Mk2 Golf IHI track car... Rear body work and door catches

Ok now photobucket seems to be working I can bring you guys up to speed on the latest happenings...

Firstly here is a brief snap shot of what has been eating up all my time up until a few days ago...



It doesn't show it in the pics but I've also installed a full Race Technology dash, data logger and video 4. Which is an awesome piece of kit and I ighly recomend getting one if you are thinking about buying a data logger setup. The car was ready in time for the last two meetings of the season and after a few gremlins at the first round we had a really positive round at the last which should see us being competative in the coming 2013 season.

Right thats enough about the BMW, now for the main event!


I've bought a few more bits of kit for the workshop...

A plasma cutter you say???????






Finally bit the bullet and bought one and all I can say is that I have never bought I single tool that has saved me so much time and effort! It really is very easy to make big holes very quickly!

I also picked these up cheap from a local guy...





and then made the 2nd prototype ball joint dropper...





still not 100% finalised on the exact dimensions but it's not looking to far away from completion now.

Last but not least I've been having a look at using R32 / TT front hubs as they already have a better lower ball joint position and are a bit more robust straight out of the box. I also made a set of dummy shocks to allow me to check for clearance issues on full bump and on lock. I made them from some old scrap pipe and a bit of M20 bar with a nut welded on the end. As you twist the nut it raises the hub an also allows for the checking of the geometry.





Like I say not much progress has been made recently but I'm hoping to pick up the pace over winter and get a lot done before the new season starts. So watch this space!!

 

Feels like an eternity since I last posted here, where does the time go?!

Unfortunately I haven't spent the time working on the mk2 so if youre expecting a photo of the finished item I'm sorry but you'll have to wait that little bit longer. What started off as a "I'll just sort out the front suspension over winter has turned into an epic voyage of discovery and investigation filled with frustration, disappointment, excitement and many other emotions that have at times questioned the logic of continuing the project. To recap, in the beginning the plan was simple, "raise the top mounts to give more suspension travel" simple! This quickly deviated to include lowering the chassis as much as possible, without destroying the geometry, while retaining OE suspension pick-up points and using OE suspension parts as much as possible. Still sound fairly simple? Well after not a very long period of time I soon started to encounter problems with the position of the steering rack, wishbone angles, scrub radius, bump steer, the drive shafts, the down pipe ect ect.. Some of the problems were straight forward interference issues and remedied by remaking / modifying parts to allow for more clearance. Such as, while checking the bump steer I noticed that while on full compression the O/S driveshaft would fowl the downpipe and engine mount. Easy modify the engine mount and make a new down pipe.


I removed the engine mount, marked out the area that needed to be notched and squared it up on the mill and then slowly removed the required amount of consolidated swarf until there was sufficient clearance around the driveshaft. I then welded a strengthening brace inside the mount to regain the strength lost by the notch.







I'm confident that the driveshaft will never reach that height with the planed setup but if I change something or go for a different setup at a later date I wanted to know that I wouldnt have any issues with it.
With the engine mount sorted next on the list was the down pipe.

I was using the Jabba Sport IHI down pipe and to be fair it's done well. I've only had to repair it the once and that was probably down to not having a flexi joint in the system to allow for engine / exhaust movement which eventually made it crack. The Jabba down pipe is 2.5 inch and has a relatively sharp bend in it but still has enough flow for my 350hp. With that in mind I found an IHI flange and some 1D 304 stainless steel bends on eBay and made use of the space I had available.




It's tight on the bulkhead but I'll make a small relief when I finish up the bulkhead. Like I say it's tight but it's now 3 inch with a smoother radius and will be fine.



To be cont...
Part B too follow

 

Wow massive amounts of work and thought going into this look forward to part B

 

Time for part B...

With the racing season over its now time for me to focus on getting this thing back into a usable condition!

A few months ago I had what seemed like a good idea...

What with the MK2 being so far away from completion and the ever present urge to get out on track what I needed was a cheap and cheerful trackday stand in. A quick trawl on ebay and I found this little beauty...




Spec. list

1998 MK3 Golf 16v GTi
156000 miles
With ABS and Air conditioning

All for the grand total of 160!

Now for the catch!

It was advertised as a non runner "turns over but won't start".

OK, not the end of the world, flat battery/ duff starter motor/ fuel pump maybe?

It was in Bicester and as luck would have it I knew someone who was going right past it with an empty trailer.
The night it arrived I started the investigation. Looking thought the service history it had had quite a lot of money spent on it, new starter motor, new battery and a new clutch all within a few months. So somebody had been trying to look after it. Next was the turn of the key...

Nothing! Battery was totally flat. Half hour on the charger and I tried again... The engine now turns over but it sounds like no compression! Off with the cam belt cover and low and behold a snapped belt. Oh well never mind, whip the head off and stick a few valves in it...



Er no!

Here is all that is left of no3 piston...




So much for an easy quick fix. Never mind all was not lost! Time for plan B.













Sorted!

...or so I thought!

I had a Passat 20v turbo engine knocking about for ages so with a combination of the ABF parts I ended up with a hybrid abf-aeb.
The aeb was brought as scrap for next to nothing because it had no oil pressure and rattled. After taking the sump off it I found a load of silicon sealer blocking the oil pick up pipe. Looked like the usual "the more silicon the better" type effort when the sump was resealed. I checked the main bearings and they seemed ok, the big ends were not so good! A new set of shells and all was good. I took the cams out to check the top end and found that the last bearing on the exhaust cam had just started to pick up. A quick wet and dry and it cleaned up nice. Fingers crossed it will be alright... and it was!

Had a few problems getting it started due to stuck injectors, a bad starter solenoid and a blown TCI pack but when it did start it ran like a watch! The only problem was that I couldn't get 3rd gear. As a starting point I checked the shifter tower...



Not a good start!

I swapped it out with another from a spare box but still no 3rd gear. This means I now have to take the box back out. Not very impressed at this point but what can you expect from a car you paid 160 for.

I pulled the box back out and stripped it to reveal a whole host of issues....

The 2 of the bearings in the selector cradle had broken up...






3rd gear syncro had broken into 3 bits and there was a lot of debris that had worked it's way round the box.







So what to do now???

I had 2 other gearboxes I could bolt straight in but after a check of the ratios the mk3 ratios looked a bit better. Also the mk3 gearbox casing is slightly different to the mk4 20v and the 2ltr 16v corrado boxes I had to hand. Not a problem, I'll swap the bits I need from the mk4 box (as it had done less mileage than the corrado one) in to it and use the mk3 gear ratios.




Unfortunately after counting the teeth and checking the ratios I found they were identical! So I might as well have fitted the mk4 box straight in and saved the extra work. Oh well, it was to late to worry about that so I carried on with the original plan and swapped the mk4 gear cluster into the mk3 box.








Here are the differences in the bell housing bolt positions...




This made me laugh when I was looking at this and the penny dropped....

Gear-box




I refitted the gearbox and took it out for a spin. Gearbox was spot on! The rear wheel bearings on the other hand were not! The noise was incredible! I haven't heard bearings that noisy in a long time. Still it's an easy fix so it's not the end of the world. There are one or two other bits I still need to sort out for the MOT so I'll just add these to the list...

Air bag light on -slip ring
ABS light on -ABS pump fault (have found a possible repair for this on a Volvo forum)
N/S/R wheel arch trim missing
Heater resister missing WHY???
Two rear wheel bearings
One tyre

I've also got another intercooler for it as there isn't really the space for the charge cooler.

Once I get all this sorted I should be out for a few cheap winter trackdays!





More to follow...

 

and here's more...

A little update with the BMW now...

After nearly 12months of racing we had a problem with the fuel system not passing scrutineering. It's a bit of a long story but the short of it is, we had a two day meeting at Rockingham it passed Saturday, took the car home under instruction from the owner because he didn't want to trust leaving it there, and then it failed on Sunday. Could have been an issue but the scrutineer was quite understanding and said get it sorted for next time.

Anyway, the race was a bit disappointing with the drivers heart not really being with it which lead to a poor qualifying and two dull races. So after the race and with the car back I set about modifying the fuel system.

The crux of the problem was the fact that the car has no fire wall between the driver and the tank. After removing the quick fill pipe work, which we never used anyway, I made up an alloy box and changed all the fuel lines to FIA spec Teflon lined braided. This meant I also had to modify the swirl pot to take a -6 Teflon fitting.













The lid is held down with latches and R pins, I knew these pins would get lost / forgotten to get put back in so I had an idea to overcome this problem...





I glued 3 strong little magnets to the underneath of the lid, no more problem.

After each session / race I empty the tank and refill with between 20-30Ltr depending on what track it is. To get the fuel out I made use of the FIA test port and made up a fuel transfer pump.






The box, which has its own pump and filter inside, sits on the tank and clip to the battery in the front. One pipe goes to the test port and the other to a jerry can. I measured the fuel delivery at battery voltage so when switched it on you can time how long it takes to empty the tank and then convert that into litres to see how much to had left in the tank to adjust the next fill amount. It's a bit crude at the moment and needs refining but works really well. I also want to fit a volt meter to check battery voltage and an amp meter to see current draw 3.3Amps while pumping, 1.5Amps when empty. Saves lifting the pipe out of the can every 2 min to check and it will be more accurate on the timing.

 

And there's more!

Time for the main event!

I managed to work out what I needed to make the ball joint dropper / roll centre adjusters and how I could make them but there was a problem!

Because of the shape of the dropper I couldn't just turn them up on the lathe so it would be a combination of the lathe and the mill. The only problem was the mill didn't have reverse on it which I needed for one of the operations. I spoke to my mate, who's an electrician by trade and he said to just swap the live and neutral around. Even I knew that because it's AC current this wouldn't work. Scary to think he does this sort of thing for a living! It's only single phase so I looked into how difficult it would be to reverse the motor. It turned out, not vey!

All you need to do is to find the two ends of the start windings and reverse the terminals...

***(lost these photos in the transfer)***



In the end it wasn't too bad. I had to remove the motor completely to make sure I got the right wires but it turned out to be the two blue wires. I ordered up a forward and reverse switch and also an on off kill switch.

Went from this...



To this...





When I get round to making the dropper I'll post the reason behind needing the mill to turn backwards but that's a job for another day.


As for work on the actual car...

I've managed to finish all the welding on the front wheel arches and get them in primer...






Also managed to get the drivers seat mount sorted out...

With the wheel arches encroaching into the foot wells the pedals will be located a few inches to the left of where they would be normally. Consequentially to keep the seat inline with them I had to cut the tunnel to allow the seat frame to move over.




Also, the added benefit of doing this was that it would help improve the CoG not by much but it all helps.

Seat mounts going in...









I wanted to get the seat as low as possible so instead of sitting the seat brackets on top I made it so that the seat would fit between them and bolt through to the floor. All in all I managed to get it about 35mm lower and 35mm further to the left.

I have started the passenger side but I haven't taken any photos of that side yet.

That's all for now..

 

Good to see this progressing again, one of my favourite builds.

 

After many moons I have finally found some time to post a little update...

Due to a change of circumstances I'm going to have to sell my mk3.

I made a few changes since the last update though. I ditched the charge cooler for a front mount and connected it to some epic pipe work.










I wasn't really bothered about getting optimum power / boost / shortest pipe run as I wanted to practice my alloy welding.
After that I fitted the rear exhaust box off the mk2 which will no longer fit after the planned changes to the rear of the car.






I also fitted a set of coilovers, four new tyres, referbed the alloys, got the air con working + re-gassed it, set the corner weights, gave it a good polish and fitted a genuine set of GTi 16v badges.














All in all I am really pleased with the way it turned out and never did take it on track as what with work and other things I just never found the time.

Hopefully it will find a good home and someone will get some enjoyment out of it rather than it just sitting there being neglected.

As for the mk2....

I have made a little progress on the front hubs and here is a little snap shot of what's been going on...









more to follow on this in the next few days.

 

TOPICS LIKE THIS MAKE FORUMS

 

Good to see some progress.

 

Does anyone know this guy on Facebook I need to get hold of him

 

Once again I find myself wondering where all the time has gone since my last post??? It really has flown by!

So here I am again with another monster update for the BMW race car I've mention before, a couple of mk2 golf 20vt's and a mk4 20vt to prove I've not just been twiddling my thumbs and making up excuses.

First port of call is the mk4 20vt in for a big turbo conversion. I didn't take many pictures of this for some reason but here are the ones I did take.




Like I say i didnt take many photos for some reason.

Was in for a GT28rs APT turbo kit, Mishimoto Intercooler and radiator and some custom pipe work. Was a bit of a strange setup with the turbo kit as it was designed for left hand drive originally but it has an elbow to move the turbo back into the right hand drive location to avoid it hitting the servo. The clearances were so tight on the downpipe it was amazing it didn't fowl anything. Not a kit I would recommend in a hurry but it was what he wanted. Its still waiting for engine internal upgrades so I've no idea what power it's got or should have. Will probably be quite brisk though.


Second on the list is the e36 BMW M3 compact race car i look after...

On its last outing (pre-mods) it picked up 3 3rds and finished 3rd over all in the Britcar Trophy at Thruxston. It was a good result as we had numerous problems and issues throughout the day and we were up against teams / drivers with a lot more funds, equipment and people.

After the weekend it was discussed that we need to find a bit more speed in the car. After looking at the data logger and playing with some numbers it was determined that finding more grip instead of more power would give the best return on investment ( per second gain in lap time). So a plan was hatched to increase the track front and rear, fit a more areo front end, beef up the rear arms and to sort out the rear geometry.




The front and rear track was first on the list...

Using E46 m3 lower front arms and wider spacers on the rear the track is now 6 inches wider front and back.
To get the E46 wishbones to fit the E36 hubs I had to machine out the ball joint holes 2mm to take the larger ball joints. Not too bad a job but as always nothing is straight forward and what with it being a 3degree tapered hole it took me a week just to find the correct size cutter for the job. Still once I had the right tool it was fairly easy once it was all lined up on the mill.






After cutting the taper I made an aluminium insert that was the same taper so I could polish the seats and get a nice tight fit. All worked out well and with a combination of E46 / E36 wishbone bushes the arms were a perfect fit.
A new anti-roll bar mount was also fabricated as the E46 roll bar mounts to the strut and not the wishbone.





Next was to reposition the top mounts to reduce the camber and to sort out the scrub radius. Position, cut, check position, weld, grind, paint reverse copy and paste to other side...









Made a new strut brace as well a the old one was now to short.





The on to the rear..
Rear swing arms were beefed up to very early E30 dtm spec with the help of a few plates and a tube welded on...

Before..





After...








Body kit next...


















Testing at Bedford Autodrome showed some promising results with an increase in maximum vector g but as there was no previous data from there with slick tires fitted so a back to back comparison will have to wait.

 

Thirdly I had to finish off a 20v conversion on a mk2 for a friend. I also made a new 3 inch down pipe, alloy centre console and sorted out the custom intercooler pipe work along with fabricating a boss for the boost pressure sensor.






Now time for the mk2.

I have now finally finished the front hubs to relocate the roll center to the desired position. It's been a long journey but I have finally finished this part of the project.
Here is the whole process from start to finish...

Firstly I re-rusted two mk3 GTi front hubs in an electrolysis tank I made out of an old plastic oil barrel, a battery charger and some vanish oxy action. I didn't get any pictures of before but they looked like they had been at the bottom of the ocean for 20 years when they 1st turned up. two days on a small trickle and they came out like brand new!

I've got some more hubs to do so I'll do a better right up and get a few more pictures when I do them but for now your best off just Google-ing electrolysis.

Once the hubs were rust free and clean I could set about modifying the bottom ball joint mount to where I wanted it. The problem I had was that the OE location was too close to the wheel bearing and it was at such an angle that the fitting of mk2 style ball joint dropper was out of the question. I did look into fitting Audi TT front hubs but they were very heavy and put the steering arm in the wrong place. They also have a different offset on the hub so the brakes would need to be modified and I would have to buy 2 Audi TT shocks for the front and 2 mk2 golf shocks for the rear. So all in all it was easier just to modify what I had, so I did.

The first thing I needed to do was to make the hub square at the bottom so it would allow me to fit a roll center spacer of the required length without it interfering with the disk. I was going to make an elaborate tapered angled ball joint extender that bolted to the hub then squared off the hub and then bolted to the bottom ball joint. This was why I spent hours making the mill turn backwards, so I could hold the elaborate thing at the angle of the mk3 hub ball joint and then turn down the outside of the elaborate thing to the right diameter. Doing this I also had the problem that I was unable to mill a taper so it just wasn't really going to work. So the next idea was to to just weld up the old hub until there was enough metal to machine off back to square. The hub is made of cast steel and not cast iron so its weldable with a mig unlike cast iron, it was just going to take a lot of mig wire and time and it did! About 3 hours of welding per hub although this did include allowing for it to cool off after each pass so that it didn't overheat and affect the strength of the hub.

I pre-heating the hub to about 400 degrees C with the gas welding torch and then first filled in the hole for the ball joint.




Let it cool a little bit, run a bead, let it cool, run a bead, let it cool until there was enough material to bring it back to square.




Once I had finished the welding on both hubs they were then clamped on the mill and the first rough machining was done to determine which hub needed more taking off / more welding on.





The measuring after the first round of milling, this was to make sure both hubs were equal after the final machining.




The end result was that on of them needed another 1.5mm adding to one face and 1mm removing from the other.




Bit more welding, bit more milling and both hubs were now done and were both the same. All that was left was to drill the hole for the bolt to hold the roll center adjuster and they were complete for now...

Next part is the roll center spacer. This was easy compared to the hubs!

I just used a 50mm diameter piece of mild steel and turned it down to the required dimensions. I will probably use a smaller diameter in the future as I had half a dustbin full of swarf off the lathe after both spacers were finished.




Once these were done all that was left were the ball joint bearing holders. I cut these out of 6mm steel plate and welded some COM12 spherical bearing holders to them.






This was the first one I made with the bearing holder fitted at 90 degrees to the bracket. After a test run on the car I found that the angle the hub lays at was loosing 5 degrees of bearing travel and could run the risk of bottoming out / running out of angle on the bearing and would cause it to bind. So on the next one I milled out the hole at 5 degrees with a fly cutter to bring it back to square when sitting at ride height.

Here is a comparison of where it was to where it is now...



Finally a picture of one side installed on the car... (this has the new 5 degree angled bearing)





Just need to sort out some new bearings and hubs and then its ready for final assembly.

I'm so pleased with the way these have turned out you won't believe! It also means I stand a chance of getting it back on its wheels this year!

I've also managed to get a bit more done to finish off on the passengers seat base and got the crotch strap eyelet fitted.




This picture doesn't really tell the full story as it took me about 5 hours on and off to get the eyelet fitted. Why did it take so long some of you may ask? Well as you can see it is very close to channel in the floor which means the plate the eyelet screws into has nothing to weld to. So after grinding off all the underseal with a zip wheel I had measure the channel which was different both ends to make the template for the plate to fit against the floor so it was flat for the seat belt eyelet to weld to.





That's all for now. Sorry if this is a bit rough and ready but I hope to be a bit more frequent with the updates from now as I really do want to get this back on the road again sooner rather than later.

 

Thanks for the updates !

I`ve done quite a bit to mine, but it`s not worth an update, you spend all day and don`t seem to get much done, so I can appreciate the time and effort required to get done what you have. Nice one

 

Yeah it really is amazing where the time goes! Now that I have a bit more time available I should be able to crack on with it! Although I've just ordered some bits to go down the 6n2 rear wheel bearing route and its cost a small fortune so I'm not sure how long for! lol

 

Great update!

Just out of interest, why have you ditched the Charge cooler set up?

 

great build so far! looking forward to further updates!

 

WOW!!! Great updates

 

BMW = especially the turrets

Thank you ...

 

I swapped the charge cooler because it didn't really fit all that great and because it cost me 700 when i first bought it and I didn't really want to modify it for something that was only meant to be a gap filler until I got the other golf ready. The intercooler and the pipes was about 140 I think.

I should have enough for another update soon, been working on it with all the spare time I have (which isn't much) but progress is being made!