After checking out what other hillclimb folk do when they get rid of their dashboards, our chosen piece of metal was cut to size, shaped and then measured up for the impending dials.

Secured by chunky 8mm Allen-key bolts, the Finn Kay creation now houses a 4-inch Faria speedometer (which is pointless, as we wont have the time to check the speed going up a hill) and a 4-in-1 Faria gauge to monitor fuel level (soon to be redundant!) volts, water temperature and oil temperature. And to top things off nicely we have been lucky enough to grab the attention of Caerbont Automotive Instruments, from South Wales, who have kindly supplied our Blue Box with one of their all singing all dancing 80mm Smiths Motorsport Prosport F1 10,000rpm tachos.

This really is an immensely impressive piece of kit, with crystal accuracy via microprocessor control and rugged construction. The Prosport F1 tacho allows the user to easily programme the 3-stage gearshift indicator lights to their range of choice. You can also adjust the light intensity of all three lights: amber, green and red – and call up the maximum RPM, with a memory recall function. It looks stunning too… Supplied with a dedicated harness and fitting instructions: all for £255. www.caigauge.com

The rest of the factory Mk1 switch-gear, including hazards, rear fog and lights, were then neatly slotted into the front of the custom panel, underneath the Prosport F1 tacho, with a warning beam and an ignition light along the top.

Problem was, I now had acres of shiny exposed blue metalwork and a brushed aluminium dash-pod – both of which mirrored themselves on to the inside of the windscreen, making it nigh on impossible to see what was going on in front of me. So I called up my mate Binnes (he who recommended the Magnum Motorsport Prosport seat) to book his flocking skills!

You may know flocking as the soft felt coating found on the inside of gun cases and jewellery boxes, which as it happens is also an ideal way of toning down reflective surfaces – such as dashboards, steering columns and door trim – making it hugely popular within motorsport.

After a liberal coating of special pigmented adhesive the 1mm flock is charged by a miniature high voltage generator, to a negative potential of approximately 70,000 volts.

Part 4: Race Harness
I’m already the proud owner of a 4kg www.magnummotorsport.co.uk Pro Sport seat and a set of Magnum runners, so it should come as no surprise that I now too have a 6-point harness to call my very own.

My harness of choice is of the TRS variety, chosen in the fine shade of red, and bolted from six different directions: from both sides of the seat, one 75mm strap per shoulder all the way back to the rear harness bar and two further 50mm straps grabbing up through a hole in between my legs and clutching my tackle good and firm. TRS harnesses come with alloy adjustors too, which are both super easy to adjust and 40% lighter than the steel adjusters found on other likeminded products.

Call me fickle, but www.totalrestraint.com seems to be the choice of far too many a race champion for me to dismiss them ­and they’re English too. Added to this is an immensely strong aircraft quick release buckle, a shoulder strap for an intercom or drinks bottle and thumb loops for easy adjustment on lower shoulder straps.

Furthermore: TRS harnesses have Velcro sewn onto the outer strap enabling straps to stick to the seat when the driver gets out, which effectively saves the lap straps from getting lost down through the seat hole, or flapping around and gouging dirty great big gashes out of the rollcage.

The actual fitting of the TRS harnesses is a very straightforward operation indeed, that requires nothing more than an ounce or two of commonsense, and a thumb and forefinger to operate the metal mounting clips. Getting the harness bar strap to the right length is a little time-consuming, but far from taxing.

But before any of this tomfoolery could take place, I had to shell out £12 for some FIA-approved 25mm 8.8-grade zinc-plated high tensile steel eyelet bolts, and sweet talk a friend with a welder to concrete them into place, for the harness straps to clamp on to…

One crucial thing I will address though, is the angle at which you mount the rear straps. What I have seen, worryingly more times than not, is improper fitment of race harnesses – normally for aesthetically purposes than regulation!

The main shoulder straps that feed through the back of the seat to the rear of the car should be angled as horizontal to a harness bar as possible. Failing this, to a point as far back in the car as possible – at an angle no less than 90-degrees. What you do see quite often than not is harnesses angled down to the rear passenger foot-wells (directly behind the driver’s seat) and then bolted to the floor.

In the event of an accident, without painting a too graphic of an image, the belts will tighten and pull the occupant down into the seat – improper fitment therefore resulting in the spine being violently forced down, with obvious affects, if not death.  

In layman terms – harnesses, race seats and rollcages are essential safety items, but can just as easily be detrimental to your health if fitted incorrectly. So, for your own safety, please take heed, adhere to the instructions and fit correctly – or have them fitted professionally.

Part 3: Seating
Sat in my metal carcass, armed with a cup of tea and a hoard of motorsport catalogues, I have been pondering the forthcoming seating arrangement – for this motorsport Golf – from the clubman classic to those with wings.

There really are hundreds to choose from and without plonking your rump in each and every one you won’t have a clue which one is going to suit your needs. Luckily I was saved from such a headache when my buddy Binnes showed me his featherweight Magnum Motorsport seat that he’d slotted into his navigational rally-prepped Peugeot 205 GTI.

I was soon chatting with Magnum head honcho Dave Knowles, mulling over the available specifications. The Prosport race seat I finally chose maybe a lightweight at 4.5 kilos, but it's a heavyweight in terms of its full FIA 8855 rated specification – which means this particular seat is cleared for use in international competition.

The British-made competition seat is manufactured in a Kevlar-Carbon Fibre hybrid material, while the frame is a handmade composite construction, with bonded- in 8mm mounting inserts. Priced at £125 + VAT and £35 + VAT for the sub frame runners, they’re well within reach of most clubman racers – and are just as suitable for fast-road, track-day, or the rally stage.

In addition, the seat is padded in flame resistant foam and can be trimmed in a wide choice of coloured flame resistant material. The Magnum Prosport also has a full 5/6-point harness facility.

Buying the seat was the easy bit… Fabricating the subframes was something else!

To install the Magnum seat, first a 2.5 metre length of 40x40 tubing was acquired. The tubing was measured up and cut to size, bridged between the exhaust tunnel and sill – before being welded into place. Not that I don’t trust the floor of the Mk1, and adding heavy hunks of metal piping is far from what I planned for this lightweight Mk1, but just to be on the safe side I’ve begun to tip the scales.

Blocks of wood of all shapes and sizes were first stacked up in the redundant seat-wells to simulate the sub-frame height. The seat runners were then bolted to the sides of the Magnum fibreglass seat and laid gently atop the woodpile. After a lot of jiggling around, careful not to disturb the temporary platform, the positions were – again – measured, marked in the car with a permanent marker: calculating height, length and overall seating position.

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Part 2: The Rollcage
I’ve been making the best of my time of late, getting my teeth stuck into the interior of our blue bombshell – scooping out as much weight as possible from our rolling HQ – ridding the dash, GTI-spec seats, sound-deadening fluff, black roof-lining, door-cards, carpet and anything else I could get my grubby hands on.

The exposed VW was then loaded onto a Mercedes Sprinter recovery truck and eagerly delivered to Caged in Somerset, who provide all of Caterham Cars roll-over protection: www.therollcagepeople.com

Like anything else, custom work is never the cheapest route, but I had very specific needs regarding the rollcage, as in door bars, harness bar and, as the dash would be removed permanently, a dash bar under the windscreen. I also wanted the cage to be as tight a fit as possible, so bespoke was the only viable option.

RubberDuckMag’s project Golf stayed with Caged for a total of a week, by which time they designed, test-fitted, removed, powder-coated and then re-fitted the roll-cage within millimetres of the body shell. The main hoop was constructed out of 1 ¾-inch 12-gauge cold drawn seamless piping, while the rest of the cage was crafted with 1 ½-inch 12-gauge piping - both meeting with strict MSA blue-book motorsport regulations.

A welded-in cage would have been lighter, but a lot more labour-intensive – the £1,527.50 bolt-in option finally tipping the scales, bolts and all, at 26.5kg.

To save a few pennies (though not my sanity) I stupidly decided to ditch the luxury of the Sprinter recovery vehicle and drive the Caged Golf back to Shropshire under it’s own steam! It was a long old slog I can tell you, in what was now a baked bean tin stuffed full of scaffolding, with a soundtrack reminiscent of the bomb bay doors of a B52 bomber.

Part 01: We Buy a Mk1 Golf
We hear it’s been a while since many of the hillclimb venues have enjoyed the sight of a Mk1 Golf charge the hills in anger – instead a strong field of Peugeot 205s, Ford Fiestas and Escorts. Nevertheless, we feel quietly confident – even if our immediate rivals do all seem to pack 300 or so horsepower – and have the added advantage of many years of experience.

So first off, we’ve been out and about car shopping – all guns blazing – to eventually contest the 3B Modified Production Cars 1400cc up to 2000cc Racecar class of the national hillclimb championships.

In a bold attempt to steer clear of turning this first project feature into a Mk1 Golf GTI buying guide, we will try our best to skirt over the obvious tell tale signs and, above all, contain our over-all excitement! The enthusiasm we talk of is quite simple: we’ve found a straight Mk1 Golf with the following: solid sills that were fitted by an employee of Volkswagen circa 1983 – and not replacement sills fitted by an idiot with a GCSE and a glue gun in 2003, a fuel filler neck that feeds the tank with fuel – not rust, and good panels to boot.

The doors don’t drop when you open them either – nor is the spare-wheel recess rotten through – in fact it is complete with the original spare wheel and bracket straps. And how can we not mention the fact that this particular 3-door Golf doesn’t have a sunroof! And it gets better...

Compared to some other examples lurking in the shadows, with price tags embarrassingly five times the amount that we paid for our blue bombshell, this has to be the buy of the century.

Bringing things down to size we will admit that it is a non-GTI Mk1, which means there will be a minefield of issues, and costly ones at that, once we get stuck into engine mounts, fuelling and so forth. If we was smart enough I guess we would have bought a GTI to begin with, but we simply couldn’t find a decent one without nasty holes in the floor, a doggy sunroof – or anything less than catastrophic rot.

We’re fairly sure our £280 bargain Driver will soon deliver it’s own financial headaches and hike up the budget way beyond that of GTI, but the fact still remains – when you want to spend as little money as possible and still land yourself something dangerously close to new, the Driver seems the safest bet.

Time to get stuck in.