MSS Sports Kit install and review

This has been a long time coming for me since I first contacted William many months before I even had my RS! Then last year when I received the kit was just bad timing with work, track days and 4k mile road trips :) So to say I was excited to finally get the MSS kit installed is an understatement :)

First a huge thanks to some folks on the mk1 forum, gokart3 and RussS, for assisting with this and the other projects last weekend. Always fun to be able to throw the car up on stands for a couple days and wrench through a couple of projects.

Also, many thanks to William for putting this kit together! It's not very often that an enthusiast will go through this kind of development effort, all the way through engaging with an industry leader for manufacturing, and bring a kit to market. And the parts really are top notch; the collars and perches for the rear springs are beautifully machined.

Getting the car in the air and properly supported is a bit tricky. I needed to have the weight off of the front control arms entirely since those were removed for another project. This meant lifting the front end up and placing the stands under the control arm brackets to start. And then one side at a time using two jacks to swap the stand from the control arm bracket to the factory lift points. The rear is much easier to deal with. I placed the stands under the rear subframe mount all the way back by the exhaust. Having high quality, flat topped stands is a bonus but this would be soooo much easier with a lift.

Install was very straightforward. I've been through numerous coilover installs on mk1 TTs and this was very similar. I chose to not pull the hub off of the axle and instead use a strut spreader tool to open the collar on the hub and slide the strut out. Here you can see the spreader in place, the 14mm triple square bolt removed, and a liberal helping of PB Blaster to help the strut release.


There's a tab on the strut body that is used to orient the strut in the hub assembly. This will get hung up on the strut spreader so once you move the strut up a bit you'll need to reposition the spreader below the tab to continue.


Here's the collar opened all the way. When reinstalling the strut you'll have to take the same approach with the spreader and move it to allow the tab to pass by. Make sure the strut is fully seated all the way down into the collar before bolting everything back up!


With the upper strut bolts loosened a bit and with the swaybar disconnected you should be able to angle the control arm down far enough and slide the strut up and out. This is definitely a two person affair. And DON'T FORGET TO DISCONNECT THE ELECTRIC HARNESS from the bottom of the strut. Almost had an epic oops ;)

The three upper strut bolts are so much easier to deal with than the stacked assembly on the mk1.



The strut is then disassembled using spring compressors and reassembled on a bench out of the car. I finally found some 21mm ratcheting pass-thru sockets to make it easier to remove the top locking nut. I still dislike that arrangement but seems pretty common for a Macpherson strut.




The rear springs are much easier to do. With the lower link supported by a jack you can remove the lower bolt that connects to the hub assembly. If you very slowly raise the jack you'll find an angle where the load is taken off of the bolt and it will come out quite easily, don't force this if you can help it.



There was not enough spring tension to unstick the arm so it needed some persuasion with a deadblow hammer. Remove the stock spring and spring seat and get the MSS spring assembled correctly and put back in place. Note that you only reuse the bottom OEM seat.



Ride heights will vary from car-to-car (and depend on the driver's weight ;) but I ended up having the driver side perch set at 3/8" and the passenger perch at 1/2". This gave me 1/8" rake with me in the car and 3/4 tank of gas. We found that the passenger side height adjustment affected the other three corners more than the driver side.

Once it was on the ground and has had some miles on it I did a final rake adjustment and got it aligned. The car only lowered about 1/8" all around although I guess that may settle a bit more over time. What was really impressive is that my baseline alignment numbers when I brought the car in were almost exactly where they were after the car was aligned 18months ago. That is to say, with removing the dampers and replacing the springs it all basically went back together exactly where it was previously. There's just much less slack in the assembly of the mk2 than in the mk1.

Driving Impressions:

As I mentioned in the Superpro bushing review I've missed the go-cart like handling that my mk1 TT had. That immediate turn-in that the pre-recall arms and H&R coilovers provided. The stiff springs in that kit really helped counter weight transfer and aim the car into the corners. The mk1 also had much less bodyroll through corners than the mk2 and overall just felt more agile. The RS has more outright grip no doubt but at slower speeds could feel lazy and dare I say it boring.

The MSS kit does exactly what I wanted. The car feels agile and darty and at slower speeds is much more engaging to drive. The nose turns in right-freaking-now and stays hooked up through the corner. Even in normal mode there's very little body roll, I'd say comparable to what there was in sport previously. I've had a few instances where I was in normal mode and thought I was in sport because of how well the car was responding :) The RS for me has always done this nice trick of rotating through corners under throttle. Not full on tail-out oversteer or anything, just a sense of pouring thru the turn. Get the car turned in and start to roll on the throttle from apex out and it feels like the yaw center moves backwards thru the car as weight and power transfer to the rear. I absolutely love nailing a corner and getting that sensation and it's much easier and more pronounced with the MSS setup.

It's been interesting that the effect on the feel of the chassis extends beyond just cornering. The much reduced dive and squat (as in zero in sport) make acceleration feel that much more immediate. You can even sense this on downshifts as you lift off the throttle to rev-match and get less front-end dive. The whole car feels more direct and taut just in typical daily driving. As I said, it just feels more engaging all of the time.

Ride is firmer than stock but not any more harsh. I don't sense any additional tramlining, no new creaks or rattles. It's just as comfortable as before in normal mode. Sport is pretty stiff but it does have less of an edge than the stock springs. That high frequency jittering is toned way down. With that filtered out you get a much better sense of what the road surface is like. I know some people have said that the MSS springs make sport more usable day-to-day and that's probably true but I also think that it's just as likely that MSS has improved the normal mode so much that sport will be less necessary except for occasions when you want absolute body control and immediate chassis response.

So yes, after all this time I am very very pleased with the results. The MSS kit fits well with my overall mod program for the RS. I wanted to be careful about keeping the overall character of the car intact but just turn the dial up a bit. Just make it a bit sharper and more connected. The springs have done exactly that and with no downside that I can tell.

Superpro control arm bushings with caster adjustment

Warning:
 After 5 track days one of the rear caster bushings has failed pretty badly. I can not recommend that these be installed on any car that will see track time. They were great when new but these are not worth the effort.

One of the things I've missed from my mk1 was the immediate turn-in response and a more go-cart like feeling. The RS makes tremendous mechanical grip but at anything below ludicrous speeds it can feel a bit lazy, even in sport mode.
My mk1 was modded to improve turn-in with a set of original pre-recall front control arms with poly bushings and the H&R coilovers with a fairly stiff rear spring setup certainly helped as well. I never replaced the swaybars. I attribute the slightly lazy feel of the RS to the slower steering rack, longer wheelbase and softer spring setup.
I've tried to address part of these issues with the Superpro kit (SPF3273K and SPF3346K) and of course MSS helps as well. It's a bit difficult to separate out the improvements in handling between the Superpro bushings and MSS since I installed both at the same time but there are certainly some things that are clearly from the bushings so I'll try to keep my comments here to just those traits.

So what are these things anyway? The front control arms in the mk2 have a small bushing up front and a larger in the back that is mounted in an aluminum bracket. The larger rear bushing is oriented the same as the front which is an improvement over the mk1 since the arm is pivoting freely and the bushing doesn't bind up.



These are both fairly dense rubber but the rear bushing especially is a larger diameter so there is some room for improvement in hardness to improve steering response. Additionally the Superpro kit has the rear bushing setup offset so that it can be positioned in different orientations. For my install I chose to orient it to maximize caster. There are a couple of benefits of this; you get improved straight line stability, increased steering weight off center, and additional camber as the wheel is turned. This last bit is cool because in theory you can run less static camber but still get more camber through a corner.



The install did not turn out to be trivial at all. I've posted some info here so that folks that undertake this or have a shop do the work will know where some of the gotchas are ahead of time. It's not a typical DIY install tho.

The arms themselves are relatively easy to remove. Four bolts each side attach the arm to the subframe and then the three nuts that connect the arm to the balljoint. Several of the subframe bolts were seriously overtorqued on my car so needed a BFW to remove. There's also a bit of an issue with getting the forward bolt out of the passenger arm. This one backs out straight into the oil pan. There are two options to deal with this; drop the subframe or raise the engine. With the two dogbone bolts removed I figured I'd see if I could move the engine up just enough to slide the bolt out and it worked. This is NOT the factory approved way to do it but it worked for me.




Once the arms are out you need to have someone press the old bushings out and press the new bushings in. We went to two machine shops and the first didn't have a press with sufficient clearance and the second had a really nice press but the owner did not want to risk working with an aluminum arm because they had issues in the past (believe he said they cracked one). Luckily my suspension expert, Russ Scott who has a mk1 TT and his own press, was with me and the shop owner was willing to let us attempt the work on the press! This was really fortunate because we would have been SOL otherwise. I believe that if you get new arms at the dealer they come with the bushings pre-installed so no guarantee that a dealer would even do this work. There is an option to buy complete new arms direct from Superpro with the bushings already fitted which is what must VW guys do since they have stamped steel arms. This is quite a bit more expensive than just buying the bushings but you might be able to offset that cost since the mk6/mk6 VW guys consider mk2 TT arms an upgrade.

Anyway, Russ was able to work his magic and after a few hours of fiddling with the press and assorted tools we got the bushings pressed in and were back on track. Here you can see the bushings installed. This first one is the passenger side and you'll note the offset compared to the centered stock orientation. The second pic is of the front bushing. Please excuse all of the Energy Suspension lube :)





Reinstall all of the bolts with new OEM and torque to factory specs. Due to the offset of the bushings these will crank in a lot of toe out so you'll want to get it realigned.

Driving Impressions

Post alignment the car has gained an additional 0.5^ of caster. I don't really sense any increased NVH with these installed. There might be a bit more rumble on rough surfaces but it's minor. The additional straight line stability can be felt as soon as you get over 30mph. Below that speed the steering is so overboosted that there's not much difference. Above 30 the car feels locked on straight ahead. Start to turn the wheel and the front end responds quicker (note, some of that is also due to MSS kit install) and there's additional weight felt through the wheel too. It's not so heavy that you can't still steer with your wrists, it just feels like the car is pushing back a bit which I like. There's also a noticeably faster return to center as you unwind lock. Rapid transitions are darty and the steering feels much more alive. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Coupled with the MSS kit the RS now feels as nimble as the mk1 did. I'm very excited to get it back on track in April!

034 rear brake kit installed

Updated: Please read first!

This was a pretty easy install and 034's directions are good so I didn't do a complete writeup. It's a really nice kit too. The bracket is way nicer than similar kits I've used in the past. It's a large hardened steel piece and they use high quality ARP bolts with it.

We did have to chase the threads on the one bracket in order to thread the bolts in, I think the zinc coating was probably a bit thick. Also, I could not use the middle hangers for the e-brake line, there just wasn't enough slack. I was able to get it back into the trailing arm bracket though so I don't think there is any risk of it rubbing. I may try to lengthen the e-brake cable at some point if I've got the center console apart for some reason.

The bolt that holds the upper toe link to the hub assembly needs to be flipped around so that the bolt head is forward for clearance with the bracket. This bolt is under a lot of tension and I was not able to find a happy place with the suspension under any sort of load so be careful not to damage the threads while backing it out and putting it back in. I used a fair amount of PB Blaster to help it slide through. You can see it at the top here, I think it was 21mm. All of the caliper bracket bolts get torqued to the stock specs which I believe is 66 ft lb.



The rotors themselves are really nice and while not quite the same as the fronts in terms of hat and drill pattern they are much better than the stock rotors and the extra inch looks better behind the wheels.
As a bonus, the new rotors are lighter than stock. The C5 RS6 part is 13.6 lb and the stock rotor (worn all the way down) was 16 lbs. Figure the bracket ways a few ounces too so a total saving of 2 lbs, not too bad!







And a comparison of the new rears with the stock fronts.

Podi boost gauge install

I finally got around to installing the boost gauge that my wife got for me back in 2011... yes, before I even had the car :) Dealing with electrical and interior stuff always scares me off so I wasn't too eager to do the install.

The Podi gauge is an electronic stepper gauge with a separate sender unit. The one I have uses a white face with a red needle and is a very good color match for the cluster. It can be cycled between either a white or red face with either a red or orange needle. It also has playback and warning features. Pretty nice!

I used the 034 boost tap on the post-throttle body MAP/temp sensor as seen here from a picture by Marty.


And then I ran the vacuum line around to the back of the airbox and mounted the sender to the airbox itself.


This area gets pretty toasty so I wrapped the filter and sender with some reflective heat wrap. I swear I've added like 5lbs of this stuff to the car now :)


I ran the wire from the sender thru the firewall at the series of grommets next to the brake booster. This pic is of the firewall, brake booster just on the left. The top cable was already present, the boost sender is on the left.


And this pops out just over the brake pedal. To orient you that's the brake pedal lever on the right and the purple bit in the upper left is the OBD port.


This tool is freaking awesome for getting wires thru the grommet without getting snagged or caught up on anything. It's a Thexton wire insertion tool, available on Amazon.


So that covers getting the mechanical bits setup and the sender wire into the car. I chose to install the gauge in the center vent. Using a nylon trim tool you can pry the gauge out from the dash. It's got some serrated edge things on it to keep it in place but just get it out a bit and you'll be able to get your fingers behind it and pull it the rest of the way out. You'll also want to get the vent to the left out as well to get some additional space with pulling wires through.

I used a 10gauge wire inserted thru the vent and was able to poke it down thru a gap between the dash and center console. Once that was fished thru we were able to pull the wire all the way across to the fusebox on the back side of the lower dash without needing to drop the lower dash.

My fabricator was able to pull some plastic conduit thru which did make things a bit tougher, if you're just pulling wire it'll be much easier. Here you can see the conduit running down under some large sensor/controller and then across the lower dash under the steering wheel.




For the Podi gauge the sender has three wires, switched power, ground and data. The gauge itself has 4 wires that are used; switched power, constant power, ground and data. We chose to run the sender wire up to the back of the gauge where those connections were made and then run wires back to the fuse box, that way all of the splices were at the back of the gauge.
Here's a pic I found from another writeup that shows this splicing required. Again, this shows the ground from the gauge joined with the sender, switched power from the gauge with the sender, the yellow wire is constant power from the fuse box and then the orange and white are the data connection.


At the fuse box end I used the add-a-circuit adapters for both connections. This is from before we started and shows where my radar detector is wired into a blank location that provides switched power. The blanks next to the 20amp fuse on the same row provide constant power.


To mount the gauge into the vent pod I used an Osir O-pod adapter. This is a really nice part and snaps directly into the vent trim ring for a secure fit. The Podi gauge did sit a bit tall in the adapter so my fabricator took about 1/8" off of the rim of the adapter so that the gauge sits flush.

Getting the vent pod apart takes a bit and is easier to do with a second set of hands. I didn't get any pictures of this but there's a writeup on Fourtitude with some good pics.

That's about all there is to it. Once the wiring is all done hook up the sender and gauge and make sure it all works before buttoning it all up.