golf gti wants to race.

[MD13ailey]

ok my girlfriend was talking about my car the other day when she was a college. and one of her friends says his mazda protoge wagon can kick my regals *ss. so she tells me and i said oh thats fine we will just have to go to the track and see. I'm not goin to the track till a little later in the season so there can be some fresh rubber down and i want to get my 9" done before i race again anyways. then the same kid says he doesnt want to race until he does something to his car ( she didnt remember what) so he says his friend has a golf gti that will beat his mazda and i should race that. my regal runs consistant 13.4s occasionally 13.3s. i have been on the VW forums and from what i can find even the "Fast" ones only run low 14s at best. i dont want to jump into this with no knowledge on it I'm not really worried because at the same time as the rear end is getting done I'm gonna step up to a bigger cam as well and extend my rpm to about 7000. and make a few more ponies at the same time . can any of you shed any light or expierience on this?

 

[patmckinneyracing]

From what I've seen with golf gti's, and I'll let you know now I don't know a whole lot about ricers or what gti means, they are a popular option to put a small turbo on. The problem with these cars is they have almost no power down low and slowly gain power through the rpm's. Even then though, by the time the power kicks in on the VW, your already 3/4 of the way down the track. That's if he isn't running nitrous, which is chicken sh** IMO. And unless this guys has the computer skills and timing down on his golf, the thing is gonna bog and choke on itself. I would not be concerned in the least about beating this guy with your car.

 

[87SS383]

Well the TDI's are more of an 1/8th mile car. They are very torquey, following along the lines of most diesels. they suffer in the quarter, and as the previous poster put it, they'll bog down.

 

[torjan]

a colleague told me he runs low 14 with his Golf 4 R32 stock engine.
the diesel have a nice turbo-puch but a to small useable rpm-band.

 

[redneckracer305]

if its a 1.8t car that is stock he probably wont have a chance, even with some "mods" normally they are still slow. the turbos are tiny on these things. i know around here they typically put a full exhaust on and an intake, and make the turbo sound like its somthing fierce but they arent at all. a couple years ago when i was little crazier and didnt have my son in the car all the time, actually held right next to a modded 1.8t gti off a light, and whooped a 1.8t jetta, in the same night, and it was in a bone stock rotted out 85 z28 with a tpi 305. i cant see a vr6 car being all that quick, unless its turboed and built those seem pretty slow to. most of these thing are all sound dont let that scare you haha.

 

[80Maliboo]

This is funny.

Last year my buddy (cousin) had an 86 monte with lg4 heads, a 60103 cam, edelbrock rpm intake, stock converter, 3.73 rear, was asked to race the same car. 15.0 to a 15.5, my buddy won.

If youre not putting money on it, I will.

 

[megaladon6]

GTi's are pretty quick cars, they run about 150-200HP and only weigh 2000lbs. that's about a 10:1 weight ratio. about the same as a GTO. BTW GTi means Gran Tourisimo
stock they probably run a 14-16, depending on year. but they can be easily modded to run much faster. assuming someone with a clue, not the usual ricer. hell, there are 12sec TDi vw's and that's a 4cyl diesel! there are 10sec VW's out there.
the kid with the protege probably didn't realize that your car was modded. when he found out he chickened and got his buddy with a better car.

 

[rebelgtp]

GTi's are pretty quick cars, they run about 150-200HP and only weigh 2000lbs.

They have not been that light for quite some time. So it really depends on the car, earlier ones are freakishly light cars, stock not a ton of power but could be built up to be quite quick. Later ones got more power but also they got fatter. However later cars have more power potential.

 

[RITTER]

I had a '98 GTI that was an original 2.0L N/A car and someone put a turbo setup in it, that thing was pretty fast. A turbo'd VR6 would be something to be a little nervous about racing. I worked with a guy, when I lived in Texas, that had a completely custom built '01 Jetta VR6 turbo car and it put 325 hp to the wheels. I went to this 'euro" dyno day with him and he put down the most power out of all the cars there, supercharged BMW's and a couple of Porshe's (there was one Porshe that kept blowing an intercooler hose off at like 4500 RPM and was already making 317hp, so he would have definitely put more down if it would have held together)
I wouldn't worry about it though, who cares if you lose, just congradulate him on building a nice car and go on.

 

[3XBrownCutty]

The GTI's come stock with a turbo, first of all. secondly, if you chip one of those motors, you get around 200 horse to the wheels, bigger downpipe adds 20 horse, so a lot of it depends on how much the kid has done to it...

The only reason I know this is because one of my good friends has a jetta 1.8t. In his defense, most VW kids aren't ricers persay, my buddy only uses german parts when "upgrading" and nothing aftermarket. He is lowered and has big wheels, but the wheels are from other european cars (BBS's from audi's and other vw's etc) so it still looks stock. And no gay "ground effects." don't get me wrong, there are plenty of kids that rice out their vw's, but some kids actually do it right...