So its been a good couple years since I've posted on Briskoda and I never actually created a thread for my build, so I'll start from somewhere near the beginning, it's a wild ride filled with pain and success, and the project is still ongoing.

 

For anyone interested in heavily modifying their Skodas with EA211 engines, I have a shop opening soon specializing in motorsports and EA211 engines with all the knowledge I have gained over the last 5+ years, and I will update this post once the store is live and engine building services are available at my new unit. (will be speaking with Briskoda about club discounts)

 

Now back to the start, I bought the car stock in 2019 as my first car, I figured if I was going to pay silly money for insurance, I'd rather be paying £2k a year for a nice car vs a cheap dinger.  I didn't do much in the first year an a half, just some small cosmetic mods such as tints, stickers, some red pin-striping, a sun strip, yellow fog lights and an MST induction kit.

 

End of 2019/start of 2020 I started to get a taste for track days (I had been professionally sim racing for a few years and wanted to get on track in my own car) so started with Three Sisters in Wigan and went from there.

 

 

2021 is where it really kicked off for my project.  At this point I had only ever done some simple mods and regular servicing to my car.  I had no idea what I was doing, when it came to fitting suspension or anything more complex. so I researched and watched some YouTube videos, bought some more tools and had a go at fitting powerflex poly bushes and upgraded the suspension to coilovers.  This went quite well, I even bought a welder and taught myself how to weld to make my own custom exhaust.  I even painted the calipers red along with a few other small modifications here and there, including a rear wiper delete.

 

 

Now that I had sportier handling and noise, I wanted more power.  So in the summer of 2021 I figured instead of spending money on a stage 1 remap, only to pay for a more powerful map later down the line, I decided to go all out and bought a bigger 1.4tsi turbo and fitted it to my car with the aim of going straight for 170bhp ish. I also swapped in colder Denso ixu27 spark plugs and paired them with APR coil packs. Went to get it tuned and the tuner blew it up 🙃   The tuner basically hit the page up button on boost and fuel, rather than properly remapping it on the dyno and got the numbers wrong.  Ironically I had a P0234 overboost sticker in my engine bay, and thats exactly what happened.  The engine ran too lean, too much pressure was put on the turbo and it overheated, which warped the turbine shaft causing the internals to explode, sending fragments of compressor through the engine.

 

 

At this point I could've should've scrapped the car or had it written off by insurance, or I could put a fresh engine in and keep going..... i chose pain...

 

I figured if I had to replace the engine, I may as well go bigger and picked up a cheap CXSA engine with around 50k miles on the clock, drove to London to pick it up and transported it back to Manchester in a mate's Audi A3.

Little bit of info on the CXSA engine, it's an updated version of the CMBA engine which had oil consumption issues with the cylinder head, but the CXSA engine was preceded by the newer and somewhat improved CZCA engine.

 

I went about striping down my car ready to remove the engine and started swapping some of my mods onto this new engine, I spent an additional £500 on various service items, new spark plugs, fitted a fresh clutch whilst I was at it and painted the cam cover red.  Interestingly, the cam cover on the EA211 engines for those who don't know, is also the cam ladder, as the camshafts are built into the cover, so it can't easily be removed without having to remove the timing belt, so I had to mask everything off in order to paint it.

 

 

Once I had the new engine fitted, I rebuilt the front end of the car, and fitted RGB demon eye lights in the projector headlights whilst I was at it.  The swap between the CJZD to the CXSA was relatively straight forward, the high pressure fuel pump is identical between the two engines (both identical Hitachi HPFPs with the same plug - this will be important later on), using the original engine wiring loom and ECU from the 1.2 CJZD, The 1.4TSI engines have an additional oil pressure switch and solenoid at the back of the engine to switch between low oil pressure and high oil pressure, for performance and an easier swap, these can be left disconnected.  The engine will always run with higher oil pressure, like the 1.2tsi engines.  Once the car was running, I booked it in at a different tuner who were able to apply a base map for the 1.4tsi and tune it to around 180bhp and 260nm of torque, I even got pops and bangs *sigh*

 

I now had the first engine swapped MK3 Fabia in the UK. (Mid 2021)

 

Somewhere during all this I fitted 15mm spacers on the front and 20mm spacers on the rear for better fitment, and realized I needed some wheels.  So after getting the car back on the road, I went on Facebook marketplace and managed to pick up an almost new set of JR29 wheels for £200, no cracks, buckles, welds or damage. Fitted a nice set of Pirelli P-Zero tyres and got some tuner bolts as I had snapped the locking keys for my standard bolts.  I also fitted black badges and some rubber strips to extend the standard Monte Carlo splitter and sideskirts.

 

 

The car was now in a good spot and looking good, so I took it to Santa Pod for USC with some mates and went down the drag strip, followed by a road trip round the NC500 a few weeks later.  The quarter mile time was 15.8 seconds at 86mph iirc.

The road trip round the NC500 was a lot of fun with great roads and scenery, but in true project car fashion, the spirited driving took it's toll as the exhaust shifted, kevlar heat wrap failed, and a heat shield got loose, resulting in a slightly melted fuel tank.

 

 

1 week later, I had a new fuel tank and replaced the damaged one, and took the car to Trax car show, where I got some track time and met @Monkey_Dan in person for the first time.  I also got speaking with a few other people getting more ideas for my car.  It was around this time I started looking into getting the R5 rally wide body kit (about £3.5-4k), but then the project car curse struck again 2 days later and engine number 2 went pop as I left Tesco with full tank of premium.

 

 

At this point, I start looking for another car, very nearly bought a slightly rotten mk1 MX5... I wish I did.  Instead I bought a Toyota aygo as a cheap daily and decided to turn the Fabia into my weekend/track car.

 

I contemplated the Idea of swapping in a 1.8tsi from the Polo GTI or a 2.0tsi from the Golf GTI/R, the 2.5L TFSI RS3 engine also crossed my mind, but these were all out of budget.  So another 1.4tsi it was.  The engine was stripped down to find out what went wrong, this time I took the cam ladder off and removed the head to get a deeper look now I was more confident in my mechanic skills.  As we took the intake manifold off, we could see one of the intake valves missing in cylinder 2, I didn't expect to see it embedded in piston 2 when we took the head off...

 

As much as I hated it, seeing the Fabia with the front end fully disassembled was a familiar sight.

 

 

After some further inspection and sifting through data logs, my best guess for what happened is a perfect storm of a spark plug failing, mixed with a poorly looked after engine (remember I bought this engine cheap off the internet), a lot of carbon buildup, and some damage likely caused by the pops and bangs.  (yep, I'm getting old, pops and bangs are not cool)  I ended 2021 with a second blown engine and a cheap daily.

 

This time I bought a CZC engine with 30k miles on the clock in better condition, had it shipped to me, and repeated the same process as last time, swapping good parts over to the new engine, including the clutch which only had about 12k miles on it at this point. (yep, engine 2 lasted 12k miles)  Whilst I waited for the new engine to arrive, I went about heat shielding the firewall with gold insulation tape from funk motorsport.

 

This time round I didn't bother painting the cam ladder, instead I had problems getting the car to start due to fuel pressure from the HPFP.  Remember how I mentioned the Hitachi HPFP earlier?  The CZC engines use a different HPFP to the CXSA and CJXC/D engines which wouldn't work with my wiring loom or ECU.  Eventually after much trial and error, I modified one of the Hitachi HPFPs to fit the CZC engine which required some re-drilling and adjustment with the dremel to move the bolt holes.  It was a bit of a bodge, but it worked.  The Hitachi HPFP can also be upgraded using the EA888 HPFP upgrade kits.

 

 

The fuel pump workaround fixed all the issues, and the car was back on the road for a few months until a HGV propshaft decided to ruin my day on the M6 by damaging the subframe, front suspension, destroying an alloy, ripping out an abs/wheel speed sensor and a causing some other damage underneath.  Insurance were kicking their feet about fixing the car because of how heavily modified the car was, so after 2 months waiting, I took the car back and fixed it myself.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any more JR29s so had to settle for a single bola b25 to fix the car as cheaply as possible.  Fitted a new subframe, new control arm, re-terminated the abs sensor wire and treated the damaged metal to stop it from corroding.

 

 

With the Fabia fixed again, I went back to modifying, going even more track focused.  I fitted an aftermarket steering wheel with a custom wheel boss and quick release setup.  Doing this meant I lost the steering wheel controls, so I came up with a way to keep them, I removed them from the standard wheel and zip tied them to the wheel boss kit.  Somewhere along the way I installed a boost gauge and volt meter in one of the center air vents too.

Seeing as I was going full track car spec, I had been looking at the OMP WRC-R seats for a few months and found a pair with 4 point harnesses on marketplace which I was able to get at a bargain £650, vs £1400 for the pair of seats and harnesses new.  I went about stripping out the standard seats front and rear and fitted the new seats. Getting the seats to fit required making up some custom brackets as the standard seat mounting is offset.  Installing the seats straight onto the default mounts resulted in being sat a couple inches left of the wheel, making for an awful driving position.  I temporarily bolted the shoulder straps for the harness to the standard rear seatbelt mounts whilst I waited for a custom harness bar to arrive.

 

 

The harness bar arrived, and to mount it, I cut away the rear seat mounting loops and boxed in the bar mounts with 2mm steel and a lot of weld to make it as secure as possible, if I crash, I don't want that harness bar coming loose.  The whole thing was painted red to match the interior and adjusted to fit, and the harnesses mounted to the bar.  When fitting harnesses, they need to be fitted correctly in the right position and with the right angles, don't mess around with safety when your life may depend on it.  As part of removing the standard rear seat mounts, I removed the centre mount which had 12 spot welds and panel bond - absolute pain to remove. (Drop the fuel tank if you do this, the tank sits directly below and you dont want to drill into it)  Whilst I was at it, I also started removing some of the bonded sound panels from the boot area (ADHD got me on a side quest there)

 

 

The next addition came mid 2022 when I decided it was time for a race car livery, earlier in the year I designed some liveries for my car, and went about doing it as cheaply as possible.  I went to a local vinyl supplier, bought £80 of sign vinyl because it was cheaper than proper cast vinyl and spent every evening after work for a week cutting vinyl with a ruler and pair of scissors and applied it to my car.  I also used a vinyl plotter to cut out some additional stickers to complete the race car livery look.

 

 

After the livery, it was time for some Nurburgring prep, full service again and walnut blasted the intake valves, I fitted a 2-step controller for flat foot shifting and launch control with an aftermarket wiring loom and went to get the car remapped again, this time for a slightly safer map running 170hp and 250nm of torque running less boost but with better fuelling.  The pops and bangs were gone, and replaced with anti-lag which doesn't come in until 5k+ rpm, and the redline was raised from 6500 to 7000rpm.

 

 

The Nurburgring trip didn't quite go to plan, we were staying in Belgium for the week for Spa 24H, and went to the ring on one of the first days.  My car decided to start misfiring and wouldn't behave, so I took it on for a lap anyway, managed to get a 9:58 lap on 3 cylinders. Later on diagnosed the issue to be the aftermarket wiring loom for the launch controller, managed to fix it and got home just in time for USC at santapod again, this time I entered the autosolo and won, then entered the flame show for a laugh.

 

 

I got some more track time at Silverstone in September in 2022, and got bored in October so made a bonnet exit exhaust for fun (not for road use - car shows only)

 

The Fabia then decided it wasn't done being a project car, snapped the dogbone mount which also snapped the clutch line, so I replaced it with a thicker dogbone from a 1.8tsi Polo GTI and fitted powerflex inserts, along with replacing the broken clutch line. (I dont seem to have any photos of the new dogbone mount.

 

 

Next up was some Trackday prep for Oulton Park. I switched out my old P-Zeros for NS2r semi slicks, I didn't want to go full fat semi-slick as I still wanted the car to be drivable in the wet.  I also put fresh discs and pads on the car with j-hook disks and EBC yellowstuff pads.  The pads were properly broken in for track use, some suspension adjustments were made and the spacers were removed for clearance over practicality.  I also swapped out the white #97 on the side windows for proper MSA spec DayGlo yellow numbers and name on the side windows.  It was also around here I stopped bothering with centre caps on wheels as they just melt off on track with how hot the wheels and brakes get.

 

The Oulton Park trackday was wet, glad I chose the NS2r tyres.  By the afternoon I was getting some good laps in (I wasn't timing) and I was chasing down and overtaking 2 of the 3 GR Yaris' on the track - impressive for a little 1.4 powered Fabia.  The EBC yellowstuff brakes didn't last...  After 1 day at Oulton, I had burnt through all 4 pads on the front axle.  An EBC rep got in touch and sent out some Bluestuff NDX pads to try on the rear and RPX pads to try on the front on my next trackday.

 

 

On the way home from Oulton my gearbox blows up. Driving along in 6th gear and it suddenly becomes a neutral.  As I nurse it home, it starts popping out of 5th gear, then stops going into 5th completely.  Last few miles im having to hold the gear stick in 4th.

I order a new 6 speed PRQ gearbox from a scrap yard, get my car trailer-ed to a mates unit and swap the gearbox over the Christmas holiday.  Merry Christmas to me I guess 😂  I did also strip the box to find what happened, diff casing exploded, lost oil, 6th gear was smoooooth...  The dogbone mount on the gearbox was also cracked so It's possible that the dogbone snapping couldve also caused some damage there.

 

 

Now we're in January 2023, the new gearbox is in, and the car is serviced.  I get home from a Tesco shop and my car sets on fire.  No I'm not kidding, despite all the heat shielding, it caught fire.  It wasn't the common fuel rail failiure that caused it, instead the heat from the turbo and exhaust melted through the brake fluid line that goes from the reservoir to the clutch master cylinder.  The line that failed, I had upgraded with a fuel resistant silicone line and jubilee clips during a previous engine swap.  Luckily, I had a powder fire extinguisher in the glove box (seriously keep a fire extinguisher around if you have a project or track car) and I caught the fire early enough to put it out.  To top it all off, I had a trackday booked just under 6 weeks away

 

The fire took out the clutch master cylinder, clutch position sensor, some wiring and part of the clutch line (which I had only just replaced a few months prior)  I replaced almost all of the damaged parts, other than one part of the clutch line.  When looking for this part, it turns out only to be available with the whole clutch line kit, which Skoda had also updated to a new version which would require me purchasing a different clutch master, different clutch slave and the whole line kit.  Instagram came in clutch (no pun intended) and someone sent me some 90° connectors which I needed to fix the clutch line.  It took a month to find this part.

 

 

So now its crunch time, the car doesn't run and I have upgrades planned before the next trackday, I get the fire damaged parts replaced, fit the new RPX and NDX pads which EBC kindly sent over and the big ticket upgrades - Vibratechnics engine and gearbox mounts, a front mount intercooler setup and a battery relocation.

 

At this point, no one in the UK had fitted a FMIC on a MK3 Fabia, so I ordered a 610mm 12 row universal intercooler along with a universal pipe kit and a selection of silicone hoses. I also ordered an RTMG charge cooler blanking kit and some miscellaneous pipes to bypass the charge cooler.  I also ordered a battery relocation kit and a battery tray for an 063 Aygo battery because I had one laying around and it's 3kg lighter than the OEM battery.  I also repurposed parts of the MST intake to relocate it and used the dremel to cut out a section of the plastic radiator shroud to direct air straight to the intake.

 

Once I had everything, I chose my final routing for the intercooler, installed all the parts and my car became the first MK3 Fabia in the UK with a FMIC - managed to beat @Monkey_Dan to it by about a month. (sorry)

 

 

With the car prepared and ready, I drove down from Manchester to Snetterton for the first of many trackdays organized by @BossFox to shake the car down and see how it behaved with the new additions and lots of abuse, doing about 50 laps and also meeting a couple other Briskoda members, @Volf included.

 

The Fabia did handle the abuse quite well, pulling 1.3G in the corners and 1.2G under braking, I did notice an issue with braking performance straight away.  When slamming on the anchors after being on wide open throttle, I had no power assisted braking for half a second before the brake booster came back in.  This was consistent through the day and post trackday diagnosis uncovered the vacuum line from the engine to the brake booster had been damaged from the fire just over a month earlier.  The RPX pads were easily able to take on the late braking, and a full day of driving with no brake fade.  The car did eventually start to overheat in the afternoon so I had to back off a little and do more mid session cooldown laps.

 

 

Jumping forwards a few months, I start working for a motorsports team racing in the UK Time Attack Championship, Racing Hondas Championship and 750MC Club Enduro Championship as a race mechanic.  From this I started gaining additional mechanical and motorsports knowledge and started making my Fabia even more un-usable on the road. 

 

The bucket seats came back out and I started removing the carpets, rear door cards, more sound insulation and also removed the dash for a DIY flocked dashboard.  At this point all airbags were removed, along with the airbag controller to remove the airbag light on the dash, all wiring in the roof of the car for lights, airbags and the radio were removed to kick off the start of a more extreme diet.  After flocking the dash in the living room I fitted an electrical cut off switch and wrapped the carbon effect dash inserts with carbon fiber wrap.  I also dropped the gearbox again to replace the clutch, flywheel and pressure plate after burning them out driving in the snow with semi-slicks 🤦‍♂️

 

 

Next up on the extreme diet was removing the standard bonnet catch, cutting holes and fitted aero catches, because race car I guess...  Whilst I was at it, I also removed the standard bonnet catch, welded in 2 brackets cut away a lot of metal from the boot and fitted more aero catches.  Why the boot too?  a) Race car.  b) Whilst at Snetterton, something electrical went quite wrong, the boot started unlatching from the wiper stalk and the front wiper was stuck on unless the rear wiper was turned on (which was already deleted) and it was easier to simplify with aero catches, than spend ages messing with electrical issues. (i still have to leave the wiper stalk in the rear wiper on position for the front wipers to work normally to this day)

 

Along with the aero catches came a livery update, working for a team racing in Time Attack gave me access to the championship sticker packs which I applied to my car and I started considering building my car for Time Attack.  Once this idea got in my head, I haven't been able to shake it for the last 2 years at the time of writing.  Regulations have been studied many times and from this point, the car is going in the direction of the Pocket Rocket class in Time Attack UK.

 

 

Next we jump from mid 2023 to September 2023 going for more performance upgrades and some additional maintenance.  I rebuilt the driveshafts, replaced the seals and packed them with fresh grease, then dropped the gearbox again to disassemble it and upgrade the standard diff with a plated LSD conversion from Racing Diffs, this required some custom machining of shims, to make it work.  This is a much cheaper option than a quaife or wavtrac LSD at £300 vs about £1200, the main trade off is the Racing Diffs plated conversion kit requires rebuilding once a year.  To improve handling, I finally purchased a whiteline rear anti roll bar and fitted that to the car on the same weekend which I set to the stiffest position.  I also converted the front wiper setup to a single wiper, because race car of course.

 

 

A month after the diff rebuild was more trackday preparation, I picked up a slightly used set of Hankook RS4 semi slicks cheap from the racing team to see how they compare to the NS2r tyres.  At this point I needed new discs and pads again so upgraded the standard 288mm discs to 312mm discs from the Audi S1, had a set of caliper brackets machined and fitted a set of Porsche 987 4-pot calipers with another set of RPX pads from EBC.  The calipers I purchased from ebay were damaged and unusable so a second set was ordered and I had a friend pick them up for me and drop them off same day as it was now 2 days before the trackday and I had no brakes...  A set of HEL braided brake lines was acquired for the caliper upgrade and we fitted them in one evening, followed by immediately bedding the brakes in.

 

To improve the geometry setup on the Fabia, I ordered a set of solid adjustable top mounts for a MK4 Golf which can adjust camber and castor, which I set up for maximum negative camber and shimmed the rear hubs in the same way it's done on many race cars for some negative camber and a little more toe in to control the over excitable rear end.

 

 

We now come to the next trackday, November 2023, another hosted by @BossFox.  The day gets off to an exciting start with BossFox right behind me in his Subaru P1, already pushing the car when the tyres were still a bit cold and I hadn't got my tyre pressures up, only to have a couple of very sideways moments 😅  A few laps later and the car already starts overheating, I take a cooldown lap and go at it again only for it to start overheating again 2 laps later so I come in to find the coolant boiling over.  The rest of the morning becomes a battle over coolant and oil temps and trying to keep them down. come the lunch break and I've removed the front grill and fog lights to no avail, so I take the front bumper off, grab the angle grinder, and start cutting out the blanked off part of the upper grill in an effort to get as much cooling as possible.

 

Straight after the lunch break I jump out on track and push too hard on cold tyres sending me off after turn 1 and straight into a wall, didn't even get to see if my "cooling upgrade" works.  The good news is the harness bar is still solid as ever, so my welds are working great, and wearing a harness with a helmet and neck brace meant I was unharmed.  However, the Fabia looked a little worse for wear as it gets dragged into the pits.  Over the next 30 minutes I remove the front bumper, pop it back out and tape/zip tie it back together, I then rip off the damaged wheel arch and take a mallet to the front fender, bashing it out to make it a bit straighter and to clear the wheel.  Put the car back together, check the alignment and get confirmation from track control to take the car back out.  From crashed to beaten back in shape took just 30 minutes - skills as a race mechanic coming in there.  My favorite comment of the day was someone saying it was like watching a rally team patching their car back together.

 

The handling and tyre and brake upgrades now meant I was pushing 1.4G in corners and 1.4G under braking and made a massive difference to how the car handled.  The LSD conversion also made a massive difference in corners, being able to put power down earlier without wheel spinning, though it did come at the cost of introducing more torque steer.  Lap times only 6 seconds slower than a Golf R around the Donington GP layout.  (as for the sticker on the last picture, i had to joke about it otherwise id be a bit miserable)

 

 

Next challenge was repairing the damage, which I managed for under £100.  Bought a new wing and some headlight tint, removed the damaged wing and fitted the replacement, had to bend the mounting bracket back into place for it to fit properly.  I then re-taped the front bumper and reinforced with zip ties.  The £10 tint on the headlight saved me £500 on having to replace the whole unit.  I had to plastic weld a couple of tabs on the headlight for where it mounts, and once I removed the damaged tint, there was only one scratch in the lens, vs having a completely ruined headlight.  New tint fitted and the car is ready for the next trackday.  There are some scuffs on the bonnet, a couple dents in the door and more scuffs along the side of the car and wing mirror, I like to call those battle scars 😅

 

As for the next trackday, that was a day after fitting the new parts.  Donington GP again, but this time it was just an afternoon session and very, very wet.  This was actualy a no noise limit trackday with everything from track cars, to supercars and even full on race cars.  Being overtaken by an LMP3 race car in a hatchback is a surreal experience.  I found myself gapping a lot of the supercars as I was one of few people actually pushing in the rain, most people were struggling to gain any traction so this little Fabia was actually showing up cars it shouldn't even be able to touch... until it wasnt and the car aquaplaned going into craner curves, spitting me off into the gravel.  At the end of the day, I also got the car weighed at the track, and it comes in at just a fraction under 1000kg.

 

 

To finish off 2023 I felt a bit seasonal, wrapped the grill in red tinsel and wrapped the whole car in 1600 LED christmas lights (about 80 meters of them)  Most people seemed to love it, along with a lot of coppers - except for one...

 

 

The Fabia spent the first half of 2024 sat on the driveway doing nothing, and I did nothing with it until a week before Shed Fest, 2 of my old NS2r tyres were fitted to replace the bald RS4 tyres, and thats it.  I took the car to a couple of race weekends with the racing team, where I managed to brake the pan roof - I'm surprised it lasted this long, and finally made the decision to take it off the road permanently.  It's now a track-only car.  Mid 2024 I also bought a new daily, an e91 320d which I now use for towing.  The Fabia was then trailer-ed to tatton park VAG show, and Trax at Silverstone for more track time.

 

A few days before going to Silverstone I decided it was the perfect time to strip the dash out again, this time to remove the AC lines and the heater matrix, along with cutting out some of the additional plastic behind the dash, along with removing a headlight in favor of additional cold air for the intake to try and combat some of the temperature issues I had in 2023.  The day before Trax I spent putting the car back together and working through the night until I had to load the car onto the trailer.  I took my full trackday toolkit and spares with me just in case, and finished assembling the car in the paddock at Silverstone with Street Skodas.

 

The Silverstone track time was a lot of fun, overtaking a lot of hot hatches that again, a Fabia shouldn't be able to touch, but looking back at the onboard footage after the track time, I noticed I had been at full race pace with 130+°C coolant temps and 150+°C oil temps.  Over the last few trackdays I also noticed the car was loosing power, so where my track times should be improving, the data was showing slower acceleration and lower top speeds on the straights. After doing some compression tests, the compression is lower than it should be across most cylinders, so I've probably cooked the piston rings and/or headgasket.

 

 

After the continued overheating issues at Silverstone I decided it was time to sort the cooling out for good.  I ordered a set of auxiliary fans, some wiring, relays and a switch, I also ordered a 19 row oil cooler, an oil cooler sandwich plate, in-line coolant hose sensor insert, coolant gauge, oil pressure gauge, and oil temp gauge along with their respective sensors so I could keep an eye on everything.

 

I removed the front end, followed with the radiator shroud, I then removed the AC condenser in front of the radiator, fitted a new oil filter with the sandwich plate, fitted the sensors and gauges, it turns out the OEM heater controls cover was the perfect size to fit 3 gauges, with the hole for the centre dial cut open wider.  I wired everything up and tested them, followed with fitting and wiring up the auxiliary fans onto a relay and a new switch on the dash, fitted the 19 row oil cooler and plumbed everything in.  With the oil cooler and auxiliary fans where the AC condenser was, I couldnt mount the intercooler back to where it was originally, so the angle grinder came back out to cut away part of the front crash bar to re-mount the intercooler.  The plastic radiator shroud also had to be trimmed to accomodate the auxiliary fans.

 

 

This cooling crunch was all as a rush for another trackday... yeah I always seem to fix or modify something days before the car needs to be somewhere...

 

Before taking the car to the track, I taped up the front bumper with colour matched tape to create an area of higher pressure in front of the car, forcing more air into the cooling setup and reducing drag, very similar to how a lot of time attack cars are designed, and similar to the R5 Fabia rally car.

 

Took the Fabia to Blyton park with MQB Track Cars for a shakedown, no cooling issues, fans worked, no issues with the car.  I then booked onto 3 more trackdays, throughout October and November, first off at Cadwell park, where the only issue I had was a boost pipe coming off the intercooler twice.  I followed this with another one of @BossFox's trackdays at Donington, same again, no issues other than the boost pipe going into the intercooler popping off, this time it was 4 or 5 times.  And to finish off 2024, I went to Trac Mon Anglesey.  This time it didn't go to plan, the car would not behave, blowing the boost hose off every other lap until I decided to bypass the intercooler all-together because I wanted track time which I eventually got in the afternoon.

 

 

And that brings us to today.  I haven't touched or moved the Fabia since Anglesey in November 2024.  I have no current trackdays or shows planned for the car as it's now going into a fully developmental phase.

 

In some of the Donington pictures mid corner, I can see the tyre is rolling onto the sidewall still, despite the camber, so more negative camber is required with further geometry adjustments, and the last picture with a set of 2 month old NS2r tyres shows the tyre delaminating from overheating and the tyre rolling onto the sidewall.

 

The car needs a new engine - it has low compression, and I want more power.  I'm limited by engine size with my aim for the Pocket Rocket class in Time Attack so I'm sticking with the EA211 family of 1.4tsi engines, so the next move is possibly a fresh CZC engine, or a CZE engine as those engines have twin VVT (this will require a new engine wiring loom and ECU).  Forging the engine is on the cards, along with EA888 fuel injectors, an IS20 or IS38 turbo, a custom 7K Automotive widebody/aero kit for Time Attack, a full roll cage, and many other adjustments and upgrades, including a lot of carbon fiber.  Hopefully I will be able to spend 2025 developing the car and by the end of the year, shaking it down in an almost complete state, ready for the 2026 season of Time Attack.

 

So there's work to do.  The build has come a long way, with multiple evolutions, but there's more to come... project cars are never really complete.

 

 

 

 

Edited 10 January, 20251 yr by TheFozzy

Onto the Time Attack plan.  The regulations for the pocket rocket class require the car to be a B-Segment car with an engine size up to 1600cc Turbo or 2200cc NA, this class also allows for engine swaps, along with various weight saving and aero modifications, which is generally the best class for this car to sit in with the current modifications I've made so far.

 

I'm going to be up against some serious cars in that class, including a heavily modified Mini Cooper S which pushes around 350bhp and a £15-20k aero kit designed by AMB Aero which has designed aero kits for some of the best time attack, hill climb and GT cars around the world...  so we're talking a car with at least £40-50k invested in it...

 

So before I worry about engine and suspension upgrades to be more competitive, I'm going to focus on aerodynamics and weight saving, so the main goal for 2025 is to develop my own custom aero kit/widebody for the Fabia.  I could just buy a fiberglass R5 bodykit for £4k and call it a day, but that kit is optimized for rally cars with lots of suspension travel and for rally stages, not for low track cars with stiff suspension being used on a smooth paved surface.

 

So the plan for the bodykit is to replace the front and rear bumpers with my own carbon fiber ones, along with the wings, bonnet and doors - also in carbon fiber, the glass sunroof will go in favour of a carbon fiber roof, and additional aero parts will be designed and made for the car.

8 hours ago, TheFozzy said:

the glass sunroof will go in favour of a carbon fiber roof

Good move. I don't know about Time Attack but most other Blue Book speed classes require a solid roof on a saloon based vehicle.

32 minutes ago, Paws4Thot said:

Good move. I don't know about Time Attack but most other Blue Book speed classes require a solid roof on a saloon based vehicle.

The Time Attack regulations also don't allow glass sunroofs.  I've been looking into swapping out the roof for about a year - a standard metal roof makes the most sense from a financial point of view, but if I'm swapping most of the panels for carbon, may as well do the same for the roof😅