Had a good day on the car yesterday, Feeling a bit fragile after Tonys wedding on Saturday (top day out), the perfect sunshine and shorts weather inspired me to get up and get out working on the car by 9am I got the front up, and stripped the discs off. AP 330 x 28 rotors on solid bells: I stripped these down, and started to assemble the new 'Badger Bells' using the AP bobbin kit. first 4 to check it all lines up: And all 12 bobbins fitted loosely: You can see how the floating system works here: The disc is held on 12 bobbins, which are prefectly fitted to machined slots with around 1 thou of movement in the slots. The bells are exactly 8mm thick, and the bobbins are 8.25mm tall, so when the bobbins are bolted up to the disc, the disc can move side to side on the bell by 0.25mm. 0.25mm doesn't sound like a lot, but if you look at it as 10 thou", it's a fair bit! All fitted Found the cause of my recent ABS issues whilst I was in there too, the wire had come unclipped and had rubbed on the wider slicks at ADI: All repaired now. And summer shoes back on for bedford next week: At this point, Jardo popped over to say hello, and seemed confused as to why there was a cat going mental inside the car! Eek! i'd opened the car earlier to grab something, and next doors cat lilly must have jumped inside without me looking! The car had been shut for 2 hours, and I hadn't heard a thing. poor little cat was going nuts! Thankfully no damage to car or cat though. Phew. Took the car for a test drive and all is well, brakes are working brilliantly, with no ill effects from the floating. Some people say they're more noisey without spring clips, but I havn't noticed anything so far. can't wait to test them out on track! last thing for the day, I decided to fit my new dual core alloy rad. probably started this one a bit late as I didn't get in until 7, but it's done, and the car is ready for Bedford. Old rad out. Will be keeping this as it's only 18 months old: View through the front with a big hole: New alloy rad to go in, almost twice the width! And it's in, almost no sign that it's there with the bumper back on, but I know it's in there
Cut out a new wheel arch fence yesterday: And new one fitted: And all loaded up and ready to go to bedford
What an absolutely FANTASTIC DAY!!!! Properly buzzing after that one! It all started on Sunday, when I gave the car the once over, and we started loading up all the kit for Bedford: We tend to take quite a lot of kit with us! Then it was time to hit the road: Big Bad Dad and I somewhere en route to Bedford: We woke up to skies that looked pretty questionable over Bedford this morning: Thankfully, the rain held off, and the weather was fantastic all day long! Parked up in the paddock, ready to head out for sighting laps: BigAl at the wheel: Occasionally scary :laugh: The clouds soon passed, and we had glorious sunshine You can just about make out Alex's yellow mk2 in this one. He looked to be going very well today, and the car sounded lovely! I headed out for the first few sessions behind Nige, to try and get a crash course in Bedford Lines, this turned out to be very helpful indeed Big thanks Nige :thumb: A few sessions on the 03G's, and I decided it was time for the slicks. Que the gangster white wheels: I was incredibly lucky to have Jonny from http://www.carpromos.co.uk/ along for the day to do some filming on his awesome new Roadhawk HD setup. Jonny kitted out the car with all his gear, GPS data logger, and 3 HD cameras. I'll get some more pics of the setup from him shortly. We ran to the fuel light by about 11:40, with around 100 miles on the clock so far, so a trip to the on site fuel station was required for 50 litres of their finest 101 RON fuel: And another random picture because I like it: The new AP brakes were working seriously well. Very impressed with these so far: A quick snap of Gurds beautiful GT28 powered 16v mk1 golf. I love this car SO much, it's simply amazing: And a few pics of mine with Sambo's mental 550bhp A3: A3 friends!!!! So, come mid afternoon I found myself needing MORE fuel, so headed back for another 40 litres of 101. At this point we were up to a stonking 188 miles on track. After a Lotus (Lots Of Trouble - Usualy Serious) dropped all of it's oil around half of the GT circuit, the Javelin / MSV staff re-routed the track and opened up the south/east circuit for us to run for the last hour, which was cool! Seriously well organised from their side today. We managed to end the day on a whopping 242 miles on track. Almost 3 full tanks of fuel, the slicks held up well and have at least another full day in them, and the car was beyond perfect. It quite literally didn't miss a beat all day long. I opened the bonnet. The engine was still there, so I shut it again, and nothing more was done!
242 miles later still looking good: We did pick up a tiny bit of damage from a stone chip towards the end of the day, but no big deal: All loaded in, exactly as we arrived: Back on it's road shoes for the 120 mile drive home: And finally, 500 miles later, we're back at home, and it's time for bed Massive thanks to Nige and CGTI for organising an absolutely cracking day! Really great to meet a few new people and put faces to names I've been seeing on here for some time. Everyone was SO helpful and friendly, it really made the day for me. Such a great atmosphere within the CGTI bunch Dad had some cracking fun on track with Paul (trackcab16v) which I should have all on film Hopefully I'll get the footage through from Jonny some time soon and post it up on here
lol Haha, nice write up, awesome car and looks like a cracking day, the pics of the pit lane and the line up on track looks amazing Looking forward to the videos, glad the AP's worked as well as you'd hoped - hardly surprising though I suppose
You followed me out at the end - brilliant to see such a serious looking track weapon being driven home after a day of hard use
Thanks Dex We covered 500 miles in total driving to the track, on track, and home again! That's always been the brief for the car. it must be capable of driving TO the track, with all the gear we could need, and driving home again, in relative comfort. Seems to be working so far!
Thanks lads was really nice to meet a load of you and great fun sharing track space with similar cars
Boooo! it includes pics of your car too! There are some great shots on the Motorsportinfocus web page. I think I'll be buying these so I can get all the high res images to save
Just a quick in car clip from late in the day at Bedford on the South / East / North circuit: [video=youtube;RWicOd6qPTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWicOd6qPTo&list=UUMvpraYm_RLFjfGZaZZ_YtQ[/video] More to come soon
I'd like to spend more time on the suspension really, it's SO stable now it's crazy, but it does understeer a touch in the mid and low speed corners, but gives LOADS of confidence to pile into the higher speed corners without fear. the earlier GT track had a few more really fast corners that wern't in the south/east/north track in the vid above. I'm somewhere between stiffening the rear ARB, or softening the front, or perhaps both, and playing with damping to make it a bit more lively. It used to be a nightmare sliding around everywhere, but now it's just so stable, i could afford to live dangerously and make it rotate a bit more on request! Any advise from those with more experience than me on tweaking damping to get my desired result would be greatly appreciated. the car is running on KW V3's, which are adjustable for bump and rebound, but I've not played with them much since a basic setup 18 months ago
Jonny has edited and uploaded the first of his clips from Bedford somewhere mid afternoon Im guessing (You can hear me comment we'd done 168miles at the point we went out) Jason (Vorhees) as passenger, low boost for the whole session, lovely dry conditions One out lap, then about 2 and a half flying laps: [video=youtube;Y-6js5KoqVc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6js5KoqVc&app=desktop[/video] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6js5KoqVc Thanks for the vids Jonny!
A few totally random pictures after a sunny evening drive last night Poor splitter airdam took a battery at Bedford, it got smashed in several places by some hefty track debris! And a final one of me at the wheel, dressed as Captain Slow!
Thanks Eddie New splitter mounts made this week, to make the allen heads captive and protected. The old dome heads didn't last so well! New sunken heads, with incorporated wear protection: And the least interesting bit of all, a rebuilt driveshaft with new CV boot, and added boot venting to relieve pressure:
