S1 Rallye

This my another rallye, cherry red S1. I bought it without much thinking when it came on sale last spring for a good prize. What an intense little beast it is with it's high strung 1.3 engine and close ratio box! I drove it few weeks and put it in garage after the blue car was ready for the summer. It came with bolt-on OMP roll-cage. After some driving I decided get rid of the cage. After all, it wasn't a proper racing cage, but more for show.

The current plan is to drive this car next winter, or sell it - difficult to say. I tend to be volatile sometimes. At the moment I treat it as if it was a "keeper". So it will receive some tender loving care, first in a form of new dampers and springs (one of the dampers was totally dead).

This is the position of the strut in non-PAS car (left hand side):

Right hand side:

Cleaned the strut a bit

and painted with Hammerite

The H&R spring is actually ment for 106GTI but at least the drive height seems just right even for this light car. The ride height is now 15mm higher than with the lowering springs that came with the car. Can't wait to drive this setup (still some work to do before). A bit more understeer maybe? I'm gonna put a 24mm ARB for the rear axle so a little bit of understeer at this point is not a problem.

Update: the right hand side was more work: wheel bearing had to be changed (only in finnish!) and some previous owner had assembled the metal strip that hold the break pads in a wrong way, resulting the metal strip to tear apart and the pads almost flying away. New break pad assembly kit had to be bought:

First I thought I could get a spare part from a spare 106GTI struts which I happen to have lying around, but not. The S1 rallye has BENDIX breaks, S2 has ATE and they are fundamentally different. The ATE ones are much more big and robust, no metal strips holding pads in place.

Trackday...

Visited my first ever track day last weekend. It was organised in Alastaro circuit by a BMW club and I was there as a guest with a friend who owns a beemer. It was huge fun! I could drive (only) 4-5 rounds, the best time being 1:41.7. I'm gonna attend trackdays next year with my own car. Whether It'll be a rallye or something else I don't know. What I do know that I liked the way RWD handled in track...