# 89 cabby racer questions



## Hextro (Aug 7, 2011)

we've been racing the cabby and have been having a blast. unfortunately we've had something go wrong each of the 4 races so we havent actually finished one. we've slowly upgraded things to add performance to the car though and really have gotten her to a competitive level with a bigger cam, intake, long tube headers and a few other bits. enough to need 'special' gas. 

this last time we had the oe transmission finally go on us. we're thinking of rebuilding with better internals or just finding another donor and putting it on. with nearly the entire summer to work on her we also thought about upgrading the brakes to a larger setup. 

so my two first questions are: 

what is an economical brake upgrade that would still clear the smaller wheels? are both the 10.1 and 11 viable options in rotor upgrade from the 9.4? (the backs still have shoes and are not disk) 

are there alternative transmission options we could source from a pick n pull that would last longer or be considered an uppgrade on our 1.8 8v? we did this for the right axle so the power side now has a much bigger gti part on it. 

the car has been in another city and worked on by a vw shop but its now staying with us and we'll be able to get our hands on it way more often! this is why we're looking for options for DIY rather than looking for shops to work on it.


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## saveFred (Sep 28, 2009)

just doing the rear disk swap should make help with the braking
there are other transmissions with more optimal ratios for track, look up the code/ratios and dceide which one works best.
You could swap an 02a in but thats a bit more money and not sure how it would drive with the stock 1.8 8v

im actually building a 90 cabby race car with 1.8T and just finishing the 02A swap
Running rear disk brakes and havnt had an issue


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## skateboards and mk2s (May 17, 2006)

For most mk1 and 2 cars the rear drum is preffered unless you are running a pretty slick brake biasing system. Brand new vented 9.6s with a top notch track pad will stop these cars super quick.

I have heard of guys wd40ing the rears with discs due to it just being to much brake and getting lock up all over the track. 

As far as a trans goes. I think the investment in a short ratio O2O that has been treated to a bolt kit and nice diff should last you a long time. Its pretty rare to have actual gear issues its usually the housing bolts that shear off then bounce around until one gets fired through the casing


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## Hextro (Aug 7, 2011)

saveFred
our 1.8 isnt stock at all. i think we're running 112+ gas. i'm working on getting the parts list they put into it as the car was living 300 miles away and is now going to stay with us. I think we're going to try motul 660 and some carbotech 10s or similar endurance race pad one more time before upgrading calipers, pads and rotors.

we've done 4-5 races on that transmission with potentially double the power and it finally gave up on us. we're still not sure what broke but even manually putting it into gear from up top, it still sounds like busted parts trying to find grip. we like the long third gear it has though. When we lost R,1st & 2nd we managed to put down really good times with just 3rd. had to momentum drive a bit more to now loose too much speed but it was still fast. With no speedo in the car we used our phone/gps to find out we're over 95 mph in 3rd at around 75-7800 rpm. 

i'll try to figure out the trans model soon and read up on which it is. What we're really after at this point is durability of the go fast bits already in there. 

maybe an upgrade to the trans and a Peloquin "020" Limited-Slip Differential would put us there 


thanks for the replies!


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