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A DRIVER FOR BIG-HITTING GOLFERS
RG Motorsport may be known as BMW specialists, but they’ve recently proved that they can make Volksies go faster too, and their first official Golf6 GTi conversion is right on the money. With a bolt-on upgrade, the Randburg-based tuning, conversion and maintenance experts have unleashed the true potential of Wolfsburg’s hot hatch and endowed it with a 270 km/h potential.
With Johannesburg car enthusiast Riaan Burger happy to provide his car – Untamed GP - as the development mule for an extreme road conversion, the project started by fitting an uprated KKK K04 turbo, which, while it looks very similar from the outside, has very different internals and it is designed to minimise lag, and run cooler.
“Modern tuning techniques are all about careful manipulation of the electronic control systems and this is evident even with showroom models, where we see different outputs from similar engines,” explains RGM’s managing member, Robin Green. “For example, it is clear that the latest generation 2.0-litre FSI engine is able to cope with much more than the 155 kW it is rated at in the current Golf6 GTi and through our motorsport programme we’ve established exactly how much stress it can handle.”
RGM has used the Bridgestone Production Car championship as their proving ground for a number of years and Golf 5 GTis tuned by them have won Class T of that series two years in a row, and in 2010 three of the first four cars in the class owed their combination of power and reliability to RGM. They will be tuning two Golf6 GTis this year, so the smart money is on a repeat performance.
But back to Untamed GP, a car which started its life in plain Ice White livery, but now wears a custom Le Mans blue suit, offset by a black roof and silver mirror housings. While it was stripped down for the respray, additional sound-deadening was added, and ensuring the highest levels of refinement was a critical part of the overall design brief.
Wheels are still 18-inch in diameter, but of a rather unusual design and the cars also hunkers down on a set of H&R springs, a drop of 30 mm giving it the right kind of demeanour, without compromising its ability to be used every day. That was the objective with the engine too, an area all-too-often forgotten in the pursuit of horsepower and quarter Mile times…
As per the off-the-shelf Stage One package, there’s a full RGM stainless steel exhaust system, 63 mm in diameter, to expel burnt gases. The catalytic convertor has been removed in the interest of performance, and the entire system from the turbo onwards is new. The system is shaped and welded in-house and fitted with stainless steel silencers built to RGM’s specifications.
Feeding the right amount of clean air into the engine is critical and supply is filtered by a serviceable free-flow gauze filter. Fuel quantity and air volume is manipulated by the ubiquitous Unichip, which piggybacks on the standard ECU, ensuring the perfect mixture anywhere between idle and 7 000 rpm. Finally, the engine has been set up with the two maps, so as well as setting for 95 octane, a switch in the glovebox allows the settings on the Unichip to be optimised for a 95 and Torco mix (a proven race fuel concentrate, imported and distributed locally by RGM) for maximum engine performance at increased boost pressure, without risk of detonation. Finally, intake air temperature on this car is lowered by an enlarged intercooler.
The end result is impressive, to say the least. Headline numbers on the RGM dynamometer, corrected to a flywheel rating at sea level, are 242 kW and 405 Nm. These figures represent improvements of 56 percent and 44 percent respectively over standard.
Getting it all onto the road was the next challenge and RGM has called on some respected product suppliers in the performance marketplace. A carbon metallic Spec Stage 3 clutch and lightweight flywheel from the same outfit feed torque through the ‘box and to a Quaife limited slip differential, ensuring maximum traction off the line.
In this guise performance is pretty astonishing, a set of test numbers garnered at Gerotek with a VBOX datalogger making for some impressive reading. To optimise the results, two different sets of tyres were evaluated, test driver Adrian Burford achieving his best results with a pair of sticky Toyo Proxes R888s (thanks Mintys Rosebank for providing some awesome rubber!) on the front axle.
With so much torque and power, a ‘less is more’ approach was required to get off the line without excessive wheelspin, the temptation to squeeze the loud pedal into the carpet too soon having to be avoided like unprotected sex with a Point Road hooker. With the a stock standard six-speed manual GTi having already managed some good results (0 – 100 km/h in an impressive 7,6 seconds), the pressure was certainly on to achieve the perfect launch, without twisting off the driveshafts or crashing the ‘box with the owner standing just metres away and listening to every sound as we tortured his baby…
With the car’s set-up optimised in terms of tyre pressures, the RGM-tweaked Golf eventually recorded a best sone-way run of 6,49 seconds to 100 km/h when unleashed on the Pretoria facility’s long straight, immediately thereafter managing a best of 6,68 in the opposite direction. With the ambient temperature starting to rise, it was time to plug the memory card into a laptop and take a closer look. The news was all good: using an average of the two best runs in opposite directions (as is standard operating procedure when testing) it was confirmed that the average 0 – 100 was indeed 6,58 seconds.
Of course, the modded car’s advantage becomes more apparent in the higher speed runs, a breathtaking 8,38 seconds required to hit 120 km/h from standstill (compared to 10,25 for a showroom GTi) and the quarter – or 400 metre to be pedantic – taking 14.4 versus 15.5 seconds.
In an 800 metre standing start, the Green machine comfortably breaks the 200 km/h mark in some 22 seconds. And proving that this isn’t a One Trick Pony, there are substantial improvements from 60 to 100 km/h in fourth, and 80 to 120 in fifth, as our data table shows.
At first light the conversion had already impressed with a 267,3 km/h run, a standard car recording 249 km/h on the same strip of road only minutes earlier.
“The beauty of this particular conversion is the holistic approach which was taken, and the results are spectacular,” says Green. “The customer’s brief was to supply a finished product that would create serious horsepower without compromising reliability, driveability, or safety and we believe that we’ve achieved that objective.”
Burger agrees: “The conversion is everything I wanted it to be. In standard form it is really nice to drive and I didn’t want to sacrifice that. I use this car nearly every day and there aren’t any negatives. But when I’m in a hurry I put my foot down and it just accelerates and if that’s still not enough I can flick that switch in the glovebox…then it really is dynamite!”
While not affecting performance, Burger also wisely opted for upgraded front brake pads and discs from Ferodo, braided brake lines and race-spec fluid for the hydraulics.
As well as a fairly radical conversion such as the one carried out here, various upgrades for current and previous-generation GTi’s are available from RGM, and customers can have anything from mild to wild. The Stage 1 Golf6 GTi upgrade (which utilises the standard turbine) comprises the full stainless steel de-cat exhaust system, serviceable high-flow air filter and Unichip Q mapped on the RGM dyno. This package produces 188 kW on the flywheel - 33 kW more than standard – and costs R13 550, including a six month, 20 000 km warranty.
Not a bad starting point if your want a fast, reliable GTi without breaking the bank…
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