Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car

I think about 300 kgs heavier than the Red Devil.
 
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Jesus!
Thats massive!!
Brilliant nick
Whats on the ugenda to get back up top?
 
Sparrow what did you weigh in at??
200kg is massive. Tbf
Nick would hit 26's if he lost 225kg

Or if he used my car
 
Both the above without driver yes Bill.

Gurds car was 922kg with lowish fuel load. More than we expected to be honest.

Didn't weigh mine yesterday but I know historically it's 1160kg (+/- 5) without any fuel.
 
Prawn said:
Both the above without driver yes Bill.

Gurds car was 922kg with lowish fuel load. More than we expected to be honest.

Didn't weigh mine yesterday but I know historically it's 1160kg (+/- 5) without any fuel.
Click to expand...

Where's the extra weight from, the cage is only 50kg according to custom cages.

You need perspex windows, carbonfibre body panels, tubular control arms, HS sport spindles and magnesium wheels, see if the misses is willing to sacrifice the honeymoon, lol
 
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897kg is awesome!
Congrats on your 2nd place btw!
2 in a row right?!
 
I am sure you would have been quicker Nick had you been out in the morning session, by the time 1pm came around it was warming up nicely .
The fact that you ran at all and managed to get it back home without being recovered is a minor miracle. Having to locate a driveshaft on a Sunday morning within a reasonable distance and having to get that driveshaft nut off were not the best start to a day.
 
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daz-20vt said:
3rd is still brilliant mate.
As good as your a3 is its still a lard **** compared to a lot of the curby lot!

Testiment to your driving i reckon
Click to expand...
My car weighed in at 1828Kg with me in it, so about 1750 Kg on it's own. I think I win the lard **** title :) .
 
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Karl's bus is awesome. It just keeps getting better each time!

So, a little write up required I guess!

I had Saturday to chill out and get the car ready, so in the morning

I started by dropping the lower dash panel down to get to the fuel pump relay, I've had a few occasions where the pumps haven't kicked in with ignition and its obviously not started as a result. It hasn't let me down completely, but with lots of stop / start at Curborough I wasn't going to risk it:



I also decided to replace the broken bulbs in my high level brake light in a (failed) attempt to cure my bulb warning light.

The bulbs are so tiny it was hard to get a grip on them with my clumsy hands, I used a tiny off cut of 3mm vacuum hose pressed over each which worked perfectly :)




I'd read mention of some online fuses / wiring connections behind the stock cd changer and sub, so i swung them aside to check connections behind.

I was horrified at the weight of the CD changer when I unbolted it, so much so that I had to weigh it to find out:



3kg!! No chance that's going back in then!

Factory for sub was next:



5.5kg saved in 5 minutes. Result!

With the new relay in and the dash panel back, on I checked over the engine and flushed out the catch can.
It's not looking that pretty after 2 years of hard abuse without ever having a clean, but it's functional still! Soon to be tidied up a lot.



I nipped out to give the car a quick wash, as you must before any event :racer:

Heading through town I passed a police car, and of course, doing nothing wrong, I thought nothing of it.

Into the car wash, minding my own business, when suddenly a police car pulls in across the entrance, blocking me in the car wash, blue lights flashing!



WHAT THE FECK IS GOING ON !?!?!?

I haven't done anything!

:busted cop::busted cop::busted cop:
 
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Before I know it, a police officer has got out of the car and it RUNNING round the patrol car towards me.

Im sat there, not wanting to make eye contact initially whilst I separately try to work out what I might have done trundling through town in 2nd gear.

Had he seen a kick of flame from the tailpipe? Had I come up as insured on anpr for some unknown reason?

Countless scenarios ran through my mind in about 3 seconds, apart from the one really obvious one.

It was my friendly tame Police man mate, Sam. He was just stopping to say hello having seen me pass.

What a *******! :laugh:

To make matters worse, Sam decided to leave the car parked outside, lights on, whilst he stood and chatted with me for 15 minutes.

Everyone was walking past, looking into the car wash, with Sam there talkin enthusiastically about cars, waving his arms around. To all onlookers, I was getting a proper extended telling off!

One woman even walked past and shook her head and waved her finger at me as if to say 'serves you right!'

:laugh: :racer: :laugh:

We had. A laugh, I headed home for a Chinese, then packed the car up late Saturday night:

 
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So 05:15 came and I was up and ready. I picked Rob up at 05:45 and we headed off to meet Tuffty and JoJo at Notcutts at 07:30 for breakfast.

We cruised up in good time, pressing on a bit, and the car was feeling good. We were excited for the day ahead.

As we pulled off the m42 to meet the guys, I felt an odd tug at the Steering wheel. It was as if we'd run over a small stone or something that snagged at the wheel.

We didn't think much of it, and wet into Maccys for breakfast with Paul and Joe.

8L parking only please.



Breakfast done, we waited for Al to arrive. Funnily enough Al turned out to be Big Al from this very forum. Not my Big Bad Dad, but the other name stealing Big Al :laugh:
We headed off, but sadly we didn't get too far.....

We accelerated off the round about gently, and as I let off to change to 3rd the wheel snagged again.

Something felt odd. I wasn't happy. Time to pull over.



We got the car up in the air and started checking it over. I'd had the wheels off earlier in the week and thoroughly checked everything and found no issues, so it was a bit of a mystery.

Top mounts fine. Ball joints fine. Wheel bearings felt fine.

Then I rotated the wheels, drivers side fine. Passengers side - not so much!

There was a good 30-40mm of back lash on the wheel, which when looking at the shaft not moving was all in the joint.

Head further inside the arch and I saw that the CV Boot had failed totally. There was grease everywhere. And one VERY hot looking knocking joint.

That'll be the issue then! :laugh:

Being just a few miles from Curby, we dropped it down, and limped to the track.

As we went it was getting worse, and snagging really bad every time I lifted. As we came I to the paddock it started clunking badly. I think we were lucky to get there at all to be honest.

I wasted no time, and got ready to remove the shaft. We unpacked the car, got out the tools. And made a start.



Only, it didn't get too far.....

Breaker bar on the hub nut. Pull for England, nothing.

I got the 4' jack handle on the breaker bar, and had another go:



BANG!

Phew. It's off.

Oh, crap. No.

Extension bar snapped. D'oh!

I borrowed another extension from Alex (Sparrow) and had another go.

The socket slipped off. This wasn't looking good at all. The nut was looking pretty rough at this point too.

I compared sockets with a few others, and found that Alex's 30mm socket had less of an internal chamfer than mine, so gripped more of the nut.

I sprayed it up with penetrating fluid, left it for a while, then gave it a few extended blasts with the impact gun, both tightening and loosening to try and shock it off.

After another spray, we tried again, with a bigger breaker bar, and THANKFULLY it came off.

Thank god!




With the shaft out, it was pretty clear that the joint was destroyed. There was so much play in every direction, no wonder we'd been having issues!
 
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Glad you got some time out on track
Its awesome to see everyone get together to help!
 
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Also i cannot believe you even still had the cd and sub!!!!! Lol
 
Been lurking this thread, very impressive development.
Wanted to gather your thoughts on the oil separator. With the 3rd outlet, do you recric to TIP or leave it open to atmosphere?
Have you been collecting much oil and thinking about draining back to sump?
 
Looks like you had quite the eventful day! Glad it all turned out ok in the end
How long is that on that shaft then? 2 years?

I wish I could make it to Combe but it's not gonna happen :/.

Gmx - I'm not sure exactly what Nick does but with it having 2 inlets he could be venting to atmosphere but could also have it going back to the tip. Doesn't really make Much difference.

As for draining it back into the sump....after seeing what comes out of catch cans in the past I wouldn't dream of sending it to the sump. Contaminating the oil with that lot isn't gonna be the best idea


Sooooo what's the expected date for the new developments Nick?
 
with the catch can, the idea was that the engine is breathing in 2 places, both of which are 19mm. So rather than T them together and effectively half the available breathing area, I'd run a seperate 19mm feed from each point to the can.

The outlet is than 25mm to either breath freely to atmosphere, or return to the TIP. I've got the pipework and breather filter for either option, so I'll see how it goes on that one.

I don't collect a huge amount at all, although I'd ideally like a self contained system where the majority is recycled and i end up emptying the can very rarely.

New developments to follow immediately after this saturday Ste :)

I feel this is an opportune moment to remind everyone of this too:

http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/thread...combe-sept-12th-pax-rides-for-charity.252630/

Just £20 (ALL towards charity) to jump in for 3 flying laps of Castle Combe this Saturday! Hope to see some of you there :)
 
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Anyway, I have a curby report to finish..........

With the driveshaft off, it was pretty clear it wasn't about to propel us any further that day.

An urgent message was posted on facebook at 08:18, and 17 minutes later, my prayers were answered!



Simon had a pair of shafts, and was only in Leicester, around 50 miles away.

At this point, the Non fatherly (to me!) BigAl stepped forward, and very generously offered to drive me to Leicester and back to collect the shaft.

We Jumped in Al's Hyundai Coupe (Not been in one before, was nice!) and hot footed it over to Leicester! It was a decent journey, and Al was great company to talk to, I think in that 2 hour round trip I learnt a lot from Al about business, houses, breaking cars, and fathering cool children :laugh: (give them sunglasses!) All useful advice for the future I'm sure :laugh:

Simon was an absolute gent, and gave me a pair of early S3 style nut type shafts, along with a spare coolant hose to fashion a repair on a poorly mk2 also back at Curby.

Back at the track, I cleaned up the new shaft, and got to work fitting it. Car was looking sorry for itself up in the air whilst everyone else was having fun!





11:58, and I dropped it back down and joined the que, only to find the track was now closed for lunch!



Instead of wasting time, I took the car out on the road with BigAl to make sure all was working as it should. I think Al liked it :)
 
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After lunch, I was near the front of the que, and it was finally time to head out for a first run.

I headed out, paying particular attention to tyre warming, and completes my first lap of the day with very little fuss. It felt strong for a first run, and I thought it'd be a good base to build from over the afternoon.

The car had other ideas though.......

Having missed the entire morning session, I was keen to get as MANY laps as possible in the afternoon.

I started off with fronts at 24psi cold and rears at 28, and settled on 26h front and 30h rear. This seemed to give the car a really nice balance around the Curby circuit.

After the first few laps, I felt
Myself getting frustrated, I was over driving on the subsequent few sessions and I could feel the times going the wrong way.

After a stern talking to myself, I headed out very conscious that a clean run would be fastest, not s brave one.

From there on, I think i hit the braking point BANG ON every time from the first corner. The car was feeling good, and I had a remakeable number of runs which all felt good with little or no mistakes.

I carried on all afternoon, lapping away, with the car feeling good.

Id heard that in the morning both Alex and Gurds had run absolutely blistering times. Not having a lunch time check on times I had absolutely no idea where I stood, other than to say from what I'd heard, the chances of getting near Gurds were fairly slim!
 
The day carried on and e trying be appeared to be having great fun.

Karl was going VERY well in the big a4 tdi, which is sounding absolutely
Amazing since its exhaust work this summer:



Who would ever think this was the 5th fastest car of the whole day? Behind 3 turbod track cars and a 410bhp TTRS!!?!

Alex was going well in the mk2, going seemingly quicker every event:



Then we have Mr. Singh. Re- witing the rule book and giving me a LOT to think about!



The end of the day came, and was sadly marred somewhat by Ashs car giving up spectacularly right near the end of the day. Seemingly loosing all compression. Not good for Ash at all, I believe he eventually got home around 02:30!
 
Presentation time came, and I was a mixture of disappointed, and relieved to find myself called 3rd.

Disappointed that my run of wins had come to an end, but if I'm honest I felt far more relieved that I'd turned what looked set to be a disaster day into a 3rd place finish.
I was however thrilled for Alex and Gurds. Alex has set yet another PB, dipping into the 27's for the first time, and Gurds had set an overall fastest ever road legal time, beating my previous PB by 0.25s.

Normally I'd be a bit jealous of this, but given the insane al

Every time at Curby the fastest times seem to be set in the morning. I'm not sure if this is down to air temperatures effecting the turbo engines, but it seems to be fact, and I'd missed those crucial morning laps, and I was now paying the price.
 
So did alex and gurds both set quickest times am?
And what tyres were you and gurds on?

I still think you done blinding seeing the crappy start you had.
It was enough toplay head games with yourself for sure.
Its all in the name of fun and to come 3rd to 2 seriously fast cars and drivers is really nothing to cry over lol
 
Prawn said:
Normally I'd be a bit jealous of this, but given the insane al
Click to expand...

I knew it get at least one bit wrong typing all that on my phone!

*Normally I'd be a bit jealous of this, but given the insane amount of work that Gurds has done over the last 12 months, I'm absolutely over the moon for him that it's all come together so well. It's. Real testament to all the hard work he's put in, and it looks simply amazing in the flesh, I couldn't stop looking at it all day!
 
So, time for a few pictures :racer:

Most of these pics came from Liam Russel via Facebook - thanks Liam!
















And a little video, this was taken fairly late in the afternoon and I believe was a 28.19s run. A full 0.8s off my PB, but confusingly the run felt good, as did several others, but the times were not forthcoming!


 
Hmmmmm. That'll teach me to rush things. I edited the video in movie maker last night and hit save, then uploaded it without watching. It appears that the quality has gone nuts somewhere on the way, so apologies to anyone who tried to watch it! Will fix this evening!
 
daz-20vt said:
So did alex and gurds both set quickest times am?
And what tyres were you and gurds on?
Click to expand...
I ran two identical quickest times, one in the morning and one in the afternoon session. However, that's the first time I've ever managed to come close to the morning session time in the afternoon.
Gurds was on 888s as was I, Nick was on A048s or Direzzas, not sure which.

daz-20vt said:
I still think you done blinding seeing the crappy start you had.
It was enough toplay head games with yourself for sure.
Click to expand...
Definitely, it was an amazing recovery. :yes::respekt:

daz-20vt said:
Its all in the name of fun and to come 3rd to 2 seriously fast cars and drivers is really nothing to cry over lol
Click to expand...
This, and thanks for the compliment.
 
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So, the keen eyed among us will notice that I've made more than one or two fairly strong hints towards a particular large change coming in the very near future.

It's finally here.

I actually paid for this a long long time ago, but I've avoided posting anything until I physically had it in my hands.

After many years on the me3.8 AGU ecu, we have finally taken the plunge.

Today, I collected this:



Much, much fun is going to be had with this I feel!
 
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