An idea of how it might look: The tunnel was a bit thin at the leading edge of the new tower where the hole used to be for the old shifter, so I made up a sandwich plate to bolt down through the tunnel and clamp the new shifter into place: Started removing the old box linkages under the bonnet to allow me to hook the cables up and position the inner stops: First volvo cable in place: Measured up positions for the first cable stop, and welded it to a base plate. my welding isn't pretty, so don't be nasty :laugh: Cleaned up and in place: First cable test fitted: Second cable stop clamped up ready to tack: Decided to add a little gusset on this one as it'll take more abuse on the fore / aft movement Nasty welding, but it's strong enough! Cleaned up a bit: All the parts sanded down and primed: Then 3 coats of Porsche 8C6 orange: And laquered: Time to start installing Gaping hole needed filling: Painted black, and all bolted up and finished Sorry the last pics are dark, it got dark! shifter feels really awesome to use, to precise with ball joints on all ends now, really accurate from gear to gear, and a nice short shift too which I can adjust to suit my needs. Aside from feeling a bit more positive, there isn't really a great deal more to it, but I've seen these in the past and ALWAYS wanted one, so when one popped up on ebay, I just had to have it!
Many many thanks for all the info regarding the shifter, my A3 will sport exact same set up for next season
So, a final catch up to bring the thread up to date. 2013: After driving the car looking like a breaker for 6 months, it was finally time to get it looking it's best again, so it went into the bodyshop in the care of my good mate Jamie: It was awesome to see the car finally looking how it should again, I was finding it really hard to get motivated and enthusiastic about it when it looked so crap, having it painted really spurred me on again I also took a trip up to Ace Cafe one month, where a nice chap with a camera took a few shots of the inside: next up was brakes, after Donington early in the year and Abingdon, we felt like the brakes were running too hot. Power was fantastic from the LCR brembos, but pads were not lasting too long due to the excess heat, and pedal feel would start to go after a long session on track and require some time to cool. We took a bit of a gamble, and opted for some Forge motorsport 6 pots: More on those later!
I decided to turn my attention to getting all the controls just right for me. In my Mini I have a KAD internal linkage, which puts the gear lever really high up next to the steering wheel: I wanted the lever higher in the A3. An ideal solution would have been to make a new tower to mount the shifter higher up, but this would mess up my cable setup, and mean having to remake my centre panel also which I didn't fancy, so I had a mate make me a gear lever extension: Please escuse the dodgy instagram pic, it's the only one I can find from the time: Of course, with the lever 4'' higher up, it made the throw very long indeed, so i set about adjusting the shift levers at the box end to compensate for this: Next up was pedals. I was having issues with heel n toe with the forge brakes due to increased pedal travel from the larger pistons. After chatting with a mate who races in the MaX5 cup, I decided to make my own pedals to suit my needs. Throttle pedal: 3mm alloy, just slightly larger and wider than the stock pedal, same position: The clutch pedal, 3mm alloy again so as not to change location too much: And the brake pedal, 10mm alloy this time to bring the pedal up relative to the throttle, and also offset heavily to the right: This arrangement makes it very easy to heel n toe as the brake and throttle are fairly close, and also makes left foot braking very easy as there is plenty of room between the brake and the clutch. having a massive wide pedal also makes it very easy to switch between left and right foot braking, sometimes usefull for reducing dead pedal time
Ever since the crash, I hadn't been 100% happy with how the car felt at high speeds, over 100mph. I felt it was skittish and not totally stable at the back end, especially when coming off the power at speed. Now, I'm no aero expert by a long way, but having followed NigeP's threads for years I decided I wanted to at least have a stab at it. Purely as an experiment, I took a massive gamble and ordered a low profile rear ring on ebay. YES - it looks VERY questionable - I know. especially the pixie ear end plates. ARGH. On the road it was impossible to notice any difference, aside from an annoying whistle at around 80mph - More speed required to see if there are ANY effects at all. On a more private test track, a quick buzz up to 130mph showed some interesting results. call it a placebo by all means, but the car no longer felt so nervous above 100mph. Travelling at 130mph felt less scary than previously touching 100. Not scientific at all I realise, but there certainly felt like there was a difference. I put an old road sign to good use: And made some new end plates: I also made up some brackets to move the wing rearwards a touch, still far from an ideal location, but further back is better on the whole
With the end plates done and the wing moved back, the whistle was gone at any speed. We did a track day to test the effects of the wing, and the results seemed pleasing. On track where previously the car had been quite tail happy, it seemed much more planted at the back, to the point where I actually increased the stiffness of the rear ARB to make it more playful. The one small downside was a slight increase in understeer in higher speed corners, which was to be expected. Now, as I said before, I'm no aero expert, and I'm not foolish enough to think that this wing is functioning brilliantly giving me XX Kg of downforce, but whatever it's doing, even if it's only acting as a spoiler in it's current location and negating some of the lift generated by the hatch back shape, the difference was noticable to both Dad and I. We even removed it for a session and its absence could definitely be felt. Happy days.
Around mid summer, i got approached by BeachBuggy Turbos who asked if I was willing to test a new product he was developing. Dan (BBT) was looking to see if he could mount the 2.0 TFSI turbo - the k04 064 onto the 1.8T engine. These turbo's had been getting fantastic results on the 2.0 TFSI motors - Dan felt sure that they could produce similar results on a 1.8T without the need for the expense of a big turbo. Due to the custom requirements for this, I didn't fancy taking it on on my driveway for a change, so I took the car down to Ben at Parsons performance, and we agreed to do it all together. His welding is considerably better than mine, so it was a no brainer that he'd weld up the downpipe. Having a ramp was also very handy! So, another empty engine bay! First offer up of the TFSI turbo, mounted using a custom made adapter plate Dan made to get around the different stud layout. The ports matched up perfectly between 2.0 and 1.8 T heads. It's a very neat setup, with the N75 attached to the compressor housing, and the actuator tucked away behind the block: Engine back in and inlet made up: Intercooler pipe work made up: The route is not ideal at the moment being so long, but it doesn't seem to be holding it back Downpipe made: Done!
On the road, the car felt fantastic with the tfsi turbo fitted. I was only running it on actuator pressure initially, keeping an eye on everything, but initial impressions seemed very good indeed. We did a small low key sprint at Curby which was great fun: I called in to see my gran after the Curby day, she's 93, and she absolutely LOVED the car! And a quick trip to Bills to run it on the dyno and check it was safe before I put too many miles on it: The results were great, considering this wasn't mapped yet and running on the map for the previous turbo:
More chats with Nige, and an hour or so of RobT's time at Inters - it was time for a splitter! I started by getting the car up on the ramps, I need to remove the bumper to drive it up the ramps, so that came off first: And up she goes: I took a measurement along the sill line to see where the car was sitting, this will become my target angle for the splitter to ensure it's parallel to the ground when finished, or slightly nose down if anything. I marked up the centre line, and drew around my existing LCR splitter to get a rough outline shape. Then added 100mm all round for the splitter projection, this should suit, as the sides of the LCR splitter curve in tighter than the bumper, so total projection on the sides ends up around 50mm. And out came the Jigsaw: Next up came the rear piece, all cut out and finished: The idea of making it in 2 parts, is that the front section is fairly likely to get damaged at some point, and also, if it were a single piece, I'd be unable to remove it and take it home if it were damaged. By making it this way, it can be removed and put in the back of the car if needed. Like so: (hole is to clear the dog bone mount) Held up for a test fit: (angle not set here) Hinges fitted to join the two halves (these will be bolted up in the finished product) I left a 2mm gap between the sections, which is just enough to allow adjustment of the splitter angle without the two parts binding. Rear section test fitted, this is bolted through the two captive bolts that hold the lower subframe brace in place. it's absolutely solid here! But as an extra, I added tie rods hanging down from the chassis rails to take extra weight I welded M8 nuts to the end of the thread bar, then ground it all down so there's as little as possible sticking down to catch I later scraped that fixing method for the tie rods, because it was awful, requiring the whole bar to be turned to remove, and the car to be lifted too high. useless. Getting there:
Once finished it'll come off for more paint Made a start on the air dam, this is just a test piece to get an idea of how it'll work air dam will be attached to the splitter via tabs: Supports layed out and washers and nuts ready: Supports in the slam panel lower, metal bar behind these spreading load. I can hang my whole body weight off this, so I'm going to consider it strong enough. Side view of the supports from the chassis legs: I checked under the car for areas that would be most exposed to heat, amazingly, it's really not THAT exposed down there thanks to the enormous 6 speed box blocking half of it off :laugh: This was all I had, so for now I positioned it in the key area: And it's on! Bumper on: Airdam on, not enough light from my iphone flash now for a proper pic: I also added some skids to the underside to save the plywood from wearing away: Initial impressions: I went out, and didn't get stuck leaving / entering my driveway: Straight to somewhere with level ground to check it's sitting level: Drove about 10 miles, roundabouts, country roads, the bumpy old A30, got up to some reasonable speeds, and no audible vibrating or resonating at 1XXmph, and nothing fell off, so I'm very happy so far!
Nick, changed from the Forge calipers mate? I thought I noticed the change over on ASN but I put it down to me seeing things at the time, lol.
The bare splitter alone was 8Kg, with all the fixings and the airdam the whole lot comes in at 10kg all up. Given how much it's transformed the way the car drives, i'd still run it if it were 50kg to be honest! It's made it a totally different car to drive. I can see why Nige has been plodding on with this aero stuff for a few years now, I certainly wouldn't go back to how the car was pre splitter now. You dead right Lewis, the Forge brakes are no longer on the car. I gave them a good shot for 6 months, and despite being great during road use I just couldn't get them to perform how I wanted on track. Forge were brilliant though and took them back no questions asked when I explained how they hadn't met my needs, really great guys to deal with and very receptive to feedback After the Forge brakes, I went back to what I knew with a set of LCR brembos and Godspeed 2 piece rotors: Not the best pic, but the only one I have: Stopping power wise, these were fantastic, but when running on slicks at Combe they just couldn't handle it and ran far, far too hot. In fairness to the brakes, they didn't fade or fail at all, but I did get just 200 track miles from a brand new set of DS3000 pads, so another solution was required. The latest attempt to get serious brakes without spending serious money:
I guess after about 200 pictures, nobody has any idea how the car goes at present, so rather than a post of pics, here's a post of various vids throughout the cars evolution: First Ring trip as a track car, 08:40 BTG May 2011: [video=youtube;nEOlZLpc474]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEOlZLpc474[/video] Comedy spin at Hullavington Nov 2011: [video=youtube;OuDObshqaIg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDObshqaIg[/video] Handling course at Inters 2012, came 2nd overall over the whole weekend and won 300 of eibach vouchers! Also the first time I met Chris and a few other CGTI lads: [video=youtube;vuuxh-6Irrg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuuxh-6Irrg[/video] Ring lap a year on, 08:20 btg with around 290bhp at the time. Looking back, this seems messy to me, but hindsight is always 20:20 I guess! [video=youtube;d7pvC74tKzc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7pvC74tKzc[/video] And the horrible event, skip to 1:40ish. [video=youtube;xaC8ihrJq_s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaC8ihrJq_s[/video]
