74 Firenza Coupe (31 Mar 10 - Lucky Escape!)

pity about the head gasket, but very good service to get it done for you at short notice

Once again Pitstop have gave you great service

plenty of sideway action in the snow fall? planed and unplaned!

 

Absolutely no choice about the sideways in the snow - I think I drove the whole way to Northampton looking out of one side wndow or the other!

The car is actually remarkably easy to drive in the snow, off the throttle understeer, bit of throttle to get her neutral, bit more throttle and oversteer. Beat the hell out of driving FWD at work where everything seemed to give understeer - except handbrake which meant wild sideways lol.

I suppose some of you might wanna know what I was doing at Northampton Motorsport for 6 hours on the wednesday....




Here's a hint to some of it



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nice

another one....

Bill Dryden in the SMT Vauxhall

 

Some ridiculous sized slicks on these cars! What sort of power were they running?

An interesting piece in Autocar a couple of weeks ago. An inside-back cover feature, which they're seemingly running for all marques, entitled "What has <car mfr name> ever done for us ?"

For the Vauxhall piece, this what what it said:

The car pictured was a red Firenza, AXD 771M.

 

Power-wise....



Old Nail and Tony Davies' car were reckoned (by Blydenstein) to be around 280bhp in 2.5 litre Twin cam spec.

Some people ran to 2.6 (further stroking) which limited Power output to about 250ish (through revs) but could mean 240 or so lbft.

Bearing in mind a std Droopsnoot should be around 1000-1000kg. One that had been stripped and had fibreglass bonnet, boot, doors, front wings and rear wings was nearer 800kg or less.

SO fat slicks were useful to try and get the power down

 

Wheel colour help needed!

What colour shall I paint my wheels?


I'm thinking silver/chrome rims with gloss black centres. But then I think gold centres. And then I think all white. Then Bright yellow centres and silver/chrome rim. Then red (to match Griffin) with silver/chrome.


Ok, I've not really decided....

These are the type of wheels I'm painting - Revolution 4 Spokes (mine are bead blasted and awaiting paint)




So what ya think?

 

Classic black & silver IMO

 

I was sorely tempted to paint the centres Ninja Green (like the bike I brought to Curborough) but I've settled for the classic Black and Silver

 

Looking at the absence (or near-absence?) of Chrome on the car, I'd avoid polished/chromed lips completely.
I think you got the colour of the other wheels spot on for it, so I'd be tempted to do them the same colour.
Though if you wanted to be fancy (and possibly unique), you could do Satin Black centres with a Gloss Black rim

 

chrome/polished doesn't really appeal to me - too much work!

So the rims will go shiny silver paint as it's much easier to keep clean. The road wheels will get shiny silver painted rims at some point (they were supposed to be like that in the first place, just one more thing the guy who rebuilt a lot of the car got wrong)

Satin and gloss could look cool - although it would all soon go very matt as soon as it got dirty!

 

i think its way too cool a car for a volkswagen forum

amazing dexter, a truely awesome car i have a really good friend in NZ with 2 Vivas both look in amazing condition...

was only thinking the other day was 10 years since you came to my house in Ipswich, where da hell the time go

 

No way - 10 years? Whoooaaaaa


Are you feeling old buddy? Cos I sure as hell am now!

 

Just been reading about this car in this months Practical Performance Car.

 

Hope you liked the article - it was a pretty awesome drive to Northampton in the morning for the day, took the first two hours to do about 15-20 miles. The car didn't have problems with the snow, just all the modern ****e cars it had to weave round

 

I though that was your car in PPC - still to read the article though... will look forward to it now even more!

 

There's another one in Retro Cars I think... I saw it and checked to see if it was yours...

 

The funny thing about the one in Retro Cars is that it was rebuilt by a place not far from my home...


If only I'd taken my car there to have the work done in the first place!

(Although I'm still glad Pitstop built the engine - was faultless round Brands Hatch all day long )

 

One of the things that old cars don't have is as many backups/failsafes as modern cars.


Take the steering coupling - a rubber disc that is the only link between the steering column and the steering rack. It allows the change of angle between the two, as well as getting rid of vibration.

Unfortunately when it breaks you lose all steering - everything - car just goes wheels straight and goes straight ahead, regardless of whether you're on a straight or a corner......


Needless to say - I'm quite glad that mine broke just as it was going on the ramp to replace it, rather than out on the road!




I've been hassling Pitstop for months to get me some decals to put on the car; I'm very pleased with their work and wanted to give them some advertising.
Picked the car up today from having the steering coupling done and there were two lots of stickers on the seat

SO needless to say I've spent the afternoon throwing them at the car...

 

very nice & glad things went when they did instead of out on the road.

I had a similar thing with the mk1, drove it from S.Wales to TSR in somerset for work on steering only to find out the rack brackets were just about to break off when i got there!!!

 

That was very lucky, could of been an 'experience'