Greg@RME's '09 Jetta daily driver / project

[Greg@RME]

So back in March my '06 Jetta was rearended while I was stopped at a light in Denver. The guy was in a Lexus SUV and his foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas pedal. I had recently done a lot of work to the car, including a Malone 1.5 tune, window tint, GTI grill w/ TDI badge, Hella headlights, LED fog lights, BFG's, EGR bypass, etc, etc. It was a very clean car, not perfect but I was happy with it.... long story short, the damage and price to repair it came in at almost $5k! So the car was totaled....


My '06 before the wreck...

And the damage after.... doesn't look that bad, but the floor of the trunk was pushed in quite a bit.

So the insurance company gave me less than what the car was worth IMO and not what replacement value would have been. I wanted to find a nice, newer common rail car and ended up finding a project '09 with 102k miles in SLC, Utah. I paid a few thousand under book value, knowing this car had issues. The PO (owned by a used car dealership, so no real history) thought the DPF filter was clogged, but wasn't sure. The car wasn't building boost, didn't have nearly as much power as it should and belched all kinds of black smoke at any more than 1/3 throttle.

I planned on doing a DPF/EGR/cat delete anyway, so got those out of the way using a delete pipe from Buzzken, then had a Malone Stage 2 tune done to go with the deletes. I hoped this would fix the problem, but figured there was something else going on. While I had the DPF off, I checked the turbo on the hot side and it spun freely, didn't have any excess play or other signs of problems/damage.

I ended up finding that the MAP sensor was bad, once a OE sensor was installed the car was making boost again! The OE MAP sensor cost $110, not too bad.

I had the wrecked '06 in my possession for a week before they picked it up and after I had bought the '09, so I removed & swapped the aftermarket parts that they weren't going to pay for.

The '09 as I got it...

Swapping parts between the 2 cars....

Removing some extra weight...

And after swapping all the parts! I think it's starting to look pretty good.

I want to make some improvements to the suspension & handling next, bigger rear anti-sway bar, some larger wheels & better tires and probably a set of Koni FSD struts and Eibach Pro-Kit springs.

 

[Greg@RME]

Picked up a set of 18" Audi wheels with some used BFGoodrich 245/40ZR18's G-Force Super Sport Z-rated tires for a few hundred bucks! The wheels were painted (poorly) and have seen some curb rash & beating up... they were cheap though, I plan on using them for weekend track use 5-6 times a year. It's amazing how tight the turn-in and response to steering wheel input is compared to the other tires that have a much taller sidewall.

The car is much more responsive in the turns, but these tires really make me want a rear anti-sway bar and better struts & coils.... SOON!

 

[Greg@RME]

Well.... made it out to the track this morning! It was SO MUCH FUN, the car actually did pretty well!

So these tires have a max pressure of 50 PSI, I ran them at 45 so they had room to increase when hot. The tires did get pretty warm to the touch after a run, I checked pressure and at the most one of them went up 2 PSI. It took me a few runs to get to know the track, then after that I was trying to remember what gear to be in at every point. Eventually I learned there were 3 places to be in 3rd gear, 2nd for everything else. I hit 60 MPH on a couple of the straightaways. I leaned a lot about when to brake, how to hit the apex, to FOCUS on the apex when driving into each turn and look where I want to go... I think a lot of my motorcycling experience related to the car on the road track. One of the guys that has a decent amount of experience rode along with and gave me tips while driving.

We ran 10 minute sessions, I got out 5 times. My slowest lap was my first time out (of course), 77.25 seconds and my quickest lap was on my 4th time out at 72.09 so I gained over 5 seconds! It was good to get a baseline my first time out for future trips out to the track!

Here's a quick video from part of the day...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icEMlUFY4w0

 

[mrrhtuner]

Very nice!

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Nice build. And it's nice to see someone else running their TDI on the track. Here's mine a few years ago at Calabogie in Ottawa.

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One thought: You should probably be running much less air in your tires. I would start with 28 PSI and check after the first run, aiming to keep them at 30-32 PSI hot. This is pretty standard. Too much pressure and the contact patch gets focused on the center of the tire and the car won't corner as well.

 

[Greg@RME]

Very nice!

Appreciate it!

Nice build. And it's nice to see someone else running their TDI on the track. Here's mine a few years ago at Calabogie in Ottawa.

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One thought: You should probably be running much less air in your tires. I would start with 28 PSI and check after the first run, aiming to keep them at 30-32 PSI hot. This is pretty standard. Too much pressure and the contact patch gets focused on the center of the tire and the car won't corner as well.

Thanks, the track time was a incredible experience... can't wait to do it again. I was amazed at how well the stock car did, with the change of better tires and larger wheels.

You're totally right on the tire pressure, I was way high... wasn't really sure if I should be running higher pressures to keep the sidewall from rolling over, but you make a good point about the tire holding in the corners. Another notable thing regarding tire pressures, I would spin the inside tire coming out of the higher-speed corners when boost came on.

That's a good lookin' car! It's good to see that the money I've been sending you guys has been going towards some fun!

Hopefully I'll be ordering some new suspension bits from you soon!