- What makes a car really fun to drive?
Is it the engine?
Is it the suspension?
The chassis, the transmission?
The truth is it's like all of them.
Like baking a cake, it takes
a good mix of key ingredients.
You gotta have your sugar,
gotta have your milk,
gotta have your butter, gotta
have a couple eggs in there,
gotta have your flour, gotta
have your bacon powder,
gotta have some splash of vanilla extract.
I'm frigging Cake Boss over here.
You guys ready for a
Jerry cake, get ready.
But you guys, you get the picture, right?
You need a good balance,
otherwise the cake won't rise.
And just like a cake,
you can't rely on one
aspect of the car too much,
otherwise it all gets
thrown out of balance.
And an excellent, and I mean
egg-cellent example of this
is the Volkswagen golf GTI.
But the real heroes
are an electronic limited
slip differential,
the seven speed DSG dual
clutch transmission,
and the dynamic chassis control system.
Join me as we go bumper to bumper
to properly explain why the Golf GTI
is one of the best,
most fun cars ever made.
Let's go.
(hip hop beat)
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All right, all right.
Let's get back to the episode now.
Now I introduced you Mr. Alex
and this is his front wheel drive car.
He's in a parking lot.
He's got his hands off the wheel
and he puts the pedal to the floor.
And you can see
the wheels in his front
wheel drive car shift,
they go one direction,
and that's because it's
experiencing torque steer.
So what causes all of this?
Well, it's a couple
different things going on,
but it all leads back
to the transversely mounted
engine in the front of the car.
Now see in a rear wheel drive car,
there's a drive shaft that sends the power
to the rear of the car,
and the differential transfers that power
to equal length half shafts
that go to each rear wheel.
But in a front wheel drive
car there is no drive shaft.
Instead the engine, the
transmission, and the differential
have to share the space
of that engine bay.
And that leads to half
shafts of unequal length
connected to each of the front wheels.
And this unequal link leads to
a different level of reaction
to the torque from the engine,
which leads to different
levels of grip from each wheel,
and therefore leads to
unpredictable veering,
also known as torque steer.
You guys got it.
And the part where the GTI is special
is how it puts that
power down effectively.
And that my friends is accomplished
using its VAQ limited
slip differential lock.
Also, it's important to note
that this is the first
front wheel drive car
to ever be offered with
a differential lock.
That's pretty crazy.
If you think of all the front
wheel drive cars out there,
this is the first one ever
made to have a locking diff.
Thank you, Germany.
What is a differential?
Well, that is the part of the drivetrain
that transfers the engines
power to the wheels.
And the differential
also allows the wheels
to turn at different speeds,
giving the car the ability
to make tighter turns.
Now, if you watch the "HiLow" episode
where Nolan welded his diff in Low Car,
you notice how it couldn't
do a reasonable U-turn
after they did that.
And that is because
he intentionally stopped the differential
from doing what it was originally designed
and engineered to do.
Now, before we play this clip,
pay close attention to
the wheels on Low Car.
You can hear them dragging when he turns
and that's because one wheel
can't turn at a different speed
than the other wheel.
If you're turning on the inside
that inside wheel's gotta go slower
and the outside wheel's got to go faster.
But when you weld the diff together
they're rotating at the same speed.
And if you try to do that
when you're going in a circle,
doesn't work that way.
- Oh, (laughs) yeah, there it goes!
- Now moving on what does VAQ mean?
Now that is an abbreviation
for another German word,
more specifically this one.
And this word in German is
"vorderachsquer sperre".
Nailed it.
Now to my English buddies that translates
to front axle cross bar.
Okay, great, now we know how to say it
in German and English,
but how does it work?
Well on the passenger
side of the transmission
is the VAQ module,
and that's connected to the differential
through a drive shaft
and a hydraulic pump.
And when you're driving the GTI,
the VAQ system will decide
whether or not to lock the differential
by activating the hydraulic pump,
sending fluid into the
clutch pack to lock it.
Now the differential lock isn't an only on
or a only off type of situation.
It's constantly being changed
based on the needs of the vehicle.
So the diff can be
disengaged to fully engaged
and back to disengaged again
inside of three tenths of a second.
Now where this proves to be very helpful
is shown through a feature
called yaw control,
and that's a form of torque vectoring.
Torque vectoring is the act
of the differential varying
the amount of torque
being sent to each wheel to maximize grip.
And yaw, by the way,
is the twisting motion the car experiences
on a vertical axis.
Let's say you're driving
the GTI on a track
and you're turning a corner.
Mid corner VAQ systems
will read multiple sensors,
including the traction control
module and the abs sensors,
and then it will turn on the
electronic hydraulic pump.
The hydraulic pump rapidly builds pressure
and stops the differentials
ability to send equal power
to the wheels experiencing less load,
and usually this is the inside wheel.
So therefore more power and torque
is sent to the outside wheel,
pushing the GTI around the
corner more effectively.
Now VAQ also uses a
preemptive diff lock system
for launching off the line
as quickly as possible,
as well as neutralizing
that pesky torque steer
that front wheel drive
cars can be plagued by.
So it is safe to say that the
VAQ limited slip differential
is a pretty key piece to
applying the GTIs power
down to the road properly.
However a locking LSD is
not the only thing necessary
to transfer power from the
engine to the wheels effectively.
You also need a pretty nifty transmission.
(jazzy music)
The so-called driving purists might say
that you can only achieve
a pure driving experience
with a manual transmission,
which the GTI can be optioned with.
But the GTI also has an optional
seven speed DSG dual clutch
automated manual transmission.
Now let me tell you, this
transmission is sublime.
♪ I'm gonna shift from two to three ♪
♪ I'm gonna shift from three four ♪
♪ If I had a couple more gears
then I'd shift some more ♪
Now you may ask why is that the case?
Well, look at it this way.
A single clutch manual transmission
requires the car to engage
the clutch, switch gears,
and get back on the gas.
Now you could be a really,
really great driver
and you could shift as fast as possible,
but there is still that
tiny little itsy bitsy,
very small space, you see it right there?
I'm equating this distance into space.
There's that tiny space
where you aren't on the gas
because you need to shift.
But a dual clutch transmission,
it solves that tiny bit of time it takes
for you to lay off the gas.
Now dual clutch has two clutches,
one outer clutch and one inner clutch.
So one clutch will handle first,
third, fifth, and seventh,
while the other will handle
second, fourth, and six.
Now imagine that the GTI is
moving along in first gear
and it's about to shift.
So as soon as you hit the shift paddles,
the GTI uses a synchronizer system
to engage the other clutch
that is already in place
and engaging the next gear
at the exact same time
the other clutch is being disengaged.
But you might be thinking,
"Hey, Jerry, what if I want to downshift?"
Well, there's an actuated shift fork
that decides whether or not the car
will be downshifting or upshifting.
And this all means that there's
not going to be any delay
when you shift between gears.
And in fact, the shift speeds are so fast
that a human couldn't possibly do it.
The average human blinks at
a speed of 400 milliseconds.
A Ferrari Enzo upshifts
using a sequential manual
transmission in 150 milliseconds.
The GTI DSG's transmission,
it upshifts in eight milliseconds.
Yeah, you heard that correctly, eight.
That's the number of kids I'm gonna have.
Now this family friendly hatchback
can shift gears 18.75 times
faster than the Ferrari Enzo
and 50 times, faster than you
can blink your (bleep) eyes.
If you don't think that's fast,
you're on the wrong side
of history, grandpa.
Now the icing on the GTI's cheese cake
is its adaptable suspension.
Now structurally it has a pretty standard
Macpherson strut set up in the front,
which you'd find in most Volkwagens,
and in the rear you'll find
a multi link independent suspension setup.
And like the name implies,
the movement of one wheel won't affect
the grip or traction of the other,
hence they are acting independently.
Meaning the GTI won't
get as unsettled as often
when driving over uneven surfaces.
So on paper this is great to see.
And at the same time, however,
all of that stuff is solid
and proven technology
seen in many other cars out on the road.
So what did VW do that's unique?
They decided to add some
special sauce to it,
and that special sauce is
dynamic chassis control,
also known as DCC.
It's an adaptive chassis control,
allowing it to improve the
suspension's performance
in real time.
Now using wheel and acceleration sensors,
the GTI analyzes the road
surface, the speed of the car,
and the amount of lateral
G-forces the car is experiencing.
And with this constant
stream of information,
the GTI can actively
control the damper valves,
allowing the car to selectively choose
the ideal damping force
for each of the four
wheels within milliseconds.
You guys know how fast milliseconds are,
we already talked about it.
In other words,
DCC allows this suspension setup
to realize its full potential.
Not only will the car
actively manage the damping on its own,
the driver can change
between several driving modes
to fully customize their
driving experience.
So whether you'd like stiffened
dampers in sport mode,
all the way to the least
aggressive setting in comfort,
the suspension will
constantly adjust the dampers
individually according to
the mode that you're in.
So you can see the golf
GTI is similar to the cake
that we talked about at
the beginning of this,
I'm sure you remember that cake.
You've been drooling the whole time
thinking about that sucker.
Takes a bunch of ingredients, right.
It takes adaptive suspension,
takes a DSG dual clutch transmission,
and it takes a VAQ
limited slip differential.
You put them all together
and they make one of the
most fun cars to drive ever.
And aesthetically it's a very
mature and restrained design
that won't turned too many heads.
You're not gonna find huge fender flares
or massive wings here.
But in their place are subtle
red line accents in the grill
and on the sides and in the interior.
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Bye for now.
