Are you going to put a roll cage in it?

 

Yes.

Step by step.

Was very satisfying demolishing the inside of a car.

 

Yep Never appreciated how much crap they have in them.
It's a bit louder inside now

 

We are at Oulton next Wed (27th). Happy for people to come down for pax's - might even let you drive it

 

Needs bucket seats next

 

Thats a long story......
We already have both 3 and 4 point harnesses but need an adjusting (sliding) mount for the drivers seat. So we are on the lookout.

 

Well we took it out at Oulton last Wednesday.

What can I say - fantastic. I still can't believe how chuckable the car is and how much grip it has.

The suspension, brakes and reduced weight has made a massive difference.

In the first session I took the car around. When braking hard the whole car unsettled and went light at the front We thought the suspension wasn't set up right or the brakes were rubbish - turns out the tyres weren't properly inflated

The good thing with the suspension is that it can be manually adjusted - so Lee tightened up the front. What a difference this and the tyre inflation made.

I would say we were lapping at 2:25 ish early on. By the end of the day we were down to 2:17's. All unofficial of course For comparison, after watching other cars for a while, the fastest car on the track appeared to be an exige which was lapping at 2:00 minutes. We also had a chat with a guy who had a ToyoTyres race prepped Golf GTI. He was doing about 2:08's.

The day wasn't very cheap and this was shown in the tryes of cars that were running. I've not seen as many race prepped cars or as many very fast cars on track before. The day was run by easytrack and I have to say it was extremely well run. Lee has a load of pics and I'll leave it to him to upload them.

The next short term step is to remove more weight - by taking some of the bumper inserts out and to buy some bucket seats. We'll be doing 3 or so track days in the next 6-8 weeks.

After that, we'll buy a LSD and fit a roll cage. We'll also look at replacing the bonnet brackets with pins and possiby buying a fibreglass bonnet.

 

interesting project

I suppose the roll cage will add a bit of weight?

are you going to take mechanisms out of the doors and remove the heater, etc?

that would save some weight

 

Take out the horn and other unobvious stuff - interesting how much bits like that weigh!

 

Well, Lee looks worried everytime I point at something in the car/under the bonnet and ask what's that - I have a penchant for removing unknown parts.

I removed two of the front speakers at the track.

We need some kind of horn for MOT. I think there's an alarm siren somewhere though.

We'd like to remove the window mechs, the problem is that the front ones ara elec and I'm not sure a manual one is a straight swap.

Yes-roll cage will add weight, but there are E30's out there with roll cages that are <1000kgs.

replacement seats should save 20-30kg. bonnet pins should save another 15 or so.

There's a trade off though. To race in the ToyoTyres champ many parts have to be standard - e.g IIRC the glass windows cannot be replaced with plastic ones that are lighter, and the car has to be no lighter than 95% of it's original kerbweight, although you are allowed to add ballast.