General Panda (race car build)

[mike9184]

Hi All I have just joined the forum and thought I would share my joint project I have started with my brother as he has been collecting Pandas for years and thought it was about time we modified one. My brother works in Australia and we have have come to an agreement that he buys the parts and as I am a mechanic I have the task of building a race / track car.
The first task was to select which of the 2 pandas to use. One being a 1990 carbed 1 litre model or the other being a 1993 CLX. A decision was made to use the 1990 model as it never ran great due to carb problems and the engine would be sold anyway.
So initially a 1.2 16 valve engine (out of a scrapped mk1 Punto!) was lined up but we decided that the extra 10 bhp from the 1.4 16 valve Stilo engine was worth the extra money.
So the now redundant 1.2 engine will be going into the newly purchased Panda Number 3 which is another CLX (because 2 pandas is never enough! )
The plan is to strip out and lighten it as much as possible, along with fitting twin webber carbs to a custom manifold and running Emerald K6 Management to control the spark.
Purchases so far:
13 x 7 alloys
1.4 16 valve Fiat Stilo (95 BHP)
Emerald K6 ECU
PHOTOS OF THE RACE CAR TO BE
Hope you can make sense of my rambling.

 

[lewey]

Welcome. Will the cars be raced and therefore built to an MSA spec or are we talking track and fun? A 1.4 16v Panda is quite fast, but will need some serious work on the front suspension (completely replace with wishbones or something) to feel like a racing car. 7" wide wheels will be so hard to fit; you are going to need huge arches and negative offset!

Good luck with it all.

 

[VmanC]

Welcome. Will the cars be raced and therefore built to an MSA spec or are we talking track and fun? A 1.4 16v Panda is quite fast, but will need some serious work on the front suspension (completely replace with wishbones or something) to feel like a racing car. 7" wide wheels will be so hard to fit; you are going to need huge arches and negative offset!

Good luck with it all.

:yeahthat:

Look forward to seeing your progress on this. Oh and welcome to the Forum!

Are you in Australia too or here in the UK?

 

[mike9184]

Welcome. Will the cars be raced and therefore built to an MSA spec or are we talking track and fun? A 1.4 16v Panda is quite fast, but will need some serious work on the front suspension (completely replace with wishbones or something) to feel like a racing car. 7" wide wheels will be so hard to fit; you are going to need huge arches and negative offset!

Planing to make it comply to the scottish Hillclimb and Sprint rules as there are a couple tracks close to where I stay. Also to be used at knockhill circuit for trackdays for some banter

As for the suspension plan to use bilstien shocks modified using rally design coil over conversion kit for 21/4 springs front and custom rear springs along with the bilstien rear shockers

Hopefully rose joint the front suspension but not sure exactly how yet.
As for the wheels already have 13x7 with et20 trial fitted and have millimeters between front shockers and rim but do just clear also just clear rear suspension arm no tyres as off yet but was thinking 175/50/13

Look forward to seeing your progress on this.

Oh and welcome to the Forum!

Are you in Australia too or here in the UK?

Not quite as lucky just sunny Scotland but thats where the pandas are

 

[panda panda]

Completely Mental

You'll fit right in here

 

[pandamonius_maximus]

yay another mad panda modder! We'll have a race series soon enough :slayer:

Seriously, can we start up a race series and freak out peeps at tracks like Brans Hatch? Will be watching this keenly for race prep mod tips. Rose joints sounds a little posh for a panda I like it :devil:

Good luck!
Si

 

[oxide hunter]

this sounds very awesome.

cant wait to see it when its done.

 

[mike9184]

yay another mad panda modder! We'll have a race series soon enough

Seriously, can we start up a race series and freak out peeps at tracks like Brans Hatch? Will be watching this keenly for race prep mod tips. Rose joints sounds a little posh for a panda

I like it

Yeah think you have to be mad to modify a panda

As for the race series that sounds awesome as long its not like the xr2 race series at knockhill or else we would end up with the pandas becoming extinct

Here are a few photos with the 13" wheels trial fitted , also found some wide arches my old man had from his mk1 fiesta back in the day they could be made to fit well

What do you think ???????

 

[VmanC]

Will certainly look the part with them on there.

Pandas only just fit that ramp by the look of it!

 

[mike9184]

Your right VmanC it does just fit pandas are a bit on the narrow side

More goodies arrived today from my brother who spends to much time on ebay and buys things not really needed hence the following pictures of 13x8 alloys (Must admit they do look better)

Also a new race alternator arrived which will need custom brackets but only ways 2.7kg the picture shows it compared to the original as the build goes on you will reliase that Im a bit obsessed with wieght saving and hope to get the car down to 650kg with cage.

The manifold pictured is a vauxhall red top that was lying around I plan on cutting up and making my own 4 branch out of it. The machine shop is making a new flange to weld it to as we speak

 

[Liquid Knight]

You can convert the 16V head to run with a Vauxhall (spit that out) Nova distributor. I found this gem out after I took my engine apart. A couple of trumpets or a bank of bike carb's and she'd take off. Have a look at Guff II if you want. I'm sticking to standard arches and Punto GT brakes but eventually there will be an interesting engine in there.

 

[pandamonius_maximus]

Wow, looking like a sweet project already. Those wheels are amazing but surely going to be too wide though? There was another race panda built by "team pandamonium" that had some wide'ish wheels on and I think it suffered a bit on the straights because of it. It was also punto 1,2 I think. Although that might not be fair, it was racing up against my dads mk1 scirocco (which was a blue printed 1,6litre). So the scirocco had a power advantage but was much heavier as my dad insists on racing his car with all interior still fitted. Oh and also driving to the track of course :slayer:

You thinking of keeping it road legal or you going the full hog?

Here are some photo's of them at brans ages ago when I was still taking pictures on some sort of photo-reactive chemical film device :

Quite cool that they were next to each other on the grid, made my day completely!...

We even had adjacent pit garages...even more amazing had pit garages in the first place. Only club racing but apparently they were just not being used on the day...

Sorry I don't have any better pics of the team pandamonium car I did have a glance FF but I'm terrible with searches it seems.

Anyway, will be keeping at least one of my beady eyes on this thread :slayer:

Si

 

[mike9184]

Yeah your right they probably a bit wide and hamper the handling but would like to make them work as they fill the arches nicely

The car will be fully road legal as I think you lose the feel of the car if it is a track only car don't get me wrong it won't be a daily driver .Maybe used the week before a race/trackday to get a feel of the car again or to try out any mods:devil:

Those pictures are awesome I'm sure I had a old Car and Car Conversions (CCC) book which used to have a feature on that Panda but I can't find it anywhere
I've also tryed searching for info on that Panda but can't seem to find any pictures or more info on it

Right I've got a question for the technical panda guru's
I've only found a FIA approved rollcage for the Panda 4x4 are the floor pans the same on the 2 and 4 wheel drive Panda's ???

 

[AndyPanda4x4]

Hi welcome to the Forum!

The project looks a wicked job I'm looking forward to seeing your progress

P.S I can't really advise you on the previous question!

 

[kolza]

Hi, and very welcome
Really looking forward to see how panda can "fly".
Meanwhile some more inspiration, ideally not the best shot angle, but the rims width seems to be close to what you've got.

 

[Kingjnr2677]

Your right VmanC it does just fit pandas are a bit on the narrow side

More goodies arrived today from my brother who spends to much time on ebay and buys things not really needed hence the following pictures of 13x8 alloys (Must admit they do look better)

Also a new race alternator arrived which will need custom brackets but only ways 2.7kg the picture shows it compared to the original as the build goes on you will reliase that Im a bit obsessed with wieght saving and hope to get the car down to 650kg with cage.

The manifold pictured is a vauxhall red top that was lying around I plan on cutting up and making my own 4 branch out of it. The machine shop is making a new flange to weld it to as we speak

Aye mike, less o the ebay digs as you have to admit they were worth every penny!

If I worked out correctly they should have more clearance from the inside lip to the strut (front wheels) and rear suspension arms (rear wheels) having an ET0 compared to the ET25 on the 7" Wide wheels! Was I right?

I'm finished with the Soda blaster here so will take it back with me so you can blast the engine before painting the block etc. Shouldn't need to paint the head!

Just away to print off the emerald wiring diagram and work out what military connectors I will need for the ecu wiring etc so will give you a phone later to discuss, e.g. using the original coil packs etc?

So when I come back on holiday I can get the loom sorted before leaving again!

Build threads looking good!

 

[Kingjnr2677]

Also not sure if anyone has noticed the first photos you have posted but yes the picture of the bonnet is from fire damage and yes there is a story behind this!

The story is that I was using this panda for my daily commute to work (always put a smile on my face) and had left it at my fathers garage (where all the work mike is carrying out on the vehicle now) for a couple of days due to driving my other car.
I then went in to collect it on the Friday morning to drive to work again and started it to allow it to warm up and as usual me and mike started chatting.

Then after a few minutes chatting I went out to go to work where I then saw what looked like to be steam coming out from under the bonnet, after a few choice swear words I began to walk over to the panda to switch it off and at that point we both saw a little flame pop out from the heater intake vent.

This caused both of us to start swearing and mike to drop his coffee whilst i ran over to the car to turn it off mike ran inside the garage to get a fire extinguisher!

After blasting in through the front grill and the bonnet heater intake vent, we opened the bonnet and finally finished extinguishing the fire! After all the excitement we then realized that we could look at the CCTV and see how long the car was on fire! Upon looking back at the CCTV the total time from first smoke to us extinguishing the fire was a grand total of less than 1min!

Scary isn't it, as if I had been on my way to work and the panda had caught fire then i would have had no access to a fire extinguisher and the car would have definitely ended up being a burnt out shell!

Amazingly the only damage to the car was the fire damage to the bonnet and the inlet air filter housing melting a bit!
Even more amazingly we replaced the fuel line from the pump to the carb and I then drove it to work!

Just thought I would give you all a bit of history behind the car!
I also bought it off of ebay a few years ago from a guy in Essex (where it was sitting in his back yard) for the pricey sum off £256!

 

[pandamonius_maximus]

Yeah your right they probably a bit wide and hamper the handling but would like to make them work as they fill the arches nicely

The car will be fully road legal as I think you lose the feel of the car if it is a track only car don't get me wrong it won't be a daily driver .Maybe used the week before a race/trackday to get a feel of the car again or to try out any mods:devil:

Those pictures are awesome I'm sure I had a old Car and Car Conversions (CCC) book which used to have a feature on that Panda but I can't find it anywhere
I've also tryed searching for info on that Panda but can't seem to find any pictures or more info on it

Right I've got a question for the technical panda guru's
I've only found a FIA approved rollcage for the Panda 4x4 are the floor pans the same on the 2 and 4 wheel drive Panda's ???

No way!! You found an FIA roll cage!! Damn it, I could only find an MSA one and now my car is limited to sprints and hillclimbs! Unfortunately might not be able to fit the one designed for the 4x4 to your 2wd as the rules of mountings are that the backstays must fit above a suspension mount (one of the reason my MSA approved one isnt FIA approved I think. And the 4x4 suspension pick-ups are in different places on the rear. Otherwise the internal floorpan is no different I don't think.

Annoyingly I have race prepared my Marbella and that has the same suspension design as the 4x4 so I could have totally used it!

Check the rules in the blue book though but think this is the case.

Here is how my rear backstays mount:

not much strength on this arch as the suspension mounts are towards the back corner (where the shackles hang from on leaf springs)

But if you can't use the 4x4 one, there is always the option of custom. How's your welding?

Si

 

[mike9184]

Cheers for all the encouraging coments kolza, andypanda4x4

Pandamonius_maximus cheers for the pics much appreciated I'm assuming your cage is an omp ? The cage Im looking at is a Sparco as the omp has the double bend to clear the dashboard as the sparco I believe doesn't and needs the dash cut or removed

As for the welding could make a cage but only have a die to bend 40mm tube and would make the cage quite heavy as can only afford the cds tubing not the lighter t45 but may come down to that as the sparco cage is £600 waiting to hear back if it is fia approved

Can anyone confirm the floor pans are the same ??????

 

[pandamonius_maximus]

Cheers for all the encouraging coments kolza, andypanda4x4

Pandamonius_maximus cheers for the pics much appreciated I'm assuming your cage is an omp ? The cage Im looking at is a Sparco as the omp has the double bend to clear the dashboard as the sparco I believe doesn't and needs the dash cut or removed

As for the welding could make a cage but only have a die to bend 40mm tube and would make the cage quite heavy as can only afford the cds tubing not the lighter t45 but may come down to that as the sparco cage is £600 waiting to hear back if it is fia approved

Can anyone confirm the floor pans are the same ??????

Yes OMP, I could only find one place selling one at the time which was Demon-Tweeks, and not sure they sell it anymore either. The rules got changed as well and now you cannot have any bolted joints, so that is another thing wrong with my cage for the FIA

Where have you found the sparco cage out of curiosity? I have a 4x4 that may get a cage at some point and also might consider it for the Marbella if the car does well enough at sprints etc.

Si