car almost stock.
Improved roadholding (lowered car 20mm and added stabilizers).
Engine rebuild @ 410.000 km.
No fuel economy instrumentation except for the stock "econ" marking on the rev counter and the factory-installed boost gauge.
Build Thread:
Current Mods:
Car had been in US-spec, so lowered suspension und added stabilizers were an absolute necessity to make it driveable on european roads. In US-trim, corners were an absolute horror.
Suspensionwise, it now equals a 900 turbo for the european market, which actually has a very good roadholding. :-)
Replaced stock ceramic catalytic converter with a metal 200-cell, thereby gaining Euro-2 emissions classification (and reduced backpressure).
Engine rebuild became necessary, as the car started to burn oil. One piston ring was shot, as we found out later, due to an fault in the electronic engine management (full-throttle-enrichment did not work, and leaning out a turbo under full load actually is not the smartest thing to do...)
Dynotesting after the rebuild showed 190hp compared to 160 hp the factory claims. Still running stock boost... :-)
These mods had not been done with fuel economy in mind, but performance. They help, though...
Planned Mods:
1. mount Heuschmid front spoiler.
2. get a factory rear spoiler.
Reasons:
1. My factory front spoiler has been damaged on the left side in last year's winter snow, and I am noticing getting a terrible amount of air underneath at speeds above 160km/h.
Even with 30hp more, the car will not get faster than before. So the damaged front spoiler really seems to hurt.
I expect the Heuschmid spoiler to work even better than the factory spoiler.
2. My previous 8V got the same top speed as the 16V. That's 145hp vs 160hp, and the same speed in otherwise identical cars.
Only difference beeing the factory rear spoiler, which the 8V had and the 16V has not.
So this little thing really seems to make a difference.
