We'd Purchased a Genesis Coupe. Now What?

"Zachary Oberle" (zacharyoberle) 04/11/2016 at 14:05 • Filed to: Project Hoondy, car buying, engine oil, oil additives, RAN-UP, RS-R, Tires

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There it was. We could scarcely believe how pretty our newly acquired Genesis Coupe looked while crouched alongside our trusty old Jetta. Say what you will about the styling details of the car, the proportions are difficult to fault. The wheels are pushed out to all four corners, giving the car a tiny front overhang and only a little more in the rear. Certainly, compared to a Mustang, that rear overhang looks quite small.

We think in stock configuration the the ‘Stang has a slightly tippy, van-like stance in person.

This could be fixed of course, and people do stance Mustangs beautifully through the use of cost-effective mods. We just think it’s nice not to mess with that aspect of the car and get on to more interesting stuff from the get go.

Which, we would find, was vastly different from what most other GenCoupe tuners thought was interesting.

Everyone seems to go straight for the wheels, cramming 19 or 20 inch “rimz” under the car ASAP after purchase. While we are dubious on the large diameters, we will admit that the car looks great with rear tires that are 275mm in section or more.

On the other hand, we really emphasize driving feel over all other considerations for modification. This means we must be realistic, and the fact is that different cars need different adjustments.

Our Jetta responded amazingly well when we ditched its super-heavy 16 inch OEM alloys and went to a set of feather-light 17 inch BBS wheels. Dropping nearly fifteen pounds of unsprung weight per corner off a three thousand pound car is always going to yield great results. This is doubly true on a tinny FWD car with mediocre steering geometry. Extra unsprung weight punishes the car’s engineering shortcomings and taking that weight away does the handling a great service.

From the factory, our Genesis Coupe is a rather different animal than our old Vee Dub. The car has modest eighteen inch alloys as standard, and while it is afflicted by numerous handling vices, they are nowhere near as bad as a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta. The Hoondy has a lot more power as well. This means a change in unsprung weight, while still very beneficial, doesn’t carry the same massive performance premium that it did on our VW.

So we weren’t worried about wheels.

Tires, on the other hand, were a pressing issue.

Our Genesis Coupe had sat on a dealer’s lot for nearly 12 months and the tires showed it. Dry-rotted to hell, they would never perform adequately during the looming winter season.

We ran separate summer and winter tires on our Jetta and intended to do the same with Project Hoondy. The Jetta had nice summer tires, but the winter set was just a mis-matched pile of crappy all-seasons. We were determined to do better with our new car and so went straight for a set of super-legit winter tires.

We looked at a few options. Blizzak is the big name in winter tires for sportscars, but in 2013 Michelin had cooked up an intriguing new hunk of rubber we wanted to try.

The Michelin Xi3 has been hailed as one of the least obnoxious winter tires that money can buy. Winter tires are great for finding grip in snowy, low-temperature conditions, but they tend to spoil the handling characteristics of sportscars. The Xi3s are an exception to this rule, delivering shockingly civilized performance on dry roads. Tire roar is low, ride comfort is excellent, and the tread doesn’t feel too squirmy under power. The damn things even come with a 40,000 mile treadwear warranty; something that would have been totally unheard-of on a winter tire just a few years earlier.

After the thaw at the start of 2014, summer tire selection was a no-brainer. The Continental Extreme Contact DW is a work-horse of a sportscar tire. It is phenomenal in the wet and wears like iron for how sticky it is. It lacks ultimate dry-pavement grip when compared to other high-performance summer tires, but it has fantastic breakaway characteristics.

A set of four such Continentals in size 225 45R17 served us extremely well on our Jetta. Paired with the lightweight BBS wheels they transformed that little car into something that managed to feel at least slightly sophisticated. We bought a set in factory 18 inch sizing and called rubber done for the next four to five years or so. We picked up a second set of 18 inch OEM wheels for a mere $400 on Craiglsist so we wouldn’t have to swap rubber back and fourth on one set.

Other than tires, we made virtually no changes to the car during our first six months of ownership. We researched what other owners were doing and replaced some fluids. In fact, the fluids were our first real “modification” of the car in that we deviated significantly from factory specs.

First up to bat was engine oil.

N ano-particle technology is the future of lubrication. It’s easy to imagine how it could help automotive engines. Think of tiny ball-bearings, so small they pass right through the oil filter, rolling between every sliding surface of the motor. Billions of little particles fill every crevice of the oil galleys, reducing the amount of metal-on-metal contact between components.

We think that, as it becomes more cost-effective, nano-particle tech will eventually substitute for a large portion of traditional anti-wear additives like Zinc and maybe one day replace them altogether.

In the mean time, legit nano-particle lubricants are extremely expensive. Only a few companies use them and they are marketed almost entirely to the racing industry. The thing about the racing industry is that they don’t buy products that don’t work. If it doesn’t help reduce lap times or improve reliability then it doesn’t get purchased, period.

So, back in our Jetta days, we gave it a whirl. If we were going to try engine oil additives then we might as well start at the top. RS-R’s RAN-UP is about as expensive as additives get. It leverages a nano-lubricant that was originally developed for aerospace purposes. It has !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to legitimately free up extra power and torque in a variety of engines, but we honestly don’t care too much about that. We’ve come to love RAN-UP because of how incredibly smooth it makes our engines run.

Upon first using RAN-UP, we constantly pulled up to intersections and assumed our Jetta had stalled because we couldn’t hear the engine idling. Stabbing the throttle in neutral, hearing the engine rev, and then listening to it settle down into infinite softness is a weird and wonderful experience.

We found that RAN-UP reduced stall speed and it made the VR6 in our Jetta harder to stall in general. The engine would recover from ludicrously low RPMs, as low as 300 in some cases. It idled slower too, a tick under 500 RPM rather than 600 like it had always done before.

Beyond these objective changes, we could go on for ages about what we perceived as subjective improvements to our engine’s dynamics via RAN-UP. Faster rev-up in neutral, better transient response, more power up top, more grunt down low, and an overall more pleasant nature were among the highlights of what we felt. None of these apparent changes were put to objective testing, and so we consider them purely preferential improvements on our part.

Our objective driving impressions combined with our subjective preference for the engine’s behavior made the purchase of RAN-UP worth it to us. This was helped as we started to lengthen our oil change interval with tests from Blackstone to ensure we didn’t push too far. We made it all the way to 10,000 miles with plenty of headroom left in our oil’s additive package. We saw absolutely no elevated levels of copper, aluminum, or other elements that would evidence engine wear. The data suggested that our Jetta might go as far as 15,000 miles before the oil truly started to wear out.

Ten thousand miles was good enough for us though, and we took solace in the fact that we were leaving ourselves so much head-room. This meant the odd auto-cross event or trip to the drag-strip wouldn’t necessitate a reduction in our oil change interval.

So when it came time to choose an oil mix for Project Hoondy we reached straight for the winners of our many oil trials with the Jetta.

Penzoil Platinum (and later Penzoil Ultra) combined with Lucas Synthetic Oil Stabilizer beats the pants off of Royal Purple, Redline, and Lucas’s own high-performance full-syn motor oil. The Penzoil/Lucas blend is cheaper to boot.

As a side-note about Lucas Synthetic Oil Stabilizer, we just want to say that we are not big fans of Lucas products in general. Their Heavy Duty Stabilizer is a terrifying gear-oil type syrup, only suitable for the most miserable of dying engines. Their other “fix” products like Transmission Stop Slip are just nasty, gluey, super-high-viscosity gunk that temporarily softens major mechanical problems at the cost of a reduced fluid change interval and your dignity.

We consider Lucas’s Synthetic Oil Stabilizer to be the one bright spot in their product lineup and proof that even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

Which leaves us with our final choice for Project Hoondy’s Oil Mix:

Five quarts Penzoil Ultra 5W-30, 300 milliliters RSR RAN-UP, and one quart Lucas Synthetic Oil Stabilizer to use as top-up fluid. We change it out every 10,000 miles along with a fresh Wix oil filter. Our Hoondy has an oil sump capacity of six quarts, so this combination of product results in the perfect volume for us.

It ain’t cheap though.

Even when buying the Penzoil at Wal-Mart and the Lucas in bulk on Amazon, our oil fill costs a whopping $90. Throw in the filter and that’s a hundred bucks for an oil change we still have to do ourselves. This is largely the fault of the RAN-UP, which runs $50 for 300 mL at its absolute cheapest. We win some of that money back through improved fuel economy and an extended oil drain interval, but that’s still a pricey fluid service no matter how you slice it. It would be difficult to justify through purely objective argument, but the subjective improvements to the driving experience are more than worth it to us.

Project Hoondy’s very first oil change was a lot of fun. We hadn’t properly flogged the car yet on our first day of ownership. We wanted to feed her the good stuff first. In went the lovely oil products and out came the smoothest, most melodious V6 grumble we’d ever had the pleasure to experience. We worked on a beautiful paint detailing job while we waited for the sun to go down. A slow, liberal claying removed tons of hidden gunk and then a heavy buff with Klasse sealed it up all nice and tight. This stuff is the greatest:

Once it had reached the witching hour we rolled out into the night, accompanied by the increasingly lusty, heathenish noises of that perfectly lubricated engine. We cannot disclose where we went or what happened on that drive, but it was good. Really good.

Project Hoondy’s inaugural flogging did a lot to confirm what we liked about the car. The driving position especially was just ideal for us and was a huge part of what made us choose our Hyundai over the many alternatives we looked at. Wheels and tires and brakes may be changed, but driving position is forever.

Nobody out there is offering pedal relocation kits, or bolt-on steering column adjusters. We feel like this aspect of performance cars is sorely under-emphasized by contemporary car reviewers. It’s one of the many reasons we love Chris Harris’s reviews as he’s a real stickler for seating position.

You can get the seat in a Genesis Coupe adjusted very low in the car, with plenty of rake if you like that sort of thing (we do). A low seat and high transmission tunnel puts the shifter quite close to the wheel.

The steering column has tons of adjustment and the pedals are evenly spaced, with a BMW-style bottom-hinged throttle pedal.

Perfection.

As much as we were basking in the positives of our purchase, driving the car properly hard had revealed many flaws we didn’t perceive during our test drives.

The front bump-travel was just pathetically short. This one problem spoiled our fun out on the road more than all the other problems put together. It makes the car genuinely nervous and unpredictable over bumpy pavement. As a driver, it makes you gun-shy about iffy road conditions. There are many fantastic sections of road out there that have a few bumps in them, and feeling apprehensive about those bumps can really take the fun out of driving.

Other issues we noticed included the power steering, Dual Mass Flywheel, and drivetrain mounting.

The power steering was mostly a preferential thing. We thought it felt over-boosted and not terribly eager to return to center. It had middle-of-the-road feel: better than a Camry, worse than a Boxster. Honestly, we preferred the steering feel of our old Jetta over the Hoondy but, eh, we’d get used to it.

The Dual Mass Flywheel was far more annoying. All DMFs are irritating by nature, but the one in our Hoondy really pissed us off in particular. We could feel it’s wobbling, oscillating mass slowing down that wonderfully zippy V6. The snappy manual gear-change begged for quick down-shifts and that damn flywheel wouldn’t let the engine blip quickly enough to accommodate. The DMF had to go.

We were shocked at how much the engine and transmission moved around during hard driving. The engine would twist way over under WOT and then snap back to center when we lifted off the gas to shift. This movement was so violent that it would actually lock us out of the first-to-second upshift on fast launches. Unacceptable . Stiffer drivetrain mounts would be a high priority.

Thus we had established a road-map for tuning Project Hoondy. We wanted to begin with those pesky mounts, but an unexpected wet patch in our driveway would put the kibosh on that plan. Our beloved car was leaking an alarming fluid from an alarming location!

Find out which fluid escaped from where and what major tuning decision it caused us to make on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

HammerheadFistpunch > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 14:29

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You’ve written many words but none of them tell me who “We”is.

gawdzillla > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 14:35

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the whole post was comparing this to a Jetta,

don’t you have some RWD sport-y car to compared to ? test drive a decent 350z from a near by stealership ?

Bytemite > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 14:41

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Love the saga. Can’t wait to see the car come alive once freed from that massive flywheel and marshmallow mounts.

Was it diff oil?! So you can swap to a Torsen of course.

Bytemite > gawdzillla 04/11/2016 at 14:48

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He already went out and drove a bunch of different cars before buying the Genesis.

Zachary Oberle > HammerheadFistpunch 04/11/2016 at 15:06

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See now, you’ve made a huge mistake in revealing that you actually care about the ‘mystery’ of who “we” might be. Now we’ll definitely be sure not to clarify on that for some time longer.

HammerheadFistpunch > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:08

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Heifermax > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:14

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Think I’ll be following this closely. I’ve always been impressed by a number of the other vehicles you’ve test driven during your car buying experience, but it certainly has a lot to say for a sports car that sticks out at you.

wiffleballtony > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:15

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If you're like most Genesis owners, the next thing is boost related stickers.

Dasupersprint2 > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:29

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Go on then! From now on, I’ll consider the ‘’we’’ as you and your mom.

Arrivederci > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:46

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What the heck kind of factory wheels are on a Jetta to make you drop 15 pounds per corner swapping to BBS?????

Shankems > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 15:50

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Hyundais site says track width is 63.0 F/ 63.6 R.

Zachary Oberle > gawdzillla 04/11/2016 at 15:52

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“the whole post was comparing this to a Jetta”

Hah! Great criticism. We really didn’t mean for it to come out that way and, as mentioned, went to great lengths in a previous article to contrast our experience in the Hyundai with other comparable cars.

You can read that here, if you’re interested.

One car that received no mention in that article was the US-spec E36 M3.

The pictured car was in our family for years: a ‘99 BMW M3 in four-door body style and equipped with the absolutely mandatory five-speed manual transmission.

This car was an instrument of hoonage. The US spec S52 engine wasn’t a fire-breather like it’s Euro spec cousin, but still had plenty of grunt. The watered-down engine was helped by both a close-ratio 5 speed ZF transmission and one of the most comically huckable chassis this side of a Lotus Elise. It was an amazingly neutral and infinitely forgiving car that, regardless of its friendliness, had an unquenchable thirst for hooning.

We loved that car. It felt incredibly “right” from the factory, even as a beaten-down 120K mile example with worn-out factory original everything. It was pretty sketchy when first purchased, with a clutch that slipped under WOT, brake fluid that boiled if you stared at it too hard, and rear end bushings so badly chowdered that the car would crab a bit in a straight line when you gave it full power. Despite all that, it was a complete riot to drive and wasn’t so sketchy that it felt overly dangerous.

The process of refreshing that M3 really cemented our love for driving and improving sports cars. It set our benchmark for driving pleasure and taught us that fun was better than speed. We owe a lot to the old German war-horse.

qbeezy > wiffleballtony 04/11/2016 at 15:52

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Hey, boost bro. BOOST.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Arrivederci 04/11/2016 at 15:59

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Yeah I thought the same thing. I cant imagine factory wheels weighing more than 20, 25 pounds each? And expensive aftermarket wheels couldn’t be less than 15 pounds? I am thinking smaller 15-16 inch wheels but I really cant see 15 pounds each being possible.

Zachary Oberle > Bytemite 04/11/2016 at 16:00

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“Can’t wait to see the car come alive once freed from that massive flywheel and marshmallow mounts.”

Nice foreshadowing. Changes to these parts would indeed lead to surprising alterations in the driving characteristics of the car.

“Was it diff oil?! So you can swap to a Torsen of course.”

Nice guess, we’d have wished! Two for two on the foreshadowing though. We didn’t talk about it in this article, but the open diff that came in our Genesis Coupe GT would quickly become a real sticking point for us. The diff does get a mention in the next article.

Stay tuned!

Zachary Oberle > Arrivederci 04/11/2016 at 16:21

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Our Jetta came stock with the much-maligned 16x6.5 inch 6-spoke alloy wheels. These bastards weigh, we shit you not, 29 pounds. See all the material around the hub? That’s just a solid chunk of aluminum. They were hands-down the shittiest wheels available on that car.

The wheels we replaced them with were 17x7 inch BBS units taken from a early-2000's Subaru WRX. These were an insanely expensive factory option on the WRX only as they wouldn’t fit the STI’s larger hub pattern. They are quoted by OEM wheel re-sellers as weighing 16 pounds each. Our scale said 15.3, but we call it 16. These things are top-of-the-line near-net aluminum forgings and rival just about anything you could buy in the after-market at this size. Only magnesium wheels or perhaps Rays engineering wizardry would result in somethething significantly lighter.

The tires were lighter as well. Continentals with a short 45 mm sidewall are a good pound and change lighter than the OEM Michelins with a taller 55mm sidewall.

On our scale, our old 16 inch wheel/tire combo weighed in at 51 pounds each. Our new 17 inch wheel/tire comb weighed 36.5 pounds on the same scale. Fourteen and a half, or as we said in the article nearly fifteen, pounds.

It is a huge, nearly unbelievable amount of unsprung weight savings that would be difficult and expensive to achieve in most other circumstances. Ours is a peculiar case in that our car started with unusually craptacular wheels and that there happened to be an astonishingly high-quality set of OEM wheels that would fit. To get the same results on a different car you will almost always have to resort to very expensive after-market wheels.

We definitely won’t be able to pull off the same trick with Project Hoondy and therefore will be sticking to the stock wheels for quite some time.

Arrivederci > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 16:26

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Wow! I had no idea! I can’t imagine the difference in driving with that sort of unsprung weight loss.

gawdzillla > Bytemite 04/11/2016 at 16:27

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I am buying a 2 door sport-y-ish car, since I already compared it with another 3 or 4 cars in my previous post

I am going to compare it with a dodge 2500 turbo cummins this time,

the brake-feel is different, it took the dodge longer to brake from 60-0

the gas milage is suprisingly similar, the dodge gets 25mpg (diesel) after a tune

The oil change interval is 15000 miles on the Dodge 2500 blah blah blah

OMG_LOL_WTF_BBQ !!! the dodge won the drag race !! 500+ ft/lb tq !!!

totally irreverent

Zachary Oberle > wiffleballtony 04/11/2016 at 16:28

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“If you’re like most Genesis owners, the next thing is boost related stickers.”

Jesus Christ. If there is one thing we’ve learned from owning a Genesis Coupe it is that we are not like most Genesis Coupe owners. There will be no stickerz, ground FX, or stance yo applied to Project Hoondy. We’re just waiting for the first commenter to come along and tell us that our car “needs moar low” so we can tell them to go fuck themselves with a cactus.

Zachary Oberle > Arrivederci 04/11/2016 at 16:43

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Holy shit man, it was hilarious. Because our Jetta had a ratio of high low-end to low top-end power it responded insanely well to the unsprung weight loss. Acceleration improved so much that we dropped a reliable three tenths of a second off the car’s 0-60 time. Granted, we attribute at least one of those tenths to better grip from the Continental tires.

Better than the added quickness was the incredibly improved steering feel. MKIV Jettas have pretty nice steering feel for what they are, and shedding weight helps that immensely.

Interestingly, the huge unsprung weight reduction made the car way more sensitive to wheel-carrier related maladies. Unbalanced brake rotors or iffy wheel bearings are way more apparent with the light wheels than the heavy ones.

We experienced this a few times as we actually kept the horrible 16-inch wheels for a couple of seasons as our winter set. A barely-audible grumbling rear wheel bearing became incredibly loud when we switched from the 16s to 17s one spring season. We eventually salvaged a lighter 15 inch set for winter duties, but switching back to the 17s in the spring was always magical.

We would strongly recommend a similar wheel swap for other enthusiasts, especially if it can be done with all-OEM equipment. It’s just an incredible performance bargain if you’re lucky enough to have a car with sizing that works out.

wiffleballtony > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 16:44

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Have you considered Moar low?

Zachary Oberle > wiffleballtony 04/11/2016 at 16:48

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Zachary Oberle > Shankems 04/11/2016 at 16:53

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Shit! That’s what we get for being lazy with the Googles:

Turns out that was some pretty subjective horse-shit we was a writin’. Gonna just edit that out now. Thanks for the editorial assistance mate.

In hindsight, we have no idea what we were thinking with that passage. A car that had a track width near identical to its body width would have a full half of its wheels poking out from under the wheel-arches.

What a dumbass!

Frank Grimes > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 16:58

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seriously when do you get coilovers?

wiffleballtony > Frank Grimes 04/11/2016 at 17:10

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Zachary Oberle > Frank Grimes 04/11/2016 at 17:10

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Not for quite a while. Almost none of the coilover kits on the market for this car do anything to address the lack of front bump-travel. Indeed, many of them make that problem worse.

The only coilover kits avaliable right now that we would consider are the top-shelf motorsport models. These have shorter shock-bodies than stock and are therefore capable of producing more bump-travel than the OEM setup.

That said, such coilover kits have an incredible amount of adjustability and are just way more motorsport-oriented than what we really need. We would need to adjust the coil-overs in an unusual way to produce the smooth-riding street car we desire. This kind of setup is beyond the scope of our experience. If we went this route we would get them installed and then hire the services of a racing outfit such as Professional Awesome to set it up to our liking. Even pro setup might not help enough though. Motorsport-grade coil-overs tend to have very heavy springs and we think there might be no existing option with soft enough springs for our liking.

It’s an enticing option, but a very expensive one. For now we are willing to bide our time and see what the after-market comes up with. This approach has paid off for us in the past as the Genesis Coupe’s after-market is still maturing.

wiffleballtony > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 17:11

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Bytemite > gawdzillla 04/11/2016 at 17:21

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I don’t quite follow? The OP already bought the car after doing extensive comparing and test driving. He test drove other GT cars and sports cars. It is time to get familiar and modify and enhance the vehicle, not be comparing it to another car again. That ship has sailed. He only used his Jetta as a past positive experience with a certain engine oil additive which led him to use it in the Hyundai.

Torque is irrelevant until you factor in RPM. The result is horsepower, which is now relevant. So, I don’t know where you’re going with this either.

qbeezy > Zachary Oberle 04/11/2016 at 18:46

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Great write up. I have the BK2 and owned a BK1. The BK1 lacked the engine and tranny refinement. Especially the transmission. The manual isn’t very good and it holds back an engine with potential. For handling issues, I got better rear sway bars. And I got a set of stick Falken rubber and it brought the car to life. Bumpy Detroit roads scared the hell out of me, but with time you’ll understand how to handle it. And the engine mounts were a no brainer for most on the Gencoupe forums.

Zachary Oberle > qbeezy 04/11/2016 at 19:11

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Yea, Hyundai really spiffed up the manual trans as the model years went by. The 2010 manual trans is still more than good enough, you’ve just got a much lower chance of finding a good one. They’re pickier about their fluid spec as well which is something we’ll touch on in the next article.

As we’ve lived with the car, we’ve come to learn that most of the Genesis Coupe’s apparent manual transmission problems are actually more the fault of poor drivetrain mounting. The badly restrained drivetrain thrashes around in the chassis and can make gear selection under duress a real pain. A lot of transmission, differential, and rear suspension damage occurs on these cars due to the combination of hard driving and crappy mounts.

We’ve come to tolerate the car’s problematic lack of bump travel, but are still on the lookout for a good solution for improving it. Over time our rapport with the car has improved and we can predict when it is going to have problems related to the bump travel. This familiarity combined with a lack of good after-market solutions has caused us to put this problem on the back-burner. Plenty of cool stuff to do in the mean time, most of which is applicable to the later BK2 cars such as yours.

Stay tuned.