Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car

I'm afraid not Adam, just a very unusual looking H-pattern billet shifter instead.

Fitted to tigthen up the shift action by replacing all the bushed cable ends with ball joints, and raising the stick slightly further, as well as making the throw adjustable.

And partly because it looks cool :racer:

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:)
 
oh that makes sense, thought you'd gone just that little bit extra, couldn't see any mention of it in your thread !

when we having this tear up then lol
 
oh that makes sense, thought you'd gone just that little bit extra, couldn't see any mention of it in your thread !

when we having this tear up then lol

I wish :( sadly a conventional sequential box probably wouldn't cope with the torque, and the closest alternative would be an SQS SEQShift like Bill used to useox., which uses some clever gears/cams to give sequential operation of the 02J box. They're about £1300 though, so about 5x what this cost me!

Does feel very very nice changing gear with this though, really positive and kind of 'clunky' in a good way, it just feels very positive when engaging gears.
 
The right conventional sequential box would be fine, a Sadev like Ben (Mr Moore that is) is throwing in the rally car would be ideal, and is rated to more torque than your car will chuck out with that turbo on there. Only slight issue being that it's about 25 times the price of your set-up. :huh: Kind of hard to justify, but it would be amazing! (His has even been pulled out of a Fabia, so would actually be easier to fit in your car than his!)

New shifter looks awesome, can't wait to be taken for a spin in it at Christmas, I can see your 'encouragement' costing me a lot of money in bits for the Scirocco though haha.

I'm tempted to do the same as you have with the box end of my cables as I've got a few of those ball-joints lying around.
 
For the same of half an hour with a tap and dye it's worth a go Robin, although as a half way measure to see if its worth it you could resin fill the voids in the standard cable ends. That was always my plan before this came up
 
Just found some pictures of "track car" back when it was just "actual A3".

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Which leads me onto my next point.

Prawn should buy my wheels off me to make his car look epic again; my beautiful 17" Avus reps so you can use all your track tyres and make your car look amazing and like a road car whilst still being epic.

Basically, buy my wheels so I can buy Pierres 18's. And look how epic your car used to look.
 
Prawn - do you have any cockpit acceleration vids with the rebuilt engine / map where the tyres hook up properly? I'm intrigued! :icon_thumright:
 
Prawn - do you have any cockpit acceleration vids with the rebuilt engine / map where the tyres hook up properly? I'm intrigued! :icon_thumright:


I sure do Dan.

No wheelspin in this vid at all:


 
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What rpm do you regularly change at?
Im a bit of a girl and too used to driving family wagon ( TDI Bora) i change about 5200 rpm max.
 
when pushing on I change at 7k Paul,

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With power being so flat from 5-7k at 340bhp+, change at 7 and you fall back to 5, and it never drops off the pace
 
I know there is an update, but it is his thread so I will let him do his thing :p
 
Been meaning to ask you Mr Prawn how the new clutch set up is treating you as mine will be very simular just slightly bigger?

Is it rather grabby or hard work in traffic?
 
Haha, you guys are awesome! I just logged in to update this, and was dreading searching for the thread on my awfully slow laptop, and I find that you've brought it right to the top for me :)

Cheers lads!

Minor update this time I'm afraid, I've been busy sorting out christmas stuff, and been away on Holiday with Tori :)

I didn't make much noise about these, because frankly, they just didn't look good at all, but I picked up these TT comps from Ben a few weeks ago:

1465606F-5AEF-4906-96D9-4EB593793288-11628-000009CE0EEFBAAC.jpg


I had them shod with some Pirelli P-zero Corsas I picked up a little while back from Plunky.

Beautiful wheels, and they looked amaing on the black mk2 they used to live on, but just didn't work on the track car at all:

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So, fast forward some miserable hours spent outside in the cold and wet with the sander, and they were ready to paint:

61CCD98E-05FA-4C33-824E-D2DC65BF93F6-11628-000009B0335942E8.jpg


Forward a bit more in time, and today I fitted them:

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ECA28787-3605-4AB3-97E9-D9192D4910A8-11628-000009B04CAA9D5D.jpg


Much, much, MUCH better I think.

I had the original alloy centre caps, which were looking a bit tatty, so I sanded them down clean and fitted them too. Not sure about these like this, so may paint them black too:

01BFDDA1-DDD4-46B9-9BBF-356527994606-11628-000009B051CB3F69.jpg


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WIth those on, I decided I'd done enough messing around with the suspension over the past few months, and with a 400 mile round trip to cornwall coming up for christmas, and a 200 mile round trip for new years, it was about time I had the tracking set again. Last time it was done on the Weitecs, one of which turned out to be bent!

Down to Protyre, and I handed over the keys. The bloke pulled forward, then went to reverse, and kind of sat there for a few minutes, creeping a few inches forward every 30 seconds before trying again. Haha, the shifter really confused him.

I still get excited looking at it being the correct shape again :) I almost like it in Matt black, but I don't think it'd look right if the whole car was done like this.

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Results on the whole were very good indeed:

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Front end has come out perfectly, with almost exactly 2.4 degrees negative camber on each side, and 8.8 and 8.65 degrees of caster, pretty close for camber / caster that was setup on the spirit level of my iphone :)

In light of the added camber and caster, I had the front track set just a fraction toe in this time, Toe out seems to suit otherwise standard geo and livens it up a tad, but with the rest of it being fairly aggressive now, it seems to feel a bit more stable slightly toe in, and hopefully it'll counter a little bit of tyre wear induced by the camber.

At the rear, it's not quite so great, but still by no means a fail, the toe has evened out perfectly, although not quite as close to parrallel as I had expected.

The side that I shimmed 1 degree of camber, aiming to go from 1.2deg to 2.2 deg, has gone slightly further, reaching 2.47 degrees negative, yet the side that I shimmed 0.5 degrees, hoping to go from -1.7 to -2.2, has actually stayed the same. I'll be removing that stub axle and adding a 1 degree shim now instead of the 0.5 I had previously.

All in all though, it's come out REALLY well, it drives very staight, and with the toe now set it feels fantastically sharp. I had a little drive tonight, and on low boost it's just about managable in the wet from 3rd upwards, but on high boost it's still utterly terrifying, which just leaves you with the biggest grin ever :)

Heading home to cornwall tomorrow in the car, and will then be doing an oil change with 1000 miles now on the new engine. Taking Jardo his Milltek sytem, and Frenchman my old weitecs which he will be having refurbed and repaired, so hopefully those two will have some updates soon as well :)

Also hoping to have a little Mini meet up over the holiday with anyone else who's around in Plymouth at all, I think Jardo was thinking Sunday if anyone is about?
 
Been meaning to ask you Mr Prawn how the new clutch set up is treating you as mine will be very simular just slightly bigger?

Is it rather grabby or hard work in traffic?

Really not as bad as I thought it would be dude.

At first, it was really fairly grabby and juddered quite badly if you tried to slip the clutch on pulling away at all.

Now at around 1000 miles, that juddering has gone completely really, it's not grabby, and it's easy to slip gently in traffic.

If you slip it TOO much when creeping in traffic it does begin to judder and get annoyed, but you soon learn to let a 20 yard gap open up in front of you first and then just come off the clutch reasonably quickly.

Once bedded in, I see no reason why you couldn't use it daily :)
 
Pleasure mate!

Dude to be honest I like the center caps silver it breaks the all black!

Nice update on the camber!
 
I had been toying with what wishbone bushes to get until today, I forget standard figures, but I had expected to reach at least 9 degrees of castor just from the top mounts, and whilst it's an improvement, and they're very equal which I'm chuffed with, I'd like a little more.

Will now definitely be getting the SuperPro offset rear bushes instead of the Powerflex Solid bearing rear bushes I had been considering.

Add those to some 30mm front bushes in my nice and Rare early mk1 wishbones, and I think I should be on to a winner.

I also want to try and Poly bush the rear beam at some point too, as this Beam was just thrown on after the crash to see if the car was straight, and the bushes are of unknown age or mileage.

Will be on the lookout for an LCR rear beam, as I'm fairly sure Kev discovered that the internal tube that runs through them (which would act like a factory ARB) differs in thickness across the models.
 
I really thought I had so much going in my head at once, do you ever sleep?

Not that Much, I've had a list of things as long as my arm that I'm constantly thinking about, just ticking them off then adding something else to the list, development is never ending man! Never settle for what you have :)
 
Not that Much, I've had a list of things as long as my arm that I'm constantly thinking about, just ticking them off then adding something else to the list, development is never ending man! Never settle for what you have :)

So true dude!
I keep saying I'm done with mine but it never ends!!!! I'm ordering a standalone air/fuel ratio gauge now. Then need to figure out where to put it
 
When i first saw those alloys on this i hated them, i have the same ones on my tdi and i hate them but now these are black they look alot better!

Prefer your old ones though!
 
Lol I don't like things sticking out there it needs to be maybe on the passenger side center console vent or something.

Going with glowshift to match my other gauges


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Have you not considered the IDF tubular control arms? You'd have loads of control them. Glowing reports from everyone who has had them...
 
When i first saw those alloys on this i hated them, i have the same ones on my tdi and i hate them but now these are black they look alot better!

Prefer your old ones though!

There are no old wheels dude :)

Currently I have these Rotas:

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These OZ SuperTourismos:

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These S3 rims:

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And these TT comps:

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Only wheels I've sold are these TT 6 spokes:

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These S4 Avus reps: (What a HUGE mistake!)

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And these Leon Cupra Starfish:

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I want more wheels :(
 
I bought a set recently.

IDF-VW-MK4-Golf-Jetta-R32-Audi-TT-MK1-Front-Tubular-Control-Arms.jpg


PREORDER: VW MK4 Golf, Jetta, R32 / Audi TT MK1 Front Tubular Control Arms - Innovative Design and Fabrication - IDF

They're pricey but I needed new bushes and ball joints and why not upgrade at the same time. It's one of those things everyone who doesn't own or have experience of them says they'd be terrible on the road blah blah blah. Depends heavily on the quality of the joints. I went for the option of boots to cover the joints. We don't get salt here and little rain so it's all good.

A review:
VWVortex.com - IDF Tubular Control Arm Thoughts/Review
 
I'd love to see a review of those arm from someone after getting them set-up properly with aggressive geometry. I can't see how you can adjust the castor without flexing the arms quite a lot, as winding out the rear rose-joint increases the distance between the 2 joints. Otherwise they look nice though, beautifully made.

If anyone's interested I'm hoping to be doing a small batch of something similar at some point this year, hopefully they'll be a bit lighter and with more adjustment than those ones, as well as having some roll-centre correction hopefully. The idea with mine will be to start at standard LCR geometry with all the adjustment going more agressive, if I remember right I reckoned I could get around 4deg extra camber and similar again with the castor.
 
Hahaaa, your such a winner prawn.

Ok then, out of that "selection" shall we call it i like the S3's, Rotas, mk1 TT's, and the S4's haha

How come the S4's were a big mistake?
 
I'm going to be running Ground Control top mounts too so hoping I should have enough adjustment for my needs. I'll be driving it on the road too so 4 degrees might be a bit much unless I become a majority stakeholder of a tyre firm.
 
haha, yeah, well the idea with mine with be anything between 4 deg extra and standard LCR. You should be fine with those arms on the road, as long as they're well made (and they do look well made) then you should have a nice setting, I'm just curious about how well they adjust to more extreme set-ups.
 

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