Callan's GTiR Story

My car is a black,UK spec car first reg. November 92. There's currently 63,550 ish miles on the clock. The car is currently bog standard,apart from having a de-cat pipe, ITG plate filter and grooved front discs with particularly shite ferodo competition pads which mean you have to drive like an arse to get them to work at all and then the bloody cooling ducts cool them down again.

CALLAN'S GTIR STORY

After being fed up with my 405 mi16 I decided to get something faster. After phoning around I got in touch with John at FUTURA Imports."yes it's a lovely car, in Grey with competition clutch, superb". So being a bit gullible I accepted this and duly traveled to Doncaster to view it (4.5 hrs each way!). Car was shite, felt slow,no clutch, no brakes. However there was another there v.nice and v.fast avec the magic umbrella,HKS induction kit and dump valve. I had an ABS vehicle inspection on this car and one other in Berkshire and both were reasonable cars but both had chassis damage consistent with shipping unloading damage. The inspector reported that although this wouldn't affect driving it could weaken the chassis in the event of a crash. So this put me off imports.

Blind Date

After a near miss at buying an impreza (still wish I had), I saw an advert for a UK car in motoring news. had an inspection done and got a glowing report. Duly flew to Glasgow 27/11/98 did the deal and drove back £9250 lighter. Over the next week it became obvious that my car was BHP light when I struggled to overtake XR3s. Also the car revved a bit lumpily.

At Moseley's tuning in Llandeilo the boost pressure was diagnosed at 7 psi (pussies boost).Got a bleed valve put on temporarily to put boost to std 10.6 psi then went to Interpro. 209 bhp at 5858 and high fuel pressure. Now Ive just had a new std boost control and fuel pressure reg. fitted.

InterProgoandfixitpleaselovely

as the car has obviously still got less than standard boost with the replacement boost control fitted and the bleed valve removed. The engine seems to use to much fuel, is reluctant to rev without lumpiness and is just not very powerful. I'm hoping Interpro will be able to diagnose the problem or I'll have the only GTIR in Britain with impotence.!Turbos fine. Ive a printout from the car march 98 at TDI rolling road with 225 bhp at 6850 revs so it has worked ok.

I'm hoping my mini beater can turn into the Porsche beater it should be. As well as the lack of performance I've been very disappointed with the handling of the car - too much roll and not enough lateral grip on corners (mind you-it does look like it's on stilts in standard form) - the mi16 would have taken it to the cleaners on handling. The car is under warranty for a further 18 months as standard car but if the insurance people don't make a fuss I'll try and get nismo shocks and eibach dampers on it. Also some 16 inch adikt alloys will help.

Pads Without Wings

Right at the start of January I bought some standard Nissan disks grooved by Silvia engineering and some pads that they reassured me would work from cold. However they're obviously a type of carbon metallic comp pad and not suitable for fast road. So the hunt for replacement pads began. After phoning several different pad suppliers (mid January) Paul at demon tweeks could only get mintex M1144 pads made specially and they didn't fit when they arrived after a two month wait. Previously in January I spoke to the guys at EBC but at that time they didn't make a greenstuff fitment for the gtir then. but after seeing Adrian smiths car equipped with them I felt gutted because after £96 and two months I'm now going to have to draw around the current pads for a plate pattern and then wait another month or so for them to be made. And to cap it all in the new Demon Tweeks catalogue they now do g-force and pagid pads (also pagid rears) all at much less than £96! Monkeys sperm!

Non Starter

My starter motor also died at the start of April. Because you apparently need to remove the inlet manifold to remove and refit the starter, complete with new sealing gasket 2 weeks wait, the labour was 11 hours and that's with the mechanic being good! Vince only charged me for 8 hours labour-just over £300 parts and labour (exchange starter). I've also invested in some new leads and platinum plugs even though the old plugs were only 8500 miles old in an effort to smooth the lumpy revving.

Incidentally I've slick 50d the engine and use castrol RS 10w60 synthetic oil. Vince reckons that oil rated below 5w e.g. Mobil 1 0w40 isn't very good for turbos but I'm no expert so I couldn't comment.

So to round up I'm basically driving GTIRlite - light on power, brakes and handling! But hopefully Interpro can sort out my engine so I can experience a little bit of the 30s of 15psi boost ran when Vince was adjusting the bleed valve in January-top fun. He's recently rebuilt a customers 300ZX engine to 450 bhp- blinkin flip!

Anyway I hope you get this Email and when I win the lottery and turn the car into 500BHP you'll be the first to know! Keep up the epic work with the GTIR page.

Regards. Callan John