Alberto's lupo 1.0 - My spicy daily

[amgeriz]

Hello everyone.

This start because I wanted to have again a fun little car, as my first one was a 106 gti and made me the best memories behind the wheel. But I didn't want another 106 or saxo because many things I don't want to deal with again...

After a lot of research, mostly on this forum, decided my next car will be a lupo 1.4 16v, and in fact still is true, because I ended buying a really cheap soft blue 1.0 to have a try until I find a good unit.

But my plans changed a little bit because I still have it since 2021, this car its a joy to drive now. It's my only car. I use it for go to work, shopping, lot of spirited driving, roadtrips, touristenfahrten... 

I will explain here what I did to the car to the current state, because it's true that from an aesthetics point of view looks like I only cleaned it haha

 

 

Edited November 10 by amgeriz

[mk2]

@cj1 is your friend for advice...

 

[amgeriz]

The car was cheap because four main reasons: the state of the bodywork and interior, it had a different key for the driver's door, it stopped sometimes when put it in neutral... And didn't start in some periods of time, then revived. Last thing wasn't told me, but anyway, let's fix it.

I solved the key problem disassembling the door lock mecanism like this video

Later, you need to introduce the key of this lock to take out the cilinder off the main body, the position of the pins will be flush like this

Now its time to take out this key and insert the key you want to use, in my case the main key of the car, ended with something like this.

And finally, change the position of the non flush pins, normally there are empty slots in the cilinder, if one of them don't work in any place it's time to remove it or replace it with a new one, there are kits available for cheap. In my case I removed two of them.

You can see the process with more detail here. It's in spanish but google do all for us easy nowadays haha

http://www.fullcustom.es/guias/adaptar-bombin-desguace-a-nuestra-llave

The second problem was solved buying a vagcom cable and software and calibrating the throotle body.

The process for a cable operated throotle like mine is Engine > Basic Settings > Group 98 > Go!, That's it.

And last thing was a faulty 410 fuel pump relay, it had power, but sometimes didn't close the contact that sends power to the pump (sound from the relay but not from the pump) It was temporally fixed with some 'love taps' to the fuse/relay area on the dash until the pump runs haha

Finally paint and interior received some care aswell.

Edited November 7 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

With all important issues fixed, and a fresh set of maxxis tyres, it was time for some lowering. Car was comfy, but too soft for me. For this car I wanted something cheap but with some good reviews, so I ended with a set of JOM coilovers.

Bought new top mounts and bearings, and used the non retaining nut that come with the kit, so it's way easier to replace the top mounts in the future like you see.

So out with the old

And in with the new!

Didn't use the plastic washers (because less travel) and dust covers (because it desintegrates quickly) and cutted a new set of rear bump stops to the measure of the new fronts, with very good result. Nowadays I regret to not cut at least 10mm of the fronts, seeing how much travel I ended up with the car on the ground. It's not too complicated to bottom out.

And probably next time I will use powerflex top mounts, because rubber ones sag, letting the upper support loose, not ideal.

But anyway, the change was great to my taste, little bit bouncy, but the car feels alive at last.

Edit:

There is something important in non abs equipped cars, because they have a brake bias valve on the rear beam. When you load (or lower) the car, it tensions a spring that moves the valve, increasing stopping power on the back. I realized it because brake pedal become spongy, like it's not enough bite on the front. The only thing needed is to release tension on the spring. 

I measured first and then moved up the bolt on the slider. In my case 4mm was enough to recover front bite.

Edited November 11 by amgeriz

[mk2]

some fantastic information in there for everyone 👍🏻

Really useful.

 

[amgeriz]

Let's talk about alignment...

Car had a base alignment, with 0 toe on the front and standard camber (less than 1 degree) when I mounted the coilovers, because I needed to wait until springs and top mounts was fully seated. 

Then I played with the front height a bit, ending up with 75mm from the first bottom thread to the bottom of the locking collar. And rear stayed on the lowest, but with adjusters mounted.

After that was time for the camber. I tried to do myself by eye, knowing what was previously, then went to the alignment shop to set toe. Had to argue with the alignment guy, because was late and I came there with 2°20' on the front left and almost 3 degrees on the front right. Finally he gave in and put some toe in to go home and come back next day. Car was on rails!! Loved it!

So next day was time for the definitive alignment at last (haha inocent me)

Of course I had to argue with the alignment guy again to have this camber, because horrific tire wear he said, and this was the maximum he was goint to put in. I wanted half degree more, but okay... it is what it is for now, I could try the car with front and rear camber equal. 

Handled fine, but far from how was the day before, I payed two times and wasn't happy with the result. Definitely I needed to find another place to align the car.

Edited November 8 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

I drove it some time while thinking how can improve cornering...

In a fwd car you want more front grip, because front tyres need to do all the work (steer, traction and braking) It can be done in two ways, improving front axle grip or worsening the rear one. I prefer first option, and that's why I wanted that half degree extra on the front and not to quit on the rear.

Car then have same camber allround, so the behaviour should be neutral, but it isn't, because while front axle was letting car move and turn freely with that 0 toe, rear axle was pointing inward almost half degree, slowing the car down on the straights and making the car understeer on corners. That's because it forces the car to mantain a straight line all the time, giving another work to the front tires (to carry with the rear axle) It's fine for high speed corner stability (that I will never see on this car) but bad for rotation.

So same again, you can give the front axle more grip, helping rotation by reducing rear toe, or you can reduce rear grip, by using a big anti roll bar to break rear grip easily on corners. And again, I prefered first one.

So I bought these.

Eibach/SPC EZ 75200 shims. With them you can align rear toe and camber in one go, by rotating two excentric disc marked with numbers. This numbers are the result of your choosen camber and toe in this chart.

In my case I use the 19/1 to the left (-19') and 18/1 to the right (-15'). 

Then you align this numbers on a template and cut were the template say, to let room for the hub bolts. Easy.

Oem bolts are M10x32 10.9 grade, so I measured the shims and bought M10x35 10.9 with grooved whasers.

Take out drum cover, take out bearing, bolts, slide the shim between the beam and the drum assembly, put new bolts (I used some blue threadlocker for extra safety) torque like it was before. Done.

The result was amazing!! Now we are on bussiness!

I couldn't stop laughing first day I drove it haha. And of course look for the slightest excuse to drive it.

Like go to work on it having bus service available haha!

Edited November 9 by amgeriz

[tigcraft]

Now that’s a very interesting theory and good read. 

[mk2]

I did the exact same when I got my first Lupo (I didn't shim the rears though-interesting what you posted).

Alignment was correct but the insides of the front tyres still wore down faster than the rest. After some maths, I realised that doing lots of town driving is what caused the front insides to scrub (and wear). The car steering geometry is wrong and can't be changed. So I added about a degree of toe-in in total.

All my Lupos are the same now and tyre wear is perfect (I don't expect an SDI to handle... so it's set up for long life tyre wear). I wrote a "how-to" on this subject.

[amgeriz]

I just read your "how-to" and was exact the thing I did when I lowered the car hahah, with the JOM coilovers resulted in exact 0 degrees camber in the first aligment (I was expecting a lot more after lowering and by the looks, but was a massive toe out what I was seing) I think because the elongated holes of the shock.

Didn't know this of the Ackerman radious on Lupos, even so vw front alignment specs are from +5' to -5', interesting!

Mine wear out the inside fronts if I do much highway mileage, but nothing dramatic, it's something I accept, so the more twisty road driving I do, the better it wears haha.

Edited Sunday at 10:29 PM by amgeriz

[tigcraft]

I’m running zero tow in/out and a bit of negative camber. Tyre wear seems good with a slight bit more on the insides probably due to negative camber.

Regarding rear axle alignment, a friend of mine used to deliberately run toe in as he did racing and said it makes for better traction due to tyres running warmer. Still an interesting thought 

[amgeriz]

Toe in/out depends on many things, but essentially it make the tyres working with slip angle (friction) that causes heat, better for traction and aceleration, worse for rotation (toe in), stability (toe out) and top speed (both) The use depends on whether is fwd or rwd, and front or rear axle. Suspension Secrets explain this superbly in their web

Toe in is used in rwd cars on the rear axle to get better traction and rear stability, both street use and racing. On a fwd, in racing, toe out is used to help rorate the car, both front and rear, you can watch DannyDC2 & Darkside Developements racing collab videos, if I remember right they run 4mm total toe out on the rear of the ttrs. 

Hope it helps mate!

Edited November 10 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

Time for upgrades!

As I said the car handle way much better now, but there is something I wanted to improve.

All we love lowered cars, they look way cooler, it drops centre of gravity and give better feedback on corners... but from a geometry point of view, in a front Mc Pherson strut car like ours, ruins everything but centre of gravity. And one of those things that ruins ir roll center.

This represents a stock height Mc Pherson strut roll center.

And this represent the same but lowered. 

Let's consider that the crossed flags in the centre of the car are the center of gravity. It will drop the same amount that you lowered the car, but roll center go down way more, and this is the point from which the car pivots. Body roll will depend on the moment generated from the weight of the car × the distance from the center of gravity to the roll center. More distance equals more roll, easy.

I used the images of the Pinderwagen web where he explain how to correct it propperly.

https://pinderwagen.com/build-topics/roll-centre-correction/

If you can't correct it, you can mitigate by stiffen springs and/or anti roll bars, that's the other reason why lowered cars needs higher spring rate apart from the reduced suspension travel. This coilovers aren't stiff enough for me (here is when you realize that you get what you pay) so I ended changing the oem 18mm anti roll bar for a 22mm gti one, buyed new from factory at a very good price.

Parts needed are:
6N0411309F anti roll bar #15
6X0411313A subframe bush #16 (x2)
6N0411315D droplink #17 (x2)

It didn't eliminate roll, but reduced it. The floatiness feeling dissapeared. It made a hell of a difference on the car control, steering felt sharper and it's way more stable on 'high speed' corners, the only drawback is I felt the car less agile in slow ones (puts more load on the outside wheel), but I can live with that. 
I keeped the original 18mm one for some future regrets and it ended in the scrapeyard.
Still budget, way improved, cool!

Edited November 9 by amgeriz

[mk2]

1 hour ago, amgeriz said:

.Didn't know this of the Ackerman radious on Lupos, even so vw front alignment specs are from +5' to -5', interesting!

Oh. My. God.

At last.

Ladies and Gentlemen, after ten years on club lupo, we have a new member that understands car suspension.

Finally.

My life is complete. I have tried so many times to get people to understand this. Finally.

Deep respect @amgeriz 

(i used to work with the guys at darkside)

 

[amgeriz]

I try to, but it's something that take time to understand only reading it. For me the best way is to use a real car to make trial and error and feel what the theory say. For this thing this little machine is perfect, I ended touching more things than  expected...

Edited November 9 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

I enjoyed driving the car until I cooked the tyres. As I said, not enough front camber, lot of hard cornering, so much heat cycles on a road tyre... Ended in outer edge delamination. Was fun anyway.

Started to think a lot on a bucket seat, because stock seats have none lateral suport. In Spain you can't have one (or two haha) legally if don't buy a tüv approved one, with tüv approved mount and rails for your chassis, plus homologation, plus taxes, and that is a lot of money. I had it illegally in my first car, but now I don't have room for store the stock seat until MOT time, and don't want problems with the police, or in the worse scenario with the insurance in case of an accident.

Then I remembered something called CG Lock...

This tensioner made your stock seatbelt work like a harness on the lower 2 points and gave free movement on the third one for daily driving. But it's discontinued.

So I searched for an alternative on the internet until I saw this picture in a Toyota GR forum.

https://www.gr-zoo.com/threads/alternatives-to-cg-lock-lap-belt-tensioner.1784/

5 minutes later I buyed one of this clips on Aliexpress. The result was the best 2€ I spent this year. I use it A LOT.

It was time for some fresh rubber...

 

Edited November 10 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

I mounted this new Nankang NS-2R tyres on the winter, because why not? Haha. It's the best test for using them daily.

Honestly, for me they are good with cold weather and on the wet if the road surface is good, and when it's bad the car slides smothly, without any car strange movement, you release the gas or brake pedal and the grip come back the same way. They gains temperature easily too, in fact you can see how the water evaporates on the fronts when you stop it.

Unfortunately I tested emergency breaking performance with a greasy road. Another car crossed both lanes just at the exit of a roundabout and I hit it... He said he didn't saw me.

Only needed to bodge the headlight to protect from the water until I got the insurance veredict in my favor, then I replaced it.

Height differences plus bodged headlight.

I booked an alignment, and the new alignment guy insisted in mantain this camber to have a try with the new tyres, "it will be better, trust me". Okay then...
Went to my favorite twisty road, tested it, didn't like it, returned home and booked another aligment. Another shop, another double bill, but this time happy, happy for the handling, happy for the grip, and for finally have it like I wanted, not for the service... Starting to hate alignment shops.

Then I could see what I ended with on the rear. I wanted to try slight toe out, but for the first try was better to be conservative. That's why I dialed it very close to zero on the positive side, but turned to be a little bit the oposite haha, so no need to modify it again, good. The only bad thing is that I lost some camber on the left rear, but I don't feel any difference on handling.

I loved the tyres, they transformed the car, not only for the grip, but also for the stiff sidewalls that makes it direct and predictible. It had zero understeer, speeds started to be decent, less braking, more momentum, more fun and more confidence on the car behaviour, both dry and wet.

Edited November 11 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

A desicion was made for 2024

I wanted to go to the Nurburgring for too long, and there was always an excuse to postpone it, so this year, on the touristenfahrten opening season day, I paid my first lap and ordered the greenhell card. There is no turning back.

To do this I needed to do a lot of work to make the car reliable enough for the +4000km trip. Among other things:

Fresh engine and gearbox oil
New control arms bushes
New steering and suspension balljoints
Complete brake refresh
New thermostat and waterpump
And a ignition system refresh

I do all the maintenance in a self service garage, it's 100 kilometers from where I live and only opens from monday to friday, so I needed to go there after work with limited time. It's going to be challenging...

Edited November 11 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

Honestly I don't like to do maintenance to the car. You spent money, time, effort, sometimes loose your patience and the reward it's nothing but new parts. But sometimes there are surprises...

I ended buying complete control arms with balljoints, and always thinked the shape of those was to only be possible to mount in the correct arm. But having them on hand I noticed that the bolt pattern is symetrical.

If you look mounted like it suposed to, you will notice that the balljoint is offset to the back. So if I flip positions the offset will be to the front of the car, giving some real needed caster to the suspension geometry, for free. Sounds too good to be real. But there's only one way to know it.

I went to the garage, mounted everything, compress the strut with a transmission jack while on the lift, rotate the wheel to see clearances, it may work...

I went to an alignment shop near the garage and ended with this

Definetly it gained caster! It loosed some camber too, but it can be adjusted later. Yes, again. 

First impressions were that the weight of the steering was increased (so pleased with that), the steering numb center it had going straight dissapeared, the car rotates even better, and is more stable too... it feels like a bigger car! (well, it is actually, with the added wheelbase hah) And all this only driving home!

Edited November 14 by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

I try to be self sufficient in all the things I like. It was time to align the car myself and don't argue with anyone again about that.

So I buyed this basic string alignment kit from Caliper Garage.

It consist in 4 hooks to hold into the car, 6 tubing pads and 8 connection blocks. So I needed to buy separately all the tubing, alignment string, plum bobs and a steel ruler to make it work.

It took some time to choose, collect and setup everything, but I wasn't on a hurry either. This is what I used:

8 meters of 16mm raw aluminium tube
A plumber tube cutter
Some 0,40mm fishing line
Two 60g fishing plummets 
Some 1,5mm stainless sheet
And a half milimeter graduation steel ruler.

After I used for the first time, realized that I could make it better from scratch, so I ended buying another meter of tube (9 meters in total) and 16 aluminium tube clamps to make two rigid units once setup.The only thing I would improve is to change the tubing finish to an anonized one to be easier to slide and harder to scratch.

The end product. The best way to start is to cut all the short tubes to half meter and leave long ones 2 meters long. They can be shortened later even mounted.

To be accurate and setup easily its better to have the line equally spaced on both tubes, so I grooved them with the same tube cutter.

And I used the stainless to make one of the clamps work differently, by opening it like this you can slide freely the big tubes to center the string box.

Edited Saturday at 03:22 PM by amgeriz

[amgeriz]

For the camber/caster I just bought the best budget digital gauge I could find. And added to that a big magnet to cover any hub diameter, and after trying it, I used a stainless washer between both to reduce the magnet power.

I bought them hollow because the transmission stick out a little of the hub.

Edited November 14 by amgeriz

[mk2]

I'm interested to know what angles you measure for fully pushed in to right out (the slots on the ball joints). If it's different each side, the subframe is out of position. It's interesting to see how accurately they fitted it in the factory...

I used a mobile phone to measure mine!

[amgeriz]

As far as I know, the control arm bush have an oversized hole that can be pushed in or out to correct deviation from the subframe. I pushed out mine with a lever and tightened in position when I changed the control arms, ending on this numbers with the balljoints on the 'wrong' position. Pushed out the balljoints too.

If the caster on one wheel is out, you need to correct on this oversized hole. If it's the camber what is wrong you need to correct on the strut bolts. Or you can loose the subframe during alignment and move it with a lever until it's straight.

I hope that's what you asked.

Edited November 15 by amgeriz

[mk2]

On mine when I changed the control arm bushes, I noticed a U shaped guide in the subframe to slot the centre of the bush in place. I couldn't adjust it. The only place I could find to adjust the camber is at the ball joint (the 3 bolts) and the two big bolts on the shock. The two holes in the shock/strut are about 2mm bigger which allows a LOT of adjustment. 

I will be changing the sub frames on all my Lupos soon, so I'm trying to get as much information as possible (in the U.K., with lots of salt on the roads, they rust really badly).

[amgeriz]

Yes, it have these U guides, but it allows a little movement if you force it. On the other two, make the same thing but differently, shock bolts move the top of the wheel inward, and the balljoint slots on the control arm move the bottom of the wheel outwards (I ended modifying last one, will show it). If you will changing the subframes, try to measure some reference points before take out old ones. 

 

Edited November 15 by amgeriz