Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car

Got the second crutch strap mounted this evening, and slung the passenger seat in for work tomorrow.

Also had a good look at the sliders I've got to see how easily they will mount up to my sidemounts.

Answer is, Very easily! I'd rather not use sliders if I could avoid it, but one seating position just doesn't work for dad and I due to different heights.

The sliders I've got are Sparco double locking ones, so hopefully about as good as they get. will look at getting them mounted once I've finally got this cage finished!

I think getting in and out is going to be rather tricky :S
 
Got the cage finished today!

Got to Andys this morning, and he finished off welding in the rear cage feet, whilst I started stripping the inner sills for the front feet. A few hours passed, and the ice cream van stopped by:

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There's a nice array of cars on Andys drive, including this:

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His housemates 440 bhp Evo 8 mr fq340

Then there's this:

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Best value for money car on the planet! £500 for a 250bhp s40 t4, with Evo brakes, coilovers, buckets, arbs, it's ****** awesome! And being built solely for our ring trip :)

Our work station for the day :)

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We originally thought the front feet would be easy, but on advice from JJ at R-Tek we decided to totally remove the ****ty metal shelf on the inner sill.

After a good few hours, we got the front feet in and sorted. Lovely welding from Andy :)
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Then we moved onto the harness bar.

We had decided to just go with single door bars for now, for access reasons mainly. This means I had a spare sermon door bars. I thought I'd see if I could use the tube to a harness bar, and to my amazement, it fitted perfectly with all the fittings in place as per the door bar!

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Then onto the door bars:

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Seats went back in:

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Harnesses fed onto the harness bar:

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Andy having a sit to see how it feels

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More tomorrow, tired now!
 
Cage is looking awesome. Nicely done...

There's a nice array of cars on Andys drive, including this:

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If only Rob actually drove it instead of cleaning it. I hear he just cleans it haha. He was saying they have the same potential rod issues as us 1.8T drivers but at ~450bhp rather than much less! Nice cars, I was looking at the 7 myself before I got the S3 but out here they're not quite as exclusive as the S3...
 
Looking good Nick! Do you arms not really ache with the steering wheel like that though? Mine used to really hurt, and your seats are a good inch or two lower than mine! Its sooooo easy to drop it down more than that with a few washers and 2 new bolts (like you saw on mine) I think you could even keep the steering column trim too, but not 100% sure on that.
 
I actually find the wheel really comfy George! I think it's the whole
Package which makes it work though, if I had my seats reclined like yours, the wheel
Would be terrible up high. You need to sit very upright to make the most of the close high wheel.

So, after a hard days work, we decided to head out for a little drive, me in the a3, Andy in the red ovlov

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The s40 looks so different when it's lowered with a set of wheels:

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Things were going well, the car felt great, and noticeably more stiff than it was pre cage

After about 20mins, Andys Volvo popped a boost hose off

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That was soon fixed, thanks to my leatherman, and we carried on for a bit

It wasn't long until we found ourselves parked up again:

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Of course, it's because the Volvo was broken again :)

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This happened 3 times whilst we were out, so we decided to head home for a few beers. We swapped cars for the drive home to see how each others cars weighed up.

The Volvo has the legs on the a3, but only by a tiny margin really. But the a3 has it on handling for sure with the Quaife.

Half way home it popped the boost hose AGAIN, so I just trundled back, and that was te end of our fun.

Nowi need to make a start on painting this cage!
 
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Love it dude so sweet!

When my standard ko4 is back on I'll bring the hybrid down.
 
That volvo a petrol? I want one!

2.0 turbo petrol yea, This one's about 250bhp at the moment. Andys last S40 2.0T was 400bhp and FWD, it was nuts!

Love it dude so sweet!

When my standard ko4 is back on I'll bring the hybrid down.

Awesome man, will have to take you out for a spin in the car to see what you think!

Even on a stock ko4, yours is surely going to be quick still, at effectively stage 2 spec?
 
Yeah every things still on it apart from the hybrid and bills exhaust mani so it should still be fairly potent :eyebrows:
 
Especially with big port heads and water meth :)
 
Andy is bang into Volvo's - did you see his "project" one that's been going for years?
 
I wouldn't know :(

Prawn, loving the cage matey, I wonder how much more stiffer the car will feel with that fitted.

Way way way stiffer now, it's brilliant.

A single jack anywhere under the side lifts both wheels on that side easily, even if it's right near the front.

it also tripods constantly going into petol stations and stuff. I like stopping when it's done it, and letting it rock back and forth. People always look pretty confused!

Not looking forward to trying to paint this though!
 
I took the easy option first!

Tonight I removed the 3 removable bars, and made a start on painting them.

Got 3 coats of white primer (makes the orange look better), and 2 coats of orange base coat on this evening. Will probably give them another coat of base coat before laquer tomorrow night :)

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Me too :) I'm hoping it's going to look awesome. I love black and orange, but the big orange blocks just didn't work on the wheels. Hopefully the orange highlights of teh cage will work much better!
 
oooooooooooooooooh, just found out there's a Rolling road day at JKM on saturday. the one rollers that my car has run on in every stage of it's development!

I think I'll pop along and see what happens :)

Previous figures at JKM are:

standard: 158bhp / 162lbft
revo stage 1: 184bhp / 236lbft
CC stage 2, blown turbo a week after mapping: 197bhp / 211lbft
CC stage 2, new turbo, dead fuel pump: 226bhp / 290lbft

Never been back with a 100% working car! Now has LCR fuel pump, and a new MAF, but the turbo has more cracks in it than this pane of glass:

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What do we think will happen?
 
still logs 187 g/s on the MAF every time, although I'm not sure that's entirely accurate on this one any more!
 
still logs 187 g/s on the MAF every time, although I'm not sure that's entirely accurate on this one any more!

The cracked turbo on mine resulted in lower and lower g/s readings every time I went to log it. If yours is still recording quite good results then maybe your turbo isn't as bad as you think :think:
 
it's just the size of the cracks that worries me! you can almost read through them. haha. That and over 200 000 miles is an interesting combo!

Wonder how long it'll last with the hybrid :p
 
it's just the size of the cracks that worries me! you can almost read through them. haha. That and over 200 000 miles is an interesting combo!

Wonder how long it'll last with the hybrid :p

I think my worse crack was the one that wnt through the wastegate housing!

Do you know if you exhaust mani is crack free?
 
Take the airflow with a pinch of salt though, im on standard map and get same airflow as yours prawn, and I very very much doubt mine will pull off 230odd.
 
Utterly pointless update really, for which I apologise, but this is as much of a diary for me as anything else :)

Got a bit more done tonight, I've drilled the rear arches for the final cage mounting points, and started making up the reinforcing plates to go behind the arches to stop it pulling through. No pics of this, as I totally forgot!

Also, in my mini, I've found the door bars chip quite easily, when removing the harnesses and the buckle hits the bar, it chips the paint.

To combat this, I've wrapped one of the door bars in a clear plastic film. Took ****** ages to apply, but I'm pleased with the results. You can hardly tell it's on there, and it'll stop them chipping totaly.

I'll also use this on the harness bar too, to stop the harness straps from wearing the paint off where they wrap around

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Can't even work out which bar has the film any more:

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Best car in the world ever, period.

I've done so many miles in this thing, I miss my weekly cleaning ownership of it :(
 
It misses your weekly cleaning too dude :(

When you home next to come for a ride / clean it ;)]

It'll be comming to live near you after the Ring trip until christmas. but if you're up here before the august party I can take you out :)
 
well, they're going to be wrapped in padding too in places, where it's required, but I've not got ****ty pipe lagging.

I've got 6m of proper longacre cage padding, with the offset hole to get the padding on the side you require. of course, the padding is bright orange!
 
this really is an amazing thread, your tempting me to strip out my car now!
 
Cheers dude, FMIC is infact a turbo revs one as sold on eBay for £200, although I bought it from tuner-stop in California long before they were on UK eBay! Shame really, as I paid twice the price!
 
I've been having lots of problems with vibration under load lately, and I've eventually traced it down to a driveshaft out of balance somehow, or possibly an inner CV.

I've had constant driveshaft problems for the past year since a Ring trip where it ate it's inner CV and I was forced to drive it back with the shakes. I've gone through all manner of new inner and outter CV's, and another second hand driveshaft, but I had to use an existing CV on the second hand shaft, and the problem has never totally gone away.

I enquired at TPS about a pair of new shafts at trade price, and the result was a staggering £466 for a pair, PLUS a surcharge, so I couldn't keep mine for emergencies.

****** that!

So, I got looking for some elsewhere.

I found all manner of RePro shafts for £100 or so, then stumbled across these people:

Drive shaft, CV Joints, Boot kits. Drive Shaft Store.

they claim to make all their own shafts, with no RePros, and at £150 for a pair, I thought it was worth a shot!

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They arrived this morning, and to be honest, they look pretty good to me.

The only difference between them and the originals is the offside shaft, is a solid shaft, of smaller diameter than the original, which is a hollow shaft. I questioned them about this, and they said it won't make any difference. Both are the same weight too.

Anyone else tried these guys before? at £150 Vs £466 I thought it was worth a shot!
 
Nice work, I wonder what else you could get for £150 ;)
 
haha. can't drive it without driveshafts.

This thing has turned into a money pit! It best be worth it. Sub 5 minutes around the Ring I reckon. Fo Sho!
 

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