The Genesis of Revelation!

So, with the stuff I don't like out of the way, here's what I do like:

1. This car is comfy. Like, really comfy. Comfy seats, nice surfaces to touch, good sound system, tight and rattle free chassis and the HVAC system just gently wraps you in this lovely little cocoon of coziness. 

2. The steering is really nice. I had almost gotten used to electric power steering and this just takes me back to one of the ways the good old days really were better. Direct, feelsome and accurate. The Gen Coupe is pretty big for a sports car but it just shrinks down when you start to play.

3. The LSD is aggressive and gives the car a really fun tail happy, hooligan feeling when you turn off the ESC. 

4. Brembos. Brakes feel really good though I think I might try a firewall brace later on. 

5. General feeling of being well-built. The drivetrain doesn't have any lash or slack in it, the rear subframe doesn't quiver when I'm putting down the power and hit a bump, I never get the feeling I'm doing something the car wasn't designed to handle, even when I'm beating on it. 

6. It's goddamned pretty. I feel good every time I look out the window and see it.

Silly, goofy and/or interesting things I added.

This is a phone number display. It's so that when I double park - everyone in Korea double parks - the person or people I blocked in can call me and ask me to "remove the car please." I foolishly left the old phone number display in the Forte when I sold it and, as a result, I wasn't able to double park for almost an entire week. It was a traumatic time and I'd rather not speak about it any more. 

This is a sticker I have put on all my Korean cars. It says 초보운전, which literally means "low level driving." Figuratively it means "I really suck at driving, please don't kill me if you see me reversing up a highway onramp."

I put these stickers on my car as a psychological warfare tactic. That way, when I'm on a track, the other drivers will see my sticker and become terrified, leaving me space to set blistering lap times and DOMINATE the time attack events I participate in. 

Documenting what I learned today about the suspension parts off of a Genesis SEDAN. First, the lower control arms are definitely aluminum in the front. They appear to be the same dimensions as the iron lower control arms on the Genesis Coupe though I need to measure to be sure. 

Part numbers are 54500 3M000 and 54505 3M100 if anyone wants to try aluminizing their Genesis Coupe with me.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

I want that sticker! 

Where are you in Korea? I live in Pyeongtaek and used to take my corvette up to Inje Speedium. Now with the supercharger I can't run a road course anymore.  But I do go drag racing in Daegu in the summer. 

bobzilla said:

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

I want that sticker! 

There's a variety of stickers, for about 5 dollars. 

초보운전 차량용 스티커 자동차 해시태그 - 옥션 (auction.co.kr)

t56mike said:

Where are you in Korea? I live in Pyeongtaek and used to take my corvette up to Inje Speedium. Now with the supercharger I can't run a road course anymore.  But I do go drag racing in Daegu in the summer. 

Hey Mike,

I live in Daejeon. I LOVELOVELOVE Injae Speedium and plan to hit it once I have the suspension sorted on my Genesis.

Is the supercharger on your Vette giving you cooling problems?

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

Yesish. I'm running about 20 degrees higher than normal. 200 on the coolant and 212 on the oil. t's the intercooler blocking flow.

So I splurged and bought the Dewitts cut down radiator, with built-in oil cooler, and matching Spal fan set.

I was a dummy and didn't swap out the thermostat to the 160. However there is no coolant to be had on any base. Once my radiator and fans get here I'll swap it all out and see where I am

In reply to t56mike :

I hope it solves you problems. Let me know if and when you do another track day and I'll see if we can coordinate. If you give me enough notice, I might be able to introduce you to some racecar builders. 

A car like this, normally, would be expected to sell for around 6,500 or 7,000 dollars. I got it for 4,800 bucks. One of the reasons was that "it rides rough and handles a little weird." It was also, way, way too low. 

I actually saw this as an opportunity. First, I am pretty sure I can upgrade most of the suspension components in a Gen Coupe with aluminum versions off the Genesis Sedan, the Kia Stinger, the Kia K9 (don't know what that's called in the US) and even the hideous luxury SUV tank thing. Secondly, there are versions of these aluminum parts that are supposed to mount springs and shocks and, as such, come pre-drilled with bushing holes. I want to use those holes to make some Porsche-style brake cooling ducts like these below.

I have a friend gifted in the art of CAD, another friend who does 3D Printing professionally and a long, long history of lighting my brakes on fire at track days. Perfect combination!

Anyway, before committing to the purchase I pulled the wheels off the car to make sure the funny handling and rough ride were a symptom of something bolt on and not, say, massive and poorly repaired crash damage. Here's what I found.

First, maybe this is my ignorance, but that seems like a super-sketchy camber bolt to me.

Passenger's side front spring.

Driver's side front spring. I didn't take any pictures, but the rear springs weren't much better. 

Replacements. 8kg/mm in front, 6 kg/mm in the back. 

With the suspension together, relatively speaking, I felt comfortable enough to tackle some canyons. And dude, I like this car.

1. I completely understand why Reese Millen had so much success drifting his Genesis. It's a relatively long wheelbase so everything comes out nice and easy. It also, for reasons I don't understand, tends to "set" at whatever slip angle you've chosen to hold the throttle steady at. This car is almost as easy to slide as my old E70 Corolla and easier than everything else I've tried. 

2. Lovely steering. I practice precision by driving on these tiny farmer access roads on the way to work. The Genesis, despite being very wide, eats this stuff up. It just shrinks around me. Weirdly, this reminds me of a 3rd Gen F Body, which is another car I randomly love driving.

3. I know it's technically a turbo 4 and should be peaky and high strung, but man does this Theta drive like a Windsor or SBC. It was simple to get a spirited canyon drive, uphill, even in 5th gear and as low as 2300 rpm. It was faster revving out to 6k, but not dramatically so. 

4. I can't wait to get a proper alignment and better tires on this thing.

5. I don't understand how this car rides so nice while cornering so flat. 8kg/6kg with stock swaybars and, somehow it's flatter than my 500kg lighter Daewoo with 9kg/9kg springs or my Tuscani at 8kg/8kg and a big rear bar. 

Small update. I am a hardened ricer and thus the lack of flush fitment in the back fenders could not be tolerated. 10mm spacers left over from my Turbo Tuscani fixed all.

Before:

After:

And yes, I will replace those rotors.

On a geekier note, the geometry of the lower strut is roughly as follows:

1. Short lateral control arm is 33.5 cm. The aluminum version has the spring/shock mount is 25 cm away from the chassis side mount. It's at a 90 degree angle to the chassis.

2. The forward extending tension link is 48.5 cm and mounted 133 (+/- 5 dgrees because this was really hard to measure in my driveway) degrees relative to the chassis.

3. Hyundai used two balljoints, one for each link. This pushes the instant center outwards and reduces bumpsteer while also reducing camber change under compression/extension.

4. The long arm's balljoint is mounted 4.5 cm forward and 2.5 cm higher than the short arm's ball joint.

5. The distance from the front edge of the rotor to the trailing edge of the caliper is 370 mm.

6. Max steering lock (inside wheel) is about 55 degrees. Due to ackerman, the outside wheel is a little less.

DaewooOfDeath said:

With the suspension together, relatively speaking, I felt comfortable enough to tackle some canyons. And dude, I like this car.

 

1. I completely understand why Reese Millen had so much success drifting his Genesis. It's a relatively long wheelbase so everything comes out nice and easy. It also, for reasons I don't understand, tends to "set" at whatever slip angle you've chosen to hold the throttle steady at. This car is almost as easy to slide as my old E70 Corolla and easier than everything else I've tried. 

2. Lovely steering. I practice precision by driving on these tiny farmer access roads on the way to work. The Genesis, despite being very wide, eats this stuff up. It just shrinks around me. Weirdly, this reminds me of a 3rd Gen F Body, which is another car I randomly love driving.

3. I know it's technically a turbo 4 and should be peaky and high strung, but man does this Theta drive like a Windsor or SBC. It was simple to get a spirited canyon drive, uphill, even in 5th gear and as low as 2300 rpm. It was faster revving out to 6k, but not dramatically so. 

4. I can't wait to get a proper alignment and better tires on this thing.

5. I don't understand how this car rides so nice while cornering so flat. 8kg/6kg with stock swaybars and, somehow it's flatter than my 500kg lighter Daewoo with 9kg/9kg springs or my Tuscani at 8kg/8kg and a big rear bar. 

#3 is what keeps me a Korean car fan rather than a Japanese car. I grew up with TBI SBC v8's and all I know is torque. That HP thing is somethinf the Japanese came up with to be silly in my mind. Korean cars just make great midrange power that is almost always there and the theta is amazing. I miss my big block 2.4 for that. Yea, it would spin to 7400 (tuned) and still make decent power up there but that 2k-6k was home. Pick a gear and leave it there. 

In reply to bobzilla :

I can see where you're coming from. I grew upon two stroke motorcycles so peaky and zingy was what I thought of as normal. I've still never owned anything with a V8.

This torque stuff really started to win me over when my 160 hp Forte was nearly as fast over a lap of the Korean F1 circuit as the 300 hp turbo Tuscani was. Usable power>peak power. I think the Gen Coupe, even on the track, is prolly gonna be fastest shifting 500 rpm short of redline in most cases. 

I said before the car is really drifty in a hooligan sort of way. Anyway, finally got some decent tires and a proper alignment and it's no longer drifty. Sad faces but it probably just means I need more power! 

Speaking of which, how dumb would it be to make a T off the back of the turbo, one branch of which dumps behind the front wheel on the passenger's side and can be close with a bolt on stopper, while the other runs to the stock exhaust? Thinking this and a tune might be on the menu. 

I had originally planned to replace the rusty rear subframe but almost everything in the rear suspension was crusty, nasty and suspect. Pictures coming soon. 

More horrors from the rear suspension. 

Ick.

Did this car spend time submerged in the ocean?  That seems like a lot of heavy rust for a relatively young car.  But your marching along getting a lot of what appear to be annoying repair type tasks done.  Keep it up.  

The car is from Gangwon Province which, climatically, is roughly similar to Anchorage. Wet, mountainous, cold, right next to the ocean and heavily salted. So that's part of what you're seeing.

The other part is that Hyundai has, for some reason, never figured out the art of drain holes in suspension components. I have replaced dangerously rusted control arms and subframes on two Tuscanis, a Sonata, an Optima and an Elantra -and that's just my and my friends' cars.

I also kind of did this to myself on purpose, but more on that story next post.

Here's the new subframe, looking all shiny and pretty. If you look at the mounts in the front, you'll see there's two differential mounting holes but only bushings for one of those holes. I was all ready to be pissed off at the parts vendor for not giving me both mounts (and there are bolt holes on the differential for both sides) but it turns out Hyundai, for God-knows-why, only uses one. 

Guess that's an easy upgrade in the not too distant future. Can't imagine why they didn't come with four mounting points factory. Or maybe I'll use it for a diff cooling solution I'm working on. Don't know yet.

Pretty much an entirely new suspension. 

Also got one of these. Turns out it's .5 cm too short to work with the Gen Coupe. Same think with the aluminum knuckles, just a tiny bit off in exactly one mounting point. Grrr. 

Also, before I forget, big ups to Hyundai Mobis. The service so far has been prompt and very reasonably priced. That suspension rebuild included pretty much everything but the front subframe - all the arms, all the bushings, new parking brakes and hubs, new rear rotors, rear subframe, rear axles - and parts only ran me 1,500~ bucks. Just ran in to get some new lower grills and a vacuum hose and everything will be waiting for me tomorrow 20 bucks altogether. 

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

I buy a lot of stuff from them off eBay.  IT's usually 1/3 the cost of local and I can have it in 3-4 days from SK.

Some some reason, this is how Hyundai did it from the factory. There's even a threaded bolt hole lined up behind that empty bushing space thing. No clue. 

I think I can improve the cooling efficiency here. Since I plan to take this car to track days, my approach is going to focus on lots of cooling, lots of durability. Secondarily, I think there are several areas on the bottom of the car I can aerodynamically optimize without creating access nightmares or road-salt-traps.

Dif bolts are all 9 cm apart, with the to higher ones 130 degrees off from the bottom two.  

CAD design for a differential bracket. This part will mount to the diff and support a second component designed to imitate something Gale Banks puts on his giant trucks. 

The bottom edge of the Banks part hangs down a little big and acts like a scoop. According to his testing, this can lower diff temps by up to 100 degrees in heavy use. My plan is to use sheetmetal to approximate the "scoop" part and the fins already on the Hyundai diff to approximate the fins on the Banks part. 

Little stuff I fixed: 

These are kind of crappy aftermarket tail lights and they were leaking. I will probably replace them with stockers eventually, but in the mean time I pulled both and siliconed the seams to stop the leaks. 

This little seam, where the bumper meets the quarter panel, there's a clip right on the corner. On the old bumper this clip was broken on both sides and there was also some paint peeling near the license plate. Every time I looked at the old bumper, the fact the corners stuck out and the paint was bad bothered me.  

Ordered a new bumper and installed it. It's amazing how much more this tiny little difference makes me like the car.