I love racing but hate winning so I bought a VW Fox

Honsch said:....

I did see a difference in spacing, I bought 4 pieces of stock to cut the steel final versions from, I am going to feel out fitment with one steel one and the prototype and adjust from there. Thank you for the list of axles. It looks like there are a few ones that are a bit shorter that I could make a different adapter for and make work.

Im also using a Valeo single mass flywheel and clutch. 

The 16v was chosen mostly because it ran, and one of the team members pretty much said, bring the fox to my shop and we will pull it out of his jetta and throw it in the fox. He also has a mkii rally car with an 8v and the same cam so with tearing down the original to me fox motor, he has netted some good to go spares for that car which with any luck will see New England Forest Rally next year. So in a way we both made out. 

If we don't like the 16v or blow it up swapping in another 8v is trivial, everything should swap over. 

For an ecu one teammate had a microsquirt we re-purposed. My first time messing with one however we wired all but the tps which we didn't have a pigtail for yet and the distributor / coil as im still trying to figure that out in two evenings. For fueling we obviously ditched to the cis setup and are using a rail and regulator setup from Bahn Brenner. If all goes well I think I should be able to try to start it this weekend.

Running out of time but we registered for Thompson's Lemons event anyway.

ECU is wired, took 1.5 afternoons to get everything but a crank signal. Took two days to discover we had the wrong pigtail plugged into the distributor and it was the reason for no crank signal. We have fuel, we have spark at a very wrong time but that's just settings so we are tabling that until the car is back at my house or everything else is done.

When cranking we did get some huff's and backfires so its close. Car spent yesterday at a friends shop getting the radiator mounted, exhaust attached etc. Plan is to wrap up the under-car welding or anything that requires a lift and ideally it will come back to my house tonight.

I have to build / modify something to convert the cable clutch to hydralic. Hind sight I should have done this without the engine in the car but we have some idea's which _should_ work without pulling the engine yet again.

Good progress!

We used a Wilwood 3/4" GS Compact Integral Master Cylinder.  I machined up a spacer and bolted it right up to the firewall.  It works well with the stock slave cylinder.  I turned an AN to VW quick disconnect adapter and used a small AN line for the run.

If the crank pickup is the same 60-1 for the ABA, #1TDC is 72 degrees after the first tooth after the gap.  If you're using the same VR sensor as an ABA, it has a very high output and you may need loading resistors to keep the sync happy.

Honsch said:

Good progress!

We used a Wilwood 3/4" GS Compact Integral Master Cylinder.  I machined up a spacer and bolted it right up to the firewall.  It works well with the stock slave cylinder.  I turned an AN to VW quick disconnect adapter and used a small AN line for the run.

If the crank pickup is the same 60-1 for the ABA, #1TDC is 72 degrees after the first tooth after the gap.  If you're using the same VR sensor as an ABA, it has a very high output and you may need loading resistors to keep the sync happy.

 

 

No crank sensor on the North American 16v motors. And a 4 window rotor for the hall sensor in the distributor. 
 

1SlowVW said:

No crank sensor on the North American 16v motors. And a 4 window rotor for the hall sensor in the distributor. 

 

Is that going to be a good enough sync?

In reply to Honsch :

From what I've read no. But I haven't tried it personally. I bought a Ford wheel and sensor to try and go 36-1 and was going to try and mount that to a crank or cam end  on my Microsquirt 16v project but that's this winters project. 

36-1 should work nicely, four window on the distributor?  Not so much.

In reply to Honsch :

I wish I had seen this before I built my contraption last night. I have a re-purposed hydralic hand brake setup with a new lever and a catch for the factory clutch cable. So its both cable and hydralic. I didnt see a great place to mount a push style master cyl and didnt have time to source a pull t ype. Its all mounted I just have to plumb everything. I also am doing from vw quick connect to -3an to standard brake lines for a flex line then plumbed to the master

In reply to 1SlowVW :

We got it working, in short we should work on things in the dark, had the plug wires all wrong on the distributor. It started (ish) on what we think was 2cyl so im guessing I have a setting somewhere to run both inj1 and inj2 batch fired or I again did something incorrectly in the dark. Either way it ran more last night than it has sense I got it, and with 8 days till it needs to be in a trailer on its way to a track id say thats a step in the right direction. 

the hall sensor with a 4 window dizzy setup isn't ideal, but it should be enough to fuel the motor and use the dizzy setup to handle spark. I have all winter to make it better. I have read many threads online of people converting street cars this way and had no trouble. I know this is a bit different however hopefully its good enough to keep the spinny bits inside for 15hr. 

In slightly more positive news the tires showed up yesterday and are off getting mounted today

I'm glad it's running, but don't run it too much if cylinders aren't firing.
The fuel wash can take out the rings. 

I've ran a ton of daily miles on the 4 window with Megasquirt on a 1.8 8V, works great with nary a problem even across half the country, very workable. Even used the factory Bosch AFM for TPS signal on that engine until swapping to a 5.0 Mustang TB with a cusstom adapter. 

Well we made Thompson, and even turned 150ish laps.. Few board members came and said hello and I even got to hang out with the cars original owner which was pretty cool. Sadly we never got the car running great and spent a fair amount of time laying in or under the Fox.

Im a bit late on this update so I don't remember the details so quick overview is

-Wednesday we loaded up the car that didn't run, nobody had driven, it didnt even roll down a hill. 

-Thursday we arrived at 9ish, Unloaded everything and talked out what we had to do on Friday. While it was probably 20hr of work, with 6 people we had a chance

- Friday we were up working before 7.

Car had to be aligned as it had around 2" total toe in. Camber was also set to not -10deg. Clutch cable setup was adjusted as we quickly over-traveled the first cable and broke it and had to toss in the second.  Rob got the car to idle and even rev but transient enrichment was wayyy off and while we never determined the exact cause, timing wasn't right and would move around way more than it ever should.  We got the radio harness installed and sorted the radio stuff. Took a while to bleed the cooling system as it has a couple high spots that trapped air but we worked it out and the car held 190deg idling (later in motion it worked great) I brought a viynal cutter but not the viynal so we had the steadyest hands do all our car numbers. 

I think I was talking to Tom the original owner and I looked over and Rob was sitting in the car 25min before our tech time and I could see the look on his face, car was 'done'  and someone had to drive it. Being he had an easy 100hr into the car its a no brainer, he drive it around.  It did 3 or 4 laps around the paddock and we realized we could make our 2:30 tech time. Through all our gear into the trunk and the first time I drove the car was to tech. 

Car passed tech other than they didn't like the cartek kill switch, not the end of the world but also something that had to be delt with. Couple guys headed out to buy a new switch, extra cable and connectors with the plan on just adding a second switch so Lemons was happy and to limit the re-wire. We had some buttoning up on the car to do but at 4:30 we were done and Rob, who has never tracked anything and only just start autoX'ing this spring was very easily convinced to get into the car and go see the track.  He did 4 or 5 laps before they called everyone in, car was clearly slow but I didn't care, it went by 4 or 5 times more than I expected.

Around 630 guys who ran out showed up with possibly the crappiest looking Kill switch known to man. One of the guys ran up to Tech to see if they would even let it fly which they reluctantly agreed for just this event and told us we needed something better for NHMS. I took my sweet ass time eating and adding whats needed to get the switch in and around 9 it was installed. Kill switch on, turn on everything and it was all on, kill switch off, everything was on. I figured I crossed up the batt and alt wires as its getting crowded behind the switch and moved everything around, no still everything stays on. Third try I wired EVERYTHING to one side of the switch, and power on the other, still everything stayed on. Took the switch apart and it was in fact broken, not realistically fixable and stuck on. 

At this point its 10 or 1030 and we see all the parts stores are just closing or closed. We find stores local but they don't open until 730 which could work but really make Sat morning suck. At that point I load up my pocket's with motivational beverages, grab a flash light and start walking. We were setup in the back corner of the back paddock basically by the small bleachers. I got as far as where the 3 pedal mafia was garaged after asking 40+ teams if they had spares and these guys had one and let a spare go for a cool $20. I get back to our car just before midnight and we tear into it.

A generator that sounds like an old detroit desel, angle grinders, and mig welding 4" from a pristine windshield probably didn't make us any friends around 1230 but we got the new brackets welded in and I got to wiring. By 130am it was in,  cabin side wring was re-done for the 3rd time sense thursday and the switch worked and was even wired correctly.  By 2 i was picked up and turned in. 

Sat.

Car passed tech in the morning, Nick conveyed his condolences, gave us C class, zero laps and told me to never expect that again. 

We had Rob start and all agreed on 1hr stints as we had no idea fuel time and wanted everyone to get some seat time. I think we got till noon when we realized we still hadn't put gas in the car. A min or two later car called in, it was breaking up. Our 12gal tank took 11.7gal.  Once everyone else got though the car I went out for my first stint. Car was slow, very slow. I have raced a number of times at Thompson with the SCCA and this felt like laps behind the pace car. Turns out my times were a good 14sec slower than last guy in the car and I was managing around 2min lap times from what was 1:46's.

After me Rob went back in and immediately called in, car was slow (yeah i know!) and by the time Josh got back in the car it was becoming difficult to drive. We missed taking checker by 4min but Josh figured it was bad enough he wanted to come in and not risk breaking it for the weekend.

So car was hot enough that once in the pits, the exhaust had sagged and was sitting the the passenger CV boot attempting to set it on fire and Plugs went from cyl1 looking ok to cyl 4 being completely white to the base of the ground strap. Car idled ok but any attempt to drive it and it had no power. 

Mechanically the timing was ok at the disturber and the timing belt checked out but even after zeroing the offsets in the computer, the timing would wander and attempt's to fix it would make the car not run which we never figured out. We settled with a couple degree's off sucks but wouldn't kill us and left it. Fuel wise we found out one fitting was bottomed out and we figured we had all the fuel pressure which was why all our fuel #'s were skewed. By the end of the night the car drove around the paddock great, reved etc. Rob though it was better then than it had been all weekend. 

Sunday I don't recall who started but as I recall the car was ok at first, i think we even bettered our lap times (low 1:40's?) Still wayyy off what the car should manage on paper if it ran ok and you could go north of 4000rpm but ill take any improvement. 

I think I was getting ready to get in and the car came in early, no power, ran like crap etc etc. At this point we knew the ignition side worked ok enough so we focused on fuel. We swapped the external filter, checked lines. Went out, did a lap still no power so we decided to swap the in-tank pump as the external looked new. Unfortunately the cover for the pump wanted nothing to do with coming out. A good 20min of hammering and we realized we either had to drop the tank and swap in the spare or call the weekend. 

Took all of 30min to get the tank with its 11.9ish gal of fuel out of the car, another member Matt swapped a new pump onto the hanger of spare tank that came with the car however the fuel fill hose and its 30+ years on this earth didn't want to play. I think Josh, Rob, and I spent 2hr trying to get it connected. Once on we buttoned up the car, wideband said it had 10000000x more fuel and was running very rich. Rob did some massive adjustments and the car went out.

Once it was moving I was shown the old pump. The rubber hose going from the outlet to the hanger was all rotted and you could basically see though it. So the lift pump was just pumping onto its self and the high pressure pump was sucking, and pushing both air, fuel and rubber which explains why it sounded so bad and felt like it was 150deg.

Car didn't run long, it was never right. I think we called it around 430 and started packing. Everyone got to drive and everyone actually tentatively agree'd to run NHMS. 

A week or so after Thompson Rob and I tore back into the car .We got the timing correct, fuel settings looked not un-worldly and we got it to run again. However we realized the external pump was very hot, and sounded terrible. We went about swapping the pumps however I broke the external filter block so we just bypassed it to try it out. Car immediately ran better and had wayy more fuel. I think we had to take out 20% in the idle area'as and for the first time you could snap the throttle open and it would rev. 

We drove it around my neighborhood and it all went well, pulled into my driveway and the clutch cable broke again and ended the day. 

Since then I have taken apart the entire engine side harness and found a few questionable things and cleaned them up. Nothing that really points to why the ignition timing wanders. Spending a day just working on timing I found that I could zero everything, power cycle the car and zero moves. Im assuming its just limitations with the 4 window hall sensor in the distributor and I probably have less than ideal wiring so I am working on converting to a wastespark setup and fitting some sort of trigger. This will get rid of the 16v dizzy to patch wired ignitor to 8v coil mess which I never liked anyways. 

Good job getting through tech and keeping it on track for a while.

Now all you have to do is the other 90% of the work!

Started converting the trigger setup. Going the not_unheard_of route of using a Miata / Evo cam angle sensor and making it work in the OEM 16v dizzy setup.

First step was to get one connected to the other with enough room to adapt one drive to another. Next was some sort of drive adapter to allow the dissimilar cog setups to work together. Right now the drive adapter is aluminum however it looks like it all works so Ill make another out of steel.

Whole assembly is slightly smaller than a 16v dizzy and could be made smaller. I guessed on some bearing sizes which where larger than necessary once I had the car apart and forced the overall height increase. I could probably make it 1/2 shorter just using smaller bearings and shafts inside.

Set the microsquirt to dsm cas and used vr1/2 + signal wires and we got a clean signal right away. I have a waste spark coil with igniters waiting to go in, just need the connector and we should be up and running and then can move onto cleaning up interior wiring.

During some of the machining Josh came by and patched the exhaust header. Was originally modified using only pipe we could find, some undersized Autozone pipe which actually ballooned after use. 

That's a more convoluted way of getting a good signal.
Did you do an ABA swap?  The stock crank is a 60-2 pattern and works well.

Looks like you need to do som work on your headers:

Lots of work for little gain--the perfect race car.

I have done so so much with Foxes over the years, from wild NA cars to wild turbo cars--homemade 8VT setups, even helped with a 1.8T project for a friend.  If you need any advice or resources, let me know.  

Seriously cool stuff; thanks for documenting the project! 

In reply to Honsch :

I didn't want to do a front hub trigger setup, i dig enough rubber off car the underside of all my other track / autox things and a hub trigger wasn't something i wanted to add to the list. Yeah this is initially more work than some other offerings, but if the trigger dies i can just buy another Miata unit and be good to go

In reply to GasTungstenArc :

Well i Like making parts so its a win win. Ill keep your experience in mind, this is my first fox ever so im learning on the fly

In reply to Tom Suddard :

Thanks Tom, hopfully ill have some racing content at some point not just wrenching.

In reply to poorchoices :

You're already solving probably the Fox's biggest problem from a motorsport standpoint--the transmission.  The 013 5-speed will do just fine in a street car, even a modified one, with a very long life.  But they won't hold up well to continuous track abuse.  Plus the only LSD options come from Brazil, where BX platform racing is very popular and turbo alcohol cars (they can buy ethanol and methanol at gas stations) roam the streets.  With that 01A transmission, you have more options and a 228mm clutch instead of the 210mm.  Even a "stage 1+" type of clutch would be leaps and bounds better than a rigid four puck on a 210mm footprint.  

The chassis itself is the most rigid WV chassis from that era.  The only obstacle to handling as good as any other rear swing axle VW is the placement of the engine, but I never actually felt that the weight distribution was a problem.  

In reply to GasTungstenArc :
With a good cage the car is nice and stiff.  Our previous racer had a poorly installed cage and felt like an overcooked noodle.

The switch is to an 012 transmission, the 01A is the transverse one.
We put a Quaife LSD in which required machining the diff cover to fit the larger bearing.  We run a stock OEM clutch for a B5 Passat and have had no problems.
With a good alignment it out-cornerers pretty much everything we race against. It has no business doing it but we can sustain slightly over 1.1G level cornereing forces on 200TW tires.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a much better race car than is should be.

Yeah, handling was never the Fox's problem when we owned it. Or, well, the transmission/engine problems were so bad they drastically overshadowed any handling deficiencies.

In reply to Honsch :

We can both be part right and part wrong on this one.  You are correct that it is the 012, but the 012 is the FWD version of the 01A, which is a longitudinal Quattro transmission.  The 01A is the weaker brother of the 01E.