Sam's build thread

[sambb]

I just measured the angle off the back of my recliner seat down to the rear seat mounts and its 50 degrees from horizontal which is too steep I believe. So I'd have to go for a mount in the back. My rear strut bar sits a little higher than the back of the boot so probably changing to a weld in rear strut bar and then running the harness off that would be the go for really flat shoulder strap angles. I guess that'd be the way to go especially if I'm in a recliner that wouldn't like any downward pressure on the seat back.

Anyone know about the interchangeability of VW seats regarding slider/airbag/airbag plug compatibility? The OE seats don't have a lot of flat 'shoulder' either side of the headrest posts for shoulder straps to sit on and the headrest uprights are too narrow to run straps between them. So I may need to go to another seat. Also whats the go with the airbag power in our Polo's? - is the system in our car capable of changing airbag deployment power to max if it doesn't see someone in the seat. We don't have seat weight sensors for that kind of thing do we?

[sambb]

Good pics these. Taken in sequence on the same corner is my guess. Interesting is that when the car has risen after a bump the inside rear and also the inside front are off the road. Inside rear I'd expect but inside front, too little droop? front bar too stiff for a road as rough as this, or normal?
Then in compression the inside rear is still off the deck/skimming. Its good to see nothing is rubbing and it appears to have an upright outside front. Hard to tell if the rear needed more camber in that pic.

[sambb]

Andrew I just saw the sequence of pics of his crash from that link you put up. I see what my mate meant by him heading straight for that tree. Jeez he must have thought he was a goner. I didn't realise he actually ended up still on the track. So he must have jumped up backwards on that verge after the tyres but come down on the track. That means the track is a hell of a lot closer to the loop road than it felt which is why it appeared that he was actually amongst the trees when he got air. There was definitely lots of shrapnel coming through the trees hey Definitely looks like the start of the crash, the bit we didn't see is where he nearly bit it.

[Sydneykid]

Good pics these. Taken in sequence on the same corner is my guess. Interesting is that when the car has risen after a bump the inside rear and also the inside front are off the road. Inside rear I'd expect but inside front, too little droop? front bar too stiff for a road as rough as this, or normal?
Then in compression the inside rear is still off the deck/skimming. Its good to see nothing is rubbing and it appears to have an upright outside front. Hard to tell if the rear needed more camber in that pic.

If it wasn't understeering and/or wheelspinning off the bump then I wouldn't be too worried. It doesn't look as though you have much lock on so changing (softening) the swaybar wouldn't do much, but it wouldn't hurt. If it starts to wheelspin off the bumps then you could lower it a bit more, that would give more droop capacity. There's no long corners with high G so a bit lower roll centre is not a big deal. As long as it's not hitting the bump stops over the bump of course. More rebound in the shocks might be worthwhile trying first though.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

Yeah I wanted to ask you that Gary. I'd softened off the damping thinking that I had too much bump going on in a quest to soften the ride. The car was basically rattling over the bumps and doing little jumps which had the helical diff all over the shop sending torque left and right making it hard o read what the front was doing. In the stretch after the esses I was flat out just trying to steer the thing in a straight line. MCA said its a 1:3 ratio of bump:rebound in the adjustments. So are you saying that to have ridden the roughness better that I should have gone more clicks in to exploit the extra rebound, so that each hit was better controlled?

[Sydneykid]

Yeah I wanted to ask you that Gary. I'd softened off the damping thinking that I had too much bump going on in a quest to soften the ride. The car was basically rattling over the bumps and doing little jumps which had the helical diff all over the shop sending torque left and right making it hard o read what the front was doing. In the stretch after the esses I was flat out just trying to steer the thing in a straight line. MCA said its a 1:3 ratio of bump:rebound in the adjustments. So are you saying that to have ridden the roughness better that I should have gone more clicks in to exploit the extra rebound, so that each hit was better controlled?

I don't have a definitive answer, you really need to try it. From what you are saying I suspect it would help by slowing down the spring recoil (off the bump) but there's a compromise in increasing the bump damping (hit the bump harder). With triple adjustable shocks I would add rebound (quite a bit), take out as much low speed bump as I could and leave the high speed bump alone. That's a definitive answer, but with only 1 adjuster it's a matter of trial and error. With not a lot of runs during the day it's always hard to tune, but the good thing is to write it in the book for next time.

Cheers
Gary

[Sydneykid]

If you want to test fit a 4 point harness I probably have one lying around that you could try.

Cheers
Gary

[sambb]

I'll have to get back to doing some drives through the national park where its pretty rough and see what it likes. I'll be getting under the car soon to see if there's any other way I can eek out more caster from the subframes and ball joints and if I get very motivated and decide to move stuff I might drop the subframes and throw the stock front bar back in and try that too.
re the harness yeah that would be brilliant. Just to know if the shoulder straps would work on the stock seat would be the main thing. Failing that I'll have to look into Golf R seats or something and then money gets in the way badly. I'll be in touch. thanks.

[sambb]

Neater. No more horrendous scraping noise from the rear wiper every time I activate the intercooler spray which borrowed its water pump. That had a few people confused why I was always hitting the rear wiper when staging up the other day. Those few grams could have been the 0.04 secs I needed to crack the 27's too! ha ha

[sambb]

Just checked out the seat belt mounting points. The seat belt receiver isn't bolted to the seat but is on a steel strap that's bonded to the seat. Without a bolted mount point, and assuming that I can use the stock seat I'm restricted to this harness then that uses a lap sash that plugs into your existing receiver. I wouldn't use the rear seat belt mounts but would run a strap off the union to go around a rear strut bar or a point mounted into the back of the boot.

https://www.schrothracing.com/products/quickfit#3366