This past week, we’ve completed a bunch of small projects on our Golf. Now that the car has a new suspension, the first thing we accomplished was getting an alignment. The combination of fat wheels, fat tires and coil-overs meant that we had to be careful about how much negative camber we were getting from the two-slotted bolt holes on the lower strut mount. If we dialed in too much here, the inside of the tire would hit the coil-over.
We used the Ground Control camber plate to get as much negative camber as we could at the top of the strut and from the slotted lower ball joint holes at the bottom. The result was 2 degrees of negative camber and no rubbing issues.
Next on our list was addressing the bushings in the shift linkage. Some were missing, and the ones that remained were aging. We replaced them with new pieces from Eurosport Accessories. We also added one of Eurosport’s short shift kits—it has a choice of 30- or 50-percent reduction in throw. The larger reduction was a little notchy for our tastes, so we chose the smaller amount.
While we were under the hood, we replaced the restrictive factory airbox and air filter with Eurosport’s Coolflo intake system. It has a built-in heatshield to keep warm engine compartment air from entering the intake stream.
We have a sneaking suspicion that our catalytic converter’s internal matrix is plugged and loose in its housing, as we have been getting weird surges in power levels that are accompanied by a rattling sound from the cat. After that’s fixed, we’ll strap the car to a dyno to see how we’re doing and how we can improve from here.
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