VIR with TSCC: December 2023
A VERY busy final event of the year, with many MQBs in attendance
Tidewater Sports Car Club has become a magnet for MQB owners getting on track - probably because of me, Alex and Adam pestering everyone to come out.
This will be a long post because there’s a lot to cover…
This was probably one of my favorite events of the year. I didn’t drive faster, or really even test a whole lot (but a little bit!)… but I was surrounded by a bunch of old friends and a ton of new ones coming out for their first track day, which is awesome. Weather was absolutely perfect on Saturday, with steady rain and some fog moving in on Sunday. As you can see above, we had a bunch of MQB cars out there, all MK7s plus one MK8. They were all scattered throughout the run groups with 2-3 in each.
I ran the 255/245 reverse stagger V730s on my 17x9 Apex wheels on Saturday, and then the 215/45R17 Conti ECS on my 17x7.5 black painted free whatever stock MK6 or MK5 wheels (Detroits or Denvers?). They are fantastic in the rain - see the videos towards the bottom.
It was a VERY busy weekend for me since I was helping with tech inspections (we had 170 cars to get through tech between Friday night and Saturday morning), I was renting my car out to a friend of a friend, and also was instructing. Plus wanting to spend a bit of time BSing with all the people I invited out. We had several of the Tidewater Sports Car Club autocrossers coming out for their first time on track.
My student was Matthew in his red MK7 GTI. I had a great time working with him throughout the day Saturday and he made a ton of progress in that time. Sunday was rainy and he did great in the wet as well. He’s one of the regular TSCC autocrossers previously mentioned and was great to get him out there. He was on DS2500s up front with EBC yellows out back in his non-PP equipped car.
Below: A bunch of first timers getting on track. In order: Matthew in his red MK7 GTI (and me in the passenger seat), Justin in his MK7.5 GTI, Bernard in his Celica, Michael in his wicked friggin awesome 13B turbo rotary draw-thru carbureted Karmann Ghia, Wil in his R32 GTS-T, Cameron in his mom’s Miata (because his GR86 threw a rod), and Kyle in his WRX. Lots of buddies came out for their first track day which is always awesome to see. If you guys see this, sorry in advance about conning you into financial ruin.
Testing stuff: More PCV things.
One of the things I was testing was the ventilated MK8 PCV valve as previously outlined in a prior PCV tech talk blog post. I was running with the Venturi hooked up (not as a basic retrofit), but this was primarily to test if the holes alone had any negative effects, since I’ve had essentially zero or near-zero oil consumption even on track ever since the full retrofit. I wanted to see if this modification might be viable for further testing on another car that had problems with the “basic” retrofit still.
I previously talked about this experiment HERE. The result ended up being no notable issues on the lower boost tune (24psi tapered to 18), but on the higher boost (26psi tapered to 19 at redline), it consumed approx 1/4 quart of oil each session. Not completely terrible in the grand scheme of things, but I haven’t experienced this with the non-modified valve with the Venturi functional (at least not yet). MIGHT be worth testing further on another vehicle, but realistically just retrofitting the Venturi is probably the way to go.
Testing stuff: Brake adaptation info
So while I did not play with adaptations at all this time out, it was another full weekend with zero problems braking. I was never able to induce any of the weird problems like previously encountered (pedal getting super touchy about 3-4 laps in), and Tomas never experienced any issues either. Disabling “brake prefill” and “brake system overboost” seem to have done the trick. I’ll be testing this further and attempt to play with “hydraulic brake booster” some on track next February. I’m skeptical that it’ll do anything, but will be looked into. You can read about my current opinions/thoughts on the various adaptations here.
Testing stuff: Alex’s oil cooler duct effectiveness
Prior track testing at Palmer Motorsports Park proved it works, but you can read more about about our final same-track testing results here. In a nut shell we found about NINE miles per hour on the back straight since his IATs are no longer skyrocketing due to the oil cooler throwing hot air at it.
Testing stuff (kinda, on accident): Hood vent heat extraction
This was purely a happy accident, but The Danny Ray got this shot from the side view on video where you can see the temperature difference causing a distinct change in the refraction of light between the cool outside air and hot air being extracted. I was fighting issues with the Simos Tools logger losing connection frequently, and also the tablet mount broke early on Saturday so it got stuffed in my glovebox and was not able to know if/when connection was lost.
You can see the video that the below photo was taken from here:
Photos from the event
Below are some excellent photos @TheDannyRay got with www.apexprophoto.com.
Videos from the event
Nothing real crazy here, but here are some clips from the event. Fastest laps from me and Tomas. Some rain driving from myself on Sunday. Not pushing the car hard due to everything that was going on, but had a great time and was a fantastic end to the season.
My quickest lap driving at 7/10ths… which really wasn’t all that fast as I was showing a novice around the course at the end of the day. Screwed up going into T17 as well and then over-slowed but oh well.
Plans for next year
There won’t be any major plans for the car aside from adding more camber, a slight lowering (probably on APR springs, hoping they play nice with the Koni Special Active shocks I already have), and a ton of maintenance.
Also buying tires and wheels. Can never have enough of those.
Can’t wait to head back in February!
You can sign up for the TSCC Oak Tree Bowl IV on February 17-18 here:
