I’m Harry and I’m a 19 year old mechanical engineering student from North Yorkshire (although studying in London so down there mostly) who intends to enter the motorsport industry. Towards the back end of last year I was having a search around for a project car and was lucky enough to be introduced to a wonderfully kind and helpful man who was looking to get rid of his 1991 GTO Twin Turbo.
Being a student money is obviously quite tight at the moment but during the course of applying for an intership this year (going for an interview at Mercedes HPP in February) I came to realise how much the F1 and WEC teams etc valued experience of having a project car. With the knowledge that the car would not only be a pleasure purchase but also a career investment I decided to take the plunge and so I am now the owner of this wonderful car:
I have lot’s of plans for the car, and with the idea being that I’ll be doing it all myself I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time in the technical forum! I’ll get round to buying my full subsciption when I get home to the car over Easter, might even manage to make the AGM.
As one of my main projects I hope to get round to doing some computational fluid dynamics on the car using the software at uni. I think standalone wings, splitters and diffusers might be a step out of reach but I hopefully might get some useful vortex generators and canards from it. All the results, models etc. that I use I’ll make sure to post up on the forum so other people can make use of them.
Due to being away at uni for extended periods I intend to buy a trickle charger, does anybody have a good recommendation they can vouch for?
Hi and welcome to GTOUK, nice little project there
I used to use a ctek charger , great bit of kit , if your on facebook look up car care direct , chap called Dave naxton well known in the scene runs it
Yeah agree with craig here. Most of us use ctek from Dave. He owns a Gto himself.
These cars will certainly give you some good knowledge in stripping down and rebuilding… Then cutting your knuckles, banging your head, thowing your tools and learning to swear properly lol. But treated with respect they are amazing! Welcome to the club.
Would be good to get to the AGM so you can get a good feeling about who we all are and what the club is all about
Welcome along thete is a huge amount of info in these pages…your in the right place and now legal to drink…get the alcohol in… Your going to need it
Dave
Thanks for the kind words and advice guys, I found the car care direct page and website and the aforementioned battery conditioner. Finding the GTO UK group is paying off already!
At 19 you are either very brave or do not yet quite understand what you are in for with a car like the GTO/3000GT.
Most of them out there are potential money pits - especially if you are going to modify something that the previous owner is ‘looking to get rid’.
My advice is to let go of the racing engineer mind set and stick to basics and making most of what you got. You don’t quite have the dream budget or facilities to race convert a likely shagged road car for the best part needs an oil change and new coilpack - let alone a fancy dry carbon canard predicted to give you 14 kg of negative lift.
Look forward to seeing how it progresses , there have been some amazing cars put together by folks in this club by off the cuff conversations or ideas that they have had , without having the dream and taking the risk a lot wouldn’t have materialised
Yes the complex nature of all the electronics on the car was what gave me pause at first before Merc and Red Bull told me how much they valued it. The guy I bought it off was somebody my dad knew and no longer drove the car and wanted it to go to somebody who would get more use out of it rather than because it had lots of problems. It’s been checked over by two mechanics in the family and it’s in remarkably good shape and has been well looked after, slight bit of rust around the drain holes which I’m going to clean up and weld a new plate over though. I do realise that for my first project car it’s going to be one that needs a lot of looking after and a lot of money spent on it.
I appreciate your advice though and it’s always useful to be brought back down to earth every once in a while so the dreams don’t become too outlandish. Engines coming out over easter so I can get started on the front end, so we’ll see how confident I’m feeling after that haha!
“must try harder at being a poet” 1000 times please Terry 
