230BHP Dad Wagon

[DriverTom]

I've been modifying my MK2 Fabia estate for a couple of years now and have decided to remind myself of all the work with a build thread😁

Here's a sneak peak of how she sits at the moment!

 

[DriverTom]

So the mods began with a wrecked Seat Ibiza that gave up some of its trick bits for the Fabia. The major things removed were as follows:

 

Darkside GTB1756VK turbo

PD150 injectors

Darkside FMIC & hardpipe kit

312mm big brake kit

Whiteline RARB

Whitter removable swan neck towbar

 

I got cut up in the Ibiza and put its on its side avoiding a car on a slip road. I bought the salvage back from the insurance company for buttons specifically for the upgraded components and broke the car on the drive (much to the displeasure of the misses!!😬)

[DriverTom]

So the first Fabia estate was bought, but after a couple of months sold on. It transpired that the service history was mostly fabricated and I wanted a solid base from which to start. That and the fact that the Ibiza was silver as well meant I was never wedded to it

[Guest BigJase88]

keep going...… 

[DriverTom]

So new Fabia estate bought (sorry no pics of it when I picked it up) and first thing to do was fit the tow bar. The tow bar is actually off the Ibiza as I had it already. Cutting the bumper was certainly the most stressful part as i didn't want it to look like it was chewed out by rats!

[DriverTom]

The first thing many of us do to improve the handing is lowering the car using springs, but this has a drawback in that the lower control arm now sits at an angle that reduces camber as the strut compresses during corning. This is a "feature" designed into all the PQ24 platform vehicles (Fabia, Polo, A1 & Ibiza) so that when pushing on the car will under steer safely until the loads are reduced. Even the "performance" variants share the same geometry at the front and rear so there are no benefits to be had from raiding those parts bin. Take a look at how close the ball joint nut is to the bottom of the wheel bearing on a VRS Fabia.

 

 

 

A friend of mine was building a Leon track car and he mentioned that there is a popular mod in the MK4 Golf community to fit the "Wide Track" hubs and wish bones from a Mk1 Audi TT. This pushes the lower ball joint down and out, improving turn in by increasing static camber and increasing camber gain in a turn.

 

I bought a set of TT hubs to play with and discovered that the strut diameter and drive shaft splines were the same as the Fabia, however the ball joint taper is much deeper. Undeterred I had some spacers machined up so the standard Fabia ball joint would fit the TT hub assembly and fitted the whole shooting match to my car! Had the tracking adjusted first as the toe out was insane and then took it for a spin. With the TT hubs installed the static camber was around -3 degrees and castor at +5. The front was a bit more nervous in a straight line but the turn in and cornering was AMAZING!! It was so much harder to get the front to wash away into a round about, to the point where I could get the rear inner wheel to lift, with no rear anti roll bar!

 

Here you can see the extra distance between the ball joint and the hub on the TT carriers.

 

There was a downside though, no abs sensor meant no speedo...... or ABS........ or traction.......or air conditioning (fans are turned on and off by road speed apparently). I found a company that manufactures magnetic strips for wheel bearings and had them make a set of ABS rings that would fit my TT hubs, these were fairly expensive as they were one offs but proved to be unreliable as the clearance between the ABS sensor pick up and the ring needs to be held very accurately to function.

 

I mothballed the TT hubs for a couple of years trying to engineer a solution to getting a reliable ABS signal from the wheel and figure out a way to reduce the extra static camber. 

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I get a go in an Audi S1 Quattro. Surprise, surprise, my interest in the  wide track project is rekindled. A look through the Audi parts bin and they've only gone and solved my original problem.

 

 

The S1 Quattro hubs have a larger distance between the ball joint and wheel bearing than the Fabia VRS but less than the TT carrier. It  takes a standard PQ24 strut, wheel bearing and ABS sensor, there is also a 312mm disc sized splash guard as standard ready for a brake upgrade. This hub carrier should give us more static camber and more camber gain in the corners whilst working with all the standard equipment on the car. 

 

So here are figures for a standard Fabia fitted with just TTRS lower ball joints. The camber is now at about -1.5 (with me sat in it). Unfortunately the alignment machine didn't print out the castor reading for us to see. 

 

First we start with a new arm to modify. I transferred across the poly bushes I had fitted, noting the rear is oriented for maximum castor (you will see this becoming a theme later on)

 

 

Next we need the Audi TTRS ball joint to size where to drill the new mounting holes. I dropped the bolts through the 2 holes that line up and pivoted the ball joint forwards so that both slots were bottomed out (maximum castor position). I knew from a few months ago that this position would give about -1.5 degrees of camber on a standard car and I don't believe it needs any more than that for a fast road setup. It is possible to achieve more camber by pushing the ball joint fully outboard but this is at the expense of castor. Now we can see the third bolt is going to need some room before we can drop it in, this is where the step drill comes into play!

 

 

Here you can see the new 10mm hole drilled to accommodate the third bolt. Because of the increased size of the ball joint mounting area you will have to bolt it up from the bottom of the track control arm. And for those of you worried about the strength of this arrangement, I had the unfortunate luck to clobber a monster pot hole earlier this week that bent the arm without shifting the ball joint mount or bolts at all.

 

 

 

Here is the ball joint fitted with a set of M10 grade 12.9 cap head bolts using the TTRS nuts that came with it.

 

 

If you are doing the ball joints along with the Audi S1 (quattro) hub carriers the you will need to use the standard Fabia nut to mount the tapered portion to the lower mounting point as the machining there is not wide enough to take the TTRS nut.

 

Fabia nut on the left, TTRS nut on the right:

 

And so the question is what are the benefits of the Audi S1 quattro hubs (on the left) over the standard Fabia hubs (right)?

 

The increase in distance between the hub and the ball joint mount means that when the car is back together the lower track control arm looks like this.

 

 

 

The arms pivot points are now sat much lower meaning that as the strut compresses during cornering we get much more dynamic camber. This should keep the contact patch of the tyre flat against the tarmac for longer, increasing grip and delaying understeer. The added castor settings will also be adding camber as the wheel is turned further into a corner. Subjectively I feel the initial turn in has improved dramatically but this could be because the toe in is now set to 0 degrees.

 

 

 

•  

Edited 5 September, 2019 by DriverTom

[DriverTom]

Here's a shot of the bent wishbone that led to all these upgrades!

 

Edited 5 September, 2019 by DriverTom

[DriverTom]

Brakes were duly upgraded in prep for some more power.

 

Standard 312mm VW discs and Ferrodo DS2500 pads.

 

 

It would have been rude to not upgrade to some HEL braided lines whilst the calipers were off!

 

[DriverTom]

I know these aren't in chronological order but here are the Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2 with Michelin PS3s and most importantly Skoda center caps all round.

 

 

[shyVRS245]

17 minutes ago, DriverTom said:

Brakes were duly upgraded in prep for some more power.

 

Standard 312mm VW discs and Ferrodo DS2500 pads.

 

 

It would have been rude to not upgrade to some HEL braided lines whilst the calipers were off!

 

Have these on my Octy and with DOT 5.1 brake fluid they do work nicely on track.

[DriverTom]

The aim was to build a fast road estate that got reasonable economy on the 34 mile commute😂 Deffo more focused on handling than top speed as it's all twisty A roads.

[DriverTom]

One of the worst parts of a MK2 Fabia has got to be the lack of instrument dimmer. My eyes were being scorched at night!

 

 

So the only option was to change the switch to one that would dim the clocks and the radio.

 

 

Which leads to a much better view when it get dark....

 

Edited 6 September, 2019 by DriverTom

[Lofty]

Love the engineering involved in this. Keep up the good work!

[corndog]

great project!

 

Have you thought about/seen extended balljoints?

 

I don't think anyone makes them for Fabia but i think darkside have custom ones on their track ibiza. Would buy some if i could

 

Do you think that would have the same effect as the S1 hub carriers?

[DriverTom]

On 09/09/2019 at 16:37, corndog said:

Have you thought about/seen extended balljoints?

 

I don't think anyone makes them for Fabia but i think darkside have custom ones on their track ibiza. Would buy some if i could

 

Do you think that would have the same effect as the S1 hub carriers?

 

The extended ball joints will have the same effect as the S1 hub carriers. I don't know what dimensions the Darkside track car is running, but I'd guess they were one offs. 

 

I did play around with the idea of getting some extenders made but the cost/complications of that compared to an off the shelf solution, sealed the deal for me.

 

Whiteline used to make a kit that might have worked but I understand they discontinued them due to reliability issues. 

[DriverTom]

Tired of the crummy halogen headlights and having faffed around with HID bulbs + changing them back for MOT it is time for a permanent solution. Upgrade the projectors!

 

Tools needs are a flat blade screwdriver and heatgun.

 

 

Before you can pull the lenses and split the housing the staples around the perimeter need to be extracted.

 

[DriverTom]

A bit of heat needed to soften up the adhesive and with a bit of gentle persuasion the lens will pull away from the back.

 

 

This is what the guts look like with the front off.

 

[DriverTom]

The plan is to de-chrome the front end of the Fabia so some paint is required whilst we've got the headlight apart.

 

 

To pull the refelctor parts from the lens there's another staple hidden in the corner and then it all unclips.

 

[DriverTom]

Reflectors out and on the bench for some mods 😎

 

 

An LED indicator added in the side light bay. This will all be painted black so the original side lights aren't going to remain in here.

 

[DriverTom]

Reflectors scuffed with scotch bright to take the chrome off and painted with Tamia semi gloss spray paint.

 

 

Installed the diffuser lens and I'm pretty happy with effect.

 

[DriverTom]

Cosmetic frivolity complete, time we changed out those low power candles for something with a little more grunt.

 

 

And gone!

 

[DriverTom]

Here are the Morimoto DS2 Projectors fitted with an E55 adapter plate machined out of fibre glass. A few of the holes needed opening up but otherwise it was plug and play. These are proper DS2 HID projectors and as such create the correct beam pattern and hot spot. 

 

 

Once those were in, it was a case of wiring in the ballasts and the relays for the new Led side/indicators.

 

[DriverTom]

The ignitors just about fit under the original dust cover which means the whole installation is contained in the headlight. About as OEM as I could manage!

 

 

[Gmac983]

On 05/09/2019 at 08:14, DriverTom said:

Cutting the bumper was certainly the most stressful part as i didn't want it to look like it was chewed out by rats!

Fairly sure that's how main dealers do it. 🤢

[DriverTom]

And all buttoned up 😎