Wartburg 2.0 - Its back.

Greetings: this is Mike, and I'm the current caretaker of the Trifecta of Crap racer.....yes.....Jim's Wartburg. With Jims encouragement, I'm going to try to keep you all up to date on the car and its upgrade (or downgrade) to street car status.

I bought the car to use as a learning tool with my "auto shop" kids at my HS. I'm nesting in the project with the curriculum to keep the kids "car crafting". I pay the freight (all the bills), but hey, don't we all!

Car Status as of 9/24/13.

The car is located in a top secret "off campus" facility in central NJ. The body has been stripped back down to a shell and removed from the chassis. All the wiring is now gone, dash out, stickers removed, body on a dolly. Most of the cage is out, but we're going to keep a roll bar.

The chassis has the fuel system and wiring removed. We are examining the structure to see if the punishment she got, broke anything. So far, the only casually was a broken body mount (1 of 6) and some minor wear. No broken welds even! albiet with the stock 2.2 Subaru engine with ~130 hp.

The Plan:

Reset, upgrade the front suspension. Add swaybars front and rear. Install the 2.0 Turbo engine. Reweld / gusset chassis for more HP. Full repaint inside and out. Repopulate the dash with full gauges. Full rewire, Install a full interior.. Reposition pedal assy to be more driver friendly.

I can handle the work with the kids, but will need some info to keep me straight. If you don't mind....I'll ask for assistance as I share the progress to a full up Wartburg 2.0.

1st Question: Porsche 944 front suspension. Stock; imagine a straight line through the front and rear LCA mounts; would the line on the right and left sides of the car be parallel? If not.....what will this do to steering geometry?

2nd Question: I noticed that when the car is loaded and unloaded up front, the RF tire turns twice as much as the left (bump steer) any comments or opinions on where to go with this one?

Thanks! Mike

You mean Wartburg 2.2T! I have no info/knowledge to contribute...but good luck!

Plenty of German car knowledge 'round these parts...someone will be along with advice soon. All I can contribute is a thanks for keeping us updated, and I look forward to updates!

We love photos

Can you describe the load/unload test for question #2. Maybe I'm being a little slow here, but I'm wondering if part of the movement could be due to ackerman angle instead of bump steer.

BTW, I'm glad to see that the car appears to be in good hands. It's definitely a piece of GRM history

I too have lots of blood, sweat, and tears in that car. It's great to see someone giving it some love, and I'll help with any knowledge I can from the build, though I have no good answers to the questions you just asked as I wasn't part if the steering system design, but I would agree that lots of attention be focused on re-thinking the steering in general, it was the least satisfying part of the car.

Having the Wartburg live on makes me very happy.

Deconstruction begins.

My Subura guru stopped by today. He gave me the thumbs up for the 2.0T swap. Gotta open up the engine and do some repairs first. The valve / piston tango needs to be addressed!

Seeing alot of issues in the front end today. Rack position needs a rework, LCA rear mounts need repositioning, inner "tie rod" hiem joints are loose at the mounting threads, upper shock mounts needs refab. quite a bit . :(

Looking for: CHEEP 84 or so 944 front end to scavenge the front lower cross member, steering rack, tie rod and sway bay parts. I'll do some cutting and fitting...but I need to make this solid if its going to be healthy enough for confident drives at 130mph.

Any help is appreciated! Mike central nj

Leaving aside the steering until another day, what about the upper shock mounts and LCA mounts need to be re-worked? The upper shock mounts were super beefy and gave good camber/castor settings. The LCA mounts...well, that's just where they landed when we noticed that the 944 LCA front mount fit perfectly into the stock Wartburg mount.

Sonic wrote: Leaving aside the steering until another day, what about the upper shock mounts and LCA mounts need to be re-worked? The upper shock mounts were super beefy and gave good camber/castor settings. The LCA mounts...well, that's just where they landed when we noticed that the 944 LCA front mount fit perfectly into the stock Wartburg mount.

A few issues from what I see. The LCA should be nearly parallel to the ground, yielding 7" off ground clearance. The shocks were cranked up and the LCA pitched down greatly. Easy fix, spin the spring adjusters. Next, we set the spindle/cam adj. bolts to a neutral position, and still have ` 8 deg. camber. Cranking them to the limit, we still have more than 4 deg. camber. I want to be able to get them to nearly 0 camber. Only possible fix is to move the upper shock mounts out, maybe 1-2 inches each side. I keeping the stock front wartburg mount, I'm going to have to move the rear mount "in" ~ 1/2" per side to get the lines of pivot parallel to eachother. Necessary? I'm not sure, but might as well.

The trough will be lightened too.

Steering: Im thinking of lowering the rack to be at the same height as the LCA OR making a drop tab off the exising rack attach point. more thought needed.

I'm thinking if I find a steel 924 eng. crossmember, I can narrow it and weld it up into the front fame rail section. that should locate the front LCA mounts. may not be worth the work though.

One note, many more to come, here and in our private discussions. Dont ditch the 911 steering rack just yet. Even if you go with the narrowed 944 cross member (good idea, probably would have done it if we had one at the time) the 944 steering rack will be entirely too wide. It took a lot of playing with parts to find anything that was narrow enough for this car.

Ditch the trough, cut away the supporting member below it and build a proper upper tube frame with strut mounts. What's there was build out of budget necessity and parts availability, it works but is far from optimal. This will also clear space for better access to the battery mount and/or relocating the mount. And it will allow you more room to work with the steering column, another very non-optimal portion of the car based on space constraints rather than good design.

Honestly, were I still building it (and I love watching you build it instead) I'd subframe the front end with something like a fatman IFS if I could find one narrow enough.

You'll hurt my feelings not one iota by pointing out flaws here, there are plenty of them :) Glad to hear my ham fisted welding held up though. I've always said it ain't pretty but its solid.

sethmeister4 wrote: You mean Wartburg 2.2T!

Nope, its a 2.0T that he's swapping in. It has a 2.2 NA in it at the moment.

JoeyM wrote: Can you describe the load/unload test for question #2. Maybe I'm being a little slow here, but I'm wondering if part of the movement could be due to ackerman angle instead of bump steer. BTW, I'm glad to see that the car appears to be in good hands. It's definitely a piece of GRM history

I think you are on to something. I spent a lot of time and trickery to dial out bump steer but the space limitations kept the ackerman angle from being optimal.

Hi Jim, we're having some fun here. We're trying to think before the cutting weapons come out. I think the 911 rack is perfect for the front width. No plans on changing it. Putting drop tabs to lower the inner TREs would help.

I found out about the battery position, when we went to take it out. It had to come out the RF wheel well! But the weight was low, that's good!

944 cross members are alum., 924 is steel (from what I've seen). I'm wondering if the 924 one (easier for us to narrow steel) will work with 944 arms.

Jim: the piece that holds up the trough....what is that??? stock wartburg? modified shape?

Limiting LCA stops will help as well as steering stops will be added

The piece holding up the trough is stock Wartburg, the original suspension had a inverted transverse leaf spring (like a corvette, yo), which mounted to that elevated perch. We attached the trough to it as it was there, in about the right place, and strong.

Thought I had a better shot of it somewhere, but you can see the transverse leaf there, hanging off the back of the support structure and the shocks actually bolt to the ends of it.

In reply to JThw8:

Thats CRAZY strange. but effective I guess.....

Today: removed the 2.2 engine from the chassis. Put the 2.0T on the engine stand for disassembly. Once open, I can get an idea on $$ to get it back to health. Subguru told me to get ready for a fight with the cam pulley bolts. He said that they will be TIGHT!

Probably going to sell off the 2.2 to offset the costs. Jim: shoot me a reg. email with your cell.#.....I misplaced it

Mail sent. I'll be out of town most of the weekend on our first rally but leave a message and I'll try and get back.

Might be interested in getting that 2.2 back with wiring and ecu to drop in the wife's VW ;)

First big hurdle - steering. From memory here (numbers may be off slightly)

Donor parts are 1984 944:. so stock 944 numbers put Camber at -1, Caster +3, Toe in .1/8", WB 94.5, F track ~ 58.

Wartburg current set up with frame inclined ~ 3 deg towards the front, WB 105", F. Track 50, Caster: +7, Toe in: ??? moving all over the place!), Camber - 7 deg.,

So....the Ackerman point is ~ 18" in front of the rear axle point, that would cause some oversteer.

Not sure what to do......shortening the wheelbase is not what I want to do, so is there a way to get ackerman back to "good" enough status????

Lots of crosstalk between adjustments, not even talking SAI and slip angles yet!

What do you think? Just trying to get it to handle well. I'm all ears.

The 944 was just an evolution of the 924. The control arms are interchangeable to some extent. The early 944 used the same reversed MK1 VW Rabbit steel control arms. After 84 the 944 moved to the crack-prone (when lowered too far) aluminum control arms. The later 944 arms (after 86 or 87) are slightly longer.

They also changed the rear caster blocks on the 944 S2/968 to provide a more positive mounting location for the rear control arm mounts.

The cross members between the 924/944 mount different, but the geometry stays the same.

The steering racks are different as the 924 used a manual RHD Rabbit rack, where the 944 used a Porsche produced rack and the mounting are different.

I agree that Ackerman is a real number, and would be nice to be close.....but it "is what it is" on this build. I figure if a F150 short bed has the same front end parts as a double cab long bed - - it has the same ackerman point with 2 very different wheelbases. They survive....

My big concern is lining up the Porsche components as best as possible. the 50" track makes things tough, as its 6" shorter than stock 944.

I looked under a 944 today in a nearby store lot. The LCAs are actually tilted slightly up, at the ball joint end. I'm going to shoot for level. I'm going to add stops to limit the downward travel.

I'm waiting on turboswede: to see if the R and L front bushings are the same distance apart as the R and L rear bushings. If so...I'm going make mine the same.

With the LCAs level, I measure nearly 10 deg. Caster. I'm going to move the trough to bring it down to 3 deg.

I also notice the rack is not level....I think it shifted under its previous life flogging. I'll have to re-anchor it.

swing69 wrote: I also notice the rack is not level....I think it shifted under its previous life flogging. I'll have to re-anchor it.

When you're getting flogged, shift happens.