Anyway. More deliveries turned up today Nearly 3K off Custom Race plate Diffs. As you need 3 diffs for a Quattro. We are the first in the world to get our hands on these and should make a massive difference to the car. Gripper have been spot on and these are fully guaranteed for the life of the car. Anything goes wrong they will have them back to rebuild them. When the plates wear out they will send out new ones and if i want to change the thickness of the plates or ramp angles for take up its all included. If i blow them up they will modify the bit that breaks, make it stronger and send them back out all for free. So endless support. One of the best companies ive delt with. Here are a few pics from today. New cam covers for my old engine.
And a few random pics as usual This engine fell out of the RS6 and landed neatly on these axel stands This engine is huge it looks like it has come out of a plane. This pics does not show the real size of it. 600Kilos of engine The removal of the engine out of Dan's Track car has started. My old engine is going into this and im using the Bottom end of this for my Hybrid engine build. Sorry for the low quality pics, i only had my old camera on me.
Looking good as ever Mike. Loving the progress. My spidey senses are telling me there may be a ruddy great big Gripper Decal on the side of the car with support like that? fck me. No wonder a mate and me struggled to move one of them on a pallet around the floor was hard work.
Well the support comes with buying the Diffs. They did me a trade price on them as well which was good, but still serious dollar. More than my road car costs LOL. We will run some stickers on the car.
This is turning into a very serious build indeed! Very interested in the diffs, do gripper do them for any other cars other than the s4?
Gripper have found that Audi used the same diffs in most of their high powered turbo applications. Circa 1990 -2001 So these are the same as the S2 ones RS4 ones etc. Also they have made them adjustable so they can fit them into most quattro boxes. If you speak to John at gripper and mention you have spoken to me he should be able to help. They had mine for measuring to check exact dimension etc. And a good service
Well what a week. The whole build nearly got canned on monday. I was working out what i could sell everything for and how to get all the money back ive spent on her. Buts thats another story. But after a lot of thinking and chatting with a few people the build is still on and looks like it will be taken even further but over a longer period of time now. Original build costs have doubled now, but we will be creating a pure one off GT. Im off on holiday now for 2 weeks for a long needed break.
You called your car a "her". Your treating it like a person. Canning the project would be like killing a person. You're not a murderer are you? Enough of the guilt trip. I'm regularly minutes away from selling my car and it hardly costs me anything so I can probably understand coming up against times when such a massive (and awesome) project as this could get close to the edge when I can imagine, although it is still being done at a budget, some of the figures are probably eye watering! I for one would love to see you continue it, so am glad you've had a change of heart and getting back on it. Have a good holiday Mike!
Have a great holiday, time to rest - boy you must deserve it remember sunscreen if you'd decided to just do it to budget it would be a ongoing project for ever having to change something to move it on bottom line would be higher build costs & twice as long being worked on in workshop
I have read through this thread since just becoming a forum member & I am envious of your ability to build this sort of car. The cage really is a work of art. I hope that you can get it finished & on track soon. It would be great to see it racing. I'd love to race a quattro derivative myself but I doubt that will ever happen, sadly.
Yes, I bought the car of Gary Chappel, although I don't think he used it much. It was Barry Barnes' before that & I believe that it was a Dave Pitcher who imported it from NZ.
I tried to leave the thread on the back pages for a while but its been bumped up so i thought id better answer the questions. Well about a month ago I headed down to coombe for a track day. Just to watch and show my face as a few friends and racers were going and I had no intention of driving. I woke up in the morning not feeling great, a bit lethargic and drained. Work has been mental the last few weeks and without a good holiday for 4 years I was a bit low energy wise, what with all the late nights on the build. So on the way down I decided to drink one of these large cans of Monster energy drinks. Not a good idea. It didnt agree with me too well and I just didnt feel right, if you know what I mean. A bit odd, I hear the jokes coming already. Anyway Dans S4 track car (pictured earlier in the thread) just had my old 480bhp engine installed and was being tested out and mapped on circuit. After a few morning sessions all was going well and Dan wanted me to take it out, put it through its paces while he had the laptop plugged in car. At this point I was not feeling good a bit disjoined from myself and felt a bit odd after this monster energy drink. Anyway not wanting to let the side down I jumped in and off we go. To cut a long story short I could not get switched on, or connected at all. It felt like my hands and feet belonged to different people. I just couldnt drive to save my life. I missed a loads of shifts, nearly buzzed the engine on a downshift and was just all over the track and not smooth at all. I hadnt been out for 6 months and was a bit rusty but ****ing hell what a mess. I nearly got blacked flagged for overtaking in the wrong places etc. The seating position was all wrong for me and didnt like the whole experience at all. I limped back into the pits all dazed and confused with what had just happened. It was really embarrassing and to have Dan in the car made it all the worse, my reputation went down the pan. When you are surrounded by lots of racing driver friends who hold International Race licences and mechanics who have built some of the Quickest VW Cup racing cars around and who rate you as a Quick Driver. Then you go and drive like your on your first track day and a **** one at that, Muppet. When I left I could tell people were talking it was that bad, no joke. Over the weekend I got so ****ed off with myself and fed up with driving and racing in general. I want to bin the whole project, I was evening working what I could get for all the parts on the car. I got to the stage where I worked out I could break even. Minimal costs lost!!!! By Tuesday I didnt know what to do with it, even more confused and doubting if I could even drive at all. So I met up with Jamie for a beer and to talk things over. After a ale or 2 we basically came to the conclusion I was having a 'Really BAD Day' and not to worry about it. But the main problem was the with the S4 because I didnt get on with it at all, I just wanted to bin my one. And lost all faith with the project and me as a driver. I was reminded that the 11 trophys ive won for various top 3 finishes were because I can drive but seemed in the distant past now, if it ever happen at all. So the plan now is to scrap this season and slow down the build. Car is going into storage for a few months while we concentrate on the engine build. The upside is that it will give me more time to save for a few extras on the car rather than doing it on a tight budget and rushing it to get out there. Extras now on the shopping list are a Sequential Dog Box, A Motec M600 ECU, AP Pedal box, Digital dash with full data logging facilities. If your going to build it, do it properly. Not that I wasnt before but hey. You only live once. Cheers Guys for all the support. Means a lot Im picking up the heated windscreens in the next few days and the Aluminium RS4 uprights, shafts and larger CV joints. So a few more updates will get posted, but things will be a bit slower now.
Thanks for sharing all that Mike, sounds like you were very down after that moment on track as i could understand. Anyway good luck with the future & the build. Mike
Tricky one Mike, sorry to see something like that get you down. The thing surely to ponder is how many times you've driven that car, at that power? Once. If it's of any use I'd be quite content getting into a 4WD Audi on a quick track like Combe, knowing I'd be crap at it..... Sew together some half decent lines cos I know the track, but struggle to get anything like the potential out of the car, since IIRC it's on decent rubber too. Last May I drove the Reeves Mk2 for 10 mins & gave the keys back. The car had more power than whenever I previously drove it, I didn't know the track, and everyone else was fully in the groove and I was joining it cold, early afternoon. All sorts on the back bumper, it didn't feel right, no feel in the car, and the gear changes weren't any good. There wasn't time, so I gave it up as a bad job, came in, returned it to its rightful owner who went straight back out and started where he left off! Never gave it a second thought. Similarly, it took me an event just to get used to my Mk1. I'd hardly driven it properly until the 'Ring last year, gearchanges all over the place - first few weren't good. By the time you got in, I'd decided my pace and was used to it. Used it for 3 more events last year, wheeled it out 4 weeks ago for a keen run around the local roads: familiar glove. Whilst people like to be able to jump from car to car without a blip, IMO it's all down to seat time
