Second Phase Almost Complete
 

After talking about it for a couple of weeks, I finally devoted a good portion of the weekend to completing Phase Two of my build.

First, a little oops.

I've been gathering parts for this build for a month or two now. Normally my wife never notices but in this case I had everything all laid out in the shop for the new install as it was going to be a full weekend what with having to redo my IC charge pipes and all.

New big IC
Tein Flex
FM front and rear sways
6UL's with 225/45/15 RS3's
EBC

My wife, who never comes in the shop, stopped by to see what I was doing. She looked around at the pile of goodies and asked "So, how much did all this cost?" Well, seeing as I had a couple of grand laying there, I couldn't use my usual "Oh, a couple hundred." as even a non-car-mided person would be wise to that. So, I simply said "Don't ask and I won't have to tell you.":giggle: Well, it worked. She just said "hmmm" and walked back out.:laugh:

So, I started on the IC, as I had to redo the entire thing. My old 205's would rub my charge pipe on the driver's side at full lock and full bump as I had gone through the fender with it. I knew the 225's would be worse, so I opened up the hole through the fender more towards the front, recut and welded the charge pipe, remounted the new IC and made everything fit.

After that I got after the Flex. I had read Jason C's answer to someone else's question abot Flex setup on m.net. After I pulled the spring and was checking max bump at full lock, My new RS3's would still hit the newly relocated charge pipe. WTF, I figured that I had moved it forward enough, but it wasn't so. So, opened the hole more, recut and reweld the charge pipe again, and move it forward some more. Now, it will lift the car off the jackstands at full compression of the bump stop and full lock and no rubbing.

Went back and reset the rear and front to .8" and .7" off the stop at ride height and reassembled springs on the shocks. Installed them and installed the new sways.

So, all that is left to do is set ride height with spring preload, slap an oil change on it and hook up my EBC. Now that I have my new IC, I'm going to shoot for 10 psi, which on a stock 9.5 compression motor is likely the limit I will go with it. Then it's off to the shop for an alignment.

Pics to come. I wasn't taking any today.

:laugh: Nice! It's always fun to get new parts and install them. Pics ASAP

Good stuff. Make sure to post lots of pics and steps of wiring the ebc. I'm doing mine soon as well. I think I'm at the limit of my wg spring: ~8psi.

Your tein flex and 6uls make me jealous btw:)

In for pics.

Good to see it's moving along.

sounds like a little exclamation point on the level of fun with the car you'll be having.

ps the wife will now have license to obtain a "dont ask dont tell" level of personal gifts for herself due to your setting the example. :)

She doesn't spend money. Doesn't care about "stuff". Other than her horses, which I just finished putting up 1,500 bales of hay for (that might have factored into her lack of comment), she doesn't have any vices.

I offered to turbo her BRG but she couldn't care less.

what kind of horses?

Careful how you do this... if you tell her that it only cost a few hundred... then she may go and get a Morgan while you're not looking!!! Or hit the tack shop in a fit of rage... :)

Two thoroughbreds, the gelding that is an ex-race horse and a mare that was never raced. They have turned out to be pretty good general trail horses. I got them for her for her 40th birthday as she always wanted a horse and we have the space.

i live in horse country (Wellington, FL)

we used to have Paso Fino horses when i was younger

OK, got it buttoned up today. Will test drive tomorrow. Yes, I know my car is a filthy pig.:facepalm: Plus, lots of hand prints from rolling around under it and rolling and pushing down on the corners to set the suspension. Ride height is pretty much set to my starting numbers. I have one rear corner that I have to tweak about 1/8" so I didn't bother with the center caps. No outside pics as I just finished it. Man, it looks like crap inside. Good pics to follow.:noob:

set that ride height lower :)

Funny that you should mention that. I wanted to. I've been PMing JasonC SBB about that very thing.

I went through the Tein Flex Setup thread on M.net. Jason was fairly detailed about the method to properly set up the shocks.

I removed the springs and installed the shocks and adjusted the shock length to the point where I didn't get any rubbing with this wheel/tire combination at full lock and full compression on the bumpstops with a jack under the A arm.

After that, I set the rears so that at ride height I had .8" of shock rod showing above the bumpstop on the rears and .7" on the fronts. This gave me about 90% more on the rears so that in roll it hits both bumpstops at the same time. This is as low as it will go and not running on the bumpstops and still give good travel in bump and rebound. That gave me 13" ride height on the front and 13 3/8" in the rear. I couldn't go lower without getting closer to the bumpstops.

Any ideas on getting lower without comprimising ride? All along I had planned to go to 12.5" front and 13 rear as I live on a gravel road and need some clearance.

just turn those spring collars to lower it. you wont be on the bumpstops with the TEINs.

That's the thing, I did go carefully through that when setting them up. Here is exactly what I did. Both posts are by Jason C SBB. If I adjust the perches lower, I will lose bump travel before hitting the bumpstops. They are exactly .7" gap between the bumpstop and the hard stop in the front, .8" in the rear at this ride height, shock body lenghts are the shortest possible without rubbing. I had to dial in 3/4" of preload in the rears, 1/2" of preload in the fronts to get to this ride height.

The only way I that I can go shorter is cut the fender liners which I don't really want to do on a DD that sees gravel roads.

right so even though you have reduced bump travel, you'll have increased droop travel. and you prbably still wont hit the bumpstops. remember you dont lower the collar .7 inches to lower the car .7 inches. motion ratio.

I run my car at around 12.5F and dont get weird bumpstop behavior. it's certainly free to try.

Yeah, motion ratio is like 1.3:1 IIRC. I'll drive it, let it settle and maybe play with it. Even if I drop them 1/4" they will still be close to 1/2" off the stops and drop the car to 12.7 and 13. I won't give up ride comfort for a 1/2" drop, though.

Could you take more pictures of your IC setup? What IC did you use? Aluminum piping?

Sure.

Mild steel piping so I could weld it. IC is a generic Ebay XS Power or some such thing. I got it here in the WTB section so don't have specs.

Ho Ly Shit...This is awesome! I took it for a first drive today. Running full soft as I wanted a baseline. Handling is superb on rough gravel roads. Steering feel is much better than stock. Acceleration? It felt like I wasn't even in boost. It felt slow. In a good way. No drama, no squirming on shifts, no dive and squat, and that's full soft! I love this suspension.

I have the fFM ront bar on the full hard setting ( 2 0f 2) and the middle (2 of 3) on the rears. Really flat but the shocks soaked up the bumps. Some people (over there) :jerkit:said that even full soft on the Flex made it borderline non-streetable. What were they thinking? Full soft like this should be what the stock suspension should feel like. I do 500 mile a day trips for work. This thing is effortless. And, I haven't even had a performance alignment done yet. No, I must say that my stock shocks had 80K so I assume they were pretty much done.

A+++. Would buy again. Absolutely tits.

Oh, I went through two more suspension ride height tweaks. First to get it balanced and then a bit more drop. Got it set at 12 7/8 front, 13 1/4 rear. I'll drive it like that for a bit to see how I like it.

Now, EBC and then I'm done for a bit. (Other than a roll bar, brakes, Carbotech pads...):giggle::giggle: