KneesUp
A2OC Donor
Having just put the finishing touches to my 1.4TDi 75 I thought I would share my findings with the Club. I consider what follows to summarize among the best mod’s to be made to that model. They were made having carefully assessed all the posts on this site (up to about 8 months ago), and having had a number of PM conversations with those ‘in the know’, not least Schnelltrecker, who was helpful early on in my suspension dilemmas. It has taken a lot of research time and money to finish my car, and by writing what follows I hope Members can avoid having to do the same.
Incidentally, having been in the motor sport business for much of my life, and having been a professional road tester for a leading car magazine for several years, I hope my opinions are at least worthy of consideration. I had lunch with an ex-Autocar Editor only last week. He remembered the A2 well, “Wonderful car ruined by **** suspension and the factory putting wheels on it that were far too big and heavy”. I couldn’t agree more.
On previous posts on this site I have described two fundamental cornerstone issues: First, that the A2 was designed as an inter-urban car, which just so happened to do very long journeys rather well too. Any attempt to turn it into a Golf GTi or similar, will only ruin other exceptional characteristics of the car. Broadly speaking the factory got it right, but by spending money, it IS possible to alter the car’s dynamics favourably, to some extent, if not economically. In other words, if you want a Golf GTi, go buy one. Don’t try and turn the A2 into something that it was never designed to be. Secondly, whatever works on one A2 may not work on another. Springs and shock absorbers, to name but two variables, are not identical by manufacturing batch. Also, supposedly identical spec engines vary a lot, so one re-map won’t necessarily work on another supposedly identical car. In that regard, your own R&D will be required. What follows is simply my journey with a 30,000 mile 1.4Tdi (2003) 75.
I might add at this point that I recently talked to an ex-Lotus suspension engineer who admitted that there is only one way to get suspension right for any given car: experiment. That’s what the factory designers and R&D specialists do. Once the fundamental mechanism and design is worked out, it’s about changing springs and geometries and tyres and shock absorbers until the best characteristics are found. As amateurs, we are unlikely to be in a position to do too much of that. It just gets very expensive. But I think I have found a pretty good compromise. That said, for all I know Bilstein and ABT might be much better than Weitec and Koni… My chosen path.
THE BASIC CAR
Bought two years ago for £8500, 30,000 miles. Open Sky, Leather/alcantara and electric lumbar seats, DIS, Climate Control, Bose, Multi-functional steering wheel, metallic pearl/black. To that I immediately retro-fitted a cruise control, which was worth every penny. A vital tool that I cannot recommend enough if you want to drive effortlessly for any distance. Also the Audi cruise control system is one of the better ones.
SUSPENSION
I fitted Koni FSDs, with Weitec -30s on the front, new bumps stops and strut bearings. I put on Sport rear bump stops and purchased some ‘luxury spec springs’ (8Z051115BC – 2 orange dots, 3 white dots) from Audi. I then had these compressed by 40mm by a company called Spring Coil in Sheffield (http://www.springcoil.co.uk). This gave me a rear ride height of -20mm over (ie under) standard. That made the car precisely level with Weitec -30s on the front, bearing in mind that FSDs on diesels lift the front by 10-15mm. I did not pre-compress any springs or cut any bump stops.
The resulting ride height is pleasing to me. It’s not impractically low or too ‘boy-racer’, while suiting the 17” 205/40 tyres well (more on this in a minute). Ground clearance is fine. The down side is that I ran out of camber adjustment on the lower ball joints so I have a lot of positive camber now. That causes expensive tyre wear - one pair of fronts per 9000 miles - but also gives precise steering. I could avoid the tyre wear by modifying the lower ball joints but I’m not yet convinced that the expense of that is worth it. If the car was lowered any further, it would be essential to do that modification, and cut pump stops etc etc. Anything lower might not help the ride anyway. I’m very happy with the compromise I have found (see pics).
Initially, I disliked the Konis a lot. They do not provide a controlled ride on the rebound (an opinion shared by many, not least the boys at Stealth), at least with my chosen spring set up (and I can’t see why they would with standard springs either). However, as stated elsewhere on this site they improved significantly over time. After 2000 miles I decided to keep them, and change the wheels and tyres.
April 2011 edit: After 10,000miles the Konis have settled down a lot. They aren't perfect, but they don't bother me any more at all. And they haven't for a long time. The 'bouncing' sensation, particularly noticeable on the motorway when I'd expect all to be smooth, has long gone.
WHEELS and TYRES
My car was running 16 inch 6 spoke Audi alloys. Of all the wheels Audi put on A2s from standard, these would be my normal choice. They are remarkably light (a heck of a lot lighter than the Audi 17” multi-spokes, let alone the aftermarket copies) and look quite nice too. However, I wanted to go to 17” for handling and aesthetic reasons. But bigger wheels weigh a lot more. There is no way round this problem except by spending a lot of money on high quality wheels. I bought 17” OZ Supertouring GTs, which are a bit heavier than the 6-spoke 16s but much lighter than the dreadful if attractive things Audi put on the Sport models. Ultraleggeras would have been lighter than the 16s, but they are a lot more expensive and, in my opinion, too few spokes look rubbish on an A2 – not least exposing the rear drums if you have a 75. So, I went for Supertouring GTs. Importantly, they are also 7J. Not wider. I also didn’t want to go wider on tyres than 205 or deeper on profile than 40s. To increase on these sizes would definitely lose steering feedback and handling precision (others will disagree, but I'm adamant about this). The wheels came new with good quality Fulda tyres. Noisy but good.
The fitting of the wheel and tyres made a dramatic difference to the car. Suddenly the shock absorbers and springs and wheels and tyres all started to work well together – the car ‘came together’ as a piece. This was an important lesson. In my view it simply doesn’t work to upgrade bits of holistic specifications. If you’re going to mess with the way your car handles and rides go the whole hog, or leave well alone. Otherwise you can end up endlessly fiddling trying to iron out problems. In my view springs, shock absorbers, tyres and wheels all need to work together in an optimal way, possibly with different ARBs. You won’t achieve that by doing such modifications piece meal. Do it all at the same time.
REAR ARB
The rear springs I chose had one more extra coil over SE spirngs, which helped the comfort in the vertical plane, but made the car pitch from side to side. Adding a Whiteline ARB from Awesome GTi solved the pitching problem, and ironed out the understeer. This is a great modification. I initially set it on the ‘medium’ of its three settings, but this made the back of the car a bit too stiff, so loading up the front suspension on bumps causing the Konis to rebound even more than before. Setting the rear on ‘soft’ gives the best compromise with my particular set up.
April 2011 edit: I have since put the setting back to 'medium' now the Koni's are well 'run-in' and have changed their tendencies to rebound too much.
I also fitted the later-spec front ARB, but principally because my front bushes were shot in any case.
MORE ON SPRINGS
Incidentally, if standard SE rear springs are fitted, compressed by 10-15mm, I think the rear ride would be better than using the springs I bought and compressed by 40 always assuming no rear ARB is used. My set-up only works with the rear ARB in the mix. If there’s no rear ARB, use SE springs. There are so many different Sports springs that I wouldn’t know what to say about those. SE springs are softer. And Sport springs are only -10mm. They need to be a bit lower in my view, so if you’re going to pre-compress springs anyway, I’d do it to SEs by 20mm rather than Sports by 10mm. But that’s just my opinion. In any event, measure your own car and do your own maths.
Had money been no object I would have liked to have tried ABT front springs in place of the Weitecs, but ABT wouldn’t supply fronts only, and they couldn’t be clear about ride height issues. (I didn’t want -30/35 ABTs on the rear: too much). ABT’s opinions regarding ride-height issues (and I corresponded with Germany HQ about this) and those of Schnelltrecker, among others, vary, and it would have been an expensive experiment to get wrong. Schnelletrecker also shared that some German owners had reservations about their A2 ABT springs (annoyingly I can’t remember exactly what he shared now). Also, ABT springs are non-linear ‘progressive’ in design, and while I was interested to see if they might help with the choppiness of the FSD ride, at the front, I wasn’t prepared to spend the time and money to swop them over only to swop them back again if they didn’t work. ABT have also put their prices up a lot in the last year.
So… my car no longer crashes its suspension, it handles very neutrally, has a lot more grip and, after 10,000 miles, no longer ‘bounces’ with its FSDs and only feels upset on bad road surfaces (April 2011 edit: and it doesn't do that any more). It can get choppy and rather uncomfortable if carrying passengers (April 2011 edit: not so much now), but never intolerably so and it’s better than before, and can be driven with real verve. At last it has handling that can be safely explored. Of course, it would interesting to have a 90bhp re-mapped to nearly 150 bhp (see below), but my car torque steers a bit with 101bhp (remapped), so the extra power a re-mapped 90 would produce might make torque-steer more of a problem with all associated tyre wear issues. More torque demands more grip - bigger tyres and maybe wheels. And if you put on oversized wheels and tyres to create more grip you WILL dramatically comprise the handling. It happens every time. No matter what the make of car. Keep the wheel and tyre weight down and the width relatively narrow. It makes a massive difference and allows the A2 to do what it does best. So, in that regard, a re-mapped 75 may be more handy than a re-mapped 90. That said, given the choice, I’d have gone for a 90… with its better brakes, too. But in two years I couldn’t find the right spec one. The point I'm trying to make is, that a re-mapped 75 has its benefits, because a re-mapped 90 might need more unsprung weight to put the power down nicely, and that's a backward step. A moot point, perhaps.
BRAKES
The brakes on my standard car were lacking and would have got worse with the slightly heavier wheels and tyres. I changed to Mintex and it made all the difference. It may be that the items I had on my car were non-OE and therefore substandard. I don’t know, but the Mintex items are great.
ENGINE RE-MAP
I sent the car to Vince at Stealth for a re-map, increasing my 75 to 101bhp with a load of extra torque. My initial impressions were mixed. Gone was the fine throttle response and the characterful narrow acceleration band. In its place was a more grunty powerful dynamic (sounded nice too) but with horrible throttle response. The engine also ‘pinked’ a lot (although I know diesels don’t ‘pink’ but that’s what it sounded like – it actually runs a bit lean around 2800rpm). In fairness, Vince offered to take the car back and play with the re-map, but his shop is a long was from me. Instead, what I’ve ended up doing is changing my driving style! I’ve now become used to the way the throttle responds (woolly for the first inch and a half of pedal travel, then lots happens at once), and also the ‘pinking’ type noise has diminished, too. Maybe the car's ECU has a certain amount of ‘intelligence’ and has altered its ECU settings accordingly within certain tolerances. Or maybe it’s just me?! I don’t know, but on balance I’m glad I did the power upgrade. The performance difference is very real – it makes the car more usable and a lot less stressful on a fast cross-country run.
April 2011 edit: bizarrely, over time the 'pinking'-type issue all but vanished. It hardly ever features now, except on very hot days. It's simply not an issue any more, whereas at first it was rather worrying. I've got totally used to the throttle, too.
While at Stealth I got Vince him to do a 4-wheel alignment. He also sourced and fitted the new wheels so it was all done at the same time. A good bloke with good staff.
INSURANCE
All this added £80 to my insurance premium, along with all the other mods (ride-height etc etc). I found the best deal with Adrian Flux.
SUMMARY
Aside from fitting some nicer replacement carpets, and some HID lighting, and adding a spare wheel, that’s it. And it’s all I ever envisage doing on my A2. I could put some 10mm rear wheel spacers on to dress out the back but I actually feel the Supertouring GTs fit extremely well from standard. And to be frank I’m bored of spending money. I haven’t got a garage or tools myself and I have probably spent the thick end of £3000 to bring the car up to the spec’ I want it. Broadly speaking that breaks down to £1200 for suspension, £1200 for wheels and tyres and re-map, and the rest on all the other bits. There’s about £400 to save on labour if you did it all yourself. Only fitting the cruise control, the re-mapping and the 4-wheel alignment requires specialist skill or equipment.
In summary, I now have a car I love and that will last me for many years. It’s funky, clever, beautifully made, utterly reliable, highly equipped, fun to drive, characterful and very cheap to run. It’s also rare without being pretentious. A2s don’t upset people. They’re friendly, and that’s fundamentally important. What more could I possibly want? Of course, it owes me £11,000 plus and, now with 55,000 on the clock, it is worth barely half that… But that’s not why we do these things, is it? And if I never sell it, I’ll never feel the depreciation!
Hope this all helps.
Incidentally, having been in the motor sport business for much of my life, and having been a professional road tester for a leading car magazine for several years, I hope my opinions are at least worthy of consideration. I had lunch with an ex-Autocar Editor only last week. He remembered the A2 well, “Wonderful car ruined by **** suspension and the factory putting wheels on it that were far too big and heavy”. I couldn’t agree more.
On previous posts on this site I have described two fundamental cornerstone issues: First, that the A2 was designed as an inter-urban car, which just so happened to do very long journeys rather well too. Any attempt to turn it into a Golf GTi or similar, will only ruin other exceptional characteristics of the car. Broadly speaking the factory got it right, but by spending money, it IS possible to alter the car’s dynamics favourably, to some extent, if not economically. In other words, if you want a Golf GTi, go buy one. Don’t try and turn the A2 into something that it was never designed to be. Secondly, whatever works on one A2 may not work on another. Springs and shock absorbers, to name but two variables, are not identical by manufacturing batch. Also, supposedly identical spec engines vary a lot, so one re-map won’t necessarily work on another supposedly identical car. In that regard, your own R&D will be required. What follows is simply my journey with a 30,000 mile 1.4Tdi (2003) 75.
I might add at this point that I recently talked to an ex-Lotus suspension engineer who admitted that there is only one way to get suspension right for any given car: experiment. That’s what the factory designers and R&D specialists do. Once the fundamental mechanism and design is worked out, it’s about changing springs and geometries and tyres and shock absorbers until the best characteristics are found. As amateurs, we are unlikely to be in a position to do too much of that. It just gets very expensive. But I think I have found a pretty good compromise. That said, for all I know Bilstein and ABT might be much better than Weitec and Koni… My chosen path.
THE BASIC CAR
Bought two years ago for £8500, 30,000 miles. Open Sky, Leather/alcantara and electric lumbar seats, DIS, Climate Control, Bose, Multi-functional steering wheel, metallic pearl/black. To that I immediately retro-fitted a cruise control, which was worth every penny. A vital tool that I cannot recommend enough if you want to drive effortlessly for any distance. Also the Audi cruise control system is one of the better ones.
SUSPENSION
I fitted Koni FSDs, with Weitec -30s on the front, new bumps stops and strut bearings. I put on Sport rear bump stops and purchased some ‘luxury spec springs’ (8Z051115BC – 2 orange dots, 3 white dots) from Audi. I then had these compressed by 40mm by a company called Spring Coil in Sheffield (http://www.springcoil.co.uk). This gave me a rear ride height of -20mm over (ie under) standard. That made the car precisely level with Weitec -30s on the front, bearing in mind that FSDs on diesels lift the front by 10-15mm. I did not pre-compress any springs or cut any bump stops.
The resulting ride height is pleasing to me. It’s not impractically low or too ‘boy-racer’, while suiting the 17” 205/40 tyres well (more on this in a minute). Ground clearance is fine. The down side is that I ran out of camber adjustment on the lower ball joints so I have a lot of positive camber now. That causes expensive tyre wear - one pair of fronts per 9000 miles - but also gives precise steering. I could avoid the tyre wear by modifying the lower ball joints but I’m not yet convinced that the expense of that is worth it. If the car was lowered any further, it would be essential to do that modification, and cut pump stops etc etc. Anything lower might not help the ride anyway. I’m very happy with the compromise I have found (see pics).
Initially, I disliked the Konis a lot. They do not provide a controlled ride on the rebound (an opinion shared by many, not least the boys at Stealth), at least with my chosen spring set up (and I can’t see why they would with standard springs either). However, as stated elsewhere on this site they improved significantly over time. After 2000 miles I decided to keep them, and change the wheels and tyres.
April 2011 edit: After 10,000miles the Konis have settled down a lot. They aren't perfect, but they don't bother me any more at all. And they haven't for a long time. The 'bouncing' sensation, particularly noticeable on the motorway when I'd expect all to be smooth, has long gone.
WHEELS and TYRES
My car was running 16 inch 6 spoke Audi alloys. Of all the wheels Audi put on A2s from standard, these would be my normal choice. They are remarkably light (a heck of a lot lighter than the Audi 17” multi-spokes, let alone the aftermarket copies) and look quite nice too. However, I wanted to go to 17” for handling and aesthetic reasons. But bigger wheels weigh a lot more. There is no way round this problem except by spending a lot of money on high quality wheels. I bought 17” OZ Supertouring GTs, which are a bit heavier than the 6-spoke 16s but much lighter than the dreadful if attractive things Audi put on the Sport models. Ultraleggeras would have been lighter than the 16s, but they are a lot more expensive and, in my opinion, too few spokes look rubbish on an A2 – not least exposing the rear drums if you have a 75. So, I went for Supertouring GTs. Importantly, they are also 7J. Not wider. I also didn’t want to go wider on tyres than 205 or deeper on profile than 40s. To increase on these sizes would definitely lose steering feedback and handling precision (others will disagree, but I'm adamant about this). The wheels came new with good quality Fulda tyres. Noisy but good.
The fitting of the wheel and tyres made a dramatic difference to the car. Suddenly the shock absorbers and springs and wheels and tyres all started to work well together – the car ‘came together’ as a piece. This was an important lesson. In my view it simply doesn’t work to upgrade bits of holistic specifications. If you’re going to mess with the way your car handles and rides go the whole hog, or leave well alone. Otherwise you can end up endlessly fiddling trying to iron out problems. In my view springs, shock absorbers, tyres and wheels all need to work together in an optimal way, possibly with different ARBs. You won’t achieve that by doing such modifications piece meal. Do it all at the same time.
REAR ARB
The rear springs I chose had one more extra coil over SE spirngs, which helped the comfort in the vertical plane, but made the car pitch from side to side. Adding a Whiteline ARB from Awesome GTi solved the pitching problem, and ironed out the understeer. This is a great modification. I initially set it on the ‘medium’ of its three settings, but this made the back of the car a bit too stiff, so loading up the front suspension on bumps causing the Konis to rebound even more than before. Setting the rear on ‘soft’ gives the best compromise with my particular set up.
April 2011 edit: I have since put the setting back to 'medium' now the Koni's are well 'run-in' and have changed their tendencies to rebound too much.
I also fitted the later-spec front ARB, but principally because my front bushes were shot in any case.
MORE ON SPRINGS
Incidentally, if standard SE rear springs are fitted, compressed by 10-15mm, I think the rear ride would be better than using the springs I bought and compressed by 40 always assuming no rear ARB is used. My set-up only works with the rear ARB in the mix. If there’s no rear ARB, use SE springs. There are so many different Sports springs that I wouldn’t know what to say about those. SE springs are softer. And Sport springs are only -10mm. They need to be a bit lower in my view, so if you’re going to pre-compress springs anyway, I’d do it to SEs by 20mm rather than Sports by 10mm. But that’s just my opinion. In any event, measure your own car and do your own maths.
Had money been no object I would have liked to have tried ABT front springs in place of the Weitecs, but ABT wouldn’t supply fronts only, and they couldn’t be clear about ride height issues. (I didn’t want -30/35 ABTs on the rear: too much). ABT’s opinions regarding ride-height issues (and I corresponded with Germany HQ about this) and those of Schnelltrecker, among others, vary, and it would have been an expensive experiment to get wrong. Schnelletrecker also shared that some German owners had reservations about their A2 ABT springs (annoyingly I can’t remember exactly what he shared now). Also, ABT springs are non-linear ‘progressive’ in design, and while I was interested to see if they might help with the choppiness of the FSD ride, at the front, I wasn’t prepared to spend the time and money to swop them over only to swop them back again if they didn’t work. ABT have also put their prices up a lot in the last year.
So… my car no longer crashes its suspension, it handles very neutrally, has a lot more grip and, after 10,000 miles, no longer ‘bounces’ with its FSDs and only feels upset on bad road surfaces (April 2011 edit: and it doesn't do that any more). It can get choppy and rather uncomfortable if carrying passengers (April 2011 edit: not so much now), but never intolerably so and it’s better than before, and can be driven with real verve. At last it has handling that can be safely explored. Of course, it would interesting to have a 90bhp re-mapped to nearly 150 bhp (see below), but my car torque steers a bit with 101bhp (remapped), so the extra power a re-mapped 90 would produce might make torque-steer more of a problem with all associated tyre wear issues. More torque demands more grip - bigger tyres and maybe wheels. And if you put on oversized wheels and tyres to create more grip you WILL dramatically comprise the handling. It happens every time. No matter what the make of car. Keep the wheel and tyre weight down and the width relatively narrow. It makes a massive difference and allows the A2 to do what it does best. So, in that regard, a re-mapped 75 may be more handy than a re-mapped 90. That said, given the choice, I’d have gone for a 90… with its better brakes, too. But in two years I couldn’t find the right spec one. The point I'm trying to make is, that a re-mapped 75 has its benefits, because a re-mapped 90 might need more unsprung weight to put the power down nicely, and that's a backward step. A moot point, perhaps.
BRAKES
The brakes on my standard car were lacking and would have got worse with the slightly heavier wheels and tyres. I changed to Mintex and it made all the difference. It may be that the items I had on my car were non-OE and therefore substandard. I don’t know, but the Mintex items are great.
ENGINE RE-MAP
I sent the car to Vince at Stealth for a re-map, increasing my 75 to 101bhp with a load of extra torque. My initial impressions were mixed. Gone was the fine throttle response and the characterful narrow acceleration band. In its place was a more grunty powerful dynamic (sounded nice too) but with horrible throttle response. The engine also ‘pinked’ a lot (although I know diesels don’t ‘pink’ but that’s what it sounded like – it actually runs a bit lean around 2800rpm). In fairness, Vince offered to take the car back and play with the re-map, but his shop is a long was from me. Instead, what I’ve ended up doing is changing my driving style! I’ve now become used to the way the throttle responds (woolly for the first inch and a half of pedal travel, then lots happens at once), and also the ‘pinking’ type noise has diminished, too. Maybe the car's ECU has a certain amount of ‘intelligence’ and has altered its ECU settings accordingly within certain tolerances. Or maybe it’s just me?! I don’t know, but on balance I’m glad I did the power upgrade. The performance difference is very real – it makes the car more usable and a lot less stressful on a fast cross-country run.
April 2011 edit: bizarrely, over time the 'pinking'-type issue all but vanished. It hardly ever features now, except on very hot days. It's simply not an issue any more, whereas at first it was rather worrying. I've got totally used to the throttle, too.
While at Stealth I got Vince him to do a 4-wheel alignment. He also sourced and fitted the new wheels so it was all done at the same time. A good bloke with good staff.
INSURANCE
All this added £80 to my insurance premium, along with all the other mods (ride-height etc etc). I found the best deal with Adrian Flux.
SUMMARY
Aside from fitting some nicer replacement carpets, and some HID lighting, and adding a spare wheel, that’s it. And it’s all I ever envisage doing on my A2. I could put some 10mm rear wheel spacers on to dress out the back but I actually feel the Supertouring GTs fit extremely well from standard. And to be frank I’m bored of spending money. I haven’t got a garage or tools myself and I have probably spent the thick end of £3000 to bring the car up to the spec’ I want it. Broadly speaking that breaks down to £1200 for suspension, £1200 for wheels and tyres and re-map, and the rest on all the other bits. There’s about £400 to save on labour if you did it all yourself. Only fitting the cruise control, the re-mapping and the 4-wheel alignment requires specialist skill or equipment.
In summary, I now have a car I love and that will last me for many years. It’s funky, clever, beautifully made, utterly reliable, highly equipped, fun to drive, characterful and very cheap to run. It’s also rare without being pretentious. A2s don’t upset people. They’re friendly, and that’s fundamentally important. What more could I possibly want? Of course, it owes me £11,000 plus and, now with 55,000 on the clock, it is worth barely half that… But that’s not why we do these things, is it? And if I never sell it, I’ll never feel the depreciation!
Hope this all helps.
Last edited: