New Zealand Starlet Club

Kind of a spin off from the current Nightspeed thread for anyone interested.

I'll try and make this an epic and glamorous tale while trying to steal all the glory - when the reality is it's a bucket load of hard work and largely the genious of my friend John with sometimes helpful input from me along the way.

So back in the day we had this 3 door Golf sitting around, de-reg with a small hit in the back. Had bought it from Turners for 4/5ths of very little.


We also had this 1.8T engine from a Mk4 Golf GTI side hit waiting for a home.


Naturally the insanely genius idea was to mate the two together (ok not genius, more like basically copying what 99% of other fark nurkles on the internet do)

But then we stumbled across this Vento, WOF - Reg and 17s for $1000. Picket it up, sold a bunch of stuff and made a $1000. Hmmm, two cars, one engine - now what?

Strip Golf


Strip Vento


Disect Golf


Disect Vento


Attach Golf door to Vento


Attach Golf sides to Vento and weld

Rear window shape looks wrong, soooo make custom window frame


Then we decided a track theme and roll cage would be a good idea so with a bit of guidance from Andy at RaceFX we built the cage.


Fit up a late model Mk4 dashboard so we can use all Mk4 electronics, ECU, gauges etc.


Paint, assemble and more paint


Throw away stock turbo, add something a little spicier - 3071 should cover it.


Swap rods

Assemble with turbo kit from USA - but oops flash downpipe does not clear brake booster on RHD cars


Make own system (we'll be redoing this whole lot next time the engine is out actually as we're not entirely happy with it - but at the time it got us going). Pipe facing up would be easy and flow well....


But no....


Fit engine - damn that's tight


Make exhaust ssytem


Fit intercooler, make intercooler piping, etc


Throw in some seats and sort out the interior


Flash the OEM ECU with the Eurodyne MAFLess 630cc file - too easy


Finish up some bits and go driving

No major updates, just been out having fun in the car. Hit a track day at HD on the 2nd of Jan and warped the disks, fixed that and a few other minor niggles and the next outing was a fantastic afternoon at the Puke Car Club Sprints on the 3rd of Feb.

Never really got a chance to settle into the Puke track as it has been years since I drove there but best lap was a 73.35 sec which I'm pretty happy with. Still only on 15psi and my crappy driver ability so some room for improvement.

Thanks to Shams for the pics!


Changed the wheels to some 17x7.5s but they still don't clear the brakes so moving them on and will be fitting up a set of 16x8 Speedlines this weekend. Also going to 215/45/16 RE11s in an effort to find a good all around street/track comprimise tyre as I hate changing wheels over (too lazy)

Aiming to do round 2 of the sprints on the 2nd of March and mulling over entering the Ohakune Giant 1000 just because it looks EPIC! Check it out here http://www.ohakunegiant1000.com/Site/HOME.html

Second round of the PCC Sprints last Wed was wet. Really, really wet. The last time I drove Puke in the wet was about 7 years ago in a VL Commodore Turbo so I was kinda nervous. The nerves didn't settle much when I found out I was in the same group as Steve Millen in his Targa spec GT40 and a bunch of other fast cars.

But in the end I had an amazing amount of fun trying to keep the car on the black top and still squeeze some speed out of it. Nerve wracking but awesome experience. Actually kind of one of those days you enjoy more on the drive home with the car in one piece than at the actual time on the track! Hahhaaa.

Only change since last time was change to 16x8 Speedlines and 215/45 BS RE11s from the previous 205/40/17 R888s. Impossible to tell if they're better or worse as I never drove the R888s in anger in the wet but they seemed to have good grip though you had to be super gentle on the turn in to avoid understeer.

So anyway I didn't bring a camera but in a moment of pure genious (at least I thought it was at the time) I duct taped my iPhone to the dash for this crappy little vid. Thought people might get a laugh out of it anyway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaBE_bk3GsY

This was from the last session after reforming on the grid due to someone spinning off through the chicane (note the mud dragged onto the track at the exit - slippery!).

Also a few updated pics


Results? http://www.pukekohecarclub.co.nz/result ... verall.pdf 4th fastest on the day - incredibly happy with that! (Just missed 3rd fastest) Not bad for a dirty old German family sedan driven by a complete amateur.

Spun the rollers to 259.3fwkw on 25ish psi boost at Torque Performance yesterday. Will post the graph when I can scan it. Interesting that it continued that linear scale of 30fwkw per 5psi of boost. I take that to mean we're not running into any major flow restrictions.

So not sure where to from here really? Could lean on it a bit harder, stock pistons and compression are good for around 500HP so there is a bit more we can do before pulling it apart again. However we might focus on more power for the same boost level. That will mean cams, inlet manifold and larger throttle body.

Then again you only need a short drive in it to be thinking - do I really need to change anything? 1100kg or so and around 400HP is fairly entertaining.

Well my driving still sucks - drags last Fiday netted a best of 14.085 @176.24 km/h @ 20psi. (Lost to EVL S on that run too - hahahah, small world eh!) A bit quicker than last time but still couldn't get it off the line (2.5 sec 60fts) though the RE11s seemed better than the R888s from 3rd gear onwards.

Wasn't really "feeling it" all evening actually - lost in the first round of eliminations with a 14.77, my worst run of the day. That ripped my nightey so I chucked in the towel and headed home.

While I'm here - thought I'd update this thread.

Still have this bucket, still 260kw atw. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvJMWrneSyg Need to change throttle body and retune for more power as above - just not sure if there's much point as it kinda works better in real world terms around the 200-230kw mark anyway.