Not quite finished, but close enough to be on display at the NEC Classic Car Show last weekend. More photos will follow in due course.
With the unparalleled efforts of Ant "The Autoad" Thomas at Rust Republic, who did nearly all of the hard work, we've managed to create a very close replica of a 1976 VW Scirocco Junior Cup car. If you don't know about this one make, promotional series, look at Dr Dub's excellent site for your background reading (Richie was also a mine of useful information for the build of this car, without whom it would have been a lot trickier).
http://website.lineone.net/~dr.dub/scir ... or_cup.htmThe basis of the car is actually the shell of a 1981 GLi, with the engine and some other mechanical bits pilfered from a rotten Storm. Matt Curtis (GT Matt) did a great job rebuilding the engine. We took the decision to convert it to left-hand drive, since no Cup cars were RHD. Marshall (Shavhead) helped with the bits needed to relocate the steering wheel and Johan de Haan (via the Facebook page) came up trumps with a decent LHD dash and all the associated bits. Ant generously supplied the wings, lights and bumpers to make it look like a 1976 car. Tony (mazellan) had the Zender wheel-arch kit and front spoiler, with the rear spoiler found on eBay.de. German eBay also came up trumps with the correct Interspeed Victor steering wheel and boss (from separate sellers!), black instrument surround, and so far only one side's correct door card. The interior fabric would have been too costly to replicate, so the seats were completely refurbished and finished in mk1 Golf GTI red stripe fabric, which provides a similar effect and the fabric is still available (I found werk34.de to be cheapest at the time). VW Classic now reproduce the correct Kamei golf ball gearknob, so we had one of those.
I settled on a Safety Devices bolt-in roll cage, which they make for Mk1 Scirocco. Other racing kit, such as proper race seat, harness, fire extinguisher, electric cut-offs and bonnet pins have yet to be fitted. The suspension on the original cars was slightly lowered on Sachs shocks. Since these are no longer available, I went for Koni on-car adjustable shocks, with Eibach lowering springs (we tried standard springs first, but it looked too tall). Otherwise suspension/chassis is stock GTI. After a lot of eBay searching, I found a set of four correct 15" x 5.5J ATS Cup alloy wheels. Then I found an even cheaper set of five. All nine were refurbished at Pristine Wheels in Woburn and the best five (all with the VAG stamps as well as ATS) are on the car. I wouldn't normally buy Pirelli tyres, but the original Cup cars were raced on P7s, so I felt obliged to fit Pirelli Cinturatos, which are the only ones you can get in original spec 195/50/15 nowadays.
I plan to get the finishing touches to the interior and racing mods finished over the winter, plus a professional suspension fettle and tune-up, then take it to selected track days and hillclimb/sprint events next season. It would be completely outclassed in any historic touring car championship as it's basically a standard 1.6 GTI, plus I don't want to have to rebuild it because some other idiot crashes into me. If it's my own fault, it's a different matter.
Enough chat for now. Here are some pics:
