Last updated in October of last year
where has the time gone.
UPDATE!
Well, I spent some time in October getting the car ready for a charity track day. After driving there and getting excited, it was called off
It was too foggy. So that was that for 2012. I parked the car up and put a rain cover on it, outside the parents house - planning to revive it in the spring.
We moved house the week before xmas and so the Saxo came too - I finally got a garage, whoop.
The car sat there for most of January - whilst we moved in and got settled. I then started buying the odd bit off EBay in anticipation of this years track calendar.
Just as it was getting comfy in the garage, the 'fogged off' track day was re-scheduled for February and I thought I should pull my finger out.
My Xmas present consisted of some custom Faulkner springs for the front. Went for 230mm free length and 250lb rating. I matched them with some Group N Bilstein shortened dampers that I'd purchased last year. Once installed, it does look a bit high at the front, so maybe 210 or 220mm might have been better, but I was worried about unseating of the spring when unloaded... hey ho. They are as stiff as Jimmy Saville in a hospital though - very well made indeed.
Len_beach was very kind and bought me a little cage thing for my Odessey battery that I bought last year. I was a bit worried that the little thing wouldn't be worth pi$$ing on, but after a slow charge it registered enough voltage to rise a smile and I started on the relocation.
Removed old battery + tray (the thing was massive and very heavy) - then replaced the old connectors with one from a BMW: Ebay FTW.
The dash was getting in the way, so cut half of that out. Will do the rest when a cage is purchased.
Could also get better access to the loom + alarm etc, so removed them as well. Drilled a hole for the new battery cable and put the new battery just where the rear of the passenger front seat would be. After a worrying few days of the car not starting (ffs), I traced the issue to a crap gearbox to chassis earth and then she was alive.
Borrowed Len's heat gun to get rid of the footwell tar (1.5kg in total).
I also took off the old wing mirrors for some 'M3' style plastic EBay efforts from Taiwan!
Scientifically weighed them against the old mirrors from Citroen and saved 3Kg in total. Not bad, even if they are sh!t.
Also, whilst I had Len's heat gun, I took to the vinyl on the doors - they had all wrinkled, so took them off.
Before:
After:
Then I managed to strike a deal with a chap on the saxo forum for the following:
- Powerflex lower gearbox mount
- Group N top gearbox mount
- Group N top engine mount
- Wishbones with solid nylon rear bushes and powerflex front bushes
Here are the first 3:
And the wishbones:
Ball joints were shagged, so bought some new ones and had a local garage press them in + press out the old lower gearbox mount.
New lower gearbox mount in:
Dropped the gearbox oil out whilst I was in that region. Didn't look like it had been changed since new. 12 years ago.
Fitted the wishbones around helping Len get his car fixed. Bloody wreck.
And then it was time for Blyton (again...) for the charity day.
I don't have any pictures of it, was too busy chatting crap and laughing.
We pretty much had the entire track to ourselves for 70% of the day. Only about 12 cars in total.
I did have a chinese/taiwan/other-oriental-based-nation camera mounted on the side of my seat - although from 70+ laps it recorded 3!!!! A complete load of poo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o5W7QcsvwE
Thats the fastest one of the 3 - which is not that fast. The iPhone did get me doing a 1:18 (which is still not fast) but the video is a 1:20 I think.
What a difference track temperature makes though. In the summer of 2012 (without cams or throttle bodies + carrying more weight etc) the car would do 1:17's!
Blyton has added some kerbs over the winter and they are concrete (and not very nice). One kit car hit the kerb and cracked its sump, spilling oil over the track. Its the only negative I could find for the day, however.
Paxo performed great - but future mods to come for the summer. I have got a fibreglass bonnet that needs a bit of work + the sunroof to remove. There is then the issue of rear dampers to address + a bit of welding
well, potentially. I've just slapped a load of grease on the suspect sections for now.
I've also bought a top radiator hose from a 106 GTI. This is in preparation for installing an Oil cooler. The VTS uses a heat exchanger (sandwich plate) before the oil filter and it feeds into the water/coolant system via a T-Pieced hose (you can see it clearly on the pic 2nd from the top in front of my gloves) that sits between the radiator and thermostat. The GTI didn't run this setup, so the hose is useful as an oil cooler replaces the stock sandwich plate.
Rolling road at RS tuning next month, so we'll see what she puts out! With the wrong map for the wrong bodies and on stock cam timing, I reckon it'll be less than 100bhp....
Was good to see Mr JohnPacey1 turn up for an hour. Hopefully he will help convince Leeds_182 to buy a track car and join the club.
