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New Clio 182 owner Bristol



  Pug 206 SW, 172 CUP
Hi!

I thought i'd finally get round to posting as i've been using this site for a little while now to help us (my dad and I) buy our next track day and motorsport car. As this site was so helpful my dad and i paid the membership fee so we're fully joined up now.

I'll try and keep this short and not a full on life story! I'll also try and add a few more pictures as i recently lost a hard drive and have to sift through back-ups.

We've been doing sprints and track days for about 6 years now. We started in a track prepared XR2 (after my dad sold his 300bhp rwd saph cossie) which had a cage, fibre glass bonnet, boot, track developments front and rear adjustable anti-roll bars, stage 1 gearbox with lsd etc and weighed 750kgs with all fluids and a 1/4 tank of fuel. It ran a standard engine but with a cross hatch head and went quite well however we sold it on due to it not be road legal and trailering it was a pain. I had an XR2 daily drive at the time so we moved as much as we could across from the track car and picked up an engine with twin 40 dcnf's and a 285 cam and managed due to improving driving skills to equal our times in the stripped out car. we ran it for a couple of years and really enjoyed the massively forgiving nature of the chassis and its nippy nature due to the low 850kgs kerbweight.

You tube video - This was the stripped out car. Steep learning curve i eventually did this course 5s faster in my daily drive fiesta. I've never been under any illusion that i'm a good driver. Pretty ham fisted is the conclusion i've come to!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM1v7ikkm9Y

My dad then decided he'd like a little more poke as the fiesta was only producing about 125bhp and would stop accelerating hard at about 80mph ( Fords gearing didn't help). It also didn't help that to make a big differance it was going to cost a few grand to get a really nice engine and get the gearing changed. The car was 25 years old and in very
good nick so we returned it to standard and sold it on to someone wishing to re-live boyhood dreams :D

Before anyone asks why didn't you fit a turbo or zetec we couldn't because of the regulations. A turbo engine is multiplied by 1.4 and a zetec would have put us in sports libre. Niether a great place to be with the capabilities of much more modern cars.

We had picked up a standard Honda CRX 1.6vt (now my dads daily drive) while selling the fiesta having seen an ex-challenge car with a B16a in put in very good times in the modified class. It was a joy to drive and although not quick by todays standards ( 0-100mph 22.1 autocar) it didn't feel slow. It also helped that the autocar test was with about 170kgs in the car and i only weigh 75 and we would remove another 30-40kgs by going light on the fuel and removing the spare wheel jack etc. we eventually fitted some eibach springs which made it even better. It served us well and would give us a class win if the elises weren't there! we'd beat a few of the 120's with lesser drivers in but we we're 8s adrift from the 200bhp+ ones with good drivers.

You tube video - Excuse the driving i'm no race driver, this was our first sprint with the car and believe it or not the crap start gave me my best 0-60ft time of the day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeGJj76K5Ew

Christ this is getting long i'll try and hurry it along!

My dad had picked up a ford puma 1.7 because of the CRX's huge glass area and the crappy winter we just had and i was getting frustrated with a fiesta MK3 project we we're looking into so we decided to look at just buying a cheap good car to finish off with until my dad retired (in about 18months) So i was looking at tatty Phase 1 clio 172's after constantly coming back to them while searchin old magazine articles for ideas. We then noticed that a lot of the daily drive figures weren't that far off from the puma....

... so we bit the bullet and decided to put all the money i had in, sell the puma and crx and pick up this

Clio-182-93603305929780470.jpg

Clio 182 with both cup packs (front splitter still there!), 55,000miles, cambelt done and a full years mot sounded good. We could maybe have got one cheaper but it was close and fuel ain't cheap these days!

We took a bit of chance as it was on ebay. We did get bitten a little because despite the ad saying all belts done the aux belt is off one groove on the top pulley and looks tired and it may have the coolant temp fault. Both aren't megabucks to fix so were not disappointed as the rest of the car is in pretty good nick and the recepits show everything else was done.

Aux belt, temp sensor and thermostat will be replaced asap because we don't mess around. We took the car on a similar run to our crx and it hit the 6.5k limit where as the crx's ecu was already quite happily allowing the vtec to cut in and spin round to the 8.2k limiter. It may just have needed more warming up but we not taking any chances. We don't spend our time bouncing cars off the rev limiter but my dad over took someone and it just seemed to hit the limiter early so we investigated.

So to finish up (trying my hardest) we took the CRX up to abingdon airfield this weekend to say farewell and had a great day. Shame we always ended up out with the 250bhp+ per tonne lot where you get done on the straights but almost run up there ass in the braking zones and corners. We just kept our distance and had great fun enjoying a 1.6 that loves going to 8k and a chassis that no matter what you do remains controllable even on the average tires that were on there. I had some lovely little four wheel drifts going on through the chicanes in my last session once the winter surface rust had completely left the brakes and i could confidently push the car hard.

The rear silencer unfortunately fell off on the way home (measly 90quid to replace and was shot anyway) and we got to enjoy the full vtec sound through what was left. Sad to say we were being a right pair of idiots (my dads 62 and i'm 30 for god's sake) enjoying the noise but we do it very rarely so i'm not going to cry about it and we didn't involve other cars. We only did it in 1st and 2nd on national speed limit roads. 3rd requires going up to 90+ which is taking the mick really.

So we're now on to the Clio and with the money left over we're going to do as many sprints, hill climbs, auto solos, track days etc as we can. If the clio does indeed handle as well as people say and is the full 5s faster to a 100 than the crx that autocar believes then it should be an absolute riot.

Martin ang John

P.S. we did consider the type-r but it was too expensive, too big and has a turning circle a metre worse than the clio so would have been absolutely useless at auto solos.

P.P.S. We have a preformance box thing which has turned out to be pretty accurate so if we get chance we'll try and get some times 1up (me 75kgs and my dad 72kgs) and with the same diet we put our crx on.
 
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  Pug 206 SW, 172 CUP
Apologies for the epic fail on keeping it short :sleepy:

And my dad has informed me that the CRX video is before he renewed all the suspension parts, fitted the eibach springs and the car was on yokohama A048R tyres. The car came to us without a cat as it was registered in 1991 and people just don't refit them when they go.
 
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