The Trackbitch's first track day - Cadwell Park 3rd August

After a lot of hard work and one postponed trackday, the time had finally come to attend our first trackday. We'd chosen Cadwell Park as it was close to one of the team members, it meant that we had lots of support on the day, so if anything should go wrong we had every chance of sorting it out. It was also one of my favourite tracks and at £185 for three drivers inc. helmet hire it was good value for money.

The question at the back of my mind was could we get to Cadwell (around 170 miles), do a full trackday and get back 170 miles. On the journey over from Manchester the night before the car had been well behaved, we'd never done a two & half hour drive before so it was a little daunting in a 22 year old car, but the trackbitch performed well and we passed the first part with ease.

We arrived at the track early having only a short 30 min drive to get there, the track day was a novice day (maximum three previous track days) so we didn't feel too intimidated on our first outing. To our surprise the car park was full of motorbikes, had we turned up on the wrong day? No, MSV had split the day into a bike and car day, fortunately we weren't all going out at the same time, the day was in three sessions, one cars and two bikes every 20 minutes. We eventually found the other cars in a corner of the car park, a complete mix of vehicles, two M3s, an M5, Audi TT RS, Mercedes SLK AMG, Honda S2000, Ford Puma, Leon FR diesel and a MK1 MR2, someone had an older car than ours!

We registered nice and early and then set about our first slightly daunting task, the noise test. The car is quite noisy and whilst we had used an iPhone db meter to measure the noise the week before, they are not very accurate, so we approached the testing bay with a degree of trepidation. It was our turn, we revved to 4.5k revs for the required amount of time, omitting a largish bang when backing off the throttle, the guy said 'you're fine mate', we'd passed, we asked for the reading out of curiosity, 98db against a limit of 105db.

After the obligatory driver's briefing we picked up our helmets and join the crocodile of cars for the sighting laps. These are good for getting use to driving on track and finding your feet at a slower pace, but totally rubbish for giving you the lines (like they are suppose to do), if you're any more than three cars back  you've got no chance of following the pace car's lines, as each driver adds their own personal touch to the line, by the time it's got to the back you've got no idea what the line should be. Not to bother it was good to get the trackbitch on track and get a feel for how it would perform.

10.00am arrived, this was the first session of the day out of the seven we'd paid for. We strapped ourselves in nice and tight, I omitted the ball cruncher bottom harnsess and settled for four points, that kept us nice and tight in the car. I was driving the first stint, this was it, the first proper outing in our little, red, 22 year old French hot hatch. I was slightly nervous but having driven Cadwell twice before I was also really keen to see how it would compare to my old 182 Clio and current Megane R26.

They normally tell you to start off slowly and build your speed up throughout the day, I decided to ignore this and go on full attack mode, I quickly built up the speed and soon over took some of the other cars, we then found a nice little gap with no one to bother us. The car felt very good indeed, more stable at high speeds than I anticipated and easier to drive on track than I had expected. We'd had the car tuned on a rolling road but most of the power is only accessible after 4,000 revs so I had expected that driving on track would take a bit more concentration to keep the car in the sweet spot, however the Cadwell track really seemed to work well for us with no forced gear changes, no section where you are required to change up only for a small moment to then have to change down a gear. The brakes also performed well, again a lot better than I had expected, I am sure there are improvements to be made in the future, but for now they are more than adequate. I still lacked some confidence in the high speed corners due to not really knowing what the car can take and also not wanting to roll a 22 year old biscuit tin (we still need to fit that roll cage). The car did however run very hot with the needle showing well over three quarters on the temp gauge, it was a hot day and the car is renowned to run hot but it was a little high, another future upgrade could be cooling. The 20 minutes was soon up, probably for the best as we didn't want to push the car for much longer without checking things out.

The Red Baron on-track at Mansfield corner.










We arrived back in the paddock and gave the car a quick once over, apart from a slighly leaky pipe on the the turbo which was quickly tightened up everything was OK, we'd survived session one.

Session two soon came round and it was time to change drivers, time for a passenger ride. On the way back in from my session, my mate said, 'Out of 100 how much were you pushing then?', I replied 90. I was soon to learn that my 90 was more like a 70. We pulled out of the pit lane and started our session, once again quickly picking off the slower cars and allowing the faster M-Power BMWs to get ahead of us. What then proceeded was a true assault on the track pushing the car to its limits seeing what it really could do, I normally make quite a good passenger but not for the next 20 minutes, I spent most of it pressing a fake brake in the foot well. Once again the car performed very well indeed, comfortably passing an Audi TT RS, Mercedes SLK AMG, Honda S2000 and track setup MX5, the car was punching well above its weight and doing us proud.

On the penultimate lap of the session an M5 had caught us up towards the end of Park Straight too late to be let past, just before Gooseneck we found the M5 on our inside without invitation and decided that it was best to take to the grass to avoid any potential contact, we'd had our first off! At the time I did not know what was going on so was truly terrified when we started heading over the grass towards the tyre wall, however everything was under control and we soon headed back onto the black stuff. Again the car was running very hot by the time the session was over so it was good to get back to the paddock and allow it to cool down.

The Red Baron on-track at Barn corner

We attracted a lot of attention in the paddock, with lots of people interested in the car and our project, the guy in the Audi TT RS was particularly impressed that our £1100 trackbitch could perform so well. The guys in the M5 complemented us on our ability to 'tripod' around the circuit, they said that the back wheel on some corners was cocked at least 10 inches in the air.

Session three started and it was my turn behind the wheel again, the usual cars were soon passed, not sure the guy in the S2000 was particularly impressed with being passed, unlike some of the novices who were quite clearly not pushing their cars to the absolute limit like we were, the person in the S2000 was trying a lot harder but the trackbitch soon got past. Compared to my old 182 Clio and current Megane R26 the 5 seemed just as capable and in some areas more than capable, the Megane has a lot more torque and is a lot easier to drive on track. Both the more modern Renaults had more stability in the corners than the 5, with it appearing to have too much roll (apparent in some of the pictures) so something else that may need attention in the future. The session was just about to end and we were heading down the main start finish straight when a shout to slow down came from the passenger seat, white smoke started to come from the exhaust so I quickly pulled off onto the grass. The car stalled and upon restart a massive plume of white smoke came from the exhaust, it was time to call the tow truck :o(

Luckily the car blew on the last lap of the session, it had dropped no oil on the track so we were quickly towed off the circuit and the bike session was able to start on schedule. The car was allowed to cool down in the paddock before we then tried to diagnose the problem. Every time we started the car, clouds of white smoke poured from the exhaust, it was clear our day was over.

The Red Baron on-track at Barn corner

Due to logistics and other commitments, we chose to take the car to a known local garage to get the car's problem diagnosed, we suspect a head gasket, but until we strip it down we can't say for certain. If it is the head gasket then it'll give us a chance to upgrade it to a higher spec part.

Overall, we were delighted with how the car performed on its maiden track day, holding its own against much more expensive machinery. The wait now goes on to find out what we need to do to fix the car.

Stripping the interior, bucket seats and 6-point harnesses.

There was now only one major thing left to do to The Trackbitch before our first track day in one weeks time, lose some unnecessary weight and put in some better seats with harnesses.

The seats were picked up off eBay; two used Cobra Monacos in blue (shame we couldn't get red to match the car) we felt the seats were a bargain at £100 for the pair and with the person living two miles away it would save on a fortune postage. Harnesses were also picked up off eBay, we were only looking for 4-point but some 6-points turned up and as our seats had a hole to stick the extra two points it was a bit of a bonus. We again got lucky on the price as we paid £130 inc. delivery for two used 3" OMP harnesses with aircraft buckles, they were still in date too, FIA approved until 2012. Demon Tweeks sell these new for £293 for two, so we were very happy to pay less than half price. Next up were the seat rails to allow our Cobras to fit onto the original 5's seat mounts, unfortunately these had to be bought new due to time constraints, so another £130 was forked out.

All the old seats were pulled out with great ease, first the rear bench, rear seat belts, rear interior trim, next up was the two front seats and seat belts. Inside an hour the car had been stripped.

Old & new seats and the rear interior

Old & new seats side by side - bit more support on the Cobras.

Work in progress - Team Baron in the background.

To my surprise the harnesses went in with ease, holes were drilled in the boot well for the main shoulder straps and clipped onto proper bolt mounts. The side straps just used the fixing points for the old seat belts, however we still need to fit the bottom straps correctly using mounts (we did not order enough), we have been able to fit the driver's seat with the full 6-points though, tying off the straps onto the bottom of the seat rails.

With the correct Cobra to Renault 5 seat mount adaptors the seats were easily bolted in, there's obviously no tilt but the seats slide forward and back allowing each trackbitch team member to be at the right distance from the pedals. We had thought that it might not have been possible to have any adjustment back and forth, so were pleased when the mounts allowed this.

View of cockpit with new seats and harnesses

View from rear of new seats & harnesses

Finally, after many days of hard work we were ready for our first track day. It was now just under a week to wait. We've also managed to sell all the seats (front & rear) on eBay and through the owners club, this added £95 back into the bank account. In total we've only paid £265 for our new interior.

Minor paint job - Boot lid & wing mirrors

Since we first set our eyes on our 5 we were always going to remove the rear wing as it was too Ali G for our liking and added unnecessary weight to the car. Well the wing was removed quite a while ago now and due to lack of filler at the time we just filled the holes with some old tile grout. In the same session we also removed our stupid wing mirrors and replaced with some scruffy items purchased off eBay, however the car was starting to look a little scruffy and I thought it was time to tidy things up.

So after a trip to Halfords to buy filler, primer and various grades of sandpaper I made a start on the top of the boot lid and wing mirrors. I've never done any cosmetic work on a car before so after viewing a couple of videos on YouTube I set about filling holes with the stinky gunky filler, overall it proved to be an easy job and I was surprised how quick it dried with not bad results for a newbie.

Next job was to sand down the whole top section of the boot lid, I really should have resprayed the whole boot lid but as we're not going for a full Concours restore on the car I went for the easy option, anything was better than some ropey old tile grout that had started to leak. Mirrors were also sanded down and now it was time to prime.

In total the boot lid and mirrors had three coats of primer with sanding down in between, quite a messy job with lots of red dust flying around everywhere, also wiping down the car in between coats of primer proved frustrating for someone with no patience and short on time but a spare afternoon sorted out the first stage of the respray.

After some researching on the internet I found Paint for Cars who will mix you any paint colour code and stick it in an aerosol, bundle it up with a can of lacquer and send in the post for just over £20. The parcel arrived within a week and now it was time to spray the car with some shiny red apple coloured paint.

The car was taped up again with lots of newspaper and given three coats of the red paint, again I was surprised with how quick it took to dry, with only 30 - 40 mins in between coats, it meant I was able to spray the car with all the required coats of paint after work one evening.

Day three - after the three coats of primer and three coats of paint it was now time for another three of lacquer and our trackbitch would be back looking normal again. This was easily applied, again one night after work and within a couple of hours it was time for the grand reveal.

Overall, we're pretty pleased with the results particularly the wing mirrors as the colour match is very good. For £1 items off eBay they look really good. The boot lid looks fine from a distance but due to the lower boot having a more professional finish than I was able to conjure up at the top, the match is not as good and there is a very obvious line between the two sections of spraying. However, the boot looks better without the massive wing and also looks better than having tile grout in four holes, so we're pretty pleased that for £40 and a few hours work the car is now looking almost normal.

The first proper run out

We've done a few trips out in the car but since finishing all the mechanical work and getting the car set-up on a rolling road we'd not been out for a proper drive. So on a hot sunny Sunday morning and with a friend's VX220 for company I went out for a morning's drive.

The route we took was a familiar one, A34 down to Alderley Edge, B5087 to Macclesfield, A537 up to the Cat & Fiddle Inn, then back down the A54 to Congleton. For the first time the drive out would allow us to understand how the car performed against another car and see if it behaved itself on a longer drive out.

The other car was a standard VX220 N/A which has 145 bhp, but weighing only 875kg means it has 168 bhp/ton. From a standing start the VX had a lot more low down power and the Renault appeared to be slightly sluggish in comparison, it really was apparent that if not kept above 3,500 - 4,000 rpm the Renault could not keep up with power delivery in the VX. However when the Renault was up to speed and on a twisty road and kept in the desired rev range it could easily hold it's own. In the corners the VX handled slightly better but accelerating out of the corners the Renault could pull away. It was a pretty even match with each car exploiting its strengths on each of the roads we went down.

One other thing to remember when comparing cars is that turbo cars, especially turbo cars with a large turbo and small engines can be laggy.  Driving against a normally aspirated car on the road - means we will have to thrash it to make our power work.  As already stated this is tricky to do on public roads. However on track this is much less of an issue, we are far more likely to keep our car in the power band and keep the lag to a minimum, but ultimately we will find out on the track.

Picture of the TrackBitch on A537 - Cat & Fiddle

The triangle of roads we use can be pretty busy on a Sunday however we seemed to get lucky, particularly on the final stretch towards Congleton, with no traffic on large sections of the road.

The car can be quite savage when on boost and you have to be quite careful not to mash the throttle as it can lead to the wheels spinning up (maybe some better rubber can assist with some of this). The car now handles a lot better since we have restored the axle back to its original ride height and added the GAZ adjustable shocks, however I still need to build up the confidence with the cars limitations, something I don't want to be doing on public roads. As mentioned previously it is critical to keep the car on boost and any incorrect gear changes will lead to the car bogging down and not being able to get back up to speed as quick as you might like.

Picture of the TrackBitch on A54 (note the average speed cameras now on the road)

On the trip out a couple of people even passed positive comments when seeing the car, a nod of appreciation from a biker and complements from an Audi owner who use to own one himself.

Overall the car performed very well and we're now confident that it should not embarrass itself on its first track day. We've booked Cadwell Park on Wednesday 3rd August  so we'll soon find out.

Setting the car up - an update.

The car was now setup and ready for it's first track day, however there was something that we thought was not quite right, the bhp we were producing seemed a little low. Whilst 157 bhp was a good performance gain and is still a lot of fun to drive, we were hoping for about another 10 - 15 bhp more from our set-up. This led one of the more mechanical owners of TrackBitch to head to the forums and enquire about what we have got, with some interesting responses.

We had measured the boost pressure from the carb top whilst most owners of Renault 5 GTT measure them from the carb base as you lose 4-5 psi through the carb itself and it gives a more accurate reading as to what the engine is actually getting. This could mean the car has even more potential than we think. See some thoughts below:-


With regards to BHP
Our rolling road said - 143bhp at the wheels but calculated 157.6 bhp at the flywheel. When the rolling road calculated flywheel BHP at the start he calculated a drive train loss of around 20%. For some unknown reason once tuned he calculated a drive train loss of about 10% - which is physically impossible. Drive train loss is much more consistent, if anything it is more at low power NOT less, in his calculations for us drive train loss changed and was FAR more at high power?

Talking to the guys on RTOC.org and using a 2wd loss calculator on line it is FAR MORE likely that our flywheel power is now 170bhp.  You can do the same by entering your drive train type (front, rear or 4 wheel drive) and wheel HP here
http://www.dyno-power-run.com/dynocalc.shtml

If you enter fwd and 143 whp in to this calc it gives our car a maximum 170bhp and a power to weight of 205bhp per tonne. We still have the option to safely add about 3 psi of boost (due to setting up at around 15psi carb base instead of 18psi carb base).

So we can probably expect 180+ bhp in the near future.

Ultimately what really matters is wheel horse power - torque at the wheels is the only accurate measurement a rolling road can offer, but as manufacturers use flywheel horse power (because they dyno their engines on a bench not in the car) then we have used flywheel bhp for comparison to other cars.

Lastly, we don't think we have a lazy turbo - we think at high boost (20psi +) we may well have a boost leak, probably at the wastegate, due to wastegate creep (probably caused by our poorly T3 actuator - which has no adjustment in it) or a possible leak elsewhere in the boost pipe work or the inter-cooler.


The full posting can be read on RTOC but you'll need to sign in to read it.

Setting the car up - A job for a professional & a rolling road

We all decided that we should get the car set-up properly, plus if set-up on a rolling road then we would finally find out what we had under the bonnet. Finding places that have rolling roads is quite easy, however finding places that have rolling roads and can set a car up that has a carburettor is a little harder to find. After an afternoon of internet searching and numerous phonecalls, one member of Team TrackBitch found Ric Wood Motorsport in Stockport, we asked if he could set it up on the following Saturday, but were told it was not possible as he was at Oulton Park assisting the touring car teams for BTCC. Nothing but the best for the TrackBitch.

The car was booked in for the following week and we all placed bets on what bhp we would achieve. I was hoping for around 175bhp, other team members whilst hoping for that sort of figure thought around 160bhp maybe closer to the mark. Setup wasn't cheap either at £150 per hour but it is worth doing a proper job. The car was the last one to be worked on that day, so we had an impatient day waiting to find out. After a couple of hours the car was done, interestingly the car was running lean, when we thought it was running rich, so probably a good job it was set-up by a professional.

So, onto the important bit, the figures....

Starting figures
Maximum Power - Wheels - 105.0 bhp @ 5,510 rpm
Maximum Power - Engine - 125.2 bhp @ 5,500 rpm
Maximum Torque - 128 lbft @ 4,206 rpm

Out of the factory they were 118bhp so we started in a favourable position.

Finishing figures
Maximum Power - Wheels - 143 bhp @ 5,133 rpm
Maximum Power - Engine - 157.6 bhp @ 6,204 rpm
Maximum Torque - 166.4 lbft @ 4,803 rpm

So we'd not quite made the 175 bhp we were after, Ric did say that our Turbo seemed a little weak, which was a bit worrying but that is probably what you get when you have a little gamble on eBay.

Picture below shows print out from the day.

So we didn't quite make what we were hoping for, however the car now feels so much different, the turbo when it kicks in is quite savage (easy to wheel spin in second in the dry) and if you keep the power above 3,500 rpm you can get from A to B pretty quickly. Clearly it is not a car for 0-60 times but on track driven correctly we are hoping to trouble some more serious hardware.

Looking at bhp per ton figures and using the performance calculator on Letstorquebhp this gives us:-

158bhp
831kg
Power to weight of 193bhp


To compare this, listed below are a few bhp per ton figures for some hot hatches.

Standard Renault 5 GTT - 146 bhp/ton
Honda Civic Type R - 158 bhp/ton
Mini Cooper S Works - 170 bhp/ton
Renault Clio 182 Cup - 168 bhp/ton
Renault Megane R26R - 189 bhp/ton
VW Golf R - 178 bhp/ton
Ford Focus RS - 208 bhp/ton

So, new turbo fitted, new rear axle, new rear suspension and a rolling road set-up. Let the fun commence.

There has been a further update since this was written. Please read - Setting the car up - an update

Finally fitting the turbo

All three Team Trackbitch team members were back together and we were aiming to finally get the car back on the road. This time were were also joined by an honorary team member Dave Oates who is a professional photographer, he kindly took a load of pictures of us all hard at work which have been used through this posting, he also helped us out with his mechanical knowledge.

The turbo was assembled off the car to check all the bodged connectors we'd fitted all came together. With the new larger turbo, larger actuator and larger oil-in line it really was going to be a tight fit. We'd been able to use an adapted oil-out line off a Renault 21 Turbo which seemed to fit OK, the water in and out only required one new banjo bolt and the oil-in fitted with a bit of a squeeze. it was just the actuator again from a Renault 21 Turbo that took a bit of tweaking to fit in place.

Hole where the turbo was going - Picture from www.davidoates.net

With the turbo assembled off the car we first had to re-fit the downpipe. Whilst this was off the car we welded in an AFR boss, we could then use an AFR gauge to set the car up and also use on trackdays to check our air/fuel mix was correct. The downpipe proved to be an awkward part to get back on the car and took numerous attempts to finally get attached. With the car only on axle stands it was also difficult working on the car with limited space. After a lot of swearing and forcing the part was attached.

Numerous nuts & bolts, turbos and tools - picture from www.davidoates.net

As the car was having a new turbo we also chose to change the coolant as we didn't want to overheat our new turbo. In theory, this wasn't too hard a job, simply disconnect a couple of hoses near the radiator, flush through with a hose pipe, connect the hoses, add new coolant and then bleed the system. For some reason it was pretty difficult to get to the radiator hoses and we spent quite a lot of time taking more of the car apart to get better access to the hose clips. After a lot of swearing and cursing the clips were undone and the system was drained making a real mess over the driveway!

Time for a break - Normandy Cider - picture from www.davidoates.net

New coolant was added and system was bled. Now it was time to finally fit the turbo.

The turbo went on OK, oil-out, water in & out were connected up fine. It was the oil-in and actuator that proved to be troublesome, because we'd fitted a new oil-in pipe it was a very tight fitting and the larger actuator was competing for space in the engine bay, however after more swearing we'd finally got the new turbo on and all nuts torqued up.

Picture of Team Trackbitch hard at work - taken by www.davidoates.net

Finally, the new turbo was on. Next step was to prime the turbo with oil before turning the engine over, this is done by disconnecting the electronic ignition and allowing the oil pump to pump oil around the engine. In theory, you turn the engine over (but not fire up) for a couple of minutes and this primes the turbo, the electronic ignition is reconnected and then you start the car properly. However, the car was turning over but the oil pressure light was not going out, we disconnected the oil-in line at the sump to see if any oil had been pumped through but the banjo bolt was completely dry. It looked like we had an oil pump problem or maybe a lazy oil pump that need the engine running to pump oil through?

The way to test this was reconnect the electronic ignition and hope we had a lazy oil pump, if we did we'd see oil come out of the banjo bolt. The ignition was plugged back in and the engine turned over, we must have loosened the banjo quite a lot as it dumped around half a litre of oil on the drive (with no catch pan). We had a lazy oil pump.

We attempted to reconnected the oil-in pipe, but it was at such high tension at the turbo side it was impossible to screw back in. This now meant we had to disconnect quite a few of the turbo parts to then reconnect the oil-in line. It appeared you needed a lot of time and patience when embarking on a car project!!

TURBO BOOST - Picture by www.davidoates.net

30 minutes later and everything was put back together, all that was left to do now was start the engine. The engine was turned over and The Baron was alive again, there was still a bit of blue smoke, but the old turbo had dumped quite a lot of oil in the exhaust. After running for a few minutes this began to clear.

Video of engine running for the first time with new turbo.

On the test drive the new turbo appeared to boost fine, kicks in a bit later (around 3,000 - 3,500 revs when compared to 2,500 with the smaller T2) but we did expect this with a larger turbo. It also only boosted to 12psi when compared to 20 psi with the T2. This should mean there is quite a bit of tweaking we can do :o)

Due to it once again starting to get dark and everyone short of time, we cut the test drive short. But, at last The Baron was up and running, all we have to do now is set the car up properly, could be a job for a professional at a rolling road.

Finishing the back axle & suspension

Two Team Trackbitch members met 10 days later, the target was to finish off the rear end and get the car off the axle stands. We'd managed to attach the axle successfully 10 days ago so all that we had to do today was remove the old knackered shocks, fit the new shocks, reattach the brake lines, handbrake cables and bleed the brakes.

Getting the old shocks off was a bit of a pig but after lots of WD40 they both came off, it was only after removing the shocks did we realise how buggered the rear suspension had actually been, when you compressed the shock it would take forever for them to rebound. We were fitting perhaps the best shocks that were available for the Renault 5 -  GAZ fully adjustables for a bargain price of £94. After a bit of fear of crossing threads the new shocks were on and torqued up.

Picture below shows old and new shocks side by side.

Next up was attaching hand brake cables and brake lines, again this went to plan without too much pain, a quick bleed of the brakes and our rear end was finally finished. Wheels were attached and the Renault 5 was finally looking normal again. It appeared that our new rear axle was set to standard ride height so the transformation was quite dramatic (shown in the before and after pictures below).

BEFORE - lowered to death

AFTER - standard ride height

So, the back end was complete, all that was left to do now was fit the turbo.

A trip to Telford

Today was suppose to be the day we were taking the car for its first track day, but instead we were using our day off work to drive to Telford to pick up a new rear axle and forage through random parts in the hope of getting all we needed for our turbo. 

We set off early as the plan was to obtain all the parts we needed and then try and fix up as much as the car as possible, so we arrived in Telford in good time. We had a choice of two rear axles, both were pretty crusty but one had end caps on the torsion bar and was in a lot better health than the one we'd taken off the car and at £40 a real bargain. We then proceeded to look through numerous boxes of turbo parts looking for the oil-in connector that had been alluding us, we were also after an actuator bracket as the standard T2 actuator did not fit. After a good 30 minutes of looking in numerous boxes of old oily Renault 5 parts we found an oil-in line that could be used, but still required an adaptor to fit to the turbo. We were told that a hydraulics company down the road should be able to help with the last remaining part. Next up was the actuator bracket, after another 20 minutes of looking through old oily boxes we found one that fitted, the only bad thing was it was on eBay and someone had already placed a bid. There was only an hour to go on the auction so we decided to head over to the hydraulics company whilst trying to win the auction on eBay for the actuator bracket.

After a short journey down the road we found the hydraulics company, to start with the guy behind the desk looked like he was going to find the adaptor instantly, he seemed to have a sixth sense for thread widths, looking through vast amounts of adaptors and finding parts that would sort of fit but not screw all the way in. (Until now I never realised how many different types of threads there are). After about five or six failed attempts things were not looking good and I was starting to get grumpy, were we ever going to find a part that fitted this Frankenstein turbo? The guy behind the desk now called the manager over and they starting scratching their heads and looking curiously at the hole they were trying to find an adaptor for, finally after lots of head scratching the part was found. This just left the actuator bracket on eBay.

Whilst we had been in the hydraulics shop and off for a chippy lunch the third trackbitch member was at home busy winning actuator brackets on eBay, we only had to out bid the other person by 50p. All that was left now was to drive back to the garage where we'd bought the axle, pay for the actuator bracket and then head back to Manchester.

All parts now in hand we headed back onto the M6, only to be told that the motorway was shut at junction 16, we attempted to come off before the road started to back up and get onto an alternative route before everyone else tried it, the first part of this worked well, but it soon dawned on us that all alternative routes were going to be stupidly busy. Instead of getting home in 1H 15M it took the best part of three hours, this really killed our mechanical time. :o(

By the time we got back it was 4.30 - 5.00, to fit a whole rear axle and new turbo before it goes dark was never going to be possible. So instead of doing two half jobs we focused on the axle, even this proved to be difficult due to moving over brake lines and hub assemblies, but with light fading we managed to get most of the work done, all that was left to do was fit the new shocks and the back end would be finished. However that would have to be left for another day. 

The day had been partly successful but it was appearing that my expectations of how long the mechanics would take to do were very wrong and instead of two days of work and a track day, we'd spent three days working on it with perhaps another one and a half days left of work. In addition, the next time we could all meet up would not be for another two weeks which meant the car was on axle stands til then.

Raising the suspension & fitting the new turbo - Part Two

A trip to Demon Tweeks

We made good time travelling down to Demon Tweeks in Wrexham and things looked promising upon arrival with acres of racing goodies on view. Full racing suites, steering wheels, engine pipes, crash helmets and more gauges than a power station. Surely this would have a few poxy oil attachments and a few other adaptors.

After a few minutes queuing it was our turn at the counter, we presented the sales assistant with our puzzle. 'Have you got an adaptor that will fit between this adaptor and this oil pipe' (drops a load of oil on the floor). The guy behind the desk started to flick through numerous books full of adaptors and pipe fittings. 'I'll be back in a minute'.

After a few minutes he was back looking puzzled and called over the manager, we explained our problem again, whilst dropping more oil on the sales floor and got a glazed look and a sharp intake of breath. 'What's that off mate?' This was not looking good. We felt like saying it Frankenstein's monster but told him what we knew, 'it's for a Renault 5 but has some internals from a Nissan SR20'.

After a lot of scratching of heads and numerous looks of 'are you mental?' it appeared that we were not going to get what we wanted.  A large queue of people buying steering wheels and race shoes was forming behind us, it was time we stopped wasting everyone's time with our impossible shopping list, wiped the oil off the floor and counter and got back to ponder our next steps.

On the way back we had the bright idea of, 'if we can't buy a part we'll make one' and dropped into Screwfix in Warrington to buy a tap & die set. Time was now getting on after our lame attempts at Demon Tweeks and getting lost in Warrington. Finally we got home around 6.30pm and thought we'd try a bit of DIY.

A spot of DIY

We started with the oil in pipe and adaptor, using our new tap and die set we re-threaded our adaptor to once again find it did not fit. We then attempted to saw off the end of our oil pipe, this failed miserably and another part was ruined. Nevermind, let's try and get the actuator off the bracket, without a vice to hold the actuator we sawed through the actuator and ruined it and did not managed to separate it from the bracket. Another part ruined. Time to give up on the turbo and try and tap out the torsion bar from the back end, this resulted in breaking our new tap & die set (cheap Chinese steel) and snapping off a bolt in our torsion bar. All together a pretty crap end to the day. It was time for a beer & BBQ, when was that track day again?

It's a bonnet off job fitting a new turbo.

Day Two - Raising the suspension

There was not much more we could do on the turbo, so we thought it was best to make a start on the rear end and try and sort out the stupidly lowered suspension, we'd worked out that at some point in its life the car had been lowered by 95mm, this is quite a lot and can prevent you from being insured. In theory it can be quite a simple job, remove torsion bar end caps, slip out the torsion bar, rotate the splines as much as you require, put back in and the car is magically higher. However, this is The Baron and he is not simple.

As the car has a body kit, this meant we could not access the torsion bar, we either had to remove the body kit (very messy), drill holes in the body kit (still messy) or take off the whole rear back axle (messy and awkward). We opted for the third option as it should be easier doing the job off the car. To remove the back axle requires undoing the four main bolts which feed into under the rear seats, undoing the brake lines and hand brake cables and undoing the rear shocks. After two or three hours the axle was off, all that was left was to tap the torsion ends and wind out the torsion bars. This is where we hit our next obstacle, the car had no end caps, so many years of road crude had badly corroded our torsion ends, and on one end it looked like someone had actually welded the end together. Our torsion bar was pretty screwed up and no end of belting it with a hammer and tapping with our cheap Chinese steel tap & die set was going to fix it.

Picture of our knackered torsion bar, WD40 and hammering were not going to fix it :o(

So, we'd failed on fitting the turbo and the back end of the car was missing, the shops were shut and there was nothing left we could do, apart from cancel any plans we had of a track day. Our plan was to still use the day off we'd all booked and rather go on a track day we'd continue fixing up the car. We'd drive down to CGB Motorsport in Telford, buy a new rear axle, take our turbo and any other none fitting parts and try and find a match, drive back and fix it up.

It was a shame we'd not achieved what we'd set out to do but we always knew this would not be simple, it's a 22 year old temperamental car after all.

Raising the suspension & fitting the new turbo - Part One

It had been a long time coming, finally the three of us were all together for a full weekend of sorting out the car. The whole weekend had been allocated to two things. First thing was to sort out the rear suspension, second was to replace the old smoky turbo. When we purchased the car we new that both these things needed doing within the first couple of months and now it was the time to tackle them both. We had even found a track day at Cadwell Park on the following Tuesday that we could attend if all the work had been completed. A fun few days were in store.

Sourcing & fitting the turbo

After undertaking quite a lot of research on turbos we were just about to settle for a T25 turbo as they were quite easy to lay our hands on and would provide a nice upgrade to our standard T2. However, just as we were about to source a T25, a reconditioned T28 hybrid had just been listed on eBay (with a correctly setup engine this could be good for 220bhp+) As we had a small capacity engine we needed a .49 housing rather than the .69 that is normally on the T28, by some freak chance on eBay was the exact T28 hybrid we needed. We negotiated to pay £250 which was a bit of a gamble, as we really did not know the history of it, but as it came from a reputable source we decided to take the plunge. It's easier to gamble when there's three of you :o) Now all we had to do was match up all the oil in/out and water in/out pipes.

In the week leading up to our main mechanical weekend, myself and one of the other owners had been trying to lay our hands on all the relevant turbo parts. We'd discovered that everything we needed to fit our new turbo was a different size, oil in need to be smaller, oil out was a T piece and water in was a different sized banjo bolt. After much frantic ordering on eBay we managed to source all adaptors and fittings (inc ordering for a second time when one of the parts we'd bought did not fit). The last part we needed arrived on the Saturday morning, it looked like everything was coming together.

As I'd been spraying WD40 on all the bolts for the past week the old turbo came off quite easily, a few awkward bolts, but nothing major and within an hour and a half we'd got the old T2 out. There was quite a bit of oil in the intercooler (see picture below) and a large crack in the housing so it was clear that our old turbo was pretty knackered.

Hole left in our engine with the turbo removed.

Once the old turbo had been extracted and put alongside the new T28 it was clear how much bigger it was.

All that was required now was to fit all the new adaptors and connectors we'd spent days researching and hook up the new turbo.

Oil out - we knew this was quite a bit different as we'd gone from a normal oil out fitting to a T-piece but luckily we had a spare oil out lying around from a Renault 21T so with a small amount of bodging and a new gasket it was possible to get this to fit.

Oil in - the connector arrived in the post and sort of fitted into the top of the turbo and in my naivety I thought we could make it fit or find a suitable adaptor from somewhere like Demon Tweeks, we just needed to take off the oil pipe and take this, with new adaptor to a specialist motorsport shop. A task for later.

Water in/out - Our new banjo bolt purchased off eBay fitted and the Turbo came with the water out pipe attached so another two parts crossed off.

Exhaust elbow - Our current T2 turbo only used four of the five bolts so we fully expected that our new turbo would be the same or even better, use all of the five bolts. To our horror it only matched up with three of the bolts, things were not looking good. We either had to risk using only three bolts, try & find a way round it with an adaptor or buy a new elbow. Once again, naively something I thought would be easily sorted by adding to our afternoon shopping list.

Actuator & actuator bracket - We had two options for our actuator, use the standard one or fit a bigger one from the Renault 21T. We matched up the one from our T2 (with a T2 the actuator is riveted to the bracket) we once again had a nasty surprise the bracket fitted the opposite way round, the only way we could get this to fit would be to separate the two parts, which is easier said that done. Using the T3 actuator seemed a good possibility it was big enough and we could hopefully use the bracket off the T2. With a bit of bodging it should work.

So out of all the new parts required, we scored two out of seven, things weren't looking good, but with a trip to Demon Tweeks planned we thought all would be fine. So we downed tools and decided it was time to pay a visit to Demon Tweeks.

Time to remove that wing & other tasks.

With a full Saturday to play around with the car and two out of three us around for the weekend, it was time to embark on some cosmetic and essential pieces of work. There were four tasks that required doing;

1). Undertake a compression test to check the general health of the cylinders and see if we have any problems with our pistons.
2). Sort out the alarm & immobiliser, 20 minutes to lock or unlock the car was getting pretty frustrating!
3). Replace the stupid looking useless wing mirrors which give little visibility with used ones bought off eBay for £2.50.

4). Remove that WING!!

First task was to get the immobiliser looked at, it was getting pretty frustrating whenever we needed to use the car and the battery section of the alarm fob had now completely come away from the circuit board. A quick trip down to our local Clifford specialist allowed us to order a new fob and find out a way of starting the car using the car's PIN code (very helpful if we ever lose the fob, run out of batteries etc). We also discovered the alarm & immobiliser is a pretty good one, which is reassuring if anyone tries to steal the track bitch. All this for around £30.

After getting the car home we set about doing the compression test, neither of us had done this before and all we had were instructions from the third owner on an email and an American Youtube video showing how to do the test on a Pontiac. We did have a brand new Compression tester and a brand new socket set. After spending a good 45 minutes (internet searches, Haynes manual and finally a call to our mate) trying to find out how to stop the fuel pump from sending petrol to the engine we were able to start removing the spark plugs.

By the way if you do want to unplug the fuel pump on a Renault 5 GT Turbo the connector is under the centre of the car towards the driver's side. :o)

Spark plugs were easily removed and after a lot of faffing around with the compression tester and its numerous connectors, we were ready to start the test. All you need to do is connect the tester to the spark plug socket and turn the car over five to six times, this would then tell you how much pressure was in the cylinder. Unfortunately it was not this simple. Could we get a reading on the gauge? No chance! After numerous connecting and unconnecting of the kit, checking the internet again and head scratching, we gave up. It was not to be, we believe the kit was faulty as no readings were given. Whether it was the kit or a case of bad workmen blaming their tools remains to be seen, but today we were not going to find out how our cylinders were performing.

Now time for the cosmetic stuff. Ever since we bought the car we said that the wing would be coming off. It looks absolutely ridiculous, makes the car stand out more than we'd like and probably weighs a few kg. We'd tried removing the wing before as had the previous owner, but after removing the bolts we found it was stuck on with some super strong adhesive. Putting chisels underneath it caused the wing to crack and pulling at it with all our strength proved useless.

This time we were going to require new tactics.

We set about it with a hack saw blade which seemed to be doing the trick but making a real mess of our paintwork, so after five minutes of sawing through the bonding we changed strategy and used a fresh Stanley knife blade, cutting the bond at a snails pace. After around 30 - 45 minutes of cutting away at the bonding we had a bit of movement, so I pulled on the wing whilst my mate got a screw driver underneath it and slowly the bond began to give way. The wing was off! To our surprise with not too much damage. The excess bonding was removed carefully with a blade and then light alcohol removed the rest. We then filled the holes left with some old bathroom grout I had lying around (nothing like a proper job). We'll aim to get some proper filler and paint in the near future, but this will prevent water getting in for the short term. We are really pleased with the results and think the car looks a lot better with the wing off, we have also saved a massive 7kg! Pictures shown below.

BEFORE

 

AFTER

 

VIEW FROM SIDE

All that was left now was to remove the pathetic vanity mirrors and replace with our £2.50 eBay bargains, an easy task. Admittedly they are the wrong colour and need a touch up, but they'll do until we get some paint. Finally the car has started to look normal.

So overall a relatively successful day, it was a shame the compression test did not produce any results. Something we'll have to try again another day with a new tester kit.

Trying to fix the smoky turbo

As mentioned previously, there are three of us that have gone into this project, one person with a lot of mechanical knowledge and will fix anything, a second with good general technical knowledge about cars and myself with little mechanical or technical knowledge. I know the basics but I am clueless when it comes to getting my hands dirty, I am hoping that I will soon start to learn.

If things were simple we'd all live near to one another, but we don't, and the best mechanic out of the three of us is 100s of miles away, things are never simple. As the car currently spends time at my house I get sent mechanical tasks via email by the person 100s of miles away. The first of these tasks is to try and work out how fried our turbo is and see what is causing it to smoke (intermittently).

My first task was to try and understand if oil is getting into the turbo itself and if it was how much. If there was a lot then we knew the turbo was pretty gone, if not a lot then more investigation maybe required.

Quite a simple test of;
1). Running the car for 5 minutes to warm it up
2). Disconnecting the intercooler pipe to see if any oil was in the housing

3). Disconnecting the air filter pipe to see if there was any sign of any oil

4). Finally, seeing if there was any play in the turbo shaft.

Surprisingly I managed to pull the task off and a stubborn air filter was the only mild complication. The only downside to the work was that there was no visible signs of oil in either of the places we were expecting and only a little play in the turbo shaft. This left us a little confused as we had believed the test would have proven positive with regards to the oil.

Doing this work also allowed us to find the serial number of the turbo to try and see what we had under the bonnet. To our disappointment we found only a standard T2. I wonder what happened to the KTR230 that was originally on it?

As we've now discovered the turbo is pretty standard and the rest of the engine has apparently been upgraded, (larger intercooler, uprated carb) we've now taken the plunge and bought a T28 with the hope that this will stop the smoking, but if not will give us a better turbo to build our track bitch.

The turbo is a newly reconditioned T28 Garrett which has had little/no use (apparently). We've paid £250 for it off eBay, so taken a little gamble. Fingers crossed it'll be goodun.

The first run out

Immediately after picking up the tax disk, myself and one of the co-owners felt compelled to take a drive out in 'The Baron' (sometime between picking the car up and it being MOT'd we managed to name the car The Baron, due to its dodgy wear wing addenda).

We didn't go too far or anywhere too exciting just some local roads in the area which include nice spaced stretches of dual carriageway split up with roundabouts, followed by a trip underneath two tunnels beneath the airport, for aural pleasure.

Initial thoughts on the car are; it has a quite a bit of turbo lag (currently running original spec T2 Turbo) it is slow to react, but when it does, it seems pretty quick. We've not timed it yet or had much to compare it to, but it does seem fast.

The brakes are superb, excellent feel, progressive and do a good job of stopping, having had a big brake conversion in the past this seems to have been very beneficial. Good brakes is always desirable on track, it will be interesting to see how they hold up lap after lap.

Handling I am still not sure on, the rear suspension has been completely 'slammed' and I wouldn't feel very safe on high speed corners on a race track, it is definately something for us to sort out.

Fun - the car is a lot of fun, very loud exhaust, dump valve (perhaps a little chavvy), light weight and not much to the build of the car all contribute to this. Myself and one of the other owners had a very entertaining evening out. Both of us are pretty pleased with our new purchase.

 Considering how much we've paid, the car represents tremendous value for money. We're hoping for many future enjoyable track days this year.

The MOT

After recovering the car back from Wolverhampton, it was then booked in for an MOT the following weekend. We thought it was worth putting in to see what was wrong with it rather than trying to second guess what could be wrong with it and trying to fix it. So early one Saturday morning the neighbours were awoken from their slumber as the Renault 5 was started on the driveway. It is pretty loud even when idling so my wife was glad to see the back of me when I had warmed the car up and headed off to the testing station.

All three of us were pretty pessimistic about its ability to pass. We thought the emissions would be way off due to it being smoky, especially when cold, suspension looked dubious (it still does) and the fact that it was a 22 year old car.

Upon pickup we were shocked to find out, it had only gone and passed, with only three advisory points.

1). Blue smoke upon acceleration (which we knew about), it still sailed through emissions.
2). One slightly warn rear brake pad (singular), again we can cope with that.
3). The windscreen wiper arm was working its way lose out of the bodywork, again something we had noticed.

This now meant all we had to do was wait for the insurance cover note to come through and we could then tax it and we'd have a 12 months tax and 12 months MOT track bitch within our initial £1,500 budget.


As mentioned on a previous post, tax on a Renault 5 GT Turbo is only £125 for 12 months, so this means more money to play with and less to the tax man.

A trip to the Midlands - our first viewing.

After two or three weeks of hunting on the internet, we'd booked our first viewing and set off to Wolverhampton. Upon arrival we were greeted by the owner, he appeared very genuine and showed us around the car pointing out all the things that needed doing to it, e.g. smoky turbo, potential suspension tweaks and removal of that ridiculous wing. After a brief test drive, checks on the engine and a lot of checking for rust we thought the car was a possibility.

Checking the documents showed the car was out of MOT, it has run out the prior week unknown to the owner. Our hopes of returning with a car that day had been dashed.

After weighing up the pros and cons we thought the car was worth an offer, it had been for sale for three weeks and already been dropped in price once, with no MOT or tax we offered £1,150 and as the owner was looking to get rid of it sooner rather than later he accepted.

We'd bought our track bitch.

Attempts were made to recover the car that day, but these fell through and the car was recovered the following weekend.

Now all we needed to do was try and get it through its MOT! Who knows what we had bought, how much of a gamble had we made?

On the hunt for our car.

The hunt for our track bitch started in late January, scouring eBay, Pistonheads and specialist forums. It can be quite a time consuming task, especially trying to get agreement on which cars we should consider over email. Sometimes you need to move fast to get the right car, but agreement needs to be made before hand. Also, contacting speculative owners proved to be painful, with many unanswered emails, texts and forum DMs proving to be very frustrating. They say selling a car is fraught with time wasters! 

After 10 days or so of looking in adverts a couple of cars had caught or attention. One, an already developed track bitch, including cage, race seats and sensible modifications, it was a out of tax and MOT but for the bargain price of £1,000 it was worth a gamble. 

The second was a pretty ugly looking example which had quite a lot of money spent on the engine and suspension, but was suffering from fuel line problems and a few bits of rust.

Both cars were worth a look, but to our disappointment the first was sold before we could get to see it and the second had more problems and the owner had then decided to fix it and keep it. Our quest to find our track bitch continued.

It was another 10 days before we were able to find anything worth viewing, anything good seemed to be in Kent, Essex, Plymouth or Scotland. Anything crap and falling apart seemed to be local. Or it had a ‘DIMMA kit’! Finally, we came across a red G reg GT Turbo in Wolverhampton with slightly dubious rear wing.

As it was only 1h 15 m drive away and we were all free, we booked a viewing.

Choosing the car

As we’ve owned around 10 or 11 RenaultSport cars between us (from 5 GT Turbos, 21 Turbos, Clio 16v, Clio 172 Mk1, Clio 182 and Megane R26 to name but a few) we thought it would be daft not to continue in this tradition and hunt out a Renaultsport track bitch. Initially we started looking at 172 Clios, as there are many to be had around the £1,500 budget. But slowly our search started to focus on one Renault in particular. 

The Renault 5 GT Turbo.

Why pick this car? They’re 22 years old, most have been abused, they rust and eat head gaskets, turbos and anything else they can get their teeth into. There were four quite big reasons why we chose a 5GT Turbo.

One, my mate and one of the co-buyers has owned three or four in his life and knows the cars inside out, he can fix almost anything on them (inc. welding) this would mean very limited labour costs for maintaining the car, whilst not a mechanic by trade, he is pretty handy on a car he knows a lot about.

Two, they are very light (around 850kg when new) and can be easily modified, plus if you buy the right one, someone will have done the modifications for you. Most Renault 5 GT Turbos have been modified so if we wait we could get something quite ‘nasty’. With that power to weight ratio, you could have a car that could embarrass serious hardware on-track.

Three, as they are over 20 years old, you can insure them on a classic car insurance policy, even with all modifications declared it is possible to get insurance for less than £300 fully comp.

Four, car tax, as the car is pre 2001 and has an engine size ‘Not over 1,549cc’ the road fund license for 12 months is only £125, by comparison a 172 Clio costs around £205 to tax for the year. I’d rather £80 in our pocket than the tax man.

For us there really was no option. Our track bitch of choice was going to be a Renault 5 GT Turbo. Ideally with sensible modifications, but the main goal was to get a solid shell, free from rust and a car that could be driven away.

How the track bitch project was born.

Track days can be expensive business, especially if you embark on more than one a year. This expense can get worse if the car you track is your daily driver and you are not able to maintain the car yourself. Take the following costs incurred last year just on two track days:-

Renaultsport Track day - Oulton Park

• Track day fee - £185
• Insurance - £150
• Petrol - £65
• Helmet hire - £10
• Tuition - £15

General open pit track day – Cadwell Park

• Track day fee - £195
• Insurance - £135
• Petrol - £65
• Helmet hire - £10

After these two track days and 20,000 road mile I also needed four new Michelin Pilot Sport 3 tyres. Admittedly I would’ve needed new tyres anyway within the next 5000 miles, but the cost was incurred quicker and straight after the track day. Total cost £780.

So for two track days total cost in the space of one month was £1,610.

It was turning out track days were costing a good chunk of money. Plus this was only in a Renaultsport Megane R26.

A month later one of my best friends tracked his modified Subaru Impreza, also reducing the life on his tyres, brakes and all other components. Four tyres for him are a similar cost £700 - £800. However other components are a lot higher due to the specification that is currently on the car e.g brake discs £850. Speaking with my mate he expressed similar thoughts to me on track days, great fun but pretty expensive. 

Debates can be had on whether you bother with insurance, as this would reduce costs, but with cars costing around £12,000 neither of us would want to risk having a big off and paying a visit to Mr Armco, in addition to this there are other people on tracks to consider and as there is no third party liability it only takes one clown to ruin your day, as experienced in front of me at Cadwell with an M5 driving down the side of a Skyline. Not having track insurance on our cars is not an option.

All this got me thinking and after reading about other track and Renault enthusiasts Danny Royston & Joe Simpson’s conversations on twitter one evening the seed was sown.

What I needed was a track bitch, a car that can be bought for less than £1,500, does not require insurance on track, has cheaper parts, cheaper tyres, brakes and maybe even co owned with like minded friends.

As it was the middle of winter and with nothing much to look forward to in January or February, I sent a speculative email to four friends all of which have done track days before and all of which understand the spiraling costs of running a car on-track. 

Over the course of the weekend and after multiple emails we’d agreed that three of us would club together and throw £500 in each to purchase a track bitch.