Originally posted by jr
jr@]Thought you might be intrested/laugh at mine and my mates "project", this was written by the owner will and myself and copied from northloop
The year is 2008 and a mate suggests going to Nurburgring and would I like to come? 5 of us wanted to head over and see what all the hype is about so the with 2 of the 5 being a couple, me and two mates decided to take my spare car I had which was mainly used by me to drive to town and abandon when I go for a few drinks. Little did we know it would begin one of the silliest things we've done for a while anyway.
Enter the Vauxhall Astra CDX
In all her glory, 1.8 capacity, 16 whole valves, aircon, traction control, electric everything and a sunroof.
Three of us went to the ring in it, it did the job, it did a scary lap and got us home. For the trip we stuck aload of stickers on cause it seemed right at the time:
She did the lap
it had smashed through northern europe last time, did an unofficial
10.25 lap, and got us home, but this time we wanted a sub 10, the mission was on :!
We started off with some choice mods, eibach springs, whiteline rear anti roll bar and I then took it to James' house to ruin it forever:
This is how she started (note: stickers were removed )
then on Saturday, at precisely 11.17 am, the project began, sponsored by pg tips and some bacon rolls, Me, James, Fad, Warren and James' brother luke did this
now with a plain canvas, the corbeau's from James' corsa were installed, along with some very nice omp 4 points
onto the tyre front, the 195/5 15s wer'nt going to cut it, so we bought these, and some yoko semi slicks from Lee The Legend
we then remeberd the astra was 5 stud, so sold them again, and bought these and mounted them up
and some sexy looking spares (cheers warren)
obviously such delights as the wooden trim and gear knob have stayed for strength reasons (wood lowers the c.o.g)
and the sort of finished article
Days before the trip some more bits got bolted on, not wanting to worry James' that we wouldnt have a car I decided to send him this:
I also managed to put on some braided brake hoses, fluid change, and some cool Astra GSI air ducts that attach to the lower arms and cool down everything.
Our third ring visit was coming up and this was the second time the Astra was returning to Germany, but this time it was prepared for some action. She did over a thousand miles and did 8 laps between Me and James, James managed a 9.45 BTG and was happy with that
After our ring trip we decided we had to go back, we had too many laps that we would waste and who can deny themself another visit? Our last visit was 7 days in duration but the Weekend TF sessions were just too busy and crashy. But we had read about there myth-like quiet TF days that only existed between Monday and Friday, so we planned another visit from Saturday to Thursday.
But before our trip we had to run the WeekendRacer.co.uk stand at Castle Combe's performance action day, so we decided to (Oops I said the F word) about with the Astra some more.
Take one engine bay
Remove aircon
Take some cheap Gaz coilovers (big thanks to Pickford for sorting these out for me!) to sort out the 10 year old dampers and lowering springs.
And fit them like so
Coilovers were fitted on the Friday morning before Combe so I decided to pop down to Mark Fish Motorsport who is just outside of Harlow for him to set the car up and do the tracking for me. After various cups of teas later I went back out to get home and pack my bags for Combe!
The Astra did really well at Combe, felt alot more planted in corners and a little bit faster on the straights which I think was mainly down to the big service it got last week (belt, cam pully sensor, fuel filter, air filter, plugs, oil, oil filter and rebodged the exhaust to fit again)
With the track sessions been and gone I was REALLY excited about Nurburg, the semi slicks were getting to the end of their life, Me and James were planning to get the last out of them!
Nurburg came and went, two amazing sessions of week day TF and we got on the GP track which seemed like whacky races, no sign on, hardly any flags, no helmets needed.
GP
At Karin's apartment
Lining up on Monday
Not found any pics of us on the Ring on our last visit.
Hope you enjoyed reading.
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Originally Posted by lee303 
