Cope's GTI - Page 4

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Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #45 – August 19, 2022, 04:54:49 PM

Thanks Ian! great to meet you!

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #46 – August 19, 2022, 04:55:59 PM

Nurburgring 2022

It was fantastic to be back over in Germany after 3 years!

Above is a little teaser.

After road testing the car and doing a shakedown at the national meet sprint day I was confident the Golf was ready for action.

Before leaving I gave the car a good clean, packed with the usual spares, tools and this time a spare gearbox! Yep… you read that right. Best to over prepare than face a headache trying to find a gearbox in Germany.

She was fairly loaded up!

There were 4 of us travelling, Myles in his M2, Brooke in his 330 touring and Beardy passenger with me after selling his teg.

We had a nice steady drive over to Hull to get the ferry across to Rotterdam.

In the queue for passport control, I spied another mk2! I pulled up next to the owner and said it was nice to see someone using a proper car for a trip abroad, turns out he was travelling over to Belgium for a bowling tournament! Amazing to see.

We arrived in Rotterdam the next morning ready for the 4 hour drive down to Kelberg where we were staying.

Despite the heavy load in the Golf she still managed to go off the clock on the autobahn!

Brooke managed 145mph in his 330 touring
Myles, who thought his M2 was limited to 155mph, managed 175mph before tapping out! Hell of a speed!

We arrived at the guest house early afternoon.

The host Christa was a lovely woman, who’d fully stocked the fridge with beer, and essentials, a really nice touch. The house is in a great location, 2 min walk to a big Lidl and a fairly new garage to the area, 24/7 performance – which, as you might have guessed from the name, is open 24/7!

We had a wonder down, and there was some SERIOUS metal in the carpark and on the ramps. It would be an absolute dream to own a place like this.

This is always a great view when driving to the track, with the Nurburg castle in the background

I was keen to get straight to the track and get 1 lap under my belt, so I could rest easy. It was Myles’ first time at the ring and he had some trepidation, but I talked him into getting out there for a lap, following me. That night he said he was really glad he did and meant he could get a decent nights sleep without feeling too nervous!

It had been 3 years since I’d last been, and the magic of the place is totally overwhelming, it’s still a real privilege to be there and to be able to drive the track.

Time seems to race over there and it was soon the weekend, we spent the time between driving and viewing at various points around the track.

We made the obligatory stop to the Pistenklaus

And continued day after day, lapping lapping and more lapping, only stopping for fuel and oil top ups. I got through 2 litres of oil on the trip! The Golf has always used oil, not so much during normal road driving but on track it gets through a lot, which I’m fine with.

This is one of my favourite pictures of the trip. I’ll be getting it printed and framed I think!

There’s no atmosphere like it!

The little Golf was yet again holding its own! With the only issue being the brakes.
Once the brakes were hot I was experiencing horrible pedal judder, which travelled right through the steering column, it was REALLY bad! That night I took the car out and did a bed in procedure again. The next day on track it had improved them but still not great. I headed back to the guesthouse to swap my pads over, Id taken my previous set of DS2500’s which had about 2mm of meat left on them. Went straight back for a lap and the brake issue was fully cured! I kept these pads in for the remainder of the trip.

The yellow stuff pads I’d got off my mate must have been very old (we thought 10+ years old) and they were well past it.

After doing a lap, I usually take the car for a cool down, and park up in a big layby down the road, on the weekends they blocked this off, so we found another in the opposite direction towards ED Petrol station.

After one particular lap, I’d parked next to a English EP3, his mate popped over for a chat,

He said “oh this is going really well, you flew past me earlier”
“oh really? What were you in?”
“the silver R8”
“oh yeah I remember”
“it must have some power! You were flying, what have you done to it”
“errm, yeah a few bits and bobs, mostly suspension, brakes etc”
I daren’t tell him it was a fairly standard 8v…

To be fair to him, he was probably being polite, as he definitely wasn’t flat out!

I’m no expert around here by any means, but I do know the Ring very well now, mostly from sim knowledge and the 50 or so laps I’ve done in real life. It’s one of the few tracks in the world where track knowledge beats outright power, grip, braking, you name it. If you want to go faster at the Ring, get some coaching or really put the time in on the sim. Luckily for me, I had Nige in as passenger a few years ago, I rewatched the footage back before our trip to make sure to familiarise myself with the little hints and tips Nige talked me through.

I forgot to mention about the new rad, its made a huge improvement on temps! The coolant gauge stays around 90 degrees on track, which is ideal!

Throughout the week we’d had a lot of yellow flags (crashes) on one lap there were 5 yellow flags, pretty shocking. But on Monday evening I had a fairly clear lap, I wasn’t going for an outright try hard fastest lap, but it was a nice, smooth lap with only a couple of minor hold ups - a motorbike at Adenauer Forst and a Ring Taxi at Breidscheid.

This lap felt pretty special, the car felt great, temps were good, gearbox felt great! But mainly because of the “Jump at Pflanzgarten. I’d always braked before the jump, and back on the brakes again after the jump. This time, I kept my foot flat in 4th gear, took off and heard valve bounce at the limiter… it didn’t feel as terrifying as I thought, but it was a HUGE adrenaline rush as you can see in the video.

To my surprise, when I got home it was a 9:02 BTG. Without the hold ups I think a sub 9min lap was on the cards. Without sounding like I’m blowing my own trumpet, I’m massively proud of the car, it’s been a long journey of development, both in the car and me as a driver and this was the icing on the cake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFALo-77YgQ

After this we had around 30 mins before the track closed – perfect, just time for one more lap. Our ferry back was the next day so this was the last chance to get on track.

I bought another lap ticket, and got my helmet on ready for another lap. As I started the car the siren sounded across the carpark, there had been a crash and the track was closed for the rest of the day. I was annoyed at all, actually slightly relieved as deep down, even though I shouldn’t have been, I know I would have been chasing that sub 9 lap time. Everything happens for a reason.

Our ferry back wasn’t until 8:30pm, so we had a day to kill, the plan was to visit the shops on the boulevard at the ring centre, do some karting at the Nuburgring and them drive an hour towards the ferry to visit Michael Schumacher karting centre (a pretty good day all in all)

At the Karting centre, Myles got chatting to Jake Hill, the current BTCC driver, he knew him from racing Genetta’s years ago. Jake was a really sound bloke, over there for a stag do. We were on the session after their, so didn’t get to race alongside him unfortunately. But I did managed to put in a faster lap!!

(JH24 is Jake Hill)

(Insert Jeremy Clarkson Smug Face)

3 very different cars!

We arrived at Schumacher’s place, this time they had opened up both indoor and outdoor as one track!

Very fun and very reasonably priced. I managed to bag fastest lap of the week, which topped off a great day and an even better week!

We left there for the ferry.

So that was that. The Golf had an absolute blinder of a trip. 10 laps of the ring, 1,000 road miles, off the clock autobahn, many many smiles, laughs and jokes with the best lads.
Theres some great outside footage which I’m going to complie and post up in the coming weeks.

Onto the next one!

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #47 – August 19, 2022, 08:27:15 PM

?that sounds pretty full on

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #48 – August 22, 2022, 07:57:55 AM

Great write up, always love your Ring trip reports.

Strange you should say about the brake juddering, I had exactly the same, but didn't cure it.
Every time I'd do a lap, I'd get 3/4 around and then start to experience judder, it would go right back to normal after allowing them to cool a bit. But they were brand new pads I'd only put on for the national meet,
Tried a few things, had the brakes on and off, but never got to the bottom of it, thought the bearings could be on the way out, so called it after 6 or 7 laps. Right pain as it meant I couldn't do any back to back laps either.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #49 – August 23, 2022, 04:30:52 PM

Quote from: Monkey on August 22, 2022, 07:57:55 AM

Great write up, always love your Ring trip reports.

Strange you should say about the brake juddering, I had exactly the same, but didn't cure it.
Every time I'd do a lap, I'd get 3/4 around and then start to experience judder, it would go right back to normal after allowing them to cool a bit. But they were brand new pads I'd only put on for the national meet,
Tried a few things, had the brakes on and off, but never got to the bottom of it, thought the bearings could be on the way out, so called it after 6 or 7 laps. Right pain as it meant I couldn't do any back to back laps either.

Thanks Dave!

Yeah very odd isnt it! What pads did you go for? they werent Yellow Stuff by chance were they?
I really dont rate EBC brake products...

I changed my bearings only recently, and rebuilt them with high temp grease, they feel okay to me but its a good shout.

I'm going to try Carbon Lorrain, or Tarox Competition pads next time round I think.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #50 – August 23, 2022, 04:49:48 PM

I actually had Carbon Lorrain ones in before the National Meet, awesome on track, but they were absolutely awful on the road, would screech if you even touched the brake pedal. They'd quieten down if you got them up to race hot temperatures, but as soon as normal driving resumed, they'd be screeching again.
I then fitted Brembo Sport pads, felt great on the road and (before the juddering) track, I hope it's not them making the juddering.

How do you bed in your brakes?

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #51 – October 14, 2022, 10:11:40 PM

Sorry Dave I didnt see your reply!

I usually do some really heavy braking, 90mph to 30mph, about 10 times consecutively.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #52 – October 14, 2022, 10:12:43 PM

^ Thanks mate

Last Track action for 2022

I had a surprise outing to Cadwell Park last weekend.
My mate Nick races his Leon Cupra K1 in the Javelin Sprint Series and he'd persuaded me to give it a bosh.

Javelin run the series in different classes according to engine size (turbo cars get bumped up) I was in class J12, 1600cc–1800cc.
They then have 2 categories, Spec1 and Spec 2.

Spec 1 is for cars with full interiors, carpets and 2 seats but they can have a full roll cage, splitters etc.
Spec 2 is for full blown track cars, anything goes essentially.

I would be racing in J12 Spec 1.

I did my research and my class consisted on only 1 model of car, a Toyota Celica from around 2000 ish (not sure on exact model)
But standard they are 190bhp and 1100kgs. So I knew I had my work cut out!

The morning started out damp and the first few shaded corners didnt dry out fully until after lunch.

After the first run I was really happy to be leading the class, I think this was partly down to me being on NS2R and the competition were all using AR1s and I have much more low down grunt which suited the damp conditions. But I knew as soon it started to dry out I'd really have to push to get a respectable time.

Sprinting is a whole different ball game to track days. It's being able to put down consistent fast lap times, all using cold tyres and cold brakes.
The nerves also really get to you, as the start line looms your heart rate increases, I think part of putting in fast times is being able to keep a cool head.
We had 6 timed runs in the day, and not having been to Cadwell for a while it took longer than I wanted to become comfortable.

On my 4th run I was finally taking Coppice flat. I'd figures Charlies was much faster staying in 4th, dab of left foot brake and straight back on the power for the uphill Park Straight. Any times gained at the exit of Charlies was really noticeable in the rev range.

Each time I came back to the pits and had a debrief with Nick, I told him there was maybe 0.5 seconds to gain in the lap, but not much more. One thing I learnt was not to underestimate the knowledge and confidence you get throughout the day and I consistently found time each lap.

My fifth lap out, I was confident in the track condition and the car, I just needed to give it my all, nail the lines and stay focused.

Unfortunately I had a big lockup after Hall bends into the Hairpin, which probably made for good viewing, but not great for my lap times.
never the less I'd shaved off a touch more.

My last timed run the pressure was on. I tried hard, very hard! ... a little bit too hard!
took Coppice flat, little flick right into Charlies, which in hindsight was too aggressive and causing a decent slide with half a turn of oppo at about 90mph.
Exciting and frightening all at the same time as theres no run off there.

Felt decent through the Gooseneck, which I'd been happy with all day. If there was time to be made on the competition I was sure it would be through Charlies and the Gooseneck, as the car is really on the limit there.

The Gooseneck I tend to go in fairly hot, get the rear to just rotate on entry, giving me a neutral steering position, a little flick left and it swoops the car nicely down the hill towards Mansfield.

Unfortunately again I was a little too hot on the cold brakes which caused another slide through Mansfield - scrubbing time.

Below you can see the entry to Manfield on my last run, rear wheel in the air, slight opp and front tyres trying to peel off the rim.

Less haste = More speed captain! - note for next time.

I ended the day with my fastest lap, despite the over exuberance.
(my time in pink, competitors in blue - I cant get on the site to screenshot first place in my class but I think he was an early 1:40)

And that was that. The day was over, I'd had an absolute blast! Loved the competition and was proud with my first stab.
I'd finished 3rd in class (*cough* out of 4 cars...) But i was happy with that. The little Golf was 70+hp down on power, so I was very happy with the results.

Also want to thank this lad.

No only did he supporting me before each run and pep me up throughout the day, he also absolutely smashed his class and came 4th overall!
Just to put that in perspective, he was in a fwd Leon vs full time attack spec Evo's/Impreza's, a huge achievement! Well done buddy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW8sw9NpKvQ

Above is video of my fastest run.

and a video of Nicks 1st place run, which I know some of you will enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3qBFW59aJ4

So whats next...

Well, I've got some plans for the Golf over winter.

I've not yet started stripping down my new engine, but I think I have a clearer vision of what I want to build.
I think the plan will still be a 16v on ITB, decent cams, stand alone ecu, BUT I'll be building it as a 1.8 not a 2.0/2.1.

I'm pretty keen to get the Golf up to spec and do a full year of Sprinting. Keeping the car a 1.8 will mean I'll be much more on par with the competition in my 1.6-1.8 class and ultimately make the car much more competitive ( Although I need to work on my driving style too!)

Lots to learn and lots to look forward to.

Cheers.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #53 – October 17, 2022, 09:18:39 AM

Well caught @2.23!
Sounds like you're getting addicted to sprinting.
Soon you'll be getting different set ups for sprinting/track days.

Looking forward to seeing the 16v build too!

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #54 – October 18, 2022, 10:37:25 AM

Great update and both videos were impressive. Sprint/Time attack looks great fun and possibly right up my own street. Definitely agree with the bloke that said if there was an award for being best presented it would be you (I paraphrase but something like).

Look forward to the 16v build, good luck.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #55 – October 18, 2022, 05:21:56 PM

Thanks guys!

I've always wanted to race, but its just so unaffordable to the majority of people. Not only building the car, but keep in date with things like Seats, Harnesses, Helmets, Boots, it all adds up!

So really Sprinting is the cheapest form of Motorsport, Sprint days are roughly the same price as track days and you could turn up in a standard road car if you wanted to.

Plus I wouldn't like to race the Golf, all the bumps and scrapes would kill me!

If I cause any damage on a Sprint day, then I've just got myself to blame and I can live with that.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #56 – October 20, 2022, 09:32:08 AM

I don't blame you.
My boss used to race his mk2 in the gti cup before he moved up to the mk5s.
You should see the state of it, awesome motor, but loads of marks and dings!

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #57 – December 02, 2022, 07:59:34 PM

Pretty sure this is your car in the beginning of this Nurburgring video

Queuing to enter the ring and driving on to the circuit. Film car is behind yours for a moment. Havent watched the rest to see if you meet on track too.

https://youtu.be/vtopSwV_D6g

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #58 – December 09, 2022, 09:28:57 AM

Quote from: MJA on December 02, 2022, 07:59:34 PM

Pretty sure this is your car in the beginning of this Nurburgring video

Queuing to enter the ring and driving on to the circuit. Film car is behind yours for a moment. Havent watched the rest to see if you meet on track too.

https://youtu.be/vtopSwV_D6g

Yes! I spotted Misha behind me at the exit. Its a shame we didn't meet on track as it seems we were a similar pace.

I think both cars must be a similar power and weight.

Re: Cope's GTI

Reply #59 – December 13, 2022, 04:31:13 PM

Bit of an engine update. Contrary to my last post, I'll be keeping this as a 2.0 and move up a class in sprints, it will mean I'll be against the vtec boys, which wont do me any favours at all, but I cant bring myself to downgrade the engine

Firstly I got the engine in the shed and on the engine stand, managed to man handle it on my own with much swearing.

Then set about getting it all stripped down.

The plan was to:
- Investigate the engine and see if it is indeed a TSR 2.1 build bottom end or not
- Inspect the head work
- Check for wear
- Get a rebuild plan together.

I've never taken an engine to bits before, I've only done odd jobs, so it was nice to get fully stuck in.

The "baffled sump" was questionable.

This wont be refitted, I'll be using Schrick one from my 8v.

Once the head and sump were off, I took the pistons out.

This confirmed my suspicions, its a standard 2.0 ABF bottom end, not a 2.1 TSR.
The engine has been apart before and its had new slightly oversized pistons at 82.98mm, which indicates it's had a bore and hone in the past.

I think the engine has been built in a dirty environment, there has definitely been some bits of crap circulating through the engine. There are some marks on the top of the piston too. I think i'll Dremel these smooth, rather than replace at this stage.

The initial look at the block was good to my untrained eye.

Apart from the vertical lines, these tend to show up on camera and are very hard to see in person. My only concern was 1 deep mark right at the top of the bore

I've measure its distance from the top of the bore, and measured how deep into the piston the rings sit and I think it will be okay. If the mark had gone any further down I think the block would have been scrap or ready for another bore and rehone, if there were enough material to do that.
Onto the bearings, some looked okay, some looked worn.

Onto a first look at the end, it has has alot of work. It uses 2 ABF inlet cams which have been modified by Martin from GasnGears. This will probably explain the decent power it pulled on the dyno.

I've bought myself some of ebays finest tooling to get me started with the strip down

Currently thats as far as I've got. I've not had as much time in the shed recently as I'd like but I hoping I can get this moving over more over Christmas.

...so, whats the plan.

After costing everything up from High comp pistons, forged rods, cams, uprated springs etc I almost had a small heart attack... We are talking north of £7k-£10k.

With this being my first engine build and not being able to stomach 7k, I've decided to phase the build.

Phase 1 will be a deep clean of all components, replace everything from, rings, bearings, flanges, seals etc and build it up with all the components it came with. It made 175bhp on KJET so I'd hope for 180bhp+ on stand alone ECU and ITBs. With the standard bottom end I'll be limited to the amount of revs I can throw at it, so at this stage theres no point buying cams.

Once I'm happy with phase 1 and confident it wont blow up after I've put it together, I'll probably buy another block and slowly build that up as I go, with the aim of around 200bhp+

Number aside, if it goes like a stabbed rat, makes a god awful noise and is reliable I'll be over the moon.