My Saxo Project Thread

[AlexR]

It all started off in 2002 when my good friend Ian bought a brand new saxo VTR in icelandic grey. He started the modding pretty soon after with sound system, lowering on PI, sparco strut brace, magnex exhaust and then took it to GMC motorsport for a camshaft upgrade, exhaust manifold and green enclosed air filter, with the mapping tweeked on a dastek piggyback system. The car went well with approx 105bhp@wheels, over 120bhp@fly.

This wasn't enough, he purchased a genuine new peugeot sport 106 cup car TU5J4 16v lump at a bargain price on ebay. He also managed to pick up a set of brand new peugeot sport maxi direct to head throttle bodies and a maxi exhaust manifold. This was installed but then needed an exhuast fabricating to fit as the maxi manifold finishes in a 2.5" sleeve section substantially further back than the 2" standard system starts. A trip to H engineering in tunbridge wells saw a £1300 exhaust system - flexi join on manifold, swappable sports cat/decat section and 2.5" system with single repackable silencer with 2.5" straight cut tailpipe all in very high quality stainless, mandrel bent and welded to a very high quality. Then an emerald ECU was wired in to the original loom. The car ran on a rover K series base map for a short while, it sounded very nice but without mapping didn't go too great.
A mocal oil cooler was added with a thermostatic takeoff plate to help keep the oil temp within safe limits on track.

Engine out:





Ian bought a set of 15" team dynamics pro race 1.2s and a hispec 4 pot conversion using 285mm discs. I fitted the brake system which is tried and tested to work very well, i had a set on my VTS at the time.
Now ian trailered the car up to Dave Walker the emerald guru for mapping but the engine expired part way through the mapping process, stripping down of the engine showed a catastrophic bottom end failure, big end bearings had gone, suspected oil pump failure was our diagnosis. All on an engine with under 2000 miles on it. Power during mapping was said to be rising still and at about 155bhp.

Anyway seeing as the inlet and exhaust system were designed for an engine making 200bhp+ and the cup spec was only around 150bhp it would be a good idea to go for a higher spec on the new engine build.
QEP were very well known in the 205 tuning market and had been doing a lot on saxo engines recently, most notably with catcams. They had a very good rep and i knew them personally as i had bought a standalone ecu and some cams from them so i recommended them to Ian. As far as i knew this was to be the highest spec of engine they had built for a saxo/106 so far.
More or less the whole engine we had was scrap so all that we retained for the new build was the peugeot sport baffled sump and a few odd bits and bobs.

Engine spec as it was:

TU5J4 1.6 16v
Baffled peugeot sport sump
Mocal oil cooler with thermostat
Polished and balanced crankshaft
New bearings all round
Rebore
Steel H section conrods
ARP rod bolts
High compression kit car pistons
Enlarged inlet and exhaust valves
Head ported to suit bigger valves and match inlet & exhaust systems
Solid camshaft followers
Double Stronger Valve springs
Catcams 803 cams
Maxi(S1600) exhaust header
2.5" stainless exhaust system
Maxi individual direct to head throttle bodies
Long polished trumpets
Larger pico injectors
Peugeot sport grpN engine mounts
Lightened and balanced flywheel
Helix paddle clutch
Standard VTR gearbox

Then the car was trailered up to Dave walker once again for mapping, as it was a fresh engine it needed a bit of wearing in, after a short bit of wearing in from Dave the mapping was done, giving a maximum power output of 183bhp@7800rpm and not tailing off well over 8000rpm. The engine was built to safely handle 9k+ with no problems so it should be very reliable with the revs limited to around 8k.



As we all know, using a long ratio gearbox on the rollers shows less power and it was a fresh engine so it's safe to say it should be making a decent bit more now, a map tweek will give a good indication later this year.

Next up i sold Ian an OMP full 10 point roll cage and fitted it for him together with some cheap cobra buckets and subframes. This gave him much more confidence to really push the car on corners. Next up the stupidly long VTR gearbox needed replacing, with a theoretical speed over over 170mph in 5th. My friend Mankee Cheng of Practical Performance Car fame was enlisted to build us a 106 xsi gearbox with new synchro rings, bearings and seals. Ian fitted this(not that well)

Me fitting the cage:







Not long after we booked up a track day at llandow sprint circuit in wales, the day before we finally got round to fitting our GMC motorsport springs and groupN bilstein dampers, this made the car not only much more stable but also improved the ride quality suprisingly. We were due to be meeting the convoy at reading services at 7pm. At 8pm we had only just finished lowering the car, that's dedication. After ian had faggoted about we left mine at 9pm and arrived in wales at some ungodly hour. He had forgotten to refit the gearbox mount bolt properly so that fell out on the M25 leaving the engine swinging about all the way there, the AA came out to help with a makeshift bolt the next morning.

Some llandow pics:









On the way back i was following Ian on the M4 and one of the rear dampers(which Ian "fitted") fell off and came flying towards me in the outside lane, luckily it bounced down the central reservation but was very close. Alas the PI rear dampers were refitted for time being! A week or so after llandow i swapped my VTS black headlights, black foglight mesh and mk1 rear lights for ians standard set, they went better with the wheels and also meant a little weight reduction.

Some pics i took after swapping the lights over:







After llandow the car was barely driven, one of the gearbox seals went leaving oil all over the clutch and flywheel assembly, a 106 gti box was fitted while the xsi box was inspected and a new seal fitted. It then spent a year sat on Ians drive feeling sorry for itself, there was a running problem with the engine.