GUEST BLOG - Pinderwagen - Track Spec Golf with a Difference

Moff

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GUEST BLOG - Pinderwagen - Track Spec Golf with a Difference


We are please to welcome Nigel as our Guest Blogger.


His Golf is one with a serious difference, and laps the Nurburg Ring in under 8 minutes.


For those of you who have been to the Nurburg Ring, you will have probably seen him there, he is certainly known to a good number of people...


He puts together in some amazing detail every blog he does. Well worth a read


READ the Pinderwagen blog


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What is the Pinderwagen ?


After a smash at the Nurburg Ring, Nigel has spent the last 10 years continually modifying the Golf from a pretty standard MK2 with a 2.0 16V engine from the MK3 Golf GTi, adding Megasquirt and GSXR 750 Throttle bodies and then the Turbo back in 2014.


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Well let you know every time a new update comes along...
 
Awesome project. Nice to see these older Golfs still making some serious track day times.
 
Hi All,

New Blog post added. Very interesting, all about Roll Centre correction, for all those of you whop are interested in professional set up on your car.
Nigel talks about how he has looked in detail on his Golf.

What is Roll Centre ?

The Roll Centre of a vehicle has a large impact on handling but it`s something not many people fully understand.

A “roll center” (RC) is a theoretical point around which the chassis rolls when cornering and is determined by the design of the suspension. - That`s all well and good but it obviously goes out of the window as soon as the car is actually moving on circuit ! For the purposes of this post the calculations and reasoning are valid.

I know there are chassis engineers who will point out I don`t mention the Centre Of Mass, you are correct, I don`t ! lol Whilst that is obviously highly relevant, this post is only about the effect of balljoint extenders on the Roll Centre.


Read the latest blog post about Roll Centre Correction

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Read the latest blog post about Roll Centre Correction
 
NEW UPDATE :)

Engine strip, inspect and rebuild

My Golf had zero engine issues on the last outing at DN in May. The wastegate broke as I`ve explained elsewhere but that was all.

Upon returning to the UK I fixed the wastegate and at the same time checked the condition of the piston crowns using a boroscope Matt bought me for my birthday. All 4 had no damage whatsoever, I was just checking to make see how good the camera was not because I thought anything was wrong.

I was at CoventryMotofest the other weekend, unloaded the car and left it idling for 10 minutes or so as usual. Went out for the `parade / sighting` laps with Cat in the passenger seat.

First lap was really steady, following the car ahead and just seeing where the road went.

After around 20 seconds into the 2nd lap I said to Cat "It`s really strange driving without a helmet at low speed, I`m hearing noises I never usually hear. I never knew the engine sounded this tappety, it`s surprising how much the helmet muffles that"

10 seconds after that it made ever more tappety noises and just stopped

I had taken no tools with me at all so was unable to perform any diagnosis over the weekend but I said to several people it sounded like a valve/top end issue.

I have a cheap USB boroscope that connects to the camera and that clearly showed some marking to the piston crown.



Read the full article - PINDERWAGEN - Engine strip, inspect and rebuild
 
Timing belt slipped OR the adjustable cam gear moved due to fasteners loose causing the valves to kiss the pistons ???
 
He's been out again, at Cadwell this time :)

Read the full artile on our blog PINDERWAGEN - Cadwell Park 4th July 2017



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He had a little bit of an off !

The pedal was higher than usual and I had to adjust my foot to press it. Once I had lifted my foot enough I pressed the pedal but it didn`t move. I had to press REALLY hard to get it to move but that locked up the wheels. The pedal then felt the same as usual and I was able to cadence brake whilst going towards the grass. I applied left hand lock and by coming on and off the brakes I was able to turn the car on the grass and rejoin at the top of the mountain.

Videos on the article too ! :)

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Read the full artile on our blog PINDERWAGEN - Cadwell Park 4th July 2017
 
He's been at it again ! This time back to the Nurburg Ring, to Ringmeisters Prime.

Read the full article on our Blog - PINDERWAGEN - Ringmeisters Prime 2017 Nurburgring Trackday

Ringmeisters Prime. What`s all that about then ?

I've done quite a few Destination Nurburgrin events over the last several years and I`ve always found them pretty quiet with as much free lapping as I ever wanted. After a stoppage you may get a bit of a rush from a lot of drivers to get back on track but otherwise you cproperan drive straight out of the carpark and onto the circuit without ever having to queue.

Darren has still had a lot of requests for even quieter days from many drivers so he thought he would put on a day with significantly reduced cars allowed on the event. This did mean the price had to increase to cover the circuit rental and whilst it was a fair bit more than a standard DN Event, it was still cheaper than the Grand Tourismo event a few weeks earlier and that had another 20 cars booked on.

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How is this for a Tyre issue !!

As soon as the front passenger wheel was removed, the problem was pretty damn obvious I`ve heard of tyres blistering but I`ve never seen anything like this before. I reckon I need to get a T shirt made with the phrase "I`ve never seen that before". It would sum up the weird issues I seem to get on these events.

The blister was like a soft balloon and everyone who saw it couldn`t resist poking it and telling me they hadn`t seen a tyre do that before. I have spoken to Toyo and am going to be sending it back for them to inspect and hopefully shed some light on why it failed because right now I have no idea..

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Read the full article on our Blog - PINDERWAGEN - Ringmeisters Prime 2017 Nurburgring Trackday
 
Next edition ! :)

Nigel adds an Engine Breather and Catch tank set up to the Pinderwagen - Read the full Blog

When converting the standard 2.0 16V engine to run a Turbo they often `breathe` quite a bit of oil from the rocker cover. There is no OEM rocker cover breather and this can often cause issues.

A friend had already fitted this mod on his, but fortunately, he was able to get the same modification to a Rocker cover done for me. He knows someone who was able to do the Aluminium welding and machining. First off, mill off the stock ridges

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Nigel adds an Engine Breather and Catch tank set up to the Pinderwagen - Read the full Blog
 
Sorry for delay all, now for latest update :)

Full Write up - PINDERWAGEN-Destination Nurburgring #18 August 2017

Even though I`d had a completely trouble free day at Cadwell last month I was still very apprehensive about 2 back to back days at the Nürburgring and then the next day at BilsterBerg. I had no reason to suspect there would be a problem, I was happy with my preparation but I still had those nagging doubts in the back of my mind as we left home and drove across the M62 to the ferry. I don`t really know why I was apprehensive, but I`m always the same and having 3 back to back days of abuse with no time to repair between them meant I knew that any big issue could affect the entire trip.

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Rather than go straight to the Ring we stopped off to see Chris who races in the Youngtimer series in his E30 BMW on the Nürburgring and also at various other European circuits. He had a couple of spare sets of lightly used Hankook slicks that I was picking up off him. I loaded up the Slicks but he owns a Garden centre and Lou couldn`t resist buying some plants she hadn`t seen in the UK before.

Full Write up - PINDERWAGEN-Destination Nurburgring #18 August 2017
 
BilsterBerg August 2017

Read the full Pinderwagen blog online at TMS Motorsport



When the event details were released I was unsure if I was going to bother doing BilsterBerg. It was a circuit I was aware of but hadn`t really read much about it and after 2 days on the Ring, did I really need to do another day and if so, would the Golf still be running ?

Then I applied some good old fashioned `Man-Maths`. I was already in Germany and whilst Nürburgring trackdays aren`t cheap, the actual entry cost is never the largest expense on these trips. The Ferry, fuel, meals and accommodation cost more than the trackday. I looked at it this way, if I was already in Germany I didn`t need to book a ferry and I was going to stay in Germany tonight so why not do it 3 hours away instead...

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I went out with Cat for another session and struggled. Boy did I struggle. I wasn`t going too fast but I was really finding it hard to get a line through the sequences of corners. I thought I would be frustrated but I was absolutely loving it although at the time I didn't know quite why.

I was slowly getting there but even when I knew where the circuit went, I was still finding getting the right line tricky which is unusual. I don`t usually take this long to get upto a reasonable pace before I start fine tuning, but today I was taking ages to get up to speed. Fortunately, so was just about everyone else so it didn`t matter at all.

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Read the full Pinderwagen blog online at TMS Motorsport

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Tim 'Moff' Nicholas @ TMS Motorsport
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Latest update from Nigel

Read the Full PINDERWAGEN Cadwell Park Blog on the site

I hadn`t planned on doing Cadwell again this year but when I saw a day advertised that was going to be attended by mostly VW / Audi cars and several people I knew were going, I decided to get myself booked on.

Even though it was 6 weeks since BilsterBerg I hadn`t done anything to the Golf apart from swap the brake pads side to side to even the wear and reduce tapering. Being able to park it up after a 3 day European trackday trip with nothing needing doing whatsoever makes for a very refreshing change and long may it continue... If that isn`t the kiss of death I don`t know what is



I can drive across to Cadwell in a couple of hours so left home at 06:00 and had a clear run across. The forecast suggested it would be dry and warm and as dawn broke it looked like it was going to be a lovely day.

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Gav was keen to see how a trackday was run so after the briefing he came out with me for the sighting laps. The blind corners, gradients and narrow sections surprised him. I only used 50% throttle on the sighting laps, I wanted to save full throttle for afterwards...



I`ve done enough trackdays to know that avoiding the first 10 minutes isn`t always a bad idea on a full event so we checked over the Golf until the rush had died down and then went out to do a session.

The plan was to have the driver cam recording Gav`s face but the bloody thing didn`t work

Out of the pits, nice and steady through Hall Bends and the hairpain, get a good exit out of Barn and once it was straight in 3rd I nailed it and pulled 4th. I could hear Gav start giggling from the passenger seat all the way down the main straight then he went very quiet as we went though Coppice and carried on laughing until we reached the Gooseneck The rest of the session went without issue and I just built up speed talking to him all the time and explaining what I was doing.

We came back in and he simply couldn`t believe how quick the Golf was. He expected it to be quick in a straight line but wasn`t prepared for how urgent it felt and how it didn`t die off as I hit the redline. His face was a picture as I explained that was just the first session whilst I warmed everything up and we would end up going significantly quicker once the track dried up.



In his words "The sighting laps when you only tickled it round on half throttle... back into the pits, queuing for the first session and out on track... you tickled it through halls bends and through the hairpin you nailed it and I just giggled all the way round to gooseneck in absolute shock of the speed."


Read the Full PINDERWAGEN Cadwell Park Blog on the site


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Tim 'Moff' Nicholas @ TMS Motorsport
Email us : sales@tmsmotorsport.co.uk
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