My '86 GTI build

[Rabbit Farmer]

Unsure how the 02A falls into the scheme of things (I am used to 020, 02J, and 02M... that's about it)....

Diesel Geek has some options.

Here is their short shifter page:

http://www.dieselgeek.com/VW_and_Audi_S ... s/1830.htm

Steve

[walterclark]

The early 02a shifter is pretty much ignored by most places. Bahnbrenner and Gruvenparts excepted.

The things Dieselgeek lists for the 02A shifter are physically different than what I have. I have different cable ends, square rather than oval bushings, and their short shift adapter is for a cable set that sits one atop the other at the transaxle end, where mine sit side by side.

[walterclark]

The replacement end fittings arrived. I installed the one for the front-rear cable after cutting off the stock swagged end fitting. Nota Bene: For anyone else doing this. There are no instructions but you need to split the end fitting sleeve and remove it. Dont cut the rod where the fitting ends or you will end up with a cable that is too short. I didnt make that mistake, but I can see how easy it would be to do it.

I think the car is ready for Ascutney.

[walterclark]

I must have not left anything important off or loose during reassembly this spring. Ascutney went pretty well and I feel any car that can race over the section from check 7 to finish 6 times with a couple Fam runs thrown in with nothing breaking or falling off must be screwed together OK.

I only experienced 2 things that stick out in my mind right now.

The speedo shuts down above 50mph. Given the way a VR sensor works I suspect that its is simply overloading the input to my VR signal-to-binary converter and that is an easy fix.

The other may be something I need to live with and may only be a problem at Ascutney. I found I had trouble finding 3rd gear in one spot on the hill. Right above check 7 after the road gets incredibly bumpy I am at the rev limiter in 2nd and I need to shift. The whole car is bouncing around so much at that moment I had difficulty at least twice finding 3rd. The first time it happened it simply would not go into any gear for a moment and when I pulled it back and tried again it went in. The second time, my last run on Sunday I ended up finding 5th, then 1st, then 1st and by then I needed second. The issue is getting the shifter to align to the 3-4 gate long enough to put it in and the centering springs that make this happen automatically are pretty soft so with all the shaking going on and the fact that my right arm isnt necessarily shaking in unison with the car, it is very easy for me to overwhelm these springs and miss the gate. I fixed this on the 020 by doubling up on the return spring that does this job on that tranny. Since I have a shelf full of old 020, extra parts like that were easy to come by. Not so this time around. I am not sure if doing something similar on the 02A is even possible a this point, but if it is I still lack extra 02A parts trannies right now. So that is something to look into.

Overall I am pretty happy with the changed I made.

I am not sure if the change in gearing from what I have been running ended up being faster or slower. It was different for sure. I was a little bit slower overall, in terms of times, than last fall but that may have more to do with me getting used to and confidence in the things like the new braking setup than the gearing itself. In the past I was in 4th (having previously topped out 3rd) coming up on turn 5 and with this gearing I was in 3rd with some RPM left. Since the speedo would shut down at 50 I cant directly tell if my speed was the same, higher or lower so I will have to do some manual calculations once I review the data logs to compare speed at the faster places...like coming into turn 5.

The brake setup worked well but I was very slow to get comfortable with the feel of the non-boosted pedal and I was hesitant to drive well into the cars optimum braking zone before braking. I am sure I was nowhere near the threshold of grip under braking all weekend, so I left a lot of time at each hard braking turn. I also left the brake bias controls set all the way to front all weekend. Between the 2 controls I have in series, the rear brakes are well below the fronts under all conditions I experienced, and given feedback I have from others who had similar MCs and brakes being inherently rear biased, at least I know I have the right hardware in place to be able to find a good balance. I am thinking about signing up for an open track day in the next few weeks with the goal of fiddling with the bias settings and learning where the balance point is in an environment that is a little less costly in the event of a spin.

[KevinGale]

I find myself wishing these forums had a like button. I want to say I read the post and I like seeing these posts without having to do a reply.

[drummingpariah]

I find myself wishing these forums had a like button. I want to say I read the post and I like seeing these posts without having to do a reply.

[sachilles]

It's amazing what a change in gearing will do to your confidence and self confidence levels. Changing when you shift at a hill you already know is just flat out a weird thing.
I know last fall with my new gear box, I was scratching my head for a while. Your mind is sending you conflicting info, and that usually results in hesitations....and so on.
I'm also finding that what little data I log is a far better judge of things compared to my seat of the pants assessment.

[KevinGale]

Yeah my changing to the 5.04 rear gears in my car has been great. I figured out yesterday that I can actually launch the car in 3rd gear. So I only have to shift one time.

[walterclark]

After doing a little searching around and looking at the car a bit, it would seem I could double up on what is called the side-side spring in the shifter assembly (the bits in the cockpit). This spring basically returns the shift lever to the side-side neutral position or 3-4 gate. I ordered one to see if it helps make the 3-4 position of the shifter a little harder to miss.

I also removed the amplifier for the speedo VR sensor and found one of the input wires had broken off its attachment post on the little module board. I tested the module and it really should have handled the VR sensor output just fine, assuming it was seeing all of it (not likely with one of the input wires broken). I fixed that and put it back. No good way to try it out here as the local dont take kindly to driving an unregistered race car around 30MPH speed limit roads (and they are all 30) at over 50.

I also started editing the final run log from Sunday to add a calculated (from RPM and gear). Would have it done too except the spreadsheet choked when I tried to paste a formula into about 30000 cells at once. Have to go back and try it again with more "steps" and saves.

[walterclark]

The second attempt at creating a virtual MPH from gear and RPM worked better (the spreadsheet didnt choke). (Boring details follow) The vehicle speed used to come from the speedo output attached to a Hall sensor and the Megasquirt calculated speed by my having input the transmission gear ratios and tire outer diameter. The new setup does it by knowing the tire outer diameter and the number of pulses per revolution of the rear rear wheel where the VR sensor is mounted. The Megasquirt calculates (and logs) what gear I must be in based on knowing the gear ratios MPH and RPM. Since the new speed input was shutting down above 50MPH I couldnt just use the logged gear and RPM to compute a new speed, but the easier way to get to a calculated speed was to edit the log to reflect the correct gear since that changes way less than the other inputs, is pretty obvious when graphing the data log, and only involved part of 2nd gear and all of 3rd. Having done that to the new log then comparing the speed trace to one from last fall, I was able to see where the new gearing is faster and slower than the old.

I am faster to turn 1 this past weekend, about the same (time and speed) to turn 5, slower from 5 to 13, etc. The taller 2nd and 3rd in the new setup helped in many places but where I used to come out of a turn in 3rd, then hold it to the next turn - and still do with the new - the older gearing got me to the next point a little faster (no surprise). Where I used to need to go to 4th and can now stay in 3rd the new is a bit faster. I seem to be more inclined to carry more speed into and out of the 2nd gear corners now and I am less likely to lose time by going into 3rd for just a moment or holding 2nd at the rev limiter (such as when approaching turn 1). So my feeling that it was different place to place but basically the same overall seems to be true.

The logs also make it obvious I spent more time under braking this past weekend and was less aggressive shifting, both deliberate until I gain some confidence in the brakes and transmission. The above data log that I modified is the one where I had so much trouble getting into 3rd above the bridge in my final run. It would have been my best of the day except for that little problem. It shows I spent over 5 seconds trying to find 3rd gear before giving up and going into 2nd. My speed dropped from 59 to 32 in that time. My normal 2-3 shift in that location is just under a second and less than 4MPH lost. I was on a 3:12 pace up to that point. Not bad for me considering I was still being conservative with braking and shifting.