Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car

Try it, you can always paint it black afterwards...
 
good and bad news tonight......

took it out for a blast, and its awesome, feels really quick.

took a little clip tonight. didnt launch it at all, just got it rolling then gunned it. goes fairly well i think :)

YouTube - A3 1.8t track car
 
audi upgrades
OH yea, the bad news.....

Clutch is slipping :( so I've got to take the box out again on saturday!
 
oh man it is, my daily is 224bhp on Bills rollers, and this makes the daily feel REALLY slow. it just doesn't stop pulling at all, even at 120 it really pulls hard still, all the way to 160 without fuss. on the autobahns that is. Not as if there's anywhere in england you could ever reach those speeds :(
 
I couldn't say for sure how much weight has gone, but we weighed 130+Kg of bits when we stripped her out, not including the seats, where we saved a good 30Kg in total.

Once I've done the clutch this weekend, I'll take it into work and weigh it next week. I'd like to think it's sub 1100kg at the moment though, as she was only 1220Kg previously with a full interior and spare wheel!
 
Prawn said:
Change of plan :)

Awesme GTI = appropriate name!

Just got off the phone with Al at awesome, I called up to order a 28mm rear bar, explained the project to him, and he suggested he may have something I'd be interested in:

Turns out, they had just one of the orignal neuspeed 32mm 'race' bars left that are no longer available :)
Stiffer than a 28mm bar, still adjustable, and half the weight!

Happy with that :)

Fitting the box with quaife diff this weekend too
Click to expand...
here
 
  • Like
Reactions: s3cya
32mm bar was indeed from awesome, but they've not made them for a few years now, they had a single one in stock that was no longer advertised on their site. Al said it sounded like a worthy project, so suggested I give it a try. He did me a great deal on it seeing as it was the last one available ever.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend it for a road car. Whilst the handling with it is fantastic, you've got to be very alert, as the back end will step out very easily if you back off mid bend.

I did a little back to back test last night, between the 32mm bar on the track car, and the 25mm rear bar on my daily, and the 32mm bar is like a night and day difference. The 25 feels far more suited to a nice safe road car!
 
Well.

what a ****** effort! Stupid cars.....

After finding the clutch was slipping in the week, I had no choice but to change it this weekend. I was feeling rather stupid for not changing the clutch whilst I had the box off, but I'm now glad I didn't.

Got the box off this morning in under an hour, having done it a few times recently, it really is very easy.

We set ourselves a deadline of 4pm to test drive the car, and started work at about 10:10.

11am and the box was out:

5b250810.jpg


We found that the slave cylinder had been leaking, covering the clutch in brake fluid. This is the reason it started slipping!

A quick call to camberly AF in Basingstoke, and they claim to have one. 10 mins down the road, and they can't find it!

Nearest slave available was in Farnborough, so at 11:20 we hit the M3, bound for Farnborough 27 miles away.

Got up to Farnborough, got the slave, then headed back home.

By the time we got back, it was almost 1pm.

So, with the clutch off, I flatted down the friction surface on the flywheel, to remove any contamination:

7ab996b1.jpg


With that done, and all cleaned with brake/clutch cleaner, the new V6 clutch went on:

d4fd22cb.jpg


The box went back in very easily, took about 15 mins to get it into place and bolted up. Then it was just a case of doing the ancillaries.
A rare moment where Bob was working when I wasnt:

c3c74931.jpg


Whilst it was up in the air, we threw on some discs from Badger 5 as the old ones were warped :( Cheers Bill, they look great!

3427e081.jpg


With that done, we dropped it down, and took it for a test drive. Success! it's all working perfectly. no more slipping clutch. Happy days!

With that done, we got Bobs car up on the ramps, and fitted his rear Neuspeed 25mm ARB.

d59fe695.jpg


Bit of a 2nd hand bargain for Bob at £115:

c206cb66.jpg


7ea55c62.jpg


Good result really, good days work and it's all sorted now :)

Little clip Bob took as I drove off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCs2mqId9ww

I quite like how it sounds, not really heard it before!
 
Last edited:
Awesome work Prawn. You can tell in that video the weight really making a difference, sound lively and responsive in both videos. Your making me want to take my back seats out tomorrow lol
 
Cheers dude, she's certainly pretty lively now yea!

Just need to paint my wheels, and change the oil pickup in the sump today, then she's done :)
 
So, after a cracking day saturday, yesterday just went totally wrong in general.

Started prep work on the wheels, and the blue paint seemed impossible to remove. After several hours, I had most of it off, and decided to just flat down the rest of the blue to key it up.

064b5331.jpg


Then it started raining, so I had to empty the garage out and poor Mini got soaked.

Started applying primer in the garage with a heater on, but the paint just reacted where the blue was left around the corners,

Looks awful:

72572f57.jpg


Pretty ****** off with it really, I spent ages cleaning them, but it's just reacted and put me back to square one.

So I got the hump with them, and stashed them back in the garage:

39467215.jpg


I've not got time to do these justice in the week before Combe, so I'm going to throw a can of satin black at them tonight, and be done with them for now.

So, after reading up on lots of engine failures, due to oil starvation, I decided to drop the sump, to clean it out and replace the oil pickup pipe, which most people say is very blocked after 100k+.

Dropped the sump, and to my surprise:

6901fafd.jpg


After 203 000 miles, the pickup looks like brand new!

the inside of the sump was equally clean too:

2a06b20f.jpg


Just goes to show that regular maintenance with high quality oil really does keep engines in top form. I'm a bit gutted at spending 2 hours in the pouring rain doing this on a sunday when I could have been watching the BTCC instead, but I guess at least it's done now! even if it didn't need doing.

Stuck the new pickup in anyway as I had it, here's a comparison old V new, you can see how good the old one was. Impressive after 200k

2c759d74.jpg


Tickets and track passes also arrived for Combe yesterday care of a mate:

7323a755.jpg


I know it's not a proper track day being session based, but I got 6 sessions for £125, so it'll be a nice first test for the car, on a track I know very well.

Brakes are bedding in nicely, and the new clutch seems perfect, no slipping now, and the feel is more positive with the new slave cylinder too.

Might try sticking a few orange vinyl stripes on the spokes of the wheels just to keep the theme going.

Is anyone else comming along to Combe? if so, please come say hello! We're on a club stand right next to where the pit lane exits up to folly, just up from the sound test area.

Club stand is called the ''RWD Car Club''

RWD obviously stands for 'Rong Wheel Drive :)* FWD turbo charged shopping trolleys for the win!
 
cant wait for combe mate! you should of watched the BTCC, I was there and it was awesome!!
are you meeting up with anyone on your way to combe?
 
1 Spare space on the stand J, free entry ticket has been given away, but you're welcome to park up with us in the main paddock :)

So, after getting the hump with these wheels, I spent another 3 hours on them tonight, and came out with FAR better results.

After a days hardening, I flatted down the white primer with 600 wet N dry, nice and wet, and got them much smoother. I also flatted out all the reactions, and then the rest of it all until it was nice and smooth, then cleaned it all with new micro fibres and meths.

Went with satin black, because it'll look half presentable, and the black covers all sins very easily, and doesn't show up sanding marks or any such horrors.

22930ff2.jpg


e37b7038.jpg


Not perfect by any means, but better than the nasty blue they started off with!
 
Well, a bit more work tonight, decided that just plain black would look too boring, and would make the other orange bits really stand out and look stupid, so the wheels needed some orange element.....

I had bought a few random rolls of orange vinyl on ebay last week, so decided to see what I could come up with.

Not the neatest job in the world by any means, but from a few feet away they look fine, and certainly help tie in the colours, and the Orange Northloop sunstrip going on won't look so out of place.

0739da1c.jpg


6ef287ea.jpg


ee676c44.jpg


40107a3b.jpg


As you can see, it was getting dark!

Only got the rears on tonight, need to swap some wheels round on my daily to free up some spacers to allow these to clear the brembos up front.
 
your garage floor looks like mine did this morning.... had to bite the bullet today and have a tidy up


before .....

IMAG0131.jpg






After..... :rockwoot:

IMAG0132.jpg



I might even adjust my wonky passenger door tomorrow... :)
 
So, got the wheels on tonight at long last.

Bit of an effort, as I needed to use the spacers on the rear of my daily, and due to the off offsets on my daily, I needed to swap the wheels front to rear on that at the same time. so 6 wheel changes done as quickly as humanly possible left me with a spare set of 15mm spacers :)

I actually think I now prefer the black wheels with orange pinstripe:

8e96f4d4.jpg


And these new wheels show off the brakes VERY well indeed:

30bb45b5.jpg


Can't wait to drive it to work tomorrow :)
 
had my passenger door apart today.... out of interest how far have you gone when it comes to lightening the car ??? the door cards alone felt heavy to me but when i saw those wacking great big bars of aluminium in the doors i was quite suprised,,,, obviously they are there for safety but there looks to be room for some pretty heft weight loss or do track rules not permit you to remove oem safety devices ?
 
Cheers dude. I'm really undecided which wheels I prefer at the moment!

These were only satin blacked after I messed up the primer on sunday and needed a quick fix. I couldn't live with plain black, so went nuts with some vinyl I had spare, and this is the result! For a quick fix done over 2 evenings between 6-8 I think they look ok!
 
safety things can be removed, but you have to look very carefully at what you're removing, and why you're doing so.

Removing airbags is a bad idea if you've got standard seats and belts, as you'll hit the wheel in a crash. With decent seats and harnesses, it's near impossible to hit the steering wheel, or even an airbag for the matter, so loosing it isn't an issue.

Currently, I have no cage, so removing the side impact protection wouldn't be a sensible idea, so it's staying.

Also, because this car is being built for the Ring, it must be as close to fully TUV complaint in germany as possible. This means it HAS to have door cards and a dashboard, just to remove the chances of sharp edges inside. When I eventually get the cage in, I'll make some more subtle simple door cards from something like carbon or f/g sheet
 
Right boys, I've actually made it to work in this, so I'm going to weigh it on the weigh bridge at lunchtime :)

Guess the weight!

Closest guess wins a Mars bar, collectable at castle combe this weekend or at the ring in may :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
A3/S3 Track car...
Replies
26
Views
8K
Prawn
Prawn
jsmotorsport
audi a3 8L track car
Replies
6
Views
4K
Prawn
Prawn
Marzo_NO
My A3 quattro track car
Replies
10
Views
4K
badger5
badger5
Sootpig
Sootpig's A3 track/drag car
Replies
166
Views
20K
Erikn89nl
Erikn89nl
M
S3 or A3 Track car?
Replies
40
Views
4K
Murf
M
Top
Back