On Track at ADI Castle Combe

We had a great day with the TT Race car at Castle Combe for the Audi Drivers International (ADI) show. The weather held out and the event was a real sucess!

 Some Classic Audi's were there.

 Old meets new..

 Our TT race car out on Track!

 the Milltek Time attack Car

 Waiting to go our on track..

Lots of Audi's

Some nice tuning!

It was really fun to test the race car against other road going cars, whist there were a few really fast road cars with a lot more HP than we had, we were masters under breaking and around the corners!

New Front Mounted Intercooler (FMIC)

I forgot to mention that before our Oulton Park race we also fitted a front mounted intercooler to keep the air going into the engine from the turbo as cool as possible.

Oulton Park Race

Only a couple of days after the re-map at Shark Performance it was time for our next race with the TT at Oulton Park with the CSCC, we had changed the fuel pressure regulator in a hope that it would cure our fuel delivery issue but had no idea if it had. We headed out for the Friday practice session and unfortunately not, however the huge increase in torque at the bottom end from the remap had already made the car a lot faster than before.

There wasn't much time to change anything else before the qualifying the next day so we just had to deal with it. Next morning bright an early for a 9.00am qualifying session it was a little damp and cold. To our surprise the car ran much better loving the cold thick air. Our lap times were 4s a lap faster than practice and we even managed to beat a Ferrari's and some Porsche's, qualifying 18 out of 22.

I had been doing some sneaky training on the iRacing simulator at home and it was uncanny how close the real track and car was to the real thing. Here's a video comparison of me qualifying vs the simulator:



Luckily there was a long wait between qualifying and the race so I had time to change the fuel pump which PTR had kindly taken out of one of their own cars for me to test.

Then it was race time, a grid start,  a dry track, and fingers crossed for the new fuel pump. The lights went red then we were off, I got a stellar start and instantly she reved right up to full revs - we were off, but then I saw a cloud of dust ahead and cars flying all over the place -  there we a huge crash and the race was red flagged:

Here's the view from a car a couple of places ahead of me:



The race was restarted and we were doing well, then it was time for the pit stop, unfortunately we totally messed it up struggling to get the steering wheel back on and the belts done up. I set off but one of my belts wasn't fastened correctly so I slowed right down to fix it, loosing about 60 seconds in total and a couple of places to boot.

Then before you know it the chequered flag was out and it was all over, cut short due to the start incident. We finished a respectable 13th overall in the end.

TT Remap at Shark Performance

The TT was still ruining on the stock ECU map, stock exhaust and turbo. So we decided to visit Shark Performance in Mansfiled to check what power we were getting and hopefully, tune it to get a little more. The 1.8T engine is very tunable and the stock HP is 225, with a new map it should be possiable to hit 250BHP!

First of all we wanted to do a dyno test to get a base reference, and here the fun started!

Ben from Shark ran the TT up on the Dyno and it was running like a bag of nails? the beuty is though that since the car is static you can check all of the dyagnistics and narrow down the issues very fast.

Turns out that the alternator had gone and was kicking out 17.5V, this was messing up the fuel injectors and coil packs, causing it to cough and splutter. We disconnected the alternator, and it calmed down but was now only running on the battery so we didn't have long. Next we had another issue with the N75 turbo control valve which we had only replaced at Donington, seems the 17.5V had spiked this and it was no longer working.

A quick trip to PTR for a replacement and the turbo was working again! Now to do a proper sweep test on the Dyno, this time it was showing a drop of around 40 hp mid revs, then it would pick up again? Looking at the data it appeared that we had a fuel delivery issue, as Ben put it, maybe the fuel pressure regulator or the fuel pump.
We decided to put the new ECU map on anyway and see if it made a difference, and it did suddenly a lot more power but at above 5500 rpm it would drop off rapidly? Seemed the map had helped the mid rev drop but now we were seeing the fuel issue higher up.

We had to call it a day as it was getting late and Ben had stayed behind to get us this far - Thank you..

First Race at Donington

It was a bit premature but had to be done - we entered our first race on the 24th August with the TT at Donington Park with the CSCC Modern Classics.

It was an early start and to shake things up it was raining for Qualifying! This was the first time we had driven the TT in the rain so it would be a learning curve, thankfully our car is 4DW!

Enven though the engine was still no where near full power we managed to punch way above our weight and qualify in 20th out of 28. The TT was awesome in the wet, four wheel drifing out of the corners in a very controllable fashion whilst many of the other more powerfull cars were sliding and spinning out of control - great fun!
It turned out that our wet lap times were around 12 seconds a lap faster then our relative dry rivals!

The race was in the afternoon and unfortunately it had dried up, it was a rolling start and our lack of power showed as all of the cars we had out qualified came zooming past into the first corner.

Then only one lap in something strange happen to the breaks, there was a loud knocking sound coming from the rear breaks? then the car started to slide around? After a couple of laps we pitted only to descover one of the rear break caliper bolts had come loose and the break caliper had damaged the wheel and created a puncture:

So unfortunately it was race over for us :(

New Engine Run in at Donington

Since our TT Race car isn't road legal we opted to run the new engine in at Donington Park on one of their test days. You need a race license and a race car but other than that it's fairly straight forward.

This day was an unrestricted noise day so it bought out a lot of exotic (and loud) race cars!

 

The TT - amoungst all of the pro drivers transporters!

 

 le-mans cars!

 Spot the formula car zooming through!

plus some BTCC cars!

We were the slowest car by far, plus we we short shifting as part of the engine run in process.

PTR were on hand to iron out any gremlins and it was a good job as the N75 turbo control valve was sticking and needed replacing.

Winter Engine Re-Build PTR - TT

Well it's that time of year, time to sort the TT engine out for the coming season.

We decided that it was time to replace the engine as the old one was past it's best at 100K miles. So it's going through a complete rebuild with a baffled sump, Mahl race pistons, Farndon Racing rods, new valves, seats, springs, re-grind & balancing etc. Basically a new engine!

We are fitting Stage 3 Hybrid Turbo from Turbo Dynamics.

This should give the TT a little more grunt and with a re-map make it a lot more drivable!