Last car I had before the current GTI was a 2008 Cobalt SS.
It had a bunch of things done to it I guess. CF hood and trunk. Spherical and sealed leading and trailing control arm bushings. Custom set of HyperCo springs. 2 piece floating front rotors. Trans mounts that rotated the engine to align the axles to eliminate wheel hop. Garret cored intercooler with anti heat coating. Charge pipes. Catless downpipe. ECM tuning with HPTuners. Set of custom made headlights with FX35 HID housings put into the OEM unit. OZ Ultraleggeras 18x8 +38 with Dunlop Direzza Star Specs 235/40/18. At one point it had an Exedy Hypersingle six-puck clutch in it and I had a pretty sweet GT2871R swap on it.
What had happened was this:
I used to help run a forum and we'd plan a trip to the Tail of the Dragon every year. Since we all know about DI and valve coking, once I increased crankcase pressure via the 2871R I really did a number to the intake valves. Coked them up to the point where it pretty much misfired driving down the highway under light load. Pressed for time(due to the annual trip to the Tail was about a week out) my options were to swap out the head or swap out to a lightly used engine and turbo for the same price. Deeming that 400 whp was a bit much for a FWD car and waaaay too much for how tight the TOTD was, going back to the stock turbo was the clear choice/compromise. It's real easy to get 320-350 whp out of the stock turbo on those cars. One of the issues with the 2009 MY LNF engines was a high porosity casting in the engine blocks. Less than 120 engine blocks were affected(out of the over 20,000 made that year). I knew it was a gamble buying an 09 engine but what were the odds I got a porous block?
1:1
Still really sad about this car. It is head and shoulders better than the current Golf platform in terms of performance. In terms of fit and finish and creature comfort the GTI/Golf is a miles better car though. So it's a trade of sorts, and leaves me looking for the performance I had. Oh and the stock seats in the Cobalt SS are probably the best I've ever sat in period. Brace your anus, big ass picture dump incoming:
Said seats:
Aforementioned HyperSingle:
+ big sticky tires(note: that is not myself in the picture. Confirmed not a doggo or over skinny white guy who wears way too short of shorts, that'd be my dad)
+420 ft-lbs at the crank and a no-shift(which was advertised with the car BTW, but of course on stock power. Made DSG-esque farts with a catted downpipe and fireballs catless)=
This is why the hypersingle came out btw. Also this is the reason we have dual mass flywheels on our cars. To keep this from happening. The no chatter and "ease of driving" are side effects.
The retrofits:
Floating rotors and the stock monoblocs. Oh and it's spring time here:
Riceboi before I got the hood painted:
Domoass:
Old guys from Canada are clinically insane:
Intercooler I mentioned before:
Manifold for the swap and the GT2871R(.064 a/r if anyone cares):
Post-swap pic. Nothing to really see:
And no moar ricer hood:
If you read all of this, thanks for taking the time to.
