Sam's build thread

[sambb]

Righto so this was my after hours job on the shifter that I've just (well kind of) completed:
this is what you'll see when you lift the stock gaiter and cut off the o ring clamp underneath the shift knob. Don't be afraid to take this little clamp off as you just need a hose clamp of a matching size to go back on afterwards. You can see that there is an indented strip that runs down the shaft from the top. There is also a band of knurling that runs circumfrentially around the base of the stick and below that is another band that is indented.
This is the forge short shift fitted. The pin can be set to the shortest possible throw ie close to the pivot or stock ie away from the pivot. I set mine to the shortest but with the stock height gear stick I thought it was too notchy and liable to cause synchro crunch if you weren't quick and accurate.
So this was my answer. I found a steel powder coated rod with the exact 12mm ID for a tight sliding fit down the shaft. I had to ream the bottom 15mm out to 12.5mm ID so it would be an interference fit over the knurling. I then drilled and tapped for a 4mm grub screw that fits into the groove below the knurling so the stick can never slide up. I also drilled and tapped for a 3mm grub screw that fits exactly into the elongated ridge in the top of the shaft to prevent twist. This was probably overkill as it as tight as but good insurance - you never know what will happen when things warm up.
This is it fitted up. The standard gear knob sits below 140mm. I had had an earlier go with a stick sitting at 245mm, but even with the short shift on its shortest setting it was still a little long in the throw. I settled on 200mm height in between.The OD of the rod I used was 16mm so I had to drill out/ream the insides of the gear knob for soething just under that so it'd be a really tight press fit onto the steel rod. The forge quick shift takes away all the pendulum action/counterweighting off the shift mech which is why it feels so notchy and rifle bolt like. To make it so that you actually get a good gear stick flow from gate to gate that works well with the gate springing you need (or at least I find you do) to add weight to the gear knob. It dulls down the notchiness and sort of automatically flows into the next gate whereas without it you've got to take it all the way there. I hammered about an ounce of fishing lead sinker balls up into the guts of the gear knob before I reamed it to size and pressed it onto the higher stick. This is the finished product. The top of the gear knob is now level with the A/C pushbutton. The throw is a tad shorter than a stock height shifter with no short shift mech on the gearbox. But you get all the benefits of the higher knob eg closer to the wheel, falls to hand rather than the gorilla reach you need to be comfortable with the oem position knob. It looks stock done this way too.
If you had an even shorter throw(maybe the diesel geek ones are shorter) then you can take the knob even higher wrc style and all you need to do is put a 15 degree bend in the tube above the oem stalk and its a good position. Tried that already but like I said at 245mm high the throw gets a bit long again with the forge short shift.
If you do want to go higher than what I've done (200mm) you are at the limit of what can be done with the stock boot/gaiter. When I go into 4th the boot nearly goes tight so i'll probably have to unpick the staples holding the leather on and reseat the leather 5mm higher at the front of the gaiter frame.
Driving it around it feels great and only thing I'm thinking is that I probably could have added a bit more weight to the knob but all up pretty happy with it.

[metalhead]

yeah it s tough one with tyres. They make probably the biggest difference to your times but cost so much and bloody wear out!! No worries re hijack - its good to chat to someone who was there. Plus I saw your tee shirt and can see you have very good musical taste - its so rare these days ha ha. I'll be up at Tamworth for the state round and there at Ringwood again at the state round in August so maybe we'll cross paths again eh.

Yeh exactly, that's why I've compromised and stuck with the one set of street tyres to date. But I've run about 6,000km and 3 events on these Contis, they're probably half worn, I'd hoped they'd last a bit longer than that. Cool about the music. I haven't run any state rounds, but I have been running the Tri Challenge events, and as many of the multiclub hillclimbs at Ringwood as I can. I'm also trying to run the khanacrosses at Ringwood - you can enter just the tar events and they do all different layouts on the hillclimb track. Cheaper than a hillclimb and you get more track time...

Nice work on the shifter, looks factory. I have heavy shift knobs on a couple of my cars (Vette is a solid metal ball, I also have an old truck with an actual 8 ball), and I like the feel it gives too.

[sambb]

VW / Audi / Seat / Skoda | Haltech - Engine Management Systems

Hello - look at this. It says for AWP 1.8T's. anyone have the lowdown on AWP versus BJX. might have to get in contact with them about this.

sam

[sambb]

hmm its $2400 bucks though.

[metalhead]

What are you using for ecu at the moment? The Haltechs are good. Going to run the Hillclimb at Ringwood at the end of the month?

[sambb]

current ECU is a generic flashed standard bosch ME7.5. I'm at Tamworth for the state round this weekend and then I won't be back at Ringwood until the state round a month after that. I won't have anything left of my tyres if I race a gain before that.

[sambb]

Just got off the phone from Haltech then. I was asking them about compatibility with our BJX cos their info says AWP only but then lists our car. They said that they can only 100% guarantee it on AWP engines. They said they had worked on a Polo with a 1.8T 20V but thought that it was an AWP engine which doesn't sound right to me unless it was an engine swap into an earlier or later model? Its not an intercepter module either. It actually replaces the bosch ECU and runs all the factory ancillaries, dash etc yet is fully programmable. From what he said the only significant things are that all the pin outs are exactly the same and that our BJX has the same CAN comms as the AWP and then it is literally plug and play (except for fitment of their own air temp sensor).
Anyone know which bosch version ECU runs the AWP's and what protocol they use?

[Blue9N3]

Wouldn't this be better? Maestro Tuning Suite for 1.8T – Eurodyne


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[sambb]

Would be very good. If it comes to it, Id prefer to retain the factory ecu and tune up from a base map with something like this. A friend of mine went down the replacement ECU path albeit with a very obscure French unit in his Clio and its been an absolute dog of a thing to get right due to unforseen dramas like sensitivity to sensor signals, hidden settings etc The latter I don't think would be a drama with the Haltech though - that would be the main reason I'd go with it, the Australian tuner friendliness. My reservation with the Haltech route is that while you can produce an animal on the power tuning side of things it is very tricky and time consuming to get the light load, around town driveability, traffic friendliness, fuel economy side of things right when you have to tune it. That to me would be a big advantage of the unit you linked. Would have to look into how appropriate the base maps would be in that sense (for 98 RON), whether it would be compatible with the BJX and whether it would be as powerful as the Haltech eg I'd want a water injection tune that can default to a safe map if a drama is detected so it'd have to be able to work with a WI controller. But if the eurodyne could do things like that and have flexibility over fan control, left foot brake, ABS and ESP thresholds then it'd be hard to knock it back.

[sambb]

Ive just dragged these pics in from an earlier post when I did this to my old car.

Did a bit of work on the car last night and nearly froze to death in the garage. I took the standard oem back section of exhaust out of the car before this weekends hillclimb because as you can see in the pic above the muffler is turd. That pic inside the muffler is taken in the direction of flow. Its not even a reverse flow muffler, its a dead end design. Gases hit the plugged entry pipe and are forced out through the louvres (of which there aren't many) into an external chamber that the twin tail pipes come from. When we first did this a cut was put in just before the muffler and then the pipe was flanged to accept either the muffler again (in truth it never went back in once we got a look inside it) or a nice light straight pipe of 2/1/3in aluminium.
To get the tail section in the new car out I had to put in an identical cut to get it out over the rear beam. I then swapped in the tail section that's in the pics so I could run de mufflered. It definitely liberated some mid/top end horses on the old car so should go well in Tamworths freezing air. The pipe that I just swapped in off the old car is a resonated version and was pretty barky too when you got up it but fine at civil speeds.
The back section I removed from the new car is a non resonated pipe. When I get back I'll take it down and get it flanged and do a replay of the swap I just did. The reason for that is that just before the resonator (or anything else in the system) is welded on, the factory for some reason puts a sort of circumfrencial crimp in the pipe. So instead of being 2/1/4 the OD goes down to 2in just before its welded to the resonator. This would make the ID possibly 1/3/4in half way along the car which is very early to introduce such a big restriction and basically turd. The resonator itself wouldn't be much of a problem as its a straight through - its the diameter reductions all the way along that cause the problem even once the muffler is removed. The result of de mufflering the non res pipe with none of these diameter reductions in the system will be a full straight pipe from the cat back which I think at my horsepower level will make the need to go to a 2.5 mufflered pipe pretty well redundant.