Nate's Dusty Mauve Jetta

Nate's car has been around for a few years now, so it may seem a bit familiar to some of you, but that doesn't mean it's not worth seeing again. After all it's been featured in Eurotuner and Performance VW, plus Nate is a pretty dedicated guy when it comes to the Ocean City shows in the spring and fall. He stopped by the shop today to do a little fender clearancing in anticipation of setting up the car a little lower than it was previously.



I can recall when this car was bone stock and in need of some love, as it sat languishing in the back lot for a while. I can't recall why, but eventually Nate decided to show the car the love it deserves. This fairly rare Dusty Mauve GLX has been in his family since new, and is still on the original paint. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn close, especially for a 15 year old car.



Oh yeah, these rims? Nate custom made the centers. Not had them made, not bought them, but CAD designed and set up the CNC machine to create them from a solid chunk of aluminum. Pretty unheard of as far as I know...and they look good too. The inner and outer barrels were taken from his old Gotti wheels, which were 15x10" all around.







The other cool thing about Nate's Jetta, counting out the powdercoated everything and insane attention to detail, is the remote mounted turbo system. I didn't have a ton of room because of the way the alignment rack lift is postioned, but this pic is right at the back axle, and shows the turbo and main details.



If you want to know more about the wheels, check out the Build thread on Vortex.

_WRS

From the archives... NGP Racing Rallye Golf VR6 Turbo @ Waterfest 2005

I was over at Blacksquirrel's place this past Saturday for a little Final Four basketball and Need for Speed: Shift video game action on the PS3. While I was there I started poking around in his iPhoto archives, and I have to say, I was a little annoyed. He's sitting on a veritable gold mine of pictures over there! Some which grabbed my attention immediately were from a late Sunday run around the parking lot at Raceway Park in the NGP Rallye Golf, after a particularly hot, yet wet and gray Waterfest.



I can remember this event for a few reasons, not the least of which was that it rained quite a bit and was insanely hot at the same time. After working, sweating, and getting drenched that day, we had the glamorous task of packing up hundreds of wet cardboard boxes into the truck. The other fun part was that the two pallets of FK catalogs which had been air-freighted in for the event got pretty soaked, and we had to basically sort through them to salvage what we could and throw away what we couldn't.



That in and of itself was pretty beat, but the worst was yet to come. The Rallye had been only tuned for the break in period up to this point, and was in the process of having the Autronic management road-tuned by Kevin Black. This was all fine and good, and at least provided a sound track for us while we toiled in a trailer full of musty cardboard and paper.

This is the NGP Rallye, as it was imported from Europe.

The real kicker for me personally was when it was time to go. Ed, the car's owner, and Dave climbed into the trucks for the ride home and I was handed the keys to the newly tuned Rally. It was running low boost, but keep in mind that in this car, low boost was still well over 400hp. 450hp in an all wheel drive Golf, race clutch, with a 6-speed Quaife gearbox, Sparco race seat, 13" brakes all around, sticky tires, and race-firm suspension. Oh yeah, and no radio or air conditioning.



Yay! That's a winner. Before I even stepped into the car the rain began to fall again, and as I struggled reach for the fan controls with the harness holding me back (turned to cold, as if that would help), it became clear this was not going to be fun. The windshield was fogging at an alarming rate, and I couldn't open the windows more than 1/2" or risk filling the car with water, it was raining so hard.



We ran into traffic almost immediately. The heavy rain storms that hit the area that day had caused massive flooding and delays, with only one way really open to get to the Turnpike. That race clutch sure was fun...it was either rev the thing and slip it to move forward inch by inch, generating more and more heat coming through the firewall, and from the exhaust which terminated directly below my seat, or risk stalling it. That was not a good idea, as I wasn't sure how much time had been dedicated to tuning of the starting maps. I guessed not much.

There it is, up top!

I think it took an hour and a half to make it to the Turnpike. It should have been 20 minutes tops. Fine, no problem. I can handle this. get some speed going, air the cabin out a bit. Forget that I've been up since 5am and working since 6:30am, and it's now 15 hours after that point, and we're still 3 hours from home with the slow pace of the trucks. At least I won't get sle-CLUNK-epy.

Not an ideal seat for this sort of drive...

'Why is the car not in gear?' I put it back into 6th. It popped back out. Third time is the charm right? Not this time buddy. I try 5th. It stays, but I'm worried. On the phone: 'Ed, the car is popping out of 6th, you have any problems with this thing when you were having it tuned?' Of course not, is the reply back. It's my luck. Thank god I hadn't been able to give it more than a hair of throttle, lest Ed think I had done something to it. I had also noticed about this time that the gears were sounding decidedly louder than before. Maybe I was just tired. Sure, just tired. When we stopped at exit 5 for some food, the Rallye seemed a little hard to get back into 1st gear after I had paid my toll. Great...



After dinner I was explaining to Ed that if it kept giving me trouble, I was going to ditch them and get it as far south as possible before the trans gave out. He agreed and would follow behind me, so if I had to pull over I wouldn't be left behind. Not soon after rejoining the turnpike, the transmission began rejecting 5th gear. And getting much, much louder. I settled into 4th at about 4000rpm (which was really loud) and hoped we wouldn't cause too many accidents. The short ratios meant I was only doing about 45-50mph at best. Turns out that Dave and the rest of the guys had to ditch us while I creeped along and Ed followed behind.

One of the other Rallyes brought in at the same time, location now not know, believe to be in / around Pennsylvania.

Stopping at each toll became an exercise in creative slowing and restarting. If I didn't get the car back into a low gear before coming to a complete stop, it wouldn't go in period. All the while I was tap dancing on the throttle and brakes to keep the engine from stalling, and to allow it to even go into gear in the first place. What transpired from there was the longest, most stressful drive I have nearly ever completed. (the future Mrs WRS can tell you about the worst) - The transmission got so loud it sounded like a combination of a dentist's drill, a car accident and screaming child all at the same time. I can still hear it echoing through my head.



Miraculously I made it back to NGP's home base in Aberdeen without the car dying. By the very end I basically had 3rd and 4th gears, and that's about it. The culprit was found to be a mysteriously absent drain plug on the transmission. I've never heard of one of those falling out, but that's what it must have (may have?) done. Somehow the Quaife box managed 130-odd miles with zero gear oil, and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but once it was topped back off with Amsoil 75-90, it was as good as new! Sure a little more gear whine perhaps, but that's it. And while I ended up driving the car to H20 International that very same year, my love of this Green Rallye was broken then and there, and sadly, I've never really looked at Rallyes the same way since. It was traumatic, difficult, and scarring, but it does ultimately make a pretty good story at the end of the day. I hope it never happens again.

_WRS

Full Feature: NGP Rallye Golf VR6 Turbo

As I alluded to in my A59 post, I almost crunched the one-of-a-kind rear quarter panel of that car with the NGP Rallye Golf Turbo VR6. This car was also sourced from Canada now that I think about it, although at the time it was pretty much bone stock minus a set of coilovers and the VR6 swap. Some purists might scoff at the fact it has a VR swapped into it, but considering it was brought over to North American minus an engine, it really only made sense to put in a VR6. A G60 would be harder to source, harder to make good power with, and beside all of that it would never be quite right: The G60 motors which came in the Golf Rallye models is different than the Corrado G60 versions. Minor changes perhaps, but different nonetheless.

This car was built by Ed at NGP as an all-engine, no frills street / track monster. Built 2.9 bottom end, ported head, Techtonics cams, monster turbo, Autronic stand alone management 3.5" downpipe and exhaust, the works. At 29psi it made 550whp, which is around 640hp to the crank. That was on a C16 mix, which it obviously didn't run on all the time. On the street it ran 15psi on pump (about 380whp) and occasionally we ran it on pump 100 octane, and around 23psi (around 450whp). When Blaksquirrel shot these pics it was on that 100 octane set up.

As I'm sure Josh can attest to the speed at which this car could accelerate with the gearing it as running. A 5-speed 02A with Peloquin differential was originally in the car, but it stripped 3rd gear during a tuning session, and a Quaife 6-speed box was available, so hey, why not, The 6-speed trans was not really set up for a turbo...the gears were a bit short to be honest, and it could get through them in a hurry. I was in the car with Ed on that trip and let's just say this car has no problem topping out 6th gear. It would accelerate in 5th gear like most cars do in 2nd.


On that particular run it was just third....fourth......fifth............sixth..............done. All I can really say is that I don't want to be going that fast in a Mk2 anytime in the near future. We were probably going around 155mph to 160mph (speedo wasn't hooked up), and the effects of low and high pressure zones developing around the car were starting to become quite clear. The hood (carbon fiber) was flexing quite a bit, but it's when the headliner of the car started flapping and moving around that I was like "uh oh..." That was the point that we had reached terminal velocity though so Ed stomped the brakes and we were back down to normal speeds in no time.

Luckily Ed was smart enough to fit brakes up to the task of slowing a 2500lb car from 150mph in a heart beat. RPI big brake kits, 13" rotors with Wilwood calipers, were fitted at all four corners, and they could take care of pretty much anything you threw at them.

A hydraulic line-lock was used for e-brake function, and the bias was cockpit adjustable. I drove this car before this was installed, and let's just say you didn't want to hit the brakes too hard. The rear tires would lock up well before the fronts, meaning you were probably looking sideways, i.e. spinning out if you made a panic stop.

There was not much else to this car. FK coilovers with special Shine Racing springs, Team Dynamics 17x8" et20 wheels, a Spec Stage 5 clutch, Sparco seat and wheel, color matched cage, some gauges, and no radio. That no radio bit was a real boon for me personally. At the time that NGP had this car I was typically a "go to" guy for being behind the wheel of these cars for shows.

It was both an honor and a displeasure. Driving a 600hp+ Mk2 with all wheel drive, a race-firm suspension, race seat, race harness, race clutch and no stereo was a dream at the beginning of a drive. It was LOUD, it was FAST and it was FUN. After an hour or two behind the wheel the exhaust drone would begin to make your thoughts wander. Songs would pop into my head and swim around, the rumble of the tires over broken pavement would add to the effect....my own little percussion section for my little prison of a car.

After a show...12 hours or more of hard work, packing and unpacking, selling, barely eating, no time to relax, driving this thing home was the LAST thing any sane person would want to do. I can recall one fateful trip home from Waterfest in 2004 or so. It was raining hard, the traffic was terrible (that clutch made that one even worse), and the VR6, monster turbo and 3.5" exhaust made the cabin feel like a sauna. No A/C by the way. Fogged windows, driving behind the NGP truck, transmission making noise, exhaust popping and spitting. By the time we arrived back in Maryland I was fit to be tied. That wasn't the last time I drove the Rallye to or from a show, but it was when the shine began to wear off or me.

Ed raffled off this car in 2006, and it ended up in Tennessee, the lucky winner treating it fairly well, but it ultimately spun a bearing and ended up sitting for a while before the raffle winner sold it. I know who has the car now, and I know more or less what the owner has in store for it. I can't say much else really, and it'll probably be a couple years before the Rallye shows its face again, but the owner is a die hard enthusiast, a smart enthusiast, and chances are it'll have even more power than it did before. Yikes.

_WRS

H20 2005 Golf Rallye meet

These are from the 2005 H2O show in Ocean City, MD. For whatever reason, there were a surplus of Golf Rallyes there that year, and we shot a little 'get together' feature for Eurotuner Magazine. It was cool to see so many Rallyes together since they were never sold in the US, and there must have been a critical point that year with price/quality of used cars in Europe and crazy people in the US to import them. I'm not exactly sure how these cars get imported, but it has something to do with Canada and cars shipped without engines... certainly prohibitive enough to discourage everyone but the most dedicated. There have not been any more than one of these cars at any show since, so in hindsight this was a special moment to see these cars together.

We will do a full feature on the green NGP car at some point, it was a VR6 Turbo conversion, and with close to 600 horsepower at the wheels and 2000 lbs , was certainly one of the fastest cars I've been in.

_BS