The event was great. And to make things even better I was going to a "Driver's Edge" event at Texas Motor Speedway which is run by Rick Schwalenberg a UrQ owner. He was also my instructor so things were definately looking on the bright side. If your in Texas I'd highly recommend taking the class.

Well Saturday morning and the car had really bad oversteer. Rick remarked about how the car just turned on a dime unlike normal UrQ with mostly understeer. The car's steering response at speed was very responsive but the back end was dicy and a bit unpredictable. This made the first two runs a disappointment and something of a bitter pill. During the lunch break I met up with Pribble and the Fluhr Brothers who ventured out from Austin to see the happenings in Bryan. Ken Fluhr remembered seeing that the car did not have a front sway bar, but did have a rear sway bar. Given the overly stiff nature of the springs, we decided to remove the rear sway bar and see what happens. I also dropped the tire pressure cause the light weight of the car really seemed to be causing uneven wear on the tires. These changes made an outstanding improvement in cornering stability. The car was very drivable and that point and I was pressurizing and passing Corvettes, NSXs, Vipers. Very fun.

After the Saturday runs, The we all decided to remove the 40mm restrictor on the turbo. That took a few hours but all went well, and we were finished by 8:30 pm. The delays meant that we didn't meet the other Audi folks for lunch :-( but we had a HUGE urq discussion going with Jimmy Pribble, Ken, Eric and Father Fluhr and myself in attendance. Lots of good ideas flying around the table.

Sunday morning and I got two good runs till the rain came in. The first run was a bit of a problem cause I had a slightly loose turbo downpipe and some oil was spraying out. I was discussing the performace with Jasyn from Houston who has a very fast StageIII 1.8T and was able to pull away from me at the ends of the straights. We were hitting 125-130 mph and my speedo said 85mph. So I imagine its just an issue of the high drag coeffecient of the UrQ. I took the lights, and anything else that could cause drag, but it didn't help too much. Still had a good run passing alot of cars. I was really impressed with the Subaru WRXs. Very nice performance combination. It was hard to keep ahead of most of those cars.

The new tranmission was perfect for the track. I was pretty much using 3,4 and 5. And hitting redline in 5th at the end of the straight.

Tires were good, needed to be broken in, but once on the Yokohama AVS Sports stuck well.<ul><li><a href="http://www.thedriversedge.net/">http://www.thedriversedge.net/</a</li></ul>

If you car has the same rear as mine, check the toe on the rear. Depends on which subframe you have. For rally you might try 0deg, for real fast runs go to 30-40deg/min, and for real oversteer go to a bit of toe out. Two turns on the tie rods should give the rear a real happy feel. The tyre wear may be coming from a radical toe setting. Remember for the track, you probably want some toe IN.

If you are doing ~130, and your speedo says only 85, it's your speedo, not drag. With different ratios,, and tyres you will be running, change out the Halda 880 for an Alpha Pro. It comes with a factored speedo. Where is your redline set? I imagine if it has the AudiSport Motronic it should be 8200, setback at 8000. You can calculate you own speed knowing you ratio's/rev's and tyre circumference.

For that car, ONLY run tyres with a very stiff sidewall. Do the bounce test, mushy tyres are going to bounce real high. That car was designed for the likes of the Pirelli K series. Compare them with stock like tyres, and you'll immediately see the difference. For street use in a 15", I run Goodyear Eagle HP's. They have the highest sidewall stiffness of any 15". Stay far away from the Kumho's/Yokohama's/etc.. their casings aren't nearly strong enough for what you'll be putting to the wheels. As for pressure, on the road tyres, even for autoX, I run just 34 psi. With the stiffness, and quattro, I don't see any rollover at all. You can test that for yourself, but I'm sure you'll see the same thing.

Consider keeping the rev's down a bit in the corners by trying a higher gear. Don't come in so hot, and have to accelerate out. Let the corner scrub some speed, and try a few corners in a higher gear. It may seem like a dog at first, but keep an eye on your times, they should improve a bit.

That car was designed for oversteer. Most "stock" Audi's push like the dickens, but you'll find that car should be very neutral, it can be made to understeer or oversteer. It'll take some getting used too.

Remember also that car has taller subframe bushings, if I recall. You are sitting an inch higher than everyone else, it makes a huge difference.

Run with the spare in place. Yours it up further than mine, but I found that running without mine, I got oversteer more than I could handle.

You can also adjust the bounce and rebound of those sruts by changing the fluid. I use 365 ml of NEO 5W synthetic shock oil. Using too much will cause it to be too stiff. Find out from Bruno which springs you have. From looking at the pics of your units, the perches seem a tad low. You may want to get a bit more preload on them.

Good luck, have fun, and keep me posted. Snatch my email from the header, and send me an email, to let me know how you're doing.

Wow, thanks for the notes.

I'll go into detail.

Your correct about the bushings. The car has aluminum bushings that creak and moan but the car feels pretty good and solid under them. I'll check my rear toe in. Unfortunately, I didn't have enought time to do a proper suspension and tire adjustment prior to the event so I'm still in the "break in" period for asphalt. I was running brand new Yokohama AVS Sports in 225/45 R17. The initial tire pressure was 37 psi all around, but after consulting some people who discussed some rules of thumb like vehicle weight divided by 100 and things like that, we went with 31 psi. The wear seemed even and grip was better after that change. The rear sway bar was indeed very adjustable as you say with tapered plates for directional stiffness and eyeball linkages at each end. We didn't have time at the event to "tune" the bar, so to get the car to at least a neutral position from oversteer we removed the whole thing. It was a move in the right direction, but of course I don't have a reference to compare against a car with two properly setup sway bars. I'm going to see if bruno has another sway bar for the front. Then I can tune both fairly easily. But am I right to think If I'm running with a rear I should have a front?

What I meant to say with the speed (not speedo) is that the car seemed slow on the straight given the horsepower and the light weight. I'm pretty certain many cars that I could out accelerate from 0 to 100 were definately pulling away from 100 to 130. I think thats the awful drag coeffecient of the UrQ. i'll get the speedometer adjusted, and perhaps install a newer timing computer.

If my Tach is correct I'm redlining at 7K. Power is good and I'm getting 1.6 bar pressure. I'm certain these are very conservative settings for that engine, and I'm happy with that. Removing the restrictor helped breathing a bit, but not as much as I thought. I wish I had time before the event to remove the catalytic convertor which brings a good 3" exhaust down to 2.5" for a long length. That is probably robbing me of alot of power.

I did do a few runs with and without the spare. I noticed more stability with it in. For weight sake, I'd like to get the car tuned without it for asphalt track running.

The springs are very stiff and body roll is not bad at all. Actually quite nice. I'll see if bruno has info on the spring coeffecients.

This is a good thread. I'll relay more info when I get it.

The bushings shouldn't creak.

I believe that car is just over 1200kg, right?

On the rear you have the sway bar adjustment for stiffness(roll), and the tie rod adjustment for toe. You can play with the sway bar for the stiffness, but the toe adjustment will do heaps as far as oversteer too.

I don't run a sway bar on the front, no need. Which lower arms do you have?

As far as drag, oh well..., tons of fun, Im not complaining.

I'm surprised it is redlining at 7k, that's odd, it should be 8. I have a non-turbo, maybe they set them up differently.

Catalytic converter!! No way! They were going to make that a rule for SCCA, but it got yanked pretty fast. If you've got a cat, what kind of fuel are you running? I run VP C12, but even the Sunoco race is leaded, if you run that, it'll be plugged before you leave the pump.

I am guessing, you can run the boost up way higher than that, conservative would be an understatement. Bump it up some, you'll see oversteer real quickly.

The spare is there, for balance, actually it was setup for two spares. Keeps the nose up, when you're in the air.

Ask Bruno if the springs are Safari or Forest. I would imagine they're forest, the rate is more uniform, it doesn't need that initial give to soak up real rough stuff. Most of the Euro guys only were running those. The biggies, like Stig and Walter had many choices at their disposal.

I have some creaking when the car shifts weight from side to side in turns(like slaloms). There's no noticable effect on driving. I thought it was the bushings. Any ideas?

The car is about 2600 lbs or so with equipment and spare.

The cats on there for registration purposes. I'm running 94 octane through it. The motronic is Lehmann tuned and set for 94. Haven't run any 110 or anything like that, but I'll remove the cat before I do that. More than likely its limiting the car to 250 hp-300 hp.

I'll get the info from Bruno today.

When you run on asphalt do you lock your center diff?

Shouldn't be the bushings, they should be tight. I'd have to hear and see it to give a good opinion. Although, mine might be creaking too, but my car is so loud, you couldn't tell.

2600 is about right, with extras, mines around 2400, equipped the same.

I'd look to see if you can find a station that carries some "street" racing fuel. It's usually around 100 or so, and unleaded. The cat's will hurt performance no doubt.

I can't lock or unlock the center diff. I don't have one. I have a different tranny. I have the long AudiSport 6 spd, full time front/rear, 50/50 split. I also have limited slip front/rear. I wouldn't even think of trying to parallel park it. That's whuy mine acts a bit odd, and I still have yet to get used to it.

A couple things.... First, center locked on track all the time. Audisport drivers ALL used center locked all the time, so the "control" for it was removed early in homog cars (1982). Even the 95 audisport/MTM/SMS S2 I service has no center diff actuator, with a plethora of choices for front and rear LSD (depending on venue).

Upper bushing noise. I consider this normal, but scribe and inspect regularly. For our rally car alone, we have 4-5 different setups, none of them are really quiet, some work better than others. ALL should be checked for wear and radial play, this is a known weak link in the quattro rally suspensions.

Rear tire in is recommended per discussions. Anything you can do to legally add rear weight is a good thing. On our car, there is a 5 gallon tank at the very rear of the car for "adding water for water cooled brakes". I suspect since it's as far aft as possible, it serves a more basic function as well.

WRT swaybars, MOST audisport cars didn't have them, the roll was controlled by spring rates (we have 24 sets of springs and shocks as spares). My understanding of the car you bought was that it was Bruno's equivelent/improvement of the audisport cars. If so, you need to see what kind of stuff you have that is his vs what was on the factory campaigned cars. I suspect you have a lot of street stuff in combination with the audisport stuff. First and foremost on the list is the trailing arms for the front and rear control arms found on later A2/S1/S2 and roadgoing SQ. These are very good at handling the control arm problems inherent in the quattro subframe design, and with the install of them, rear bars were usually deleted. Are your control arms of the audisport chromolly crossbrace type?

Get used to center diff locked in driving this car, it's how it should be driven in any performance venue. I lock and unlock the rear diff depending on track venue, but always lock the center diff on track/rally-cross.

WRT fuel, Sunoco (SCCA sponsor 2002) does have 104 unleaded available on the truck. I suggest using it, and also suggest keeping Lambda circuits intact. You (squidix too) may want to ck to see if lambda is active in the programming, audisport didn't use it, but it also has a tendency to require more engine rebuilds because of overrich fuel pre WOT. Since WOT means Lambda is ignored, there really isn't a reason why you *can't* run it, we added it back to the S2 with no problems. That said, some of the programming (the early Buffum mac 11 chips I have ignore it)ignores it regardless of lambda probe install. Ck on this, I encourage it's use for longevity purposes.

HTH

Scott Justusson
couple urq's and a type 44tqw
Crew Chief: Car 559 1995 group A S2

Scott,

The suspension is nothing like my 83 street UrQ. It has the welded crossbrace type control arms. The rally uprights and hubs and a different subframe. I suspect the anti-roll bars are also some audisport spec item. THey're not like street urQs. I'll get some pictures the next time its up on a rack.

In regards to the Lambda circuit, can you clarify in more detail what that is? The engine in my rally car and the engine management computer are both from Lehmann. Bruno ordered the engine from them in 1999 and did not mess with the tuning at all. I have since only removed the 40mm restrictor on the turbo housing. I would be interested to know more about the Lamda circuit.

James B.
Austin TX

James:
WRT the suspension, I saw the pix on the S car site. Do you have the trailing link heim joints that go from the body to the C/A in the rear, and from the U channel to the C/A in the front? Ala SQ.

WRT lambda circuit, that is the oxygen sensor circuit and fuel frequency valve circuit in the ecu. (the buzzing bees sound from your fuel distributor). The early euro urq cars didn't use this circuit, instead they used set fuel frequency values in the tables of the ecu. The us cars all had this circuit since 1981.

The 3 lehmann chips I have in my possession from buffum's A1's ignore the O2 sensor input. The thiking in most race cars is that you are either ON the gas or OFF the gas, so sub WOT isn't a concern in terms of mixture. This can cause rich conditions at sub WOT conditions which leads to premature engine failure, and requires much more frequent oil changes (like after every venue).

Rick S should be able to help you here as to how to identify it and the reuirements to even add it back in. Depending on which motor ecu setup you have (I'm presuming it's a mac-01/02?) the O2/lambda loop can be added without losing any performance as originally intended. The chips for these motors are pretty well understood now in terms of programming parameters.

HTH

Scott J