I thought it was about time I got round to making this project thread. Here goes:
In October this year I had my first taste of track driving, on an RAF Marham charity track day in my 182. I’d spent a fair bit of money getting the car ready for the day and everything paid off when it behaved faultlessly. Although this was only my first day, I’d caught the bug and decided that I wanted to do more.
With Marham being towards the end of the year, and the weather rapidly getting worse, I made the decision not to do anymore until the weather/light picked up a bit in march/april time. Thinking things through, as you do, I realised that I will still need a car to get me to and from work every day so using the same car on track would be a bit of a risk. Not so much through binning it, but the mechanical side of things.
Because of that, I went out and bought a Mk1 16v for the job
, and I’ll keep the 182 as my daily run around. Insurance love me at 19, but it’s what I want to do and I don’t have a lot of outgoings elsewhere!
Anyway. I got the car at the end of October for £550, with an extra set of terrible 17” wheels which have since sold on ebay for £100. So in effect the car has cost me £450. It needs a few bits doing, but since it’s now SORN’d I’m in no great rush. I got several of the replacement parts with the car which the previous owner hadn’t got round to doing. The most important thing is that it’s rust free, a big bonus.
When I got it:
In the garage under some light. It was pretty dark when those pics were taken!
Pretty pleased with what I’d got hold of, I left things as they were for the night and went inside. After work the next day I headed home and gave it a quick once over with the sponge in the dark. Amazing what ten minutes can do to the look of the car. I’d happily have paid more for the car if it’d have been like this when I went to look at it! Far from spotless, but a lot better than it was.
The theme of this car has been out and out track car from the start whilst staying road legal to get to and from tracks, and maybe the odd weekend hoon. With that in mind, I started pulling the thing to bits! Not too many photo’s of everything coming out as I got carried away and forgot.
Made a start on the tar under the drivers seat to see how much of an arse it was going to be. Very impressed how easily it comes out with a heat gun and scraper
I got a big bundle of receipts with the car, but there are no records of the cambelt having
ever been done. This, along with various other plans means that the engine will be coming out before too long. It’ll give me a good chance to have a cleanup of the engine bay too. The O/S front wing was cracked, so this came straight off anyway, but then I decided to take all the front panels off to give me more room to work. They’re currently sat nicely down the side of the house!
A quick change of wheels to my speedline chronos which were laying around. You’ll probably see the car sat on these for the length of the project, but I doubt they’ll be staying on.
Everything that came out the car was weighed to give me a rough indication of where the overall weight of the car was. I soon got bored of writing what each individual thing was so it turned into a bit of a mess. So before I started on anything too drastic it was minus 127kg.
Lots more to come. Thanks for reading, Chris.
In October this year I had my first taste of track driving, on an RAF Marham charity track day in my 182. I’d spent a fair bit of money getting the car ready for the day and everything paid off when it behaved faultlessly. Although this was only my first day, I’d caught the bug and decided that I wanted to do more.
With Marham being towards the end of the year, and the weather rapidly getting worse, I made the decision not to do anymore until the weather/light picked up a bit in march/april time. Thinking things through, as you do, I realised that I will still need a car to get me to and from work every day so using the same car on track would be a bit of a risk. Not so much through binning it, but the mechanical side of things.
Because of that, I went out and bought a Mk1 16v for the job
, and I’ll keep the 182 as my daily run around. Insurance love me at 19, but it’s what I want to do and I don’t have a lot of outgoings elsewhere!Anyway. I got the car at the end of October for £550, with an extra set of terrible 17” wheels which have since sold on ebay for £100. So in effect the car has cost me £450. It needs a few bits doing, but since it’s now SORN’d I’m in no great rush. I got several of the replacement parts with the car which the previous owner hadn’t got round to doing. The most important thing is that it’s rust free, a big bonus.
When I got it:
In the garage under some light. It was pretty dark when those pics were taken!
Pretty pleased with what I’d got hold of, I left things as they were for the night and went inside. After work the next day I headed home and gave it a quick once over with the sponge in the dark. Amazing what ten minutes can do to the look of the car. I’d happily have paid more for the car if it’d have been like this when I went to look at it! Far from spotless, but a lot better than it was.
The theme of this car has been out and out track car from the start whilst staying road legal to get to and from tracks, and maybe the odd weekend hoon. With that in mind, I started pulling the thing to bits! Not too many photo’s of everything coming out as I got carried away and forgot.
Made a start on the tar under the drivers seat to see how much of an arse it was going to be. Very impressed how easily it comes out with a heat gun and scraper
I got a big bundle of receipts with the car, but there are no records of the cambelt having
ever been done. This, along with various other plans means that the engine will be coming out before too long. It’ll give me a good chance to have a cleanup of the engine bay too. The O/S front wing was cracked, so this came straight off anyway, but then I decided to take all the front panels off to give me more room to work. They’re currently sat nicely down the side of the house!
A quick change of wheels to my speedline chronos which were laying around. You’ll probably see the car sat on these for the length of the project, but I doubt they’ll be staying on.
Everything that came out the car was weighed to give me a rough indication of where the overall weight of the car was. I soon got bored of writing what each individual thing was so it turned into a bit of a mess. So before I started on anything too drastic it was minus 127kg.
Lots more to come. Thanks for reading, Chris.
