Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Rear Duct Modification for better brake & caliper cooling

I modified the rear panel covers to create air deflectors which now send air in the direction of the rear caliper to better cool the brakes. The Q50 is the first car I have ever had that chewed through rear pads and rotors much quicker than fronts, gets a high-speed brake judder in just 12-15k miles due to increased lateral runout of rotors and I think it is all due to excessive heat build up.

Other common causes for excessive lateral run out of rotors can be over-torqued wheels, run out in wheel bearings, or just cheap quality materials. The bearings have been checked and the wheels are always (re)torqued by me, by hand,with the wheel in the air to spec every time anyone removes it.

 Only time will tell how this mod will work, though initial results are promising.

Modified air deflectors.

The design issue I have with the rear brakes of the Q50 are:

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Q50 0-60 mph times Red Sport vs Hybrid

I had a shiny red 2017 Q50 Red Sport 400 AWD with all options except ProPilot for a few week and I decided to run a few 0-60 mph runs using Torque app and Bluetooth ODB II interfaces as I had done for my Q50 Hybrid here.

2017 Q50 Red Sport AWD
The best I could get in a run was about...

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Best 0-60 time - 2014 Q50S Hybrid AWD

Since I like collecting lots of useless data from my cars, I wanted to see what I can get for 0-60 mph times for the Q50, which is something I should have done a lot sooner.

There are many phone apps out there that use GPS for this data, but it can be all over the place dependent on signal strength, time to process the data, etc. Highly inconsistent and in accurate. Didn’t want to spend money on a professional device that I will use only a few times. With an ODB-II connected reader that is continually reading directly from the vehicle speed sensor multiple times per second, it starts getting accurate and interesting.
Best 0-60mph Time

The car setup is as follows:

Friday, August 25, 2017

The Most Empirically Effective Cold Air Intake for the Q50S HEV

Using this cold air intake setup my Q50 is achieving 97.7% temperature efficiency in cold air intake, which is pretty damn good. 
Intake Temperature as Read by MAF

What? How? Where? Who?

Thursday, August 24, 2017

MPG from Q50 on a Long Road Trip - Computer and Manual

Drove down from Madison, WI to Chesterfield, MO to watch the eclipse with the kids. Thought I would record the MPGs that the Q50 achieved during the mostly drive.

The summary is as follows per the car computer:
Total Miles Driven and Time Taken