Mini-Post: New side skirt.

Due to my own stupidity, I duffed the side skirt on the passenger side of my car. While I wait for my car to get back from the wrap shop, here are some pictures of the sideskirt, freshly painted in sapphire black metallic.

Driveability and Performance Report: December 2018

While my process of working on the S60 has been slowed down by a lack of good weather and funding, I have had time to really feel out the car in its current state and get used to the performance. On the track the car is still proper, obviously understeer is a problem given the weight and AWD system. At a track like VIR, you have a good amount of speed to really get your brakes hot during a more aggressive run. The stock braking system, while great for daily use, is not suited to stop such a heavy car with the speeds the S60 can reach. Other than these two issues, the car had no other issues out on the track. The transmission was on point the entire time, never getting stuck in a gear or holding back the torque. The suspension, for what I paid, has been doing amazing as well. The progressive lowering springs, in combination with the thicker sway bar, has seriously planted this car in corners, even with is meager 235 wide tires. With coil-overs, this car would definitely handle like it was on rails through many corners that other (mid level, performance) AWD sedans would struggle with. The turbo held up great as well, and the cool weather meant I wasn’t suffering from major power loss from heat soak. An upgraded intercooler is high on my list as well for upgrades to the car.

I have a few other ideas for upgrades such as the Viva Performance upgraded TCV, and obviously a set of Polestar winter wheels. I found some knock-off Polestar summer wheels on AliExpress, they are still a decent chunk of change but they might be a good buy just to test the quality and sell them.

I just wanted this post to be a quick update, just to show that I am still around and updating the site. Hopefully once I am working full time I can spend more time on my car and on writing here. Happy holidays everyone!

S60R - Wrap Repair + Driving the Eastern Shore

While the winter is in full swing, it is obviously hard to get any good content out. During my drive down from NJ to NC, I noticed that I had developed a bubble under the 3M wrap on my car. I can only assume that this pocket of air was caused by water melting off my hood, entering a lifted section and then forcing its way further down into the panel.

The gap caused by "popping" the air bubble in the wrap.

To remedy this situation I wanted to take as much care as I could in with preserving the area. First I used a razor blade to "pop" the affected air pocket. Once this was done I trimmed away the damaged pieces that no longer had any adhesive left. Now, because I did not have any new vinyl on hand, I used 3M clear repair tape from Pep Boys to hold the fresh edges down so that no more damage could occour in the area.

Once I received the new wrap piece (only around $5 on Amazon) I removed the 3M tape, and cut a piece around the size that I needed (actually slightly larger to account for shrink). With the headlight off I used a heat gun to make sure that all pieces of the new patch vinyl were adhered to the body with no air underneath at all. I also made sure to cover the back under the headlight to prevent any more lift, this is in part because of the nature of putting a flat piece on a curved surface as it leaves a lifted section unless cut or significantly heated and stretched.

It has now been over a week and it seems like my fix has done a great job standing up to more snow and ice. The process took me about 10-20 minutes, and was a much better alternative than re-wrapping the front bumper! Hopefully soon I can refinish the passenger side headlight to remove the nasty scrapes that it came with when shipped from Germany (came from a D3 R Design).

Stopped at a Royal Farms somewhere on the Eastern Shore. The roads were absolutely horrible, un-plowed and covered in snowdrifts from the wind sweeping across farmland. This weather is what I think damaged my wrap.