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Twingo 172



Sounds well, I bet it's such a good laugh :approve:

Still on for Mallory next month?

all being well, I've bought my ticket, so just need to keep it in one piece :)

I'm going to make a small tweak to the caster, then set the suspension up before Mallory, outside of that it's ready to go.
 
The optimist in me thought the springs that came with the H+R kit would be fine with the heavier engine. They're progressive rate, so should just find there own level, or maybe not...

I initially set the platforms to the standard recommended position to see how things worked out. It sat a bit nose down for my liking, but I gave it a try. Unfortunately I could feel that it was spending too much time in the bump stops on B roads giving a choppy ride. Whilst I had the struts off to fit the roller top mounts I took the opportunity to lift the suspension 10mm. This improved the ride a lot, so I was happy with that, but unfortunately something started to bang when hitting bumps in corners. It's taken a bit of investigation, but I'm pretty sure the springs are going coilbound. The problem with rising rate springs is that you don't really know what rate they are, so I've had to take a bit of a guess at a linear spring that will allow more travel, give a decent ride, not bash into the bump stops, and be a sensible height without being able to rattle on droop.... I trawled over the Eibach spring catalogue, scratched my head, considered the cost of pairs of springs that would probably be wrong and decided to buy a pair of cheapie springs off Rallydesign (60mm ID, 7", 300lb/in). Hopefully I'll have time to get them tested before I fit them as I'm not confident what rate they'll really be, but we'll see...
 
so much for the rallydesign springs, apparently they no longer stock 60mm springs as there's no call for them... :S

I've had a few bits on order from Renault, and finally managed to pick them up yesterday
stuff.jpg


that's a pair of front indicator lenses, a pair of window seals, some clips for the roof strips and a new fuel pipe. I'd also ordered a throttle body gasket, when I got there it was one of those packed in a plastic coated piece of cardboard jobs. Having been caught out before with a water pump gasket that fell apart whilst being extracted from it packaging I asked the spares guy to remove it from the packaging, true to form it didn't survive the experience, so I left it with him :)

Anyway, I bought the indicator lenses as the drivers side one had been cracked and repaired, and they were both cloudy.

Before:
indicator1.jpg


during:
indicator4.jpg


After:
indicator2.jpg


and a final comparison before binning the old one:
indicator3.jpg
 

The Chubby Pirate

ClioSport Club Member
  Golf R
Do you know the weight of the whole car yet? I'd be interested to work out what the bhp/ton is! :D

This is a pleasure to read!
 
Do you know the weight of the whole car yet? I'd be interested to work out what the bhp/ton is! :D

This is a pleasure to read!

not yet, I'm hoping to set it up in about 2 weeks time, so should know then - assuming I can sort the springs out... power to weight must be pretty close to an R26R
 
the spring saga continues. After a week of general disappointment in my quest for some new springs, I've finally had some success. I emailed Curtis at AST this morning to see whether he had any springs in the range I was looking for. The man is a star, no only did he have stocks of everything I was considering he was also going to be working a bit late today, so I had time to drive over to Tewkesbury and pick a pair of springs. I was sort of hoping that he'd only have one of the many options I was thinking about as that would save me having to decide which. I'd narrowed the rate down to either 40N/mm or 50N/mm, I think the 40s would work better, but the twingo has very little suspension travel, and no anti roll bar, so even though I believe the 40s to be a better rate I went for the 50s. Curtis was very patient as I ummed and arred, and went through all the numbers I'd written down one more time. I came away with a pair of 50N/mm 170mm long springs.

springs1.jpg

The blue spring is the H+R progressive one and the orange the new one. It was a relief to see the marking on the H+R springs that confirmed that they had been going coil bound.

springs2.jpg


I'd estimated that the new springs wanted about 10mm of preload to give the same rideheight as before. That worked out to be spot on.

So, good news, the new springs fit, sit the car at a sensible rideheight, and won't go coilbound. It just remains to be seen how well they work on the road, will I be smashing through the bumpstops or bounce all over the road?

I'm going to try and measure the original springs at work, it'll be useful to know at what load they go coilbound.
 
  Bus w**ker
I'd also ordered a throttle body gasket, when I got there it was one of those packed in a plastic coated piece of cardboard jobs. Having been caught out before with a water pump gasket that fell apart whilst being extracted from it packaging I asked the spares guy to remove it from the packaging, true to form it didn't survive the experience, so I left it with him :)
PMSL Thank god it's not just me then! Went back in to order another, got my old man to collect it for me the next day when it arrived from France and they'd cut it out of the vacuum sealed plastic...guessing they have a lot of them being returned lol.

You need to get some more videos up. This car is a work of art.
 
Only one way to find out! Go for a lengthy blast ;)

funny you should say that, I've just been for a bit of a run out...

so far so good, I've been for a run down a pretty rough road and it took it quite well . You can feel the limited suspension travel, but it doesn't feel overly stiff, or seem to be bouncing off the bump stops. I'll know better once I've done the run to work and back as there are a couple of nasty mid corner bumps that have been troubling until now. Note that it's still not set up as it'll be a waste of money whilst I'm still playing with springs and ride heights.
 
  Bus w**ker
Mallory you say...any details on it? I might pop down with the camera and sit myself near the hairpin.
 
  Dci 100
This thread is great, I've just read through all 13 pages so far, I cant wait to see some more pics, hopefully of it going round a track!
 
  Bus w**ker
Ta. Shame I've already got plans for that day, for £80 I'd have been on track too that's ridiculous. If I can get down for the morning I'll come grab some pictures before shooting off to go karting, I'm actually laughing at myself for turning down a track day to go karting instead. :eek:
 
Ta. Shame I've already got plans for that day, for £80 I'd have been on track too that's ridiculous. If I can get down for the morning I'll come grab some pictures before shooting off to go karting, I'm actually laughing at myself for turning down a track day to go karting instead. :eek:

I'll try to remember to wave :)

not too much done today, just swapped the fuel pipe.

Whilst I was down at ProSpeed the guys down there spotted that one of the fuel pipes was weeping. It looked like it had been bodged before, but I decided not to mess with it as I didn't fancy getting stranded. The fuel pipes are plastic, and had been wrapped in some kind of gummy bandage. I took the chance to remove it today and found that it had indeed been repaired as inside the bandage was a bit of copper pipe that was loosely inserted. I don't know why people bodge things like this, the genuine pipe was only £15, which considering it was pre-formed and shipped from France was a bit of a bargain.
 
I did something today which would have been useful to have done before buying new springs, but being a daily driver I couldn't be without it for a day. I measured the rising rate springs that came with the H+R kit. A plot first, then I'll explain what's what.

springrate.jpg

The plot is spring travel in mm against load in Newtons, I've zeroed everything so that 0mm is static ride height and 0N is with the 2150N of static load removed. As you go up the vertical axis you're going into bump, and down droop. There is only 33mm of droop available, and at 27mm of bump you start to get into the bump rubbers. Ideally I'd have removed a bump rubber to measure that too.

Looking at the rising rate spring first, at 45mm of bump it goes coilbound, the suspension was getting this far on mid corner potholes and banging most horribly. This is still 18mm into the bump rubber.

Then the 40N/mm linear spring, this is the kind of rate you'd expect on a tarmac rally car, and where I'd like to have been, as you can see it's a lot like the progressive spring in bump, but has more travel so won't go coilbound. It would drive much like the original H+R spring, but without going coilbound (this 170mm spring has 18mm more compression available than the standard progressive one).

Finally the 50N/mm spring. It doesn't feel too bad on the road, I think this is because it's not going so hard into the bump rubber. I don't like the choppy feel of the rubber, and certainly the car feels less disturbed by bumps.

All in all I'm happy with the 50N/mm springs, I wouldn't mind trying the softer ones out of interest, but it's not that important, I think I'd rather play with the bump rubbers first.
 
I got the car on the scales today, as well as setting cambers and toes. The camber was a bit out, 2.25deg left, 2.75deg right, ended up with 1.9deg both sides, actually all 4 corners were pretty much that, we didn't measure the rear as I don't have any shims, but my calibrated eyeball tells me the rear is much the same as the front. Set the toes to 1mm out, and dropped it on the scales. With me in it there was only 5Kg difference in the cross weights, so we left it alone.

So, total weight including all 4 seats, spare wheel, jack, mats, and 1/4 tank of fuel is 884Kg - I'm happy with that :)
 
what's that, 140Kg lighter than a cup? not to be sniffed at.

I just had a chuckle remebering the guy with the cup parked next to me at Prescott, apparently the cups are so fast because they're so light. Maybe I should have said something :)

looking forward to Mallory now, I just need to throw the tent in and I'm ready, are you all set?
 
Yeah, probably about the same as mine and Whiteleys if you took all the bits you mentioned out too!

Pretty much, plenty of spares all ready to go just need to get it all in the cars. Pretty p*ssed off that one of my hubs was knackered so ive got 3 hubs with bolts and one with stubs, oh well!
 
Yeah, probably about the same as mine and Whiteleys if you took all the bits you mentioned out too!

Pretty much, plenty of spares all ready to go just need to get it all in the cars. Pretty p*ssed off that one of my hubs was knackered so ive got 3 hubs with bolts and one with stubs, oh well!

You'd need to take another 200Kg out of your car to get it the same weight as my 5 ;)

I thought that hub was iffy when you originally showed it in the stud conversion post, but I didn't say anything as you'd already put them together. :(
 
Yeah - never mind, at least I got another bearing out of it for nothing, just means finding another stub and doing the work again when ive got time :)
 
Sat in the pitlane at Mallory I clocked exactly 190,000kms, so thought I'd take a picture for posterity. Pity you can't actually read the numbers, they're on the display in the centre of the dash.
190000kms_small.jpg
 
  BMW M5 & E36
Absolutely loved this car, looked superb at the weekend. Nice meeting you too.

My multicoloured-mobile in your pic too :)
 
Absolutely loved this car, looked superb at the weekend. Nice meeting you too.

My multicoloured-mobile in your pic too :)

cheers, the PH1s all looked impressive on track, you were trying a lot harder than I wanted to :)

did you all sneak off for a cheeky weigh in? How did it turn out?
 
  BMW M5 & E36
cheers, the PH1s all looked impressive on track, you were trying a lot harder than I wanted to :)

did you all sneak off for a cheeky weigh in? How did it turn out?

No we didn't actually, completely forgot to be honest. I wasn't pushing too much in the wet, shame it only started to dry a little towards the end of the day :(
 


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