That little mini ended up turning into a rally replica, complete with full 6 point roll cage, buckets, harnesses, a dash with more gauges & switches than you could shake a stick at, massive wide alloys which were nearly wider than they were tall (10" alloys back in them days) and various other bits like cooper S disc brakes, cooper drums at the back, LCB exhaust, bigger carb etc etc etc.
It soon got to the stage where I wanted more power and the limit with the A Series engine seemed to be about 100bhp, any more and things would start to get very expensive. So, I decided it would be cheaper & easier to move onto a hot hatch.
At the time, the main hot hatches were the Golf GTi, the Metro Turbo, Peugeot 205 GTi, Fiat Uno Turbo, XR3i / RS Turbo Escort and the Renault 5 GT Turbo. I went for the GT Turbo for 3 reasons, firstly it was quicker than all of the others. Secondly, around my area they were very very rare. And thirdly, they were incredibly easy to modify and get more power cheaply. You could in fact increase the boost from the standard 8psi upto whatever you fancied by poking a hole in one pipe under the bonnet. Okay, so any more than about 12psi and you`d be blowing the intercoolers plastic end caps off, and risking running too weak on the carb.
So, I sold my mini off and went out and bought a black 1988 GT Turbo Phase 2. I learnt how to tune it up and soon had it running around the 150bhp mark (Stock car has about 120bhp). I then decided that I really wanted a blue one and more power, and rather than respray a really nice black one, I went out and bought a shed off an red 1987 Phase 2 GT Turbo and started work.
Unfortunately enthusiasm outweighed the desire for photos so I didnt get many. One of the earliest photos is after the car came back fresh from the bodyshop, nicely repainted in Peugeot Miami Blue.
You can see here, its got the stock suspension/ride height and even the original 13" wheels/tyres.
Looking quite nice! The only mod I had the bodyshop do was to remove the door locks, as the GT Turbo had central locking as standard. The actual central locking used some sort of infa-red system, which also meant I could code it to my remote control wrist watch and lock/unlock the doors by pressing a button on my watch!
So, then the mods started. One of the first things I did was to drop the suspension. On a GT Turbo its pretty easy. They use normal spring/shocks up front and the back has shocks and a torsion bar system the same as what you find on a lot of Renaults / Peugeots. I lowered the back until the rear arch was level with the top of the back alloy and dropped the front using jamex springs.
That was fine for a few years, but eventually I swapped the old standard shocks out for a set of adjustable SPAX.
Engine wise, I strapped the intercooler to re-enforce it, then fitted a GT Tuning stage 1 kit which effectively gave you an in car adjustable boost control, a bigger 135 carb jet (I think the original is 120), I fitted a pipercross air filter, a Ford Escort Cosworth dump valve (£16 from Ford at the time as an off the shelf stock part), I free-flowed the intercooler (they have a flap inside which only activates the intercooler once the air temp has reached a certain level), a lower temp radiator sensor to ensure the fan kicked in early, a new copper cored radiator and I removed the thermostat completely as I wasnt bothered about the car warming up quickly, I just wanted cool coolant flowing around quickly.
The in car boost let you go from a stock 8psi upto about 20psi which is really the max the stock turbo can handle. Baring in mind at this point the car was running the original turbo and had done 80,000 miles.
The first problem I had was that the car had just had a brand new clutch fitted before I bought it, but at anything more than about 14psi the new clutch started to slip. So, I fitted an uprated Group A clutch which was rated at about 250bhp if I remember rightly. That solved the problem at the expense of a very heavy clutch pedal and snapping clutch cables roughly once a year.
Next problem was the previous owner had over tightened one of the spark plugs thus damaging the threads, so occasionally the spark plug would blow clean out of the head if I was running anything more than stock boost. This became annoying after a while and no amount of superglue or JB Weld would stop it. Only solution was to have a helicoil fitted in that plug socket. Only downer with that is that a helicoil was a couple of quid, but on a turbo car they recommend you remove the head as any debris left from fitting would get blown through the turbo as soon as you start it. So, I then figured, well if im going to have to remove the head, i may as well get the head, carb, manifold all gas flowed and ported out at the same time.
I did some research and called up Portformance (Warrington based) who at that time had just done the head on another GT Turbo from the owners club and whilst it hadnt been rolling road tested to see what power, they measured 17% more flow through the head on their bench testing machine. I think I was the 2nd GT Turbo they did. I sent all the bits off in a big box and a few weeks later they arrived back.
Fitting it all back to the car was fun as there were hundreds of boost pipes, wires, coolant pipes, but luckily I videoed the engine bay before & after so I had a reference. I also needed to workout what carb settings to use, so a quick call to GT Tuning and they suggested a 160 main jet. In order to get one, you just get a 1.6mm drill bit and drill out your old jet. Easy! After all fitting I popped down my local garage and got them to measure the emissions to make sure they werent running too rich and they were spot on.
Performance on the road was literally amazing. The bigger turbo lag you normally get when running higher boost were compensated for by the extra instant power the gas flowing / porting out did. It felt like I had 160bhp when running standard boost. Portformance estimated maybe 200->220bhp at 20/21psi.
The proof was in the pudding and on the road the car was pretty unbeatable. Ferrari`s, TVR`s, Lotus, Sierra Cosworths, Fiesta & Escort RS Turbos would be blown away as they didnt have enough power to catch me or pass me.
Other bits I fitted were uprated discs & pads. If i remember rightly I used Kevlar pads which wore discs out quicker than the pads. A GT Tuning quick shifter went inside the car and a boost gauge so I could more accurately see what boost I was running. A full Scorpian big bore stainless exhaust was only £170 at Demon Tweaks so that finished the car off. I kept the car looking pretty much stock visually except for the lowered suspension. Until eventually after getting through several sets of the 195 x 13inch tyres I managed to buy an entire set of TSW 15" wheels with tyres 2nd hand for less money than replacing my worn out stock tyres.
I kept it in that form for a while, until one wet day I was using the amazing torque to spin the wheels up in 4th when the car overboosted abit and blew the standard turbo. Still, it had a good life! So I replaced the stock T2 with a T25 which was designed to handle the higher boost more reliably, although it did increase off-boost turbo lag a bit. At that point I swapped out the Cosworth dump valve for a Group A one.
All in all it was a cracking car, although the mpg went down from 36mpg from the stock car on my 40 mile commute down to 20mpg in the later days. Also, the car was a pig in traffic, the heavy clutch, the cooling fan on to keep the temps down and no air con!
So off the road it went, and into my garage...... with the idea that id just turn it into a fun track car.
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