photographer: daniel W. sycks
Since the inception of organized motor sports there has been a battle between brains and bucks. While it always seems to appear that the dollar is superior, there is a group of racers from Ohio who would beg to differ.
The relatively tame-looking VW Golf TDI that you see on the pages before you is, at press time, second in the national points for the SCCA's Pro Rally series in Group 5, which is basically an unlimited two-wheel-drive class. Competing with a diesel VW against factory-backed entries from Dodge and Mazda, amongst others, the guys from the Rally VW team do it on their own, and they do it very well.
Dan Sycks serves as the team's manager and is an enthusiastic supporter of The Biodiesel-Powered VW That Could. "All of us on the team really just love this technology," Sycks said. "It is very easy to get excited about when you have a 1.9L engine that makes 370lb-ft of torque using basically all factory parts." This little diesel beast has been terrorizing the rally world for several years, earning the national championship in the Production class in 2002, but according to Sycks, acceptance was not immediate amongst the competition. "People were laughing when we showed up with this diesel car. They all said that we brought a knife to a gunfight. I think the most common reaction was this shocked response of It's a diesel?"
It's not just "a diesel," it's one hell of a little diesel! Oliver Weneger serves as the team's crew chief and heads the R&D department, and the VW happens to be his own personal car. "Pretty much everything we have done to the race car we have tried on my street car to test the reliability and durability of the modifications," Weneger said. The team's secret has really been their ability to make factory parts work in slightly different settings. For example, their injection pump is a factory stock unit off of an automatic TDI. "The pump on the automatics is an 11mm pump where the manual cars got a 10mm pump," Weneger explained. "People have had some durability issues with that 11mm pump at sustained high rpm, but we have not. I really believe it is the extra lubricity of the biodiesel that we run that keeps that pump alive. We have never had a problem with it."
Let's run down what at first seems like a pretty mundane parts list. Engine block? Stock. Crankshaft? Stock. Camshaft? Stock. Transmission? Stock. Cylinder head? You guessed it. The turbo is actually a VW part, but was available in Europe only, so the guys imported a few. So where is all this power coming from? Again, it all goes back to the brains. Or in this case, to one person. Everyone we spoke to on the Rally VW team was very quick to thank Jeff Robinson at Rocket Chips, who is responsible for programming the computer in the TDI. His ability to burn custom chips and creatively manage the fuel flow in the car has led to impressive gains in power and, more importantly, power-curve management. You can make all the power in the world, but if it is in an rpm range where you cannot get to it, it's useless. Sycks said, "I'd let Jeff do anything to my car that he felt like. The guy is just out of this world."
So what are the power numbers? According to Weneger, the car is good for 170 hp, but the astounding number is 370 lb-ft of torque. The maximum rpm for the motor is right around 3,600, but peak torque hits right in the neighborhood of 1,900 rpm. "The real secret of our success has been that our car is very reliable," Weneger said. "In order to win races, you need to finish races. Many of our competitors are making so much power that they break their cars on a pretty regular basis. We have never had a driveline failure during a race. We've lost tires and stuff like that, but we have never broken a driveline part in competition."