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Overall, the Enkei Fujins complement the Jetta’s overall lines, and the offset is nearly perfect, with scrub radius changing very little despite increasing the car’s footprint by 3″. The wheel design itself lends to improved brake cooling over stock (though the brakes aren’t taxed very much by the car’s stock 90HP), and the combination weighs in at a reasonable 42 lbs, only 5lbs more than the pizza cutters that were on the car.
So, how does it perform? The first thing noticed when driving the car isn’t so much how it turns, or how it rides, but how much quieter the Nitto Motivos made the car. No more tire roar on Southern California’s deplorable concrete freeways and no more chopping or thwacking over expansion joints. That’s not to say the car didn’t handle or ride noticeably different. Turn-in is much more immediate, steering feel is greatly increased, and effort feels much more realistic, all attributable to the Whiteline caster bushings. The car corners nice and flat now, and the refreshed wear items have added some much needed newness to the suspension.
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| As expected, body roll was significantly reduced. While the car was compromised a little by lowering, at max cornering you can see the difference in camber relative to the road before and after. Likely the Whiteline caster bushing had a lot to do with this, with the extra spring rates helping to keep the front end out of the really bad part of the camber curve. |
Ride quality, while firm, is not harsh, with no bumpstop contact whatsoever, and minor bumps go largely unnoticed. The overall handling balance of the car is as expected: neutral under braking, with mild to moderate understeer under power (depending on gear selection and speed). The car also has a lot more grip from the second quadrant of the corner on, likely due to the increased roll stiffness not allowing the car to get into the really bad parts of the camber curve. For street duty, with some mountain roads, track driving and on/off ramp charging interspersed in between, this is just about perfect.
Speaking of on and off ramp charging, we managed to collect some data from DashCommand to log skidpad performance on our local, er, skidpad on the way to work, and the results were impressive. To ensure reasonable statistical repeatability, the peak numbers from three logging sessions were averaged before and after the suspension install. All tests were performed at the same time of day, and the weather was as close as reasonably expected (65°F before, 62°F after, hooray for San Diego weather) between runs. To ensure accurate numbers themselves, the car was parked at the exact same parking lot bus stop (chosen for its concrete surface and markings to ensure exact placement) and the DashCommand skidpad feature was zeroed before each run. The, erm, skidpad selected was mildly banked, so the numbers aren’t an accurate representation of ultimate grip, but do show whatever delta there is between runs.
