205Gti,HondaCBR600RR
After my last trackday in the 350z I decided it would be a good idea to buy myself a trackcar before I ended up binning it. Got a 1.9 205gti for the bargin price of £500. It had a few running problems but they've been steadily ironed out on the way. However the shell is immaculate. Feels like its been a long journey from buying it to getting it to combe so I thought Id do a bit of a write up, its the closest thing Ive had to a project car.
To get it ready for castle combe (and hopefully a lot more trackdays this year) my friend Martin and I set about fitting it with r888's in 205/55/15 slightly wider than standard. This threw up a little issue of the tyres rubbing the rear arches, a couple spacers soon sorted that.
For the brakes I used black diamond grooved discs, ferodo ds25000s and goodridge braided lines with ate superblue fluid. This was a great combination til one of the copper brake pipes split on a pressure test. They were all replaced, didnt want that happening on track!
All I did for the suspention was to replace the front springs with eibach pros. After doing combe Im going to lower the rear torsion bar a bit.
The exhaust system was a bit of a boy racer affair and weighed a ton. And once it was up on a ramp we discovered that the exhaust manifold had cracked and need replacing. I bought an ashley competion exhaust and manifold. The fitment of it was terribile but with a lot of swearing and modifications we finally got it on.
After fitting the exhaust we found an air leak on the inlet manifold so had that apart to replace the gaskets. On removing it we found that some monkey had been there already and managed to break the manifold. This caused me a lot of concern as we found this on friday and I was driving it on tuesday. However with the help of jb weld we patched it up for the time being. Needs to properly welded before the next track session.
While we had it in the garage we replaced any worn hoses, the handbrake cables and did the cambelt and water pump.
After all the setbacks we had the gti came up trumps. It got me to castle combe and back and did 200 miles on track in between without any major problems. All the little niggling doubts I had when I arrived and saw cars faster/more expensive went after that first session on the track. I couldnt believe how much fun it was. I was grinning like an idiot all day. And my little gti made a good impression with the other drivers. Alot of "what engines in that then, its fairly flying". Had such a great day and my list of plans for it has got longer. Time to find a second job I think!
Thanks for reading. Dont think Ive ever written so much on here before, hope it wasnt too boring! Heres the pictures from the day.
To get it ready for castle combe (and hopefully a lot more trackdays this year) my friend Martin and I set about fitting it with r888's in 205/55/15 slightly wider than standard. This threw up a little issue of the tyres rubbing the rear arches, a couple spacers soon sorted that.
For the brakes I used black diamond grooved discs, ferodo ds25000s and goodridge braided lines with ate superblue fluid. This was a great combination til one of the copper brake pipes split on a pressure test. They were all replaced, didnt want that happening on track!
All I did for the suspention was to replace the front springs with eibach pros. After doing combe Im going to lower the rear torsion bar a bit.
The exhaust system was a bit of a boy racer affair and weighed a ton. And once it was up on a ramp we discovered that the exhaust manifold had cracked and need replacing. I bought an ashley competion exhaust and manifold. The fitment of it was terribile but with a lot of swearing and modifications we finally got it on.
After fitting the exhaust we found an air leak on the inlet manifold so had that apart to replace the gaskets. On removing it we found that some monkey had been there already and managed to break the manifold. This caused me a lot of concern as we found this on friday and I was driving it on tuesday. However with the help of jb weld we patched it up for the time being. Needs to properly welded before the next track session.
While we had it in the garage we replaced any worn hoses, the handbrake cables and did the cambelt and water pump.
After all the setbacks we had the gti came up trumps. It got me to castle combe and back and did 200 miles on track in between without any major problems. All the little niggling doubts I had when I arrived and saw cars faster/more expensive went after that first session on the track. I couldnt believe how much fun it was. I was grinning like an idiot all day. And my little gti made a good impression with the other drivers. Alot of "what engines in that then, its fairly flying". Had such a great day and my list of plans for it has got longer. Time to find a second job I think!
Thanks for reading. Dont think Ive ever written so much on here before, hope it wasnt too boring! Heres the pictures from the day.
