Troy Tempest's 16vG60 RWD Corrado

[Graphite 0]

Hi all,

 

I wanted to finally get around to starting a thread on here detailing my project that has been in the wings for a few years now.

 

I took my original G60 off the road several years ago when I managed to fracture a piston and at that point decided I wanted to build something special. For those of you who don't already know I joined John at John Mitchell Racing two years ago and went back to college to study motorsport engineering at degree level. The only problem with working with John is, and those of you who have read his 500+ bhp 16v Turbo 4-WD build thread will understand this, is that there is no way I can build a standard Corrado :)

 

Firstly I toyed with different ideas, levels of trim, what power plant to use and whether to stay with a G-lader or go with a turbo. In the end I really made the decision that I wanted to build a car that would challenge me to learn new skills in fabrication, manufacture of my own parts and vehicle design.

 

The brief then settled on a very definite plan for the drive line of the car: It had to be rear wheel drive with a longitudinally mounted engine, I then decided it had to be light, as light as it could possibly be as I knew with rear wheel drive I couldn't chase big power like John is (so to have any chance of being able to keep up with John I need a good power to weight ratio advantage )

 

I also wanted to build the car with an ethos very a kin to that of BMW in the sense that I wanted to build a very well balanced car. BMW build their cars to have a weight distribution of as close as you can get to 50/50. In going rear wheel drive it is easier to achieve this as your drive train components are spread across the length of the car.

 

So I started buying parts.....

 

The first thing purchased was the carbon panel work, this will take the weight out of the top of the car and lower the center of gravity.

 

 

So far I have the bonnet, roof skin and tailgate. I am in the process of buying wings and doors when they have been manufactured by Lewis at LWS. Even though they look like they have a coat of lacquer they are actually manufactured in the pure dry weave as there is no gel coat on the top of the panels, this can be seen in some of the other pics.

 

Detail of the tailgate can be seen here.

 

 

As can be seen there is a sheet of perspex for the rear window, the only glass I am fitting back into the car is the windscreen. The car is in no way going to be an every day road car, the brief over time became increasingly angled at motorsports, however the car will be road legal so I can drive it to events.

 

So with the major panels purchased I started looking to source a gearbox. Ideally a Quaife 6-speed sequential was my item of choice but I was hesitant to go straight for the big money box for two reasons. Firstly, I know how the box will perform on paper, I did all the required calculations to tell me what my peak velocity would be in each gear but this is only theoretical. Secondly, the box I was looking at was around 7k so if it didn't perform as expected that was a lot of money (and time saving it) wasted.

 

With this in mind I kept my eye out on eBay for suitable gearboxes, I spotted a Ford (I know, eurgh) Type 9 box built by Phil Peacock who is well known in the rally world as he used to build the gearboxes for Ford Motorsport. The box has a Quaife straight cut gear set with the extra heavy duty lay shaft bearing fitted. Basically this will take everything I want to throw at it and some more, all for a fraction of the price of the sequential.

 

 

With a great gearbox purchase comes great difficulty. Mounting the gearbox to the engine is difficult as obviously it wont be a direct fit, no one makes a bell housing that takes the Ford type 9 box bolt patten to fit the VAG 4-cylinder bell housing bolt pattern. My original idea was to take an Audi 1.8t gearbox from an A4, cut the bell housing off the gearbox and weld in a suitable section that could take the Type 9 bolt pattern. During my research I found a bell housing kit that adapted the Borg-Warner T5 (a derivative of the Type 9, but with a different gearbox to bell housing bolt pattern) to VAG 1.8t engines. I spoke to the manufacturer and discussed with them my needs and they agreed to machine the bell housing to take a type 9 bolt pattern rather than the T5, so with that sorted I purchased the kit, it was priced at £1100 but it came with a very nicely machined, super light weight flywheel, clutch friction + pressure plates and a hydraulic slave cylinder to suit.

 

However, modification is still required. Due to the Type 9 box that I bought having the heavy duty lay shaft bearing I need to remove material from the back of the bell housing to make it sit flush with the face of the gearbox.

 

The extra bearing housing can be seen in the picture below with a layer of engineer's blue on the surface.

 

 

You can also see in the above image where I had to machine down the nose cone that covers the gearbox input shaft. I found the diameter of the base plate of the nose was greater than the orifice machined into the bell housing and that the length was too long, this prevented the clutch slave cylinder being placed as far down the input shaft as required.

 

 

The mating face on the bell housing marked up to be cut to give clearance for the bearing housing.

 

 

I then found that the bolts that were supplied with the kit had the wrong thread pitch for my T9 box. The bolts supplied were M12 x 1.75 and I needed M12 x 1.5, I had some bolts with the right thread in the bolts bucket in the workshop but they didn't have the narrow heads that fit the recessed holes in the bell housing, time to machine the heads down :)

 

 

The original size bolt alongside the diameter of the head required.

 

 

At the other end of things, I obviously need to build the bottom end of the engine so I can mount the flywheel to the crank and make sure all my parts for the gearbox are dimensioned correctly.

 

I bought a 9A 2.0 16v block, it was quite heavily corroded but looked to be okay internally. After a blast off with the steam cleaner I was left with this:

 

 

After a bit of work with some more aggressive equipment:

 

 

The block went off to have the bores machined to the pistons. My block is the one on the right with the JE 9:1 pistons on top, the block on the left is a 9A 16vG60 we are building for a customers Mk1 Golf.

 

 

I then painted the block with cylinder black.

 

 

Ahh..... that's better :)

 

The bung placed in the hole for the dipstick guide tube is a blanking plug I machined on the lathe whilst I waited for the cylinder black to dry.

 

I need to bung the hole as I don't need a dipstick on this build. There will be no oil to measure under the block as this engine will be fitted with the same dry sump system we have developed for John's car :)

 

 

 

That's pretty much as far as I have got to date. Bear in mind that it has taken me two years to develop the idea, try and finalize it, save up and buy the bits.

 

I'm hoping I can find the time to build the bottom of the engine this week but as soon as there is updates I will post some more.

 

Troy.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Graphite

[seanl82 23]

A build of EPIC proportions! Look forward to seeing this progress, best of luck with everything, hope it all goes to plan. :thumbleft:

[sexybourbon 0]

Yes yes and yes cant wait for more updates

[dragon green 4]

Wow,

Thanks for posting,instead of the type 9 box,you could have gone straight to a T5 box with Quaife internals,or is it a larger box then the type 9 ?

[Graphite 0]

Thanks guys, I'm just taking my time to post more, there has been more progress than this so far. I will post some more later this evening :)

 

Wow,

Thanks for posting,instead of the type 9 box,you could have gone straight to a T5 box with Quaife internals,or is it a larger box then the type 9 ?

 

The T5 boxes with Quaife internals for about a thousand pounds more than the T9 as they are more popular and can take more power than what I want to run. I had already purchased the T9 with plans to make my own bell housing and found the kit after :(

[Jim Bowen 1]

Excellent. Can't wait to see it progress.

[daveb142 10]

Amazing. Like everyone else has said, look forward to seeing more progress!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I love the engineering threads! Will follow this one with great interest!

[swiftkid 1]

I do love a nice bit of engineering, makes a refreshing change from the guys cutting all the coils out of standard suspension or handing over blank cheques. I'll be very interested into finding out how a RWD corrado handles, since owning a bmw RWD just seems to make much more sense these days!

[g0ldf1ng3r 14]

anyone know why pics are not showing :(

[loepan 11]

pics are showing for me goldf1ng3r (dah dah dah, he's the man...) sorry where was I, love this thread so far, did my apprentice as a tool maker and seeing the lathes in action has brought back some memories, more often than not I have a problem and think if I only had a miller or lathe I could sort that problem out

 

rwd corrado, get in

[Jim 2]

Had the same problem with images not being displayed when John Mitchell uploaded his last set of pictures from his 16vG60 rebuild... for some reason my antivirus software seems to have a real issue with the domain where the pictures are hosted! No idea why.

 

I also think Virgin Media block access to it too.

[coullstar 0]

Nice, very nice. Please keep it realtively standard looking.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I'll be very interested into finding out how a RWD corrado handles, since owning a bmw RWD just seems to make much more sense these days!

 

Should be quite interesting, judging by the way high powered 1 series BMs are always throwing the Stig and Clarkson off the TG test track :D

[Graphite 0]

pics are showing for me goldf1ng3r (dah dah dah, he's the man...) sorry where was I, love this thread so far, did my apprentice as a tool maker and seeing the lathes in action has brought back some memories, more often than not I have a problem and think if I only had a miller or lathe I could sort that problem out

 

rwd corrado, get in

 

I would love to have a mill here and we are working towards getting one. The lathe is so handy for modifying small bits :)

 

In regards to the pictures I'm not sure what goes there... Johns pictures are hosted in the same place so I'll have to talk to my web hosts.

 

Thanks for the positive feedback guys.

 

Sorry coullstar, it is going to be a bit out there but hopefully in a good way :)

[Graphite 0]

Made some more progress towards getting the engine built this evening. I cleaned the crank end oil seal retaining plates ready for new oil seals, separated the rods from their original pistons and started cleaning them, cleaned all the crankshaft main bearing caps and a few other bits. I installed the new core plugs into the block too.

 

No pics as of yet but I hope to get some up tomorrow evening :)

[fla 9]

Had the same problem with images not being displayed when John Mitchell uploaded his last set of pictures from his 16vG60 rebuild... for some reason my antivirus software seems to have a real issue with the domain where the pictures are hosted! No idea why.

 

I also think Virgin Media block access to it too.

 

same here :( i'm with virgin media too.

[VAG-hag 0]

Fantastic, another big build thread with a very different approach. Looking forward to future updates :thumbleft:

[Rorgasm 10]

I go away for a couple of weeks & this is what happens..... nice work Troy. I'll be round to see you & John tomorrow for a full update on both builds.

 

Rory:smug:

[Graphite 0]

Aye. More being done tonight sorry Mr Mexico, no Juan's allow in! Hahah

[Craig 0]

Argh seems I'm missing a great build here as I'm on Virgin media too! Something to check out at work tomorrow then ;)

[VAG-hag 0]

Im on virgin and it works fine for me.....

[lilfuzzer 1]

On Bt and doesnt work for me.

 

Sounds interesting

[HummuH 10]

Interesting project.

 

Very keen to see how you get on with weight distribution as this is what I'm focussing on right now. Before this years modifications, I was running weighting balance of 66:34 F/R with 673kg across front axle and 342 across rear axle, and that was with 15l of fuel. Car fully stripped out and race modified but retaining std fuel tank.

 

My target is 60/40 on completion and I'm very keen to see how you progress towards 50/50 as I think that will be quite a challenge!

 

Keep it up!

[Slimg60 0]

Hiya Troy, great to see your Corrado is being given another lease of life!

I sold mine a couple of years ago and miss it, currently driving an Edition 30 golf, not as much fun as the rado!