It is cool to see some Jettas being built

[shwah]

I have considered it myself a few times.

On paper it seems the aero will be slightly better, with a nicer rear window angle, a trunk to fill the void behind the window and reduce the vacuum there and if a 4 door, smaller side windows open to the wind stream.

Theory is great and all, but has anyone ever run across empirical evidence to support the Jetta being more aero than the Golf?

How about effectiveness of the GLI rear lip spoiler? If there is still somewhat attached airflow there, the lip hanging of the back may actually reduce drag a teeny tiny bit (like .1% or something), but my bet is that this close to the rear window it is not really effective at all - but pretty cool looking. Anyone have or seen data on this?

Maybe I should start putting one together and run the hatch and sedan with the same drivetrain at RA to get some data...

[joeg]

If Mike Ogren says it is a better shell to work off, I would believe him.

[shwah]

I don't disagree, but I would love to see some supporting data.

The one big reason I never went that route before is because in a sprint race, I like having a shorter car, that will fit in tighter spots on track.

I am not convinced that the weight distribution is any advantage.

I think that the additional chassis stiffness could be a minor impact, though only 1 rear tire is on the ground at a time anyhow when the car is working in the corners - so maybe nothing more than a feel thing, sort of like an upper strut tie bar.

The aero stuff may add up enough to matter at triple digits, and the top of the straights are where I have issues with competition (Accords, 924s, 2.0 VWs).

I stumbled on a decent non-sunroof donor - seriously thinking about putting it together enough to swap components and do some chassis comparison between the two...

[pfcs]

I suspect the small front windows yield less drag than the Jetta tail does. At least it's a big add on Volvo 142/144s.

[D. Ellis-Brown]

There are two MK III Jetta's in Central Florida, Mike McCormick built one last year, and we built our's 3 years ago. It is a great car. As far as the Aero benefits, I can not say. We installed the rear factory spoiler on day one. But it was more for show than anything else, since we did not have any Aero data to say if it was beneficial or not. But since it was "Standard" on some models of the Jetta, we installed it. We see 6600 in 5th at Daytona with an 0.81 final drive. So it is fast. We built the Jetta for several reasons. 1. it was cheap, we found a pristine car in a junk yard with a seized motor for $200. 2. One of my friends, Randy Pobst, formally from Melbourne, Florida, and I had talked about "Jetta's, (Mk II's) in 1990, that a Jetta, with the extra weight behind the rear wheels, might rotate better to offset the normal understeer. 3. I wanted to build a new car but it needed to be a VW, 4. We figured that the car had alot of potential, because of the cross flow head, Motronic ECM, etc, and it was only 70lbs. heavier than the Mk II's. Well we were right. The hardest part of building the car was getting the car down to weight. We have done that. The engine is sweet, with lot's of torque. The next issue has been the ECM. We had two different companies burn chips for us but we could never get the A/FR down to were we wanted, so we had to give that up and installed a MegaSquirt. That increased the HP by 8%, and the Torque by 6%. David and Jeff at Atlantic Autoworks in Melbourne installed it and we saw the increase imeadiately on the Dyno. It is a neat car. Randy has driven it, Paul Ronie also has driven it, They had some very favorable things to say about it. So, we hope more people consider the Jetta's to. They are much more plentiful than the Golf's, and for me it has been a fun car.

David Ellis-Brown

[shwah]

Wow David. I honestly did not think the A3 Jetta could get to weight. You are definitely correct about the weight difference between the 2.0 and 1.8. It is a favorable classing, and if I had read closer when I started I would have gone that direction...

The AFR never seems right on the chips for that car. I would love to see that car in action. Any plans to take it North over the next year?