My Audi Conversion

General Owners Cars
141

Will I ever have any luck!!!

I was working away last week, so in an attempt to get the car finished I left it at Plans for them to do the Geo.

Whilst it was there they noticed a couple of bolts holding the turbo to the manifold had come loose. To be honest I thought this might happen and have been looking around recently for those small rigs that allow you to drill holes in the top of bolts so you can lockwire them. So they removed the bolts to drill them and lockwire them for me.

When it was going back together yesterday they noticed that the inlet wheel of my turbo now looks like this

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/knackeredturbo.jpg[/image]

It has obviously ate something, most probably a small stone. I removed the air box lid today when I went down to collect the car and sure enough the air filter has collapsed slightly into the bottom of the air box. Not by much, but certainly by enough to let a small stone or stones through.

All that turbo has done is a rolling road session and approx 45 minutes of driving up and down the runway at Plans

I am soooooooooo pee-ed off.

The call has been made and I have a new turbo on its way. The problem is, it isn�t an off the shelf turbo, it�s a bit of a thing I dreamt up myself, so it has to be made up special and it also has to come all the way from bloody America.

My first booked up trackday is supposed to be the 23rd Feb and then 27th Feb, so fingers crossed it turns up in time. I had wanted to do a load of road miles and the associated fettling following that testing before I got it on track, but all of that will depend on how quick the turbo gets here.

But anyway, big thanks to Plans for doing a great job and Big thanks to Pro Alloy for getting me a new filter on the way and some ally strip, so I can weld a cross of ally in the airbox under the filter so it can�t collapse in again.

143

Sean,you must be the unluckyiest person alive!!
to get a stone up the roof duct when you are out driving alone is some achievement in itself… let alone having it punt through the filter and wreck the turbo!!!
I have now done 14 track days with mine since the roof scoop/air box mod covering approx 11,000 miles,and the front of the car looks like it’s been shot with a machine gun… all I have found in mine is a few bluebottles a small feather and some grit…
guess this is gods way of punishing you for having the cheek to have more power than me…

144

Wonder if it was a bronze pellet?

145

Gutted, hope they sort the new one quickly.

146

Well, at least the turbo builders have had practice with the first one, and second will benefit from that somehow!

\

147

New turbo arrived yesterday evening, so me and Burt pulled a late one and got the car all back together and running, so we will be at Donno on Saturday. Unfortunatly that will be the first time the car turns a wheel in any kind of anger, so fingers crossed it all works OK.

148

Well done lads, & good luck for tomorrow.

look forward to seeing you & car next Weds

149

seen the car and it looks great, still want a pax lap sean as i need to see what ill be aiming for with my car one day

150

Well done. Hope everything runs smoothly for you today. I’m looking forward to seeing this beast next Wednesday. Will you be giving a few pax laps then? Pleeeeeeaaaaaaaase

151

My main aim on Wednesday is just to put miles on the car and work on the setup a bit, so yeah anyone that wants a pax ride, just come and ask.

Today at Donnington went really well, I was well chuffed. I had a CV boot split It was one of the stiff plastic ones, rather than the flexible rubber ones. We had looked at them when the shafts arrived and wondered how long they would last and I guess today we got our answer.

The day started with us doing about 40ish minutes in two 20ish minute sessions. We started out on low boost and slowly turned it up to see how it went.

I had a mate of mine bring me a CV boot from home, which pretty much put pay to the rest of the morning. We were back for the afternoon session though, even though the replacement boot wasn’t 100% the correct one it held up OK, only weeping a little grease.

In the afternoon, we ran the car a bit harder and did one hour non stop, in three 20 minute stints, i did the first and last and Burt did the second. The car was great, the power delivery is very progressive, with loads of low down umph.

Plan is to spanner check everything tomorrow and Monday night. I will be straight onto GKN on Monday morning to get some of there proper cv boots and the proper clips. The Inner CV’s have GKN boots and they were fine. To be honest the outer on the drivers side was fine and that is a shitty stiff plastic one, so hopefully a good quality boot and clip will fix the problem.

All in all we were really chuffed that this was the only problem we had. Roll on Wednesday and more testing!!

152

Good news mate…
Glad it went well after all your bad luck!
was sooo tempted to shoot up to Donny this afternoon to see how it was going… in the end I took the easy option and went to bed!

153

Fab news, Sean & Burt

See you guys on Tuesday/Wednesday

154

Fab news, Sean & Burt

See you guys on Tuesday/Wednesday

ive got to work wednesday, I hate my boss

would love more time in the car

burt

155

Second time on track today at Donnington. The day started out OK for me, it looks like the new nice squidgy CV boot I put on has fixed the problem I had with the hard plastic one splitting on Saturday. I am now happy that the CV boot split, simply because it was a shitty stiff plastic one and for no other reason.

Then once again my luck struck as in my second session on about the third lap, coming down the back straight under the bridge my bloody roof blows off, taking my engine cover and half of my rear clam and my rear wing with it. It’s made a right mess of a lot of brand new body work. To say I was pissed off would be an understatement.

Well I’m off to my workshop to try and salavge some body panels. Or maybe I will just pour a jerry can of petrol over it and throw a match on!!

On the upside, the car was going like a train and I am sure the only reason the roof blew off was because of the speed we were going down the back straight. I haven’t looked at the datalog yet to get the true GPS speed, but I was almost into 5th which in my car is getting on for 150MPH

156

That is what i call bad luck. Sorry Sean.
Why on earth did the roof come off?

157

God i bet that made you jump

Didnt Russ have the same problem last year???

158

That is what i call bad luck. Sorry Sean.
Why on earth did the roof come off?

Massive fart after last night’s curry!







Felt really sorry for you today, mate, but at least you know the mechanicals work great

159

hopefully most the bodywork will be repairable mate.

160

Cheers guys!

I reckon the roof came off simply because of how fast the car was going, and the amount of air getting under it. The car has never gone that fast before.