1991 Astra GTE 16v > BTCC tribute

from memory group A regs (which were used up until 1990 in btcc) allowed for a +2 inch wheel. most of the cars ran centre lock BBS wheels, as did the astras (which you can see in my first post). centre lock hubs are actually available for the astra / kadett but as i already blew the family fortune buying the car, and quick pit stops serve no purpose to me, i decided to go "for the look"

ive had a set of 15" cavalier expression wheels in the garage for over a decade so decided these would be my daily wheels (with a set of uniroyal rainsport 5 on them, to serve as "wet" tyres)

heres a couple of photos from refurbishing them myself, it took nearly 2 days to clean and prep them, before unloading serveral tins of ford arizona gold (also known as "brown" to you and me) and clear coat. i think i did 3 colour, 4 clear








youll also notice the car came on a set of white wheels. these are actually period OZ rally route (magnesium) which are too exotic to replace with some cavalier wheels. They were typically only used on astra rally cars, but i have a tenuous link to BTCC as louise aitken-walker used an actual converted rally car in the BTCC for the first 5 rounds...




so i bought some reproduction OZ stickers from a website called highgate house (6 sets) and applied them to the 4 wheels on the car.



and i also had 2 spares which were still in 1990s trim, i had to refurb these before stickering them up correctly

some transmission porn, this is a GM F20 5 speed casing with quaife straight cut syncro gear kit, and gripper limited slip diff (clutch type). for the statisticians these are the gear ratios. to give an idea how close ratio this is, the drop in revs between gears is approx 1300rpm. large final drive limits the top speed to 138mph @ 8250.

1) 2.540
2) 1.760
3) 1.420
4) 1.190
5) 0.958

4.2 FD.







in june this year i converted from the original gear stick (which was actually a retrofitted vectra item) to a harry hockly motorsport shifter. its almost identical to quaifes and instead of the standard convoluted system of levers and seeswaw joints, its a single straight rod direct from the stick to the selector turret.

allot of fun driving to northampton in july (50mph = 3000rpm, 70mph=4300 )

Oh yes! Bookmarked, keep the updates coming!

This is fantastic!

potted history on the boingy bits.

so its running coilovers on all 4 corners right now. As standard mk2 astra were mac strut front, separate spring and damper rear which presents problems. first is because the rear turret is not load bearing, and second because they werent coilover as standard, theres little to no aftermarket options off the shelf.



this is the "after" photo, the turret is an off the peg item meant for 4 linking mk2 escorts, obviously modified to fit here, the bottom goes right along side the standard chassis rails which is perfect for transferring vertical load into the shell.



gaz have been really supportive of vauxhall world and sell a gaz gold set which are converted front struts, plus modified mk2 escort rear coilovers.... currently its running 300lb front springs and 250 rear. i also have a spare set of 350lbs to play with.



in addition up front the car has group A lower arms. youll find something like this in the historic homologation papers, but in period they only seemed to be used on circuit racers on the continent. most likely this was due to the tyre rubbing on the drag link at full lock (reduced lock on a rally car would be suicide) Anyway, they are harry hockley items but modified for some quality of life to take a standard mk2 astra outer balljoint (as standard they are rose joints)





heres a photo on the car, you can see the chassis is also modified to make the pivot bolt double sheer at the front.

EDIT

i forgot to say, the combo of adjustable bottom arms and the eccentric top mounts it now has 5 degrees of positive caster and 1.5 degrees of negative camber (per side) the standard suspension had 1 degree positive caster on one side, zero on the other, 1 degree negative camber on one side, half a minute on the other. more important the stock suspension would roll into negative caster with suspension compressed (which goes some way to explaining why these have a bad rep for handling, ignoring how ridiculously under-tyred they are)

net result of positive caster (meaning the strut leans towards the back of the car) is that when you steer off dead ahead, it ads a huge dollop of negative camber onto the laden wheel, exactly what we want.

livery prep ! ive been using a company called "isaydingdong" who i originally found just by googling esso british touring car stickers. 75% of what i needed were off the peg items, the others were custom sized versions of what they already sell (like the big MOBIL sign) and the last few bits have been custom custom from scratch (like the long vauxhall for the sides). they have been brilliant to deal with, very patient and would highly recommend.



the tailgate will have GM dealersport colour flashes and mobil logo, which meant the controversial decision to remove the iconic astra GTE black vinyl. this was a complete pain in the fox picture but the method got refined to a paint stripper hot air gun to soften the glue, but not so hot to make the vinyl stretchy. Also had an extra kick in the nads because the car has had a respray up to the edge of the vinyl, which left a hard masking line of paint. i wet sanded the edge very successfully, too successful in some places down to the black primer so ended up respraying the tailgate white.

This is epic. Great stuff.

ive not really gone into it in much detail but i am one of the admins for the mk2 owners club. i have a bit of a fetish for the motorsport side of it and over the last 5 years have managed to befriend quite a few of the original GM dealersport technicians from back on the 80s and 90s. Some of them who are old enough to be in the industry from as early as dealer opel team, i.e walter rohrl in the opel ascona and kadett C (which was started by a british guy called Tony fall) through the ascona and manta 400, right through MSD period with the mk3 astra and calibra, into ray mallock mk4 astra kit car. anyhoo, over the years i managed to find an official guide to livery-ing the astras, includes the british standard paint codes plus measurements to place the colour stripes (these were sign written back in the day, not vinyls !)

if you look closely at this photo in milton keynes workshop you can see a partially finished bonnet on an artists easel !



the astra BTCC cars were run separately by dave cook race services, and managed by john clelands dad bill cleland ! dave cook also carried on into the cavalier supertouring period with john cleland and jeff allam until the cars were taken over by ray mallock and ecurie ecosse.

the btcc astra gte had a slightly different layout to its WRC cousins, but still on the same theme as the above photo, principle sponsor mobil 1 and vauxhall itself. i'm also using a huge catalogue of old photos to get a pastiche of the 3 cars. The main block colours are on the bonnet and flank, with the same tedious masking round its MOBIL 1 like the back end. its looking very motorsport now, and taking the edge off the wheels.