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Ropy 172 Budget Track Toy



  330i
Hello all! I'm new to Clio's but by no means cars and modifying. I thought that I'd start a build thread for reference purposes for myself and also it's nice to be part of a community.

So basically a couple of months ago I approached a good friend of mine with the proposition of going dutch on a budget track car. He's just started a family and i have another car (very slow project, BMW E30) and am also undertaking a very large extension on my house, so anything other than maintaining the budget aspect would be fruitless and only wind up our wives! A budget was set of £1500 and the concept of both of us chucking £100 in an account on a monthly basis to pay for track days, fuel, wearing parts and if anything was left over mods!

I spent a lot of time looking into different vehicles and decided to go with a Mini Cooper S R53.... Unfortunately everything in budget was either shagged or owned by a total chimp that i simply wouldn't have bought a car off! So that left me dredging the memory bank, to a conversation held with a good friend of mine who is now banned from this site (think deep fried potatoes!) and the shortlist was shortened even more to a Clio 1*2 or a Meg 225. Wanted to keep clear of forced induction and there's more components to go wrong so we were left with the cheeky little french hatch. I have to say they're a total change from the renault I had as my third car R5 GTX, hilarious in a straight line but not in the bends.

So having bought a tidy 172 FF from a forum member Ollie Coles who interestingly was an apprentice of an old friend of mine we get to this point here! Pics to follow but on the whole a nice little car with some useful modifications to start with, Exhaust and induction kit, polybushes, Apex springs (these will go when funds allow) and front Mintex brake pads and disks.

In terms of modifications the first port of call is to put a decent set of boots on it, not overly sure what to go for but a friend of mine works for Bridgestone, so if something affordable from their range comes up then we will go with that to start with if not, Nankang (ditchfinders) will be the way forward. I'm sure that there are better tyres out there but we will just have to accept that we wont carry quite as much speed through the corners. The obligatory internal strip will occur and other bits and pieces will be done to make life more tolerable, like fitting a bucket seat as my head rubs on the roof at the moment, i'm 6'4. From there on it will be a case of replacing and up-rating when things fail. It will be a totally dedicated track car that will be trailered everywhere so performance reducing but comfort enhancing items like rubber/polybushes will be omitted in favour for sperical bearings etc

Hope the length of the first post hasn't put you off and thanks for reading!

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