Knestis to Debut Jetta TDI in STU @ VIR Majors

[Knestis]

"Nothing went wrong."

The car never missed a beat. Changed ride height to address binding the dampers, put in a more aggressive brake pad to give more initial bite, put Dynamic Fuels synthetic sauce in it, and drove 10 sessions.

We entertained ourselves in the paddock finding bits to remove in an attempt to lose the 250# of excess weight involved.

Turned out we were about 5 seconds off the fastest STU car there and 10 faster than the rest so we concentrated on learning the car and not chucking it off of South Bend. It's got a long way to go but the potential is huge.

K

[Matt93SE]

Sounds like a good weekend overall and a good platform to start with!

If it's like any other VW I've seen, there's about 3/4 of a ton of crap under the dash that can go away.. I also see lots of glass. And door skins? There's 100+lb right there.

[Knestis]

Doors are gutted, although maybe not as aggressively as might be possible. Plastic windows are on the to-do list. We want to retain the defogger and the HVAC unit is apparently *very* messy, with all kinds of interlocking ducts and valves and junk. Cameron will be back in there, however. We haven't gutted the hood or trunk lid, not being 100% confident how to apply the more-permissive-than-IT allowance of removing "unnecessary" stuff (I think that's the word), but there IS a lot of metal there...

K

[Butch Kummer]

Good seeing you there, Kirk, and when you win at NJMP (next Eastern Conference Majors I'll be attending) I'll be able to pronounce your name correctly when you ascend to the top step! (NESS-tis).

[Knestis]

Unfortunately, we'll be missing NJMP. I'll be in Sweden watching my wife do the Stockholm marathon.

K

[Rabbit07]

I would like to say, " that car sounds cool!"

[JS154]

Doors are gutted, although maybe not as aggressively as might be possible. Plastic windows are on the to-do list. We want to retain the defogger and the HVAC unit is apparently *very* messy, with all kinds of interlocking ducts and valves and junk. Cameron will be back in there, however. We haven't gutted the hood or trunk lid, not being 100% confident how to apply the more-permissive-than-IT allowance of removing "unnecessary" stuff (I think that's the word), but there IS a lot of metal there...

K

hood and bootlid can be replaced with composite.

ditch HVAC and all that crap under the dash. doors - check the regs but i think you just need to leave the factory crash bar.
holesaw the baloney out of the bumper crash bars.

[Knestis]

I uploaded an in-car lap of VIR so folks can see how calm the inside of a DSG-equipped turbodiesel race car is...

http://youtu.be/72uiSxiBIok

K