new / help

[earl thebay]

hi im stew and i now own a mk1 scirocco at last 5 years of hunting is over..

1 how can i make the brakes better as the girlfriend will need to drive it somtimes ( chevrolet lecetie servo & master..disks & pads..hoses ) any help would be great

2 lowering cut springs..coilovers..any more ...

3 who is your insurance with thanks stew

[Nate]

hi im stew and i now own a mk1 scirocco at last 5 years of hunting is over..

howdy!

1 how can i make the brakes better as the girlfriend will need to drive it somtimes ( chevrolet lecetie servo & master..disks & pads..hoses ) any help would be great

starting with cheapest first: adjust crazy brake linake to remove all free play. renew brake fluid! goodridge braided hoses. service rear brakes and replace anything dodgy, ensuring that the brakes are correctly adjusted to remove as much shoe travel as you can. upgrade to decent quality disks (brembo "standard" - i.e. not face vented or drilled -are good) and pads, worth upgrading to vented discs if your's are solid.

2 lowering cut springs..coilovers..any more ...

lowering springs with short throw gas shocks if money is tight. consider coilovers if it isn't (personally i'd stick to lowering springs, personal choice)
never cut springs. they don't seat properly onto the strut, it's a very dangerous practice

3 who is your insurance with

all my old stuff is on lancaster classic policy with agreed value. none of them cost over £200 :)

thanks stew

HTH. now get some pics up!!

[earl thebay]

thanks that was just what i needed thumps up

[Storm]

http://www.vwgolfmk1.org.uk/modules.php ... ic&t=79884

[Storm]

http://www.vwgolfmk1.org.uk/modules.php ... age&pid=40

[Nate]

had the jamex kit on my old rocc. nice and firm but not to crashy over the rough tarmac

[RoccoGuy]

never cut springs. they don't seat properly onto the strut, it's a very dangerous practice

as long as a have the slightest shred of common sense cutting springs is no more dangerous than fitting lowering springs. if you are doing it on standard shocks it will shaft them quicker, just like fitting lowering springs on them would.


i've driven plenty of cars with chopped springs and they have never coursed the car to spontaneously jump off the road or any other of the over the top things that people who have no experience of them say will happen

[Nate]

my main experience of them is pulling the upside down mangled remains of cars that have them fitted out of hedges, down from trees and out from underneath lorries. the problem with them is that when you cut them down, they no longer seat correctly in the "cups" making it easy for them to move over bumps. in the case of something like an astra, a cut spring (or as you say a short spring with standard length shock) will not just unseat, but actually fall out, as it isn't a coil over shock arrangement.

anyone that condones them shouldn't be driving.

[RoccoGuy]

and these car's you pull from ditches ect crashed because they had chopped springs on them? how could you possibly know that they crashed because they had those springs on? for them to end up in a ditch were they speeding? being driven erratically? or did a car full of nun's suddenly jump 5 foot in the air, flip over and land in the ditch all because it had cut springs?

as i said as long as you have the slightest bit of common sense it is not dangerous. if you cut a spring down so it's just 2 coil's (like this)

is just stupid, but it's not dangerous because it's been cut, it's dangerous because of how it's been cut. just like every other DIY work we do on cars. changing break pads isn't dangerous, but if you do it in the wrong way then it is right? ppc magazine even covered cutting spring's and deemed it safe and capable of stiffening the ride.


plus if cutting springs is good enough for chip foose, then it's good enough for me

[Nate]

cutting a coil spring shorter is an mot fail. any "deliberate modification" designed to alter the spring is a fail. if the spring fails to locate in the seats correctly due to being cut (that's pretty much guaranteed, seeing as they are normally shaped so the top and bottom of the spring is flat, you remove this flat end by shortening it) then that's another reason for a fail. why they feel the need to fail the same thing twice, i don't know.

then there's the approval for the spring. the stock springs are covered by the vehicles type approval. if you modify them (by cutting them down) then they are no longer covered by the type approval and would then need to be 'e' marked to be legal. but if you'd not going to pay out for the proper parts to lower your car, i'm certain you won't bother having your modified part tested to make sure it is up to the job. so that would mean you'd fall foul of the construction and use regs.

and you are of course right, i haven't ever picked up an accident where shorted springs have been proved as far as possible to be the sole cause of the accident; but then i've never picked up and accident where there is only 1 thing responsible. if the cars had been going slower it wouldn't have happened, if the road had been slightly drier, if the driver had been better trained or more experienced, etc.

but i have seen accidents where the cut spring has been one of the major contributory factors. usually, the spring would have moved to such a place where it can interfere with the wheel in some way - be it stabbed thru the sidewall of the tyre or wedged thru a hole in the wheel and lock it solid - so as to make the car loose control. what happens after this point will also depend on the other factors - speed, driver talent, other vehicles or street furnature around etc. but it usually ends with the car coming together with something else whilst pointing the wrong way

[RoccoGuy]

if a spring can fall out and lock a wheel up it's not the fact that it's been cut that's the problem, it's the way it's been cut (too short in this case).

I had a mk2 golf that had a proper shock and spring lowering kit, the springs were -80mm iirc. They used to drop out of the cups when it was jacked up, it even passed an mot like it.

When i got my first scirocco that had cut springs, they weren't over the top and still sat tight in the cups so much so that i had to use spring claps to get them off the shocks.

So which in your opinion would be dangerous?

[Nate]

which in your opinion would be dangerous?

that's easy - both.

[GTXTRA]

Original Question now answered.

re the spring cutting debate - it's a cheap way to lower a car that clearly divides opinions. i know which i prefer - Weitec or AP coilies all round currently and at next opportunity re the BRM and the Mk1.