[race_prep] My 205 1.6 Gti (hillclimb/track)

[ifcho 0]

Hi all,

 

So I thought I would share with you my little project. I have taken inspiration about many things from this forum, while some ideas/realisations are entirely mine...

There are quite some difference to the UK 205 builds, but with limited funds and resources (I mean, workshops, performance parts, etc) I'm pretty happy with what turns out...so here it is:)

 

In the beggining of Feb`07 I bought this:

...not the best buy but for 300E its good enough. It had some issues...the engine block was cracked at least 5 times and the whole car was completely ruined. The only good thing about it was that it is white and that it hasn't got any major accidents.

In order to get it registered I had to go through a vehicle test...and as the engine was cracked I ran it without water...must say they are tough engines

 

So I needed a donor...another good buy

 

 

I started collecting parts...

Here are some brake calipers, which I'm wondering what car are they from

A willwood brake valve

I must say I'm not impressed with the quality..guess that's why I don't see many race cars with wilwood parts

 

GSXR throttle bodiesr:

 

I made some home made gr.A rear beam bushes, along with a full refurb of the rear beam and adding some rear discs instead of the drums:

 

While at the process of dissambling the rear beam I found that I had lost the key for the secret bolts...

 

So I had to get the rear beam to a garage

[ifcho 0]

Here is the rear beam mounted on the car:

 

A home made strut brace:

 

And some yello konis:

 

Then I sent the car for a rollcage...I must say all the sparco/omp ones I have seen look pretty overprices and not too strong...so here is a rollcage made for 300euro from a local fabricator:

 

Here is a local 205 meeting :-D

 

[ifcho 0]

A home made seat frame:

 

Testing the height:

 

I ordered a newman cam....(tarmac rally sprint cam)

 

Some catcam double valve springs

 

New standard Mahle pistons:

 

A s16 flywheel as I plan on running it with MSII and mapable ignition:

An alu sump from a 605:

 

And quit a mess at the garage (and at home...)

[ifcho 0]

Then the engine management arrived:

 

A Inovate LC-1 wideband + gauge (which I'm not charmed with...the wideband lambda is s** and the stupid gauge that looks like home made costs $90

 

Some cables from DIYAutotune to replace the existing peugeot installation (which is sh**e):

This one is really nice quality for $60.

 

Here are a few pics of the rollcage painted..I didn't have time or money to do a proper paint job so I painted it with the roller:

 

 

 

Two pics showing the difference...

[ifcho 0]

Here is the last one for today

 

This week we assembled the front suspension:

 

A pic of home made polyurethane bushes:

 

And here is my brother's new car:

 

 

 

A freshly painted engine block, sourced by a friend, as all the blocks I had were for the scrappy:

Edited April 22, 2008 by ifcho

[ifcho 0]

And here is the last...I promise...a few more pics of the cage:

 

 

I don't have pictures of the cage at the front, but it is also welded for the fron struts, which are strengthen by 3mm steel plates, welded at the bottom of the strut...

 

corner for rest...

New engine bearings...

 

And some equipment, mostly purchased from rallynuts:

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

nice work and parts, especially with limited amount of funds and time .

 

keep us updated .

[base-1 17]

Nice job! That cage looks absolutely exceptional for what it's cost, good work

[ifcho 0]

Well, after sourcing quite a lot of parts the car finally stars looking like a car again

 

I finished my handbrake (with a pump from compbrake...):

 

I was able to source a mi16 final drive from a mi16-converted 306xsi, which had a very close encounter with a tree..:

bought a SACHS clutch for the s16 flywheel:

I decided to deck my block and liners by 3milimeters and then get the pistons flat, this raised the compression to about 11.5.

I'm still not convinced that this was the best choice...but we can't know until somebody tries it..

 

 

Here is what mess I created in a friendly garage...

 

After taking my head from a shim, I found several cracks in it...

 

So I sourced a new head, which was again shimmed and the valves seats were re-angled.

Had to finish the assembl-ation of the engine on the kitchen table

(we are in the middle of a kitchen overhaul, so it wasn't that big issue with my girlfriend...

 

Shortly after the engine was assembled, it got inside the car:

Edited September 1, 2008 by ifcho

[ifcho 0]

I bought some Autometer gauges:

 

Me and a friend made a custom fuse/relay/switch-board...It is not a looker but I'm pretty satisfied with what turned out:

It has all the main switched I need (with a built-in light), and all the fuses and all the relays of the car are in front of me.

 

I found a local plastic welder and had my tank cut in half:

...no the best price though...40E for the cut and weld

 

Laser cut a plat for the gauges:

 

which go instead of the standard 205 dash panel:

Additionally all the standard wiring of the car was thrown out and a completely new loom is being built..

I relocated the battery in the place of the rear seats and bought a + cable from a BMW 525TDS...it suited my 205 perfectly...goes through the right side of the car, two 16mm2 plus cables go to the custom made dash, a 16mm2 cable goes to the alternator and a big 50+mm2 cable goes inside the starter :-) all that for 20E from the scrappy

 

Getting some more bits inside the engine bay:

I had all the water and oil pipes renewed...and I made a small innovation with the oil pipes. As I'm not going to give peugeot the crazy sum they want for the oil filler pipe, I bought some oil resistant hose and put it into my oil catch-tank, along with the second ventilation hose. Now if I wish to fill the car with oil, I need to undo the clip and pout oil inside the hose...the additional benefit is that I dont have the big mess of pipes, clustering the left side of the bay...

 

And adding some finishing touches:

Edited September 1, 2008 by ifcho

[edbar 6]

Looks good, nice to see you fabricating some of the parts for yourself. Look forward to updates.

[ifcho 0]

Here is my homemade camshaft pulley:

 

 

and here is how the engine bay looks nowL

this is the interior

 

 

and finally after year and a half, I drove the car

 

[felix2566 2]

Good work there, really liking all the parts you have made yourself! Makes the car feel more like 'yours'!

[DrSarty 90 1 Cars]

This is by far my favourite project on the forum; well done Ifcho.

 

I love plenty of the others too like GTI6 Boy's monstrous, no expense spared T16, but this, for sheer cheek, budget mindedness and fun takes my prize.

 

Pics like these too sum up everything '205 fun' for me. AWESOME.

 

 

 

I may drive to Bulgaria in my 205 next year just to say hello (seriously). Do you drink beer in Sofia?

 

Rich

[shalmaneser 26]

great work! you must be a very friendly person - you have lots and lots of useful friends!

 

All my friends know is how to drink beer....

[nimmo 0]

great work dude, u have a good project there.

[ifcho 0]

Hi, I'm glad you all liked it. I'm very happy with the 205 I've managed to build by now, and if it wasn't this forum, I would have never come to this point.

Two weeks ago I attended my first race..I know its not a big deal for many of the members here, as they are professional racers and this may be everyday story for them but it was quite an experience for me

We managed to get the car running at around 5.00 AM, this is the time at which it was first ran and we got it mapped. There was no time for break in...we waited 20 minutes for the camshaft to bed in at about 2-3000 rpms and then went to the highway straight to 7500 rpm for the mapping session :-D

I went to bed at about 0630 and got up at 8 o'clock cause I had to be at the track at half past eight.

The car started the first time and I successfully arrived at the track where problems started to emerge...the car wouldn't start on starter, and would not work at times....However I managed to drive through the qualifying session (only 6 laps though). On the sixth lap the car died and we could not start it until the race and I missed it...I must say I was very happy with the car, although its backend is too stiff for our tracks..Yellow konis don't really suit the 205 very nicely I couldn't get enough heat in the rear tires and I was sideways on each corner, the throttle wouldn't open fully and I still managed to get past 5 or six cars and give 22nd time out of 26 cars

 

We finaly resolved the starting problem today...after dissambling most of the car it turned out to be the CAS/TDC sensor. After changing a couple of sensors, a couple of schemes for the MegaSquirt and a couple of consultants the car now starts and works perfectly..much better than the previous times.

It is not mega fast, but it is not mapped yet, and it is with a crappy exhaust which I found in my basement...and which actually exploded today in my garage...We went to start the car and obviously, during the starting attempts the previous day we had not turned of the fuel pump and the first time it started there was a huge BANG...The backbox had exploded in parts

 

Here are some pics and clips now

http://bgphoto.net/photos/12499/o633581469580748750.jpg

 

These are two clips of the first start of the car (its actually the second one...during the first I managed to go over my right headlight :-D)

This day was one of my happiest days for the last two years.

 

Here are two clips from the qualifying session on which I can be seen for a few seconds:

 

I must say that there were so many problems until the car finally started that I'm sure that if I knew it would be so hard I would have never tried to do this...but now the satisfaction that I have built something with my own hands and it actually works is huge :-)

 

Some of the problems we had were - at the first starting attempt, I tried to turn the engine by hand...and it wouldn't turn..I thought that it was the worst - the pistons were interacting :-D with the head or valves...but it turned out to be the headgasket I had forgotten to put the locating dwels on the block and the head and had put the headgasket the wrong way around A new headgasket and a half an hour later and the engine would turn smoothly.

The next problem that arised was that the cambelt was too long...I had the block and liners skimmed 3mm and that was too much for the spring loaded tensioner...to overcome this problem, I removed the spring and the flange it pushes and tensioned the cambelt by hand...I had no sleeves for the locating 7mm nuts, so I just put two larger nuts below them...which would soon become the next problem...

At the race, after the car died and we took it to the pit area, we started it and heard a strange noise from the engine..it turned out that both 11mm nuts that hold the tensioner had gone loose.

The next problem we found was the earth for the body..the 8mm nut holding it had gone loose and the current going through the body earthed through the string for the cutout master switch..and it was in a higher state of melt...

 

The last race for the season is next weekend and I hope that the will have a new exhaust, be fully mapped and cleaned fully so I can attend it and finish :-)

wish me luck

 

 

In the spare time I had we converted my brothers 1.9 gti to mi16 power..this car also had various problems..first it wouldn't start for a few days..it turned out to be a loose pin in the TDC sensor connector...then a few days later the car became gearless, we removed the geaerbox to find that the pinion was torn as it turns out, the mechanics that put the engine in the bay didn't put all the gearbox to engine bolts and the gearbox and this lead to the fault.

Then after a couple of leaking water hoses the car was finally a proper car...until today where there was a local amateur race at which a friend of my brother, while driving the car, managed to hit a tyre in the inside of a corner and roofed the car :-/

as you can see the car needed a new paintjob anyways..so now finally it will get it...I'm just wondering which is the better option - having a new roof welded, or having the current one straightened...a new body is not an option and I don't think it is actually needed, the car drives and turns just fine.

 

p.s. this is my longest forum post ever

Edited October 12, 2008 by cybernck

[Boris 0]

wowww i know the driver

[jonnie205 1]

just chop roof off and fit another is the best way, any roof will do and even better fit a non sunroof one

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

this is great and reminds me of my projects... finishing early in the morning before the race .

 

shame to hear/see about your brothers car, hope you get it sorted soon.

 

good luck at the next race!

[ifcho 0]

I managed to take part in the last season race here.

Here are a few pics of the car, which again had a few major repairs at the last moment (the looks are still crap...but I hope I will sort them out this winter):

 

 

 

and here is some interior:

 

 

Now a few words for the race...as it was my first race, you may guess that my times weren't very good, even though I was 15th out of 30 after the qualifying sessions...

During the race, a few cars in front of me crashed and I went up to 10th or so...however I was more afraid than more experienced drivers, and I missed several opportunities where I could have gained a few places, but instead I lost some...here is a video, where instead of taking advantage of the situation, I lost a position:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=3JvscyIMSsE

 

Here, I locked the fronts and the car went straight ahead, what I could have done, was to pull of from the brakes, and eventualyl hit the lada sideways, and go infront of him....

 

The race was really exiting for me (it was my first time) and I'm very satisfied with the car.

The car itself now has around 11:1CR and a Newman track/rally 300 degree, 12mm lift cam. The block, liners and pistons were machined to get this compression. The car was rather slow at low rpms, but after 5k, up to 7500 it went pretty well...note that the car was mapped a few minutes before the qualifiing sessions, on an empty strip left for testing...

 

However, on the 5th or 6th lap I switched to third not in time and I saw the revs going up to the end of the tachmoeter (it is a 10k one...) after that the car started to be quite a lot slower...one and a half laps later, some slow cars, that I had left a long time ago started passing me by..and the car could hardly go over 6k (in fact it didn't)...and several hundred meters after that it stopped...:-/

 

I finally managed to strip the engine last week and here is what I found in the sump:

The rod is in quite a shape as well:

 

one thing that I noticed during the race, was that the oil temperature was quite high as well...nearly 130degree C...which I thing may have contributed to the damage, or may be the main reason for it...

If you have any ideas why that would have happened, please share them with me.

 

Some friends suggest that this could be the result of me not bedding in the engine properly (I just ran it for 20-30 minutes at 2500 rpm and then went straight to map it on the highway), however I doubt this would be the case. I guess that if improper bed in would do something, would be to shorten the overall life of the components, but not to cause such damage...

[ifcho 0]

I haven't updated this for a while

Well, the car was rebuild, new parts arrived:

 

 

It also had a paint job (for free, by a friend, not top class, but enough for my purposes, and the price paid :-D)

[ifcho 0]

Got a shiny new exhaust with center box only (55mm straight through pipe):

 

and went for some tests on a local karting curcuit

 

 

unfortunately, the tests didn't end up well:

 

This is the crack in the block:

 

and here is the new engine:

 

The evening after the incident I went and got the mi16 motor out of the donor car. The next afternoon it was in the car:

 

mi16 FTW

[ifcho 0]

obviously, I forgot to mention what happened last year in July. I went to a local hilclimb, with my new outfit:

 

at the service park:

 

on the road:

 

at the start:

 

 

this is the second run:

 

and this was the last corner:

 

 

 

 

.....for me :-( ...you can hear the bang at the end of the movie

 

[ifcho 0]

luckily, no damage for me, and little for the car...radiator, two wishbones, a shock absorber :-/ and a few wheels.