Very budget track build

[Clarkj93]

Well that's the last one of the year done. Altering the pressures ro 35 front hot and 36 rear hot really seems the sweet spot for this current weight, as much front grip as I can get with some corner entry oversteer to rotate it nicely.

MOT is due very soon..are these going to pass?



After realising how bad the tyres were blistering as seen above I decide ro rotate front to back. Not a great idea as the car then oversteered quite badly and inconsistently due to the dead blistering tyres which led to a small off and some minor off roading



It was quite a badly organised day I must say. Never known a circuit to take 20 mins to recover a mechanical failure for a  stopped vehicle within 100 metres of the pits and the organisers having to ask a random punter to recover the car on their own trailer? This one looked like an expensive shunt though



In 2 minds currently whether to just to get it through its MOT or just take it of the road for a bit while I do my winter upgrades as its won't be going anywhere anyway. I may just borrow rhe Mrs audi a1 wheels to get the MOT done

[Clarkj93]

Ended up just getting a set for the 2 blistered rears to get it through MOT which is next Friday, hopefully no issues with any of the custom bits on it.



Made some door cards this afternoon also. You can buy nice ones from track car door cards but by the time you spec them they end up being at least 150 quid which seems a bit expensive for just covering some sharp bits with material. Ended up spending about 50 quid in materials and door pulls. Not perfect and a little rough here and there but overall a decent finish.





If anyone was wondering the front door cards weigh around 4.5kg each on a 3 door. I think my material was at most 1kg a side so somewhere between 7kg to 8kg saving. Not going to notice that but not bad considering I genuinely thought it would be no difference at all.

[pudding]

Very motorsport    Porsche are great at charging people £1000s for removing the door pulls and giving them a piece of string instead, and you've done the same for peanuts 

4.5Kg, jesus. I thought they felt a bit on the hefty side last time I removed one!  All the little weight shavings here and there add up 

[Clarkj93]

Very motorsport    Porsche are great at charging people £1000s for removing the door pulls and giving them a piece of string instead, and you've done the same for peanuts 

4.5Kg, jesus. I thought they felt a bit on the hefty side last time I removed one!  All the little weight shavings here and there add up 

Haha yeah I get they do it in a really fancy way but still... that price?

Bmw's are the worst at least the old ones I've been in, the doors weigh a tonne I've always wondered what is actually in them to weigh that much

[Clarkj93]

As is tradition she failed the MOT nothing major though. This garage seems to always complain about any surface rust, I want it sorted at some point but is just surface rust nothing worth noting I would have thought but anyway no big deal


What I thought was odd is that the front tyres are seemingly fine they just noted wear, there's chunks of rubber missing from them blistering on circuit but thats fine it seems sounds good to me!

Bought a new battery impact wrench so just decided to put it to the test and take the passenger seat and weigh it our of curiosity. For anyone that's interested a leather mk5 gti heated seat with electric lumbar support weighs 20kg. Less than I expected actually I thought that was quite light considering the air bag, heated seat function and some kind of motor for the lumbar support





If anyone is interested in a 3 door leather seat set including door cards and arm rear then it's available for sale from next weekend. All in excellent condition (if I'm being really fussy the drivers seat could do with a deep clean just to get it to a factory fresh matt leather look like the other seats), only point is a tiny rip in the rear right door card that's always been there



Also the buttons from the drivers door card are missing as I have retained these on my car so you would just need to fit your existing ones in - easy peasy. It will be up on ebay in a few days / next week when I get round to it.

[RBS]

Somebody has been enjoying himself on the track😁👍🏻
Can be fun always on the limit…😇
Btw nice doorcards 

[bobby_fodge]

Loving the doorcards. I've seen some fancy ones on ebay but like you don't want to pay loads for what really is just a sheet of material.

So I can pinch your budgeteer idea, where did you get the material from?

[Clarkj93]

Loving the doorcards. I've seen some fancy ones on ebay but like you don't want to pay loads for what really is just a sheet of material.

So I can pinch your budgeteer idea, where did you get the material from?

https://www.cutplasticsheeting.co.uk/product/black-pvc-foamex-board/

One of the images on there is a door card from a mk5 which is why I went for it. Its a chap in the production gti series so just copied his idea essentially.

[Clarkj93]

Decided to tidy up those messy scratched up bonnet pins and replace with locking aerocatches. Not that hard to install and bonnets aren't that expensive if you really make a mess of it but it is time consuming on the oem double skin with a rotary tool, I didn't fancy putting my angle grinding skills to use for cutting a precise shape personally!



Got around to mounting the ESP button and the fuel pump cut off. Not wired up the fuel pump yet... not really looked into how I'm going to do it yet, I imagine if possible may be best to wire up to the hpfp rather then the low pressure fuel pump so the engine cuts out immediately rather than at low pressure pump where I imagine it will work like when you pull the fuse and takes a 20 or something seconds for the engine to eventually cut out.

[Clarkj93]

Good bye seats!



Still got the arm rest and door cards which I imagine will sell very very slowly as well as random bits of plastic trim... not really anywhere to store them so if anyone here wants stuff let me know and il probably give it away free or for some beer money. Rather not post though - sorry I'm just lazy 

Super pro rear bushes arrived from black Friday sale. Looking forward to driving it with a bucket seat, stripped inside and some replacement bushings, I imagine it will feel totally different.

[Clarkj93]

Good bye other bits




Stripped another 30kg out of it. Some weight facts for anyone of interest:
Rear door cards - 5.8kg
Rear speakers with sound proofing - 2kg
Rear seat belts - 2.3kg
Headlining with controls, Visors and Jesus handles - 5kg
Parcel shelf - roughly 1/1.5kg
Front door cards - 9.2kg
Roof air bags and brackets - 4kg
All oem seats - 76.2kg

Not mentioned all the boring bits but that's the main stuff at least. In total currently around 145kg weight less than full oem wet weight. Also when it was corner balanced it was " a touch over 1400kg" and since then we are over 110kg lighter so should be around 1280-1290kg currently with a quarter tank of fuel, at least 45kg more weight to come out via sound deadening and sunroof and random brackets and bits. No drivers seat in yet though so that will be an extra 15 or so kg on top worst case I think but aiming for around 1250kg-ish for now, lots of room to get creative in the future though.

Remember that rust I sorted last year? Well after stripping bits looks like it goes all the way through! Seems sturdy still but it's a little flakey so not sure if it just needs sanding and painting or if it's dead and just needs cutting out and welding in.

[Clarkj93]

Barely had a chance to get to business lately with Christmas round the corner and a new puppy in the house taking up a lot of spare time.

Almost got all the sound proofing off. You hear rumours that the tar sound deadening is like 15 or so kg but I've got 80% of it off now and I've Weighed it at 2kg... really not much in it. There are tons of like little flimsy metal brackets on the chassis that are there for seat belts, light fittings, interior door cards etc. That surely do not contribute to stiffness so I may just cut them off, think it could equal quite a bit of weight.



Sunroof is high up on my list of jobs to do also, going to remove and replace it with a 2mm aluminium sheet.

[Clarkj93]

So got all the tar off, not just need to finish removing all the glue. Did not bother weighing it after but really felt like it would have been about 5kg total, really not much. If you include things  like the foam stuffed in the footwells and cavities then yeah I can imagine it's more like 15+ but the tar itself was not that much at all.





There is definitely some weight in excess brackets/metal, Wiring and crap behind the dash but il save all that for another time or for someone else to do!

Got a nice foot plate from SW, it's for a mk6 but took a plunge and yeah fits a mk5 floor plan perfectly.







I am really dreading it but the sunroof delete is next! I bought aluminium to cut initially but realised it was always going to come out best by just getting an exact shape and size cut so I ordered the replacement and just need to do some double checking and drill the holes, paint and then look to attach

[Clarkj93]

Sunroof delete started. Just need some dry weather to get it finished.

[Clarkj93]

Sunroof delete installed! Although it's water tight, it proved tricky to get the shape right as the roof on these has quite a sloping design unlike other cars I've seen with these that are dead flat on top so as you can see there is some bumps that have developed between rivets... hopefully I can add more sealant and put some weight on to push them flat as its quire rough looking definitely not as easy a job to do as I've seen on other cars.