you watch the guys fitting the tyres on the production line, it makes you wonder how it takes highstreet tyre fitters so long! Bikes are very sensitive to tyre imbalance, so the way it's done must be ok. Interestingly, we have a maximum of 45g per side on the wheel which is pretty low. Anything more and the wheel goes back.